CAA Semifinals
RICHMOND, Va. – The CAA championship game is set, and it features one team no one would have predicted. William & Mary won their third straight game in the final seconds, knocking off top seed VCU to advance to the title game for the first time since joining the CAA.
Semifinals Honor Roll
Laimis Kisielius, William & Mary: 23 points on 10-17 shooting, 6 assists
Danny Sumner, William & Mary: 19 points, 7 rebounds
Eric Maynor, VCU: 16 points, 6 assists
Folarin Campbell, George Mason: 15 points, 5 rebounds
Vladimir Kuljanin, UNC-Wilmington: 10 points, 11 rebounds
Sumner Breeze Makes Them Feel Fine
One can’t help but notice that continuing improvement of William & Mary sophomore Danny Sumner. Highly-regarded coming out of high school and thought to be a coup for the Tribe, Sumner had some difficulty adjusting to college last year and played sparingly.
Sumner has started the last 20 games and has become more of a factor as his playing time has increased. When he plays 25 or more minutes, he averages over 12 points per game and leads the team in scoring over the last 24 games. In three games this weekend, he has averaged 17.3 points per game.
“I think before Christmas, we just felt he had to play,” said head coach Tony Shaver. “Danny struggled defensively some early in the year, but he’s so good offensively and gives us such a weapon that we don’t have without him that we felt he could grow on the floor defensively as opposed to listening to me in practice.”
His improvement certainly showed during the season, but he’s becoming a star with his play this weekend. Added Shaver: “It’s hard to imagine a sophomore playing as well as he has in the last three days.
The Tribe have been a balanced bunch, but that was the case before Sumner’s emergence. With him becoming the player he has thus far, they’ve taken another step forward and are now 40 minutes away from the NCAA Tournament.
The Waiting Game For VCU
After Sunday’s semifinal loss, regular season champion VCU now must wait it out until next Sunday. By winning the regular season title, the Rams will be in the NIT if they don’t get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, and that might be where they wind up.
On Monday morning, CollegeRPI.com shows the Rams with an RPI of 53. The Rams are 24-7 and have knocked off Houston, slumping Maryland and Akron, with losses to Miami and Arkansas. If William & Mary wins on Monday night, that would give them two wins over NCAA Tournament teams since they won both regular season meetings with the Tribe.
Predictably, head coach Anthony Grant was asked about this after the game, and he gave the only real answer there is.
“I have no idea. It wouldn’t do me any good to guess,” said Grant.
Asked again about it later, he commented, “I’d be wasting your time and mine.”
The Rams’ profile looks like one of an NIT team, but this year is no ordinary season when it comes to teams on the bubble. Plenty of teams that don’t look like locks for the tournament have had damaging losses of late, but as is always the case, the more the locks win in the conference tournament, the better for teams like VCU. It also wouldn’t hurt if teams like Houston, Maryland and Akron won a few more games so those wins look better, and if Miami and Arkansas earn their way in those losses don’t look too bad.
Grant likes to talk in terms of a big picture, and he summed it up in just such a way.
“The biggest difference is that now our destiny is someone else’s hands,” said Grant. “The thing we’ve tried to do all year is control our own destiny.”
Familiar Script For Patriots
Two years ago, when George Mason made their epic Final Four run, Jim Larranaga talked often about defense. He mentioned that there was a conscious decision made to focus on defense and win with it.
Don’t look now, but the Patriots’ defense is leading the way in their wins in the CAA Tournament. They held Northeastern under 36 percent on Saturday, then held UNC-Wilmington to just over 28 percent on Sunday. Doing so against the Seahawks was quite a feat considering how capable their offense is of putting up points.
“They disrupted us all night,” said UNC-Wilmington head coach Benny Moss. “We could never seem to quite get in a flow. They kept us from getting good ball reversal.”
The Patriots learned from their two regular season matchups with the Seahawks, both of which were close losses. Folarin Campbell, who led the way offensively with 15 points, said they knew they could beat the Seahawks from those two games, especially if they defended. His coach spoke of the learning experience at the defensive end.
“Some of the things that transpired in our first couple of games with [UNC-Wilmington] had a great impact on our decisions that we made today,” said Larranaga. “They really hurt us from three and they hurt us on the low block, so we tried to take away as many three-point opportunities as we could, and as many low-post feeds as we could. Our guys just worked so hard at limiting their opportunities from those two spots that we were able to control the game with our defense.”
The Patriots weren’t offensive stars themselves, so it was clear that defense won this game. John Vaughan did a lot of good work on the perimeter, while Chris Fleming and Will Thomas led the defensive effort and Louis Birdsong was the role player who shined at both ends.
Smith a Question Mark
Patriots junior guard Dre Smith didn’t play in the second half due to a knee problem that had his knee locking up. Larranaga said the trainer tried everything, and finally Smith and the trainer seemed to find something that worked. Asked about Smith’s status for Monday night’s championship game, Larranaga was hopeful but non-committal.
Credit the Seniors
UNC-Wilmington will now wait and see if a bid to the NIT or College Basketball Invitational (CBI) comes their way. The Seahawks are 20-13 and tied for second in the conference, and were a hot team in the month of February.
Even if the Seahawks don’t go to postseason play, their season was quite a turnaround from a year ago. Last year, they were 7-22 with T.J. Carter redshirting and some other injuries not helping. They also had to adjust to a new coaching staff with a new style of play, and all of that certainly contributed. It was a given that they would be better this year with Carter back and a year of playing for Moss, but just how much better was anyone’s guess.
“I think it’s been a success,” said Moss of the season. “From where we were a year ago, to finish down towards the bottom of the conference and have 20 losses, to this year having 20 wins. I’m very happy for that, and we’re hopeful that maybe this isn’t it.”
Moss gives credit to his seniors, and not just in the normal fashion that coaches might do. This team is senior-laden, a group that has been through plenty, and the young guys will be counted on to do a lot more next year. Not only has this group led the Seahawks this far, but moss feels they’ve also helped lay the groundwork for the next few seasons.
“What they’ve meant to this program is immeasurable. They’ve been to the mountain, they’ve been to the bottom of the valley,” said Moss. “For them to come back and re-establish the identity of this program – the winning tradition, not settling for anything less than our best, not settling for failure. They’ve done a tremendous job of teaching these guys.”
