Kean and Oglethorpe are underway, with Oglethorpe out to an early lead.
Four men’s teams and four women’s teams will cut nets down tonight on the way to the Final Fours at Salem, Va., and Holland, Mich., with one more on each side cutting another net down a week from now.
I ran into the St. Mary’s team downtown in St. Louis today — appreciate the St. Patrick’s Day wishes, guys. I was too stunned to come up with a good response, and to be honest, what do you say to a team that had its season end last night? Great run? Tough loss? Good effort? All of the above apply but I don’t know if any of them are that helpful.
Coast Guard and Wheaton have Cinderella runs in progress on the men’s side, with Oglethorpe definitely playing the role in the women’s bracket. At this rate, everyone will know how to pronounce “Stormy Petrel.”
Enjoy the games. Keep us updated on what you’re seeing where you are.
Here in Brownwood, fans were waiting to get into the Coliseum since 1:30 pm. At 5:30 pm, the doors opened and a couple hundred fans burst through the doors, literally running to claim seats. There’s a few orange-and-blue clad Hope fans including 2006 Tournament Most Outstanding Player Bria Ebels.
The only time I’ve seen people charge for something like that, it was the great Care Bear rush of 1980-something. Man, people really, REALLY wanted one of those Sunshine Bears.
Hah — reminds me of me and my brothers running for the prime seats in the upper deck at the Metrodome. The upper deck is/was all general admission and we would make a mad dash for the front row above the baggie in right field. 🙂
Oglethorpe Beats Kean and moves on to the final 4! Anna Findling drops in 44 for the Petrels tonight! 98-86 final! WOO HOO!!!!
My bad…I was thinking of Drew…that would be Anna Findley. Sorry girl! She still dropped in 44, 8-10 from behind the arc.
Looks like Oglethorpe is the first to cut down the nets. 1 down for the SCAC- Depauw looks to become the second to make it a 50/50 SCAC Final 4!
The Hope men are headed to Salem after an 83-70 win over Wheaton.
Millsaps on the verge of losing it here, down 11 with 5:05 left. They have 21 turnovers and are 2-for-17 from downtown. 30-12 here in the second half for Wash U.
(24) Oglethorpe v. (4)Messiah
(2)Howard Payne v. (8)UW- Whitewater
Looks like the final 4 is set
Ursinus beat Coast Guard, but not before nearly losing the game at the end!
Ursinus was down two with less than 30 seconds remaining when Remy Cousart drove the lane and got a foul called… allowing Cousart to get to the free-throw line. He hit BOTH with 17 seconds on the clock.
BUT, Coast Guard had a chance. Al Sowers found himself wide open beyond the arc and took the shot. I don’t think a ball can be any further through a basket than it did on Sowers show, before bouncing out. I was SURE it was in, but it was not to be.
Overtime was dominated by Ursinus, but they almost threw it away again. With less than 30 seconds left and up 6 points, the inbounds pass for Ursinus was caught… and the player promptly stepped out of bounds! That gave Coast Guard a chance… but they couldn’t get the shots to fall.
I was very impressed with CGA… who had Commandant Thad Allen in attendance, wearing an orange CGA t-shirt. They represented themselves very well. Hat’s off – or should I say, I salute – a team that represented themselves and their academy extremely well… and no disrespect to Urinsus, I would have been thrilled to have seen the CGA Bears in Salem.
Now, that being said, congrats to Ursinus. They certainly rose to the challenge in tonight’s game, which feated more mini-runs by both teams than I could keep count of. They certainly did a great job of controlling the overtime and deserve to be dancing to Salem. It is the first time since 2000 that a Centennial Conference team is dancing in final four… and they certainly deserved it. I will be very interested with their game against Amherst, since Ursinus has weapons on every point of the floor!
Wash U atmosphere was a lot of fun. I’ll write more about that later.
What a shame Hope and HPU did not meet in the final four. Why in the world they placed the #1 and #2 teams in the same bracket is hard to understand.
Easy answer… because they are NOT #1 and #2 in the minds of the NCAA, especially with the criteria the committee uses to pick teams and then bracket them. Remember, as much as D3hoops.com is the only ranking most people go by (though, there is the ESPN/WBCA poll), when it comes to post season play, the NCAA does not use it as a reference. This is also true in the D1 tournaments.