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| Photos by Steve Frommell, d3photography.com |
By Riley Zayas
D3hoops.com
FORT WAYNE, Indiana — The saying might be as old as the sport itself. It is an overused cliche but more often than not, still rings true, even in the present day of high-octane offenses, well-crafted pick-and-rolls, and refined 3-point shooting. Defense, they say, wins championships.
In a Final Four that featured three teams — Hampden-Sydney, Guilford, and Trinity (Conn.) — who came into the weekend allowing fewer than 60 points per game, and Trine at fewer than 70 per game, the national semifinals were evidence of that fact. But the two games played out in different ways.
The battle between ODAC foes Hampden-Sydney and Guilford unfolded with 12 lead changes in a contest that remained competitive until the final seconds. When the final buzzer sounded, the top-ranked Tigers of HSC walked out of the coliseum with their sizable contingent of fans chanting “H-S-C” and a 62-57 victory in tow.
Trine controlled its semifinal against Trinity a bit more handily on both ends of the floor, taking a 38-26 halftime lead in front of what felt like a home crowd for the Thunder, considering the proximity from its campus in Angola, Indiana to Fort Wayne. Trinity managed to quiet the Thunder for a span midway through the second half, cutting the deficit to three as Trine’s offense was held at bay. But the Thunder answered with an 8-0 run, gaining the necessary separation to eventually take the win.
“We rebounded well in the second half and I thought that was a significant number,” Trine head coach Brooks Miller said postgame. “It felt like we came up with the ball when they missed some shots and I thought our point of pickup on the perimeter was tremendous.”
While both teams had strong offensive stretches at critical points, the defense had plenty to do with the scoring runs that unfolded and the way in which the momentum eventually shifted towards the victors down the stretch.
Trinity entered the matchup against Trine shooting 33.5 percent from beyond the arc and 44.4 percent from the field. But the Bantams struggled for a significant portion of the contest, and shot just 2-of-16 from 3-point range to go along with an overall shooting percentage of just 30.6 percent.
Missed opportunities by Trinity played into that, especially as the Bantams went 2-of-11 from the field over the final four minutes. But Trine’s pressure on the defensive end had a role in the Thunder sealing the win in the way that they did, scoring 20 of the game’s final 31 points.
“Trine is very tough,” Trinity head coach James Cosgrove noted. “They’re very gritty. They’re probably one of, if not the, toughest teams we played this year. I think we had some good opportunities. We were just trying to play a little bit too much catch-up at the end.”
Hampden-Sydney had a similar scenario in its win over Guilford. Unlike Trine, whose lead was cut close but never erased, the Tigers fell behind 47-40 with 7:04 left. But they came roaring back, with Adam Brazil assisting on a pair of 3-pointers followed by jumpers from Davidson Hubbard and Brazil himself. The 10-0 run flipped the momentum, as HSC took a 50-47 advantage and soon followed up with another 7-0 spurt, sealing the win.
Points did not come easily for either offense, but HSC’s defense stepped when called upon, holding Guilford to 33.3 percent from the field. The Quakers shot just 3-of-12 from 3-point range in the second half. Notably, in a fitting example of how high-level defense generates momentum, the Tigers forced a pair of shot clock violations in the victory.
“We have game-changers, and that’s one of them,” HSC forward Shane Fernald said of the shot clock violations against Guilford. “It’s demoralizing when you can’t get a shot off. I think our defense is one of the best in the country, so we take pride in it.”
In turn, the semifinals produced a national title game that figures to be paced by a pair of consistent defensive squads. There will be scorers on the floor, no doubt, but both teams demonstrated on Thursday night that even when the shots are not falling, there is little reason to panic. Generating defensive stops is not a facet predicated on the ability to score.
But defense is not the only storyline present within this matchup. There is also a bit of a historical aspect, despite the fact that Trine and HSC have not met — at least not in the 21st century.
Hampden-Sydney is amongst the closest D-III programs to Salem, Virginia, the longtime home of the men’s final four from 1996-2018. In fact, each of HSC’s first two Final Four appearances in program history were played just over 100 miles from home, bringing out the HSC fanbase in droves.
Now, it is Trine which is in that spot, playing in its own backyard in Fort Wayne, just 35 miles from campus. And just as HSC did in 1999, in its lone national title game appearance in program history, the anticipation is that Trine will pack the coliseum for Saturday’s afternoon’s tilt. The impact of that crowd was certainly felt on Thursday night.
“When you first step out there, and you see all those white shirts, it’s a little daunting,” Trinity’s Dana Smith commented postgame of the crowd of 2,668.
There will be plenty more white shirts in attendance on Saturday. But it won’t be the only thing that could become daunting.
HSC dealt with its challenges on the offensive end against Guilford, but the Tigers moved the ball well in spurts, tallying 19 assists. They came into the game averaging 16.1 assists — it has been a central part of the offense throughout this season — but the significance was raised as HSC fell behind midway through the second half. The Tigers ended up recording seven of the game’s final eight assists, and that is an aspect of the HSC offense that will play into the matchup against Trine’s defensive presence.
As Kimbrough put it, “defensively, we want to be disruptive. Offensively, we want to be unpredictable.”
Offensive balance for HSC might be the key to getting past the Thunder, considering five players average 6.2 points per game or better, and three average in double figures. And beyond the stats themselves, HSC’s ability to spread the floor and pass the ball when in rhythm is something head coach Caleb Kimbrough considers a notable strength.
“We have guys that are focal points,” Kimbrough said. “But I think what makes us a difficult team to defend is that we have other guys that can still score. We’re well-rounded in that way. Being unpredictable is something we focus on and the byproduct of that [are] assists.”
Hubbard headlines HSC’s play on both ends of the floor, as the 6-foot-5 senior comes off a 16-point, seven-rebound performance in the semifinal. He scored 11 of the Tigers’ final 19 points, leading the comeback.
Hubbard played 31 minutes in the victory, and was complemented by the performance of Fernald, whose 10-point, five-assist, five-rebound showing in 20 minutes helped HSC keep the pressure on in the post for the majority of both halves. The fact that he did so after entering the contest averaging just 10.4 minutes per game, made it that much more impressive. HSC heads into the championship game with a seemingly proven one-two punch in the post.
“Shane has come on for us late in the year over the course of the last month or so,” Kimbrough said. “I think he’s really matured and become a big part of what we do.”
Speaking of stepping up off the bench, Brent Cox had a similar sort of performance in his 13 minutes against Trinity. The senior forward, who played limited minutes through the first two weekends of the tournament, stepped up with nine points on a 4-of-7 shooting day. It marked his highest-scoring effort since a Feb. 14 win over Kalamazoo, and it gave the Thunder a spark.
“I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time,” Cox noted. “Obviously you don’t get this opportunity many times in your life. I knew I had to be ready. I stayed up late watching some old clips of me [from last year], and the things I used to do. And then when I was out there, my teammates helped me out a lot, and set me up with some really good passes.”
Cox will be a player to keep an eye on in the national title game, and he and Nate Tucker both could be critical in giving Trine necessary depth in that scenario. Tucker, for his part, was 4-of-4 from the field along with seven rebounds in 23 minutes.
And to counter Hubbard and Fernald in the post, Emmanuel Megnanglo’s name comes to the forefront for Trine. The 6-8 forward had eight points and seven rebounds against Trinity but it was his presence in the paint, especially defensively, that seemed to be most noticeable.
In one sequence, a gamble by Miller paid off with under seven minutes left, as Megnanglo picked up his fourth foul. Trine led 50-43 at that juncture but a block from Megnanglo on the ensuing play was followed by Megnanglo dunk on the other end, energizing the Trine crowd. That, perhaps better than any other stretch, demonstrated exactly why Miller opted to leave his starting forward on the floor.
“We had a really tight game with Hope in the conference championship game,” Miller said. “[Megnanglo] played with four [fouls] the last 10 or 12 minutes. So it’s not something we haven’t done before. As great of a team as [Trinity] is, he needed to be on the floor. That’s part of our baseline defense. Players win games. I wasn’t going to watch the video tomorrow morning or tonight, and say, ‘Man, we should’ve given it a shot and left him in there’ if they went on a run. We needed him out there to be at our best.”
And the Thunder will need to be at their best on Saturday. The same, of course, goes for the Tigers. With the defense that was played on Thursday night, and by both HSC and Trine through this tournament, open shots will come at a premium in the national final.
Perhaps the most notable storyline of them all sits front and center. HSC has reached the title game just once before, in 1999, and lost in heartbreaking fashion in double overtime to UW-Platteville, 76-75. In that instance, as D3hoops.com’s Pat Coleman wrote in the postgame story, HSC was “the hometown favorite”. Now the roles are reversed, with Trine playing close to home, and HSC holding another shot at the program’s first national title.
“It’s two-fold,” Brazil said Thursday night when asked about reaching the national final. “It means everything. But the way we approach things, it’s just a one-day deal. We bought ourselves two more days. We say it’s a one-game championship. So tonight, we won a championship. And we’ve won quite a few championships in a row, if you put it that way.
“The opponent [tonight] was Guilford, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who our opponent is, we’re focused on what we do in that moment.”
For Trine, this has been just as much of a storybook season. There is no past NCAA Tournament history to speak of. When the Thunder cut down the nets after the MIAA title game and clinched its spot in the tournament field, history was made. When Trine’s Cortez Garland connected on a game-winning jumper in overtime against UW-Platteville in last week’s national quarterfinal, history was made. Now, one game stands in the way from Trine becoming the first team since Ohio Wesleyan in 1988 to make its NCAA Tournament debut and win it all in the same season.
“We came here to win the weekend,” Miller said. “In order to do that, we have to stay emotionally and mentally locked in to what it takes to be successful.
“Coach [Ed] Bentley talked about it with our team today. He’s a former military guy, a marine, and an incredible high school coach. He mentioned to the guys, when they would go on their runs, these 40-mile deals with 100 pounds on their backs, ‘If you looked at it as 40 miles, those guys didn’t make it. They didn’t finish. But if you looked at it as ‘We’re going to make it to this tree. We’re going to get to this hill. Focus on one thing at a time. It’s just a reminder.
“And I had them look around. I said, ‘Things like this don’t happen by ourselves. We talked about that as a team, but also as a community. The support we had tonight was really special. We’re really looking forward to seeing them on Saturday.”