William & Mary Eliminates VCU
by Jay Pearlman
RICHMOND, Va. – Funny things happen in March, sometimes in this old arena. And as Princeton proved a time or two in the NCAA Tournament, when teams play opposite styles and tempos, if the weaker team controls the pace, they generally have a puncher’s chance of winning the game. No. 5 William & Mary did precisely that against No. 1 VCU today, and managed to win at the end, 56-54. That sends the Tribe on to tomorrow night’s CAA Final, and most likely VCU on to the NIT.
Through W& M’s semifinal win (and not including the second semi-final contest), the best player in the tournament has been Tribe sophomore swingman Danny Sumner. Better each day than the day before, Sumner finished this game with 19 on 6-14 shooting (3-6 in treys), and a monstrous 7 of his team’s 28 rebounds. But the star in today’s biggest win ever for Coach Tony Shaver was senior forward Laimis Kisielius (23 points, 10-17, 3-5 in treys, 6 assists).
In a game to extend his career for yet one more day, Kisielius already had two big threes when he drained one from a step or two behind the arc in the final minute to give his team a three-point lead. Then, after VCU senior Jamal Shuler answered with a tying trey of his own, 38 seconds was left for the Tribe to duplicate yesterday’s heroics.
Twenty-four hours earlier, W & M had the ball with a full shot clock remaining, and senior Nathan Mann’s trey with two seconds to go eliminated Old Dominion. Twenty-four hours before that, it was sophomore David Schneider’s trey with even less time remaining that eliminated Georgia State. On this day, Shaver called Kisielius’ number, and after Sumner handled on the left side as a decoy, the ball was reversed smartly to Laimis on the right, to go one-on-one against senior Michael Anderson, with no help nearby for Anderson. Properly, Anderson took away the middle of the floor as Kisielius penetrated, forcing the point forward to reverse direction, pivot toward the baseline, and free himself for a shot with under half a second on the shot clock. Just as was the case seconds earlier for his trey, Kisielius’ body was square to the goal when he released, and his bank shot went clean through. Just like Coach drew it up.
It may be getting redundant, but for the third game in the tournament, Shaver and his team controlled pace for 40 minutes. (Ok, a couple of transition plays by VCU in the first half, and a couple of Tribe shots in the second too early in the shot clock might make that 36 minutes.) Add 9 rebounds and superior interior defense from junior center Peter Stein, and the firm of Shaver, Kisielius and Sumner overcame a 33-28 deficit on the boards, and combined 2-13 shooting from Schneider and Mann to eliminate the best team in the conference.
As Shaver analogized after the game, “just as the NY Giants did in the last game of the NFL regular season against the Patriots, we gained confidence that last week in losses at George Mason and at home to VCU.”
It’s on to the final, against the winner of No. 2 UNC-Wilmington and No. 3 George Mason.
