I'll Be a Son of a Shark

[PointGuard]

Ranked!!!!! Way to go!

[CoachC]

Mar 7: Arenas getting into it again, this time with Billy Sheals. What's wrong with this kid? I ask him if he wants to continue to be a part of this team, and he says yes after making some excuses. I tell him one more incident and I'm cutting him and he can watch the tournament on tv. I just don't get it. The kid should be as thrilled to be a walk-on as I was in my playing days, and be thrilled with the opportunity to go to an NCAA tournament as part of the team.

[CoachC]

Thank you! It was a genuine surprise given our RPI and conference affiliation. I never would have thunk it. It probably isn't deserved, but it's nice!

[CoachC]

Mar 12: Selection Sunday. It's been a looong nervous week of practice. During our week off our RPI rose to 40 but we fell to #24 in the AP poll and out of the coaches poll entirely. Apparently a lot of coaches had time to rethink it.

Once again a huge crowd gathers with us at the student union to watch the Selection Show.

Their is some relief from the crowd to see we aren't one of the play-in teams, but that honestly would have been a real shocker and totally unwarranted.

Top Ranked UCLA is given the number 1 seed over all and is assigned to the regional at the Meadowlands. Indiana is the top seed at Lexington. We've not seen our name yet. Oregon is top seed in Austin. Boos come from the crowd as NC St. shows up as the 8 seed. Still haven't seen our name... one regional left. Hope the stupid Selection Committee didn't forget us. Maryland is top seed in the West at Seattle. Finally we come up. The 12 seed in the West drawing UMASS. Boos come from the crowd. I have to admit I'm disappointed at that seeding as well. It's better than the 15 seed we had last year, but we hoped for a little better. UNC is the 5 seed in Lexington, and Duke, on probation, gets to stay home and watch us all. That's a shame.

After the selection show, the talking heads pick us as a possible Cinderella, and think we have a chance at the Minutemen. Let's hope they are right!

Presbyterian is invited to the NIT. I'm shocked that neither Longwood nor High Point are invited anywhere in the postseason. I thought Longwood especially had a shot at the NIT and were almost assured of a chance to defend their CIT title. I feel bad for them both.

[PointGuard]

Get your dancin' shoes on.

[Bryan Swartz]

Fairly brutal -- the draw for the tournament can really turn the tide of a small school. Go give 'em hell!

[CoachC]

You are right, Bryan. But like it or not it's definitely realistic. I'm shocked that this team managed to get ranked though. I've had better teams in better conferences with better RPIs not be able to break the top 25.

[CoachC]

Mar 13: Apparently everyone was swayed by the Selection Committee. When the new polls are released we have dropped out of the top 25 in both polls. Not that I'm convinced we belonged there in the first place, but it kind of sucks to drop out of the polls without even playing a game.

Presbyterian loses a heart-breaker in the first round of the NIT to Xavier 79-78 on the road. I'm still amazed that Longwood isn't playing somewhere. As defending CIT champ, you would have thought that CollegeInsider.com would have gladly given them an invite with an RPI in the mid 70s. Go figure.

[CoachC]

Mar 15: A huge crowd greets us at the airport as we depart for Seattle. It's a shame that we are in a regional a continent away. Most people at the West Regional will probably have never heard of us, but I suppose that could work in our favor with the underdog factor. South Carolina Upstate in the same regional will be in the same boat. Hopefully our people and their people will get together and pull for each other (OOC: Frank needs to get a few hundred people into one of those fancy rooms of his. I'm sure a few hundred of our people would drive over to take the ride, although they'll have to figure out how to get to the future first.). The local resort had hoped to pull some strings and get some tickets to the regional and sponsor a charter flight, but when they found out we were being exiled to Seattle it was impractical. It's good to finally have that kind of community support at any rate.

[CoachC]

Unable to have time to tape an interview with Larry before this one because of the pre-game press conference and not knowing when it was our turn to be ogled at. At the press conference of course we were asked what I thought about us being considered as a possible Cinderella team this year, and I told them that all I was concerned with was that we played well, kept our heads held high, and didn't look like a bunch of ugly step-sisters.

UMass is a tough assignment for us of course, but on paper at least we have a better chance than we did against UCLA a year ago, for sure. We will have to keep their high scoring 2 guard Palmer under control without letting anyone else get away from us. They are a VERY good rebounding team though, and that will be a concern for us. They send EVERYONE to the boards, and we will need to try to do the same. Not sure how much man we'll be able to play against them, but we'll try to play at least some early. The Minutemen love to run and are a high scoring team much like Presbyterian without the quality big man in the middle. In fact, Presbyterian led the NCAA in scoring this season at 76.0, and the Minutemen were 2nd at 75.6. We finished 8th in scoring ourselves at 73.5, so that in and of itself doesn't scare us, but we are going to have to get some kind of advantage to win this thing.

Not surprisingly we are out-rebounded in the first half, mostly on the defensive end but not by a wide margin overall (15-17, 2-5). Despite 7 steals in the first half we only have a +2 advantage in turnovers because we struggled at times against their full court 1-2-2 pressure (especially Feeley who turned the ball over 5 times). We struggled defensively in the man early on but when we switched to 1-3-1 about halfway through we cooled them off and we out-shoot them for the half 48.4 to 43.3. That's just enough to take a halftime edge into intermission 34-31. In the second half, I tell the team we MUST avoid the second half letdown we've had often this season. We don't have a wide margin of error in this one. We also need to cut down on the turnovers and try to do a better job on the defensive glass. If possible I would like to slow the pace down a bit in the 2nd half as well, with our shallow bench. It's not something I'd normally do, but an up and down game works in their favor because of their depth. Amazingly we hold Palmer to just 2 points in the first half, but I warn everyone to not let their guard down against him, because he's far too good to hold him down for the entire game. I'm proud of them to not let the opening minute jitters get to them as we began the game down 11-2 before we settled down. It could have turned ugly, but we kept our composure.

We come out tight in the 2nd half, and with the offense getting a little frustrated we put up some questionable shots. When Billy Sheals fired up a 3 with about 20 seconds on the shot clock I almost had a heart attack. The first media time out doesn't come til 13:34 and I do my best to try to get back my own composure so that I can try to smooth-talk them into getting back their own. We trail now 43-38. Our offensive woes have been carrying over to the defensive end as well, so we are going to try to go man to switch things up. Their big man has been killing us in the zone, and shouldn't be.

At 7:57 we continue to self-destruct, and just can't get the ball in the basket. We now trail 54-42 and it's going to take a HUGE effort to get us back in the game now.

We turn them over 20 times on 13 steals, but it's not enough to overcome a truly woeful shooting 2nd half (37.3% for the game). I'm not sure what to tell the guys afterwards. The effort was there, but we seemed to psych out ourselves out in the 2nd half.

Jeffers had 16 pts,6 rebs, and 5 stls but didn't get much help and struggled himself shooting in the 2nd half.
Feeley had 8 pts, but turned the ball over 7 times with 3 asts.
Felts was held to just 7, although he did grab 5 rebounds. There was nothing wrong with his defensive efffort though as Palmer had just 7 pts for the game and turned the ball over 7 times, probably his worst game of the season.
Battle had one of his worst games offensively of the season with just 2 pts and 3 asts, although his defense was good and he handled the full court pressure much better than Feeley did.
O'Conner was a big disappointment allowing an inferior man in the middle score 16 pts with 13 rebounds. On a night when we badly needed some offense he scored just 5 pts for us and only took 4 shots. This was a game where he could have made a big difference.

In the first half we were Cinderella, but in the 2nd half we were definitely the ugly step-sisters.

One and done Final:

G-W 56 UMass 62