I'll Be a Son of a Shark

[CoachC]

Feb 22: VMI win their final game at home to pull a half game within Presbyterian and will need Liberty to upset the Blue Hose on the road to tie for the regular season title. We are in a 3 way tie for third with the Camels and Big Blue Chickens, both of whom play their final games at home against teams near the cellar. A win in our final game would assure us no worse than 5th.

[CoachC]

Bad news for a team that is already struggling offensively. Rob Woods suffered a nasty hip pointer a couple of days ago in practice, and is questionable for this game. He is expected to be ready for the conference tournament, but our chances of winning this game are dependent on several people playing exceptionally well and one of our best team efforts of the season. We lost our first meeting with the Buccaneers at home in overtime as their starting guards raised havoc and combined for 45 pts.

Henry will start in place of Woods. Help.

We acquitted ourselves quite well at both ends of the court in the first half. We shot 50% from the field as a variety of players chipped in for some balanced scoring to offset the absence of Woods. Defensively we held them to 32% from the field, and their starting guards who hurt us so badly in the first game were held to just 2 pts combined. A good effort if we can sustain it in the 2nd half.

at the half we lead 32-20.

As is usual for us, we hit a clunker in the 2nd half, not shooting well, not defending as well, and getting out-rebounded. With 3:38 we still hold a 5 point lead however. As we continue to struggle offensively, they get a steal and a runout at 2:27 to take a one point lead. O'Conner slams one home from the post at 2:14 to regain the lead. After a stop, Feeley drives to the goal at 1:26 to stretch the lead to 3. After both teams fail to score in their next possessions, they get 3 cracks at the goal but come up empty and Moore rebounds with one second difference between shot clock and game clock. We call time out to bring in the freethrow shooters. Strangely they don't foul, but pick off a pass from Henry at :04 and get off a hurried 3 to tie the game and take it into overtime. For cryin' out loud!?! I'm speechless. You just can't beat stupid lucky.

OT

We score on our first two possessions in OT to take a 4 point lead. At 1:33 it's tied again. After a time out O'Conner misses from the post at :07 and they miss a hurried 3. Double OT.

2nd OT

After Henry misses the front end of a one and bonus, Moore rebounds, we reload and Henry hits a jumper for first blood at 3:34. After a turnover by the Bucs, O'Conner scores from the low post for a 4 point lead at 3:08. Two freethrows at the other end cuts it back to a two point lead. They tie it again with a putback at 1:49. They hit a 3 at 1:25 for the lead. Myers answers with a three out of a time out at 1:11. We get a stop but then turn it over. They hit a jumper at :14. We take our last timeout at :07. Porter hits a jumper at :02 to tie it again. Triple overtime!

3rd OT

They get the tip, but Porter steals and outlets to Sheals for a slam and first blood. On the next possession Sheals steals and finds Kerr on the break for a jam! 76-72. O'Conner drives and scores for a 6 pt lead at 3:08. At 1:46 Porter scores on the baseline to extend the lead to 8! They miss on the next possession, and loose ball out of bounds is off a Bucs hand. 8 pt lead and the ball with 1:18. They quickly foul Myers who hits both ends of a one and one, for a ten point lead. After a 3 they quickly foul again. Myers splits the freethrows, and they call their last timeout with 45 secs down 8. They hit another 3 to cut it to 5 with 33 seconds on the clock. Henry hits a pair of freethrows to put it back to a 3 possession lead at :31. Myers steals and is fouled at :16 and hits both freethrows to put the icing on the cake. They miss , we rebound. GAME!

Solid team effort, and pretty good defense, especially in the final overtime, gets us a road win without Woods. A game the guys can take pride in.

O'Conner has his 2nd straight double double and a career hi with 20 pts 11 rebs.
Myers adds 11 pts, 7 asts
Kerr has 13 pts, 2 asts, 9 rebs, and 4 stls
Sheals added 12
Porter had 15 pts, 4 asts and 2 stls.
Finney added 8

Balanced scoring and a team effort was what it took tonight, plus the fortitude to gut out 3 OTs. We finish the regular season with 3 straight wins and sweep the final 2 game road trip. Hopefully that will give us some momentum going into the tournament

Final in triple overtime:
G-W 87 CS 78

[CoachC]

Feb 25: Presbyterian choked at home last night against Liberty, and wind up with a tie with VMI for regular season championship after having the hammer 2 games up. Presbyterian retains top seed after tie-breakers. We finish in a 3rd place tie with the Soup Ladles, but wind up with the 4th seed because of their "win" against us in the regular season. We had been picked 5th preseason, so a 4 seed isn't too shabby.

[CoachC]

With the 4 seed we avoid the play in round this year, and play in the 4-5 game with 5 seed Radford in the upper bracket. Once again the tournament will be the inaugural event held at a new facility.. this time the new HTC center on the campus of Coastal Carolina. With a 3600 capacity, it's about twice as big as their old barn. Coastal Carolina, despite being one of the teams having to play a buy-in game, will at least get to play at their new facility, as the higher seed. They have chosen to play their first home game at their new facility before the official start of the tournament.

Our RPI stands at 103, so there may still be life after the conference tournament should we not win. I believe we have to win at least one game though, and even then it may depend on other teams declining the invitation. The AD has told me that the CIT has called to gauge our interest. I will not be telling the guys about it of course. I want them to concentrate on the tournament and nothing else.

Presbyterian shot themselves in the foot with that home loss to Liberty in their final game and saw their RPI drop from 44 to 61. As we saw with High Point last year, they certainly have no lock on the NIT. VMI will likely be playing someplace in the post-season as well regardless of what happens wiht their RPI of 75. I'm sure that neither of those teams are thinking about that at all right now either.

Somebody has to get the automatic bid.. might as well be us.

[CoachC]

Mar 2:
In the Big South tournament play-in round:
8 seed Liberty held serve over 9 seed Charleston Southern 64-53
6 seed Coastal Carolina gets the win in their new home over 11 seed Winthrop 66-58
7 seed High Point beats 10 seed NC-Asheville 82-71.

The quarterfinal matchups are:

(1) Presbyterian vs (8) Liberty
(5) Radford vs (4) Gardner-Webb
(6) Coastal Carolina vs (3) Campbell
(7) High Point vs (2) VMI

[Wayne23]

An injury in practice? C'mon, you made that up! Never happened to me. I think it should be part of the game, AS LONG AS IT DOES NOT INCREASE TOTAL # OF INJURIES.

Triple OT! Love it! Great win!

[CoachC]

I didn't make it up. I've had injuries turn up between games before, but not often. A lot of times they'll turn out to be things like the flu, but in this case it actually was a brused hip.

[Wayne23]

Wow! If it ever happened to me I never noticed it. I swear that all of my injuries happen during games. Interesting.

[CoachC]

We played the Highlanders just once in the regular season, hanging on for a road victory 76-73. We have to keep their guards in check. The crowd this afternoon will probably be mostly ambivalent. The majority of the 1800 or so people here for the afternoon session are fans of the host, most of the rest being the Presbyterian contingency anxiously waiting for the late game. We did manage to get about 75 people here via chartered buses.

Woods picked up his 2nd foul with about 11 minutes to go in the first half, and stayed on the bench the rest of the half. Our offense sputtered a bit thereafter, but our defense was excellent and we take a 31-25 edge into intermission.

Sustained defensive effort for 40 minutes allowed us to pull away in the second half and win easily. We had balanced scoring, as winning our last game on the road without Woods seemed to convince everyone they don't have to stand around and watch him do everything to win. We also went to the line 33 times and outrebounded the Highlanders 39-27.

O'Conner, Brown, and Sheals all made big contributions in this one and when that happens we usually have good success. O'Conner had 14 pts, Sheals 10, and Brown had 9 pts 6 rebs. Bobby Henry gave us a big lift in the first half with Woods on the bench and had 10 points, 4 rebs, 2 sts and a block.

Woods had 16 pots, 6 rebs, a stl and a blk, and had plenty of support in this one. A very nice methodical win.

Final: G-W 76 Radford 57

[CoachC]

Mar 2: in the other quarterfinal games

(1) Presbyterian 74 (8) Liberty 67
(6) Coastal Carolina 74 (3) Campbell 66
(2) VMI 70 (7) High Point 56