Photos by Larry Radloff, UMHB athletics

By Pat Coleman
D3sports.com

ATLANTA -- The long road for Mary Hardin-Baylor ended in disappointment, but even in a season of adversity, the Cru took Texas and the American Southwest Conference further than it ever has before, all the way to the title game before losing to Amherst 87-70 in the national title game.

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From losing two big men to injury before the season ever started, to six consecutive conference road games in January, to a trip across the country to Washington State in the Sweet 16 round of the tournament and a meeting with top-ranked St. Thomas in the semifinals, Mary Hardin-Baylor (27-6) overcame quite a bit just to get to this point.

And reflecting on that made Cru coach Ken DeWeese emotional.

“These guys have my total respect.

“Next year will be my 44th year, but I doubt seriously I’ll ever have another group of guys that ever captured … really captured my heart,” he said, haltingly. “And that, for a guy with my experience and years, it’s hard to put into words what it’s like to work with a bunch of young men like this bunch of guys have been.”

Mary Hardin-Baylor gave up the first 10 points of the game to Amherst (30-2), then got as close as five on three separate occasions in the first half and four twice in the second half but could never push it over the top.

“When we pulled within four I thought we were going to be able to ride the momentum and tie or take the lead eventually,” said Thomas Orr, “but every time we cut it to four they hit a big shot or we’d give up an offensive rebound and it killed our momentum.”

Orr finished with a game-high 24 points, including a thunderous dunk with 3:40 left in the first half that cut the lead to 33-28. But Allen Williamson grabbed an offensive rebound and put it back to make the lead seven. Similar rallies ended in similar ways, and the deficit was double-digits for the final 11:45 of the game, ending the Texans’ run.

The Cru’s run started with bad news in preseason, when Sheldon Jones (16 games in 2011-12) got hurt and ended up missing the season. Dorian Purnell (19 starts, 4.7 points per game) left school to take a job and transfer Chris Burks was hurt as well, impacting the team’s depth in the post. But the team rallied.

"We go out to Washington and played Whitworth and Whitman and they played very well, and we were in both games,” DeWeese recalled. “We come back on Monday and go to Trinity on Wednesday. They beat us in the first round of the NCAA Tournament the year before and we beat them in overtime and these guys began to believe, not just in themselves but in each other.”

Unlike previous Texas teams, Mary Hardin-Baylor went through two of the best teams the West Region had to offer and won, picking up the victory on the road at Whitworth and then beating top-ranked St. Thomas in Salem in the national semifinals. UMHB has been the last team standing from the state four times in the past seven seasons.

“Hopefully we’re just the beginning. Our league is really good but a lot of people don’t get to see us.

I think you can expect some more Texas teams to follow. Hopefully we’re in that group, too, but there are really good teams in our league and I think it’s going to happen now.”

And if DeWeese has his way, someone will be making a trip like this every year: “If this format does not become permanent we’re not doing the service for the student-athletes on the D-II and D-III level that we possibly can. This is the greatest atmosphere for college basketball players. ... It is something that each team should have an opportunity to aspire to get to.”