By Pat Coleman
D3sports.com 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This week, Pat Maloney returns to Salem.

No, Catholic has never been to the Final Four. But the Cardinals' senior point guard has been.

It was at the end of his sophomore year, a year after Maloney had helped lead Catholic to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time in school history. And the game was an instant classic.

"My dad and I went," Maloney recalls. "That was a great game, double overtime, when Hampden-Sydney lost to Wisconsin-Platteville. I've always dreamed about going back."

It took some time, but Maloney and four of his classmates, Mike Hartman, Tim Judge, Andy Rice and Kurt Zeisler, will be ending their careers in Salem. It's a fine way to cap a season that was looking pretty bleak in January. On Jan. 10, they lost at home to Salisbury State, falling to 9-4 and 1-2 in the Capital Athletic Conference, 0-2 in conference home games.

"That was rough, but we had a lot of things going on that a lot of people didn't know about," said head coach Mike Lonergan. "It was tough for our players to worry about basketball. But they stuck together and they all put aside their personal goals. Sometimes tragedy brings people closer together."

"We were in a situation where we hadn't been, 1-2 in the conference," said Maloney. I thought we could have started pointing fingers, but we all just hung together and tried to make this thing run."

Judge, one of four of the five seniors that lives together (Zeisler is the lone man who lives elsewhere), feels the seniors' friendship off the court helped their composure. "Nobody really gets mad at each other, we all pretty much know what one another can do. We're not going to yell and scream at each other. We all work together, we all want to win."

But it's Maloney that makes this group go, and it always has been. From humble beginnings as a freshman, averaging 12.3 points but just over three assists, Maloney has been the point guard from the day he arrived at this Northeast Washington, D.C., campus from Brant Beach, N.J. One thousand, six hundred points later, he's a complete player.

"He's come a long way as a point guard," said Lonergan. "When he came here, Pat could score like crazy but he didn't make the other players better, because he wasn't really a point guard. But this year, he'll have games where he'll have six assists and one turnover. I just wish he would try to take over more. He's too unselfish."

Maloney has picked his spots well, scoring 27 in the CAC title game against preseason coaches' pick Marymount and 25 at Clark in the sectional final.

"I didn't do a very good job against Brockport," said Maloney, who scored 16 points. "We were turning the ball over. I should have tried to get the ball in my hands more."

"For a kid that good, he's never really had a little swagger to him," said Lonergan. "That's why I don't mind when he pumps his fists and shows a little bit of emotion."

In 1998, Catholic came within an inch of the Elite Eight before Hunter's George Brown hit a rushed three-pointer to put his team into a second overtime. Coming so close as freshmen has only whetted this group's appetite.

"I remember freshman year we all made it to the Sweet Sixteen," said Maloney, "saw that we had a shot. That was pretty much our goal from then, to go to the Final Four."

"I can't believe that we're this far," said Judge. "I didn't think we'd get back there. I knew it would be hard, because there's so many good teams, you never know who's going to come up and play big."

Lonergan has long felt that Catholic getting to the Final Four would be the equivalent of winning a national champoinship, citing factors ranging from student apathy to administrative disinterest in athletics.

"Hopefully this can open some eyes of some people so they can see that having a good basketball team isn't a negative, especially when they're real student-athletes. Being on the front of The Washington Post on Sunday, when 1.2 million people see 'Catholic advances', what does it hurt to add a couple thousand dollars to a budget if you're going to be maybe able to stay at this level?

"It will be nice to see how the other half lives. It's so difficult at a place like Catholic."

"Coach has always been saying how hard it is for Catholic to get into the Final Four. We've been lucky enough to make it to four straight Sweet Sixteens."