Vindicated Retrievers
by Sam Perkins
CATONSVILLE, Md. – Confetti spilled from the rafters as most of the crowd, a record attendance for the RAC Arena, spilled onto the court in celebration. Jay Greene leapt on top of the media table and then into the throngs of fans. Cavell Johnson and Ray Barbosa, both of whom have talked about making the NCAA tournament for all five years of their intertwined basketball odyssey, embraced amid the mass celebration at center court. Justin Fry danced up a storm as Pop Bottles by Birdman blared over the speakers. Brian Hodges, quiet and reserved for his entire career, yelled at the top of his lungs and joined Greene in leaping atop the media table. And head coach Randy Monroe may well have hugged every resident of Baltimore County. The celebration carried over long after the game, as the entire Retriever family had a gathering at the “Sports Zone” on campus.
This was the scene following the best game the UMBC Retrievers have played all year, an 82-65 rout of Hartford University, a fitting culmination to their historic title run and the first NCAA Tournament appearance in their 22 years as a Division I school. The “old guard” around the America East has dug for every flaw, or rather excuse, in the book to find fault with the Retrievers during a season in which they have clearly been the class of the conference from start to finish, but following UMBC strapping on their dancing shoes Saturday afternoon, the only thing their doubters can now resort to is burying their heads in the sand. With three impact seniors, this was UMBC’s season, and with one game separating them from the NCAA Tournament, a dream of everyone on the roster, there was no way they were going to let anything stop them.
“We have had our sights on this goal all season, and we weren’t going to let Hartford or any other team get in the way of that,” said UMBC guard Jay Greene.
Saturday’s championship game was truly a showcase of the Retrievers’ all-around team game, as the most dangerous offense the conference has had since the Sorrentine-Coppenrath days at Vermont was firing on all cylinders. The Retrievers only play seven, but they are the best seven in the conference, and all of them got into the act. It wasn’t simply the number of points that UMBC was putting up that was so jaw-dropping, as the complete diversity and depth of their scorers, something the conference hasn’t seen in some time. This wasn’t Taylor Coppenrath being fed the ball over and over in the low blocks, or Jose Juan Barea taking the ball coast to coast for an entire game. This was seven different players all on the same page, all unconscious from the floor. This was hooks and up-and-unders from the low post, leaners and fade-aways from outside the paint, and a bombardment from behind the arc.
The Hartford Hawks came into the game riding high, and with a quiet confidence about them that was the perfect mindset for an offense. They also could flat-out put the ball in the basket, something that wasn’t lost on Monroe. “They have some shooters,” Monroe said. “They have some guys who are very offensive-minded. You don’t average 70-plus points a game just by passing the ball around. Those guys are very dangerous, as you could see.”
Hartford looked to be firing out of the gates in the opening minute, as freshman Anthony Minor corralled the ball off of the opening tap and hit Jaret Von Rosenberg in mid stride for a nifty lay-up.
After UMBC’s Barbosa nailed a three, Minor responded with a two-handed dunk in traffic, bringing a loud response from the Hartford faithful. Minor’s dunk was just the kind of play early on that a team can feed off of and use to get into a groove, but after weathering the brief Hartford flurry, it was UMBC whom would make it rain.
Justin Fry was crucial in the opening minutes for the Retrievers, ripping down several key rebounds, before opening the Retrievers’ onslaught with a jumper off of a beautiful up-fake and dribble drive. “Justin is incredibly unselfish, and very skilled,” said Monroe, adding “I can put Justin in the game and take him out for Cavell, and he’s always ready, he’s not coming out with an attitude of ‘why are you taking me out of the game?'”
After Fry’s jumper the Retrievers simply went bananas from all over the floor. If you blinked, you would have missed it, as UMBC hit 12 of their first 15 shots and a close game was blown open in the opening minutes behind a tornado of Black and Gold. Darryl Proctor came up with a steal, Matt Spadafora nailed a three, Jay Greene hit a three from somewhere near UMBC’s dining hall, Proctor hit a fadeaway, Proctor hit a deeper fadeaway, Fry picked Joe Zeglinski’s pocket and Proctor hit a hook in the paint, Greene hit a three from the Baltimore beltway, Barbosa hit a twisting lay-up in the lane and then stole the inbounds pass, Cavell Johnson nailed a jump-hook, Barbosa hit two free throws, and Brian Hodges swished a three. It was a 25-2 run for the Retrievers over an eight-minute span.
“I’d like to think I had something to do with that,” joked Monroe, the conference’s Coach of the Year, “but I can’t lie to you, we have some guys that can score. Not only did we make shots, but I liked the execution of moving the basketball around.”
“We lost to an outstanding team today, a group of men with experience who were ready to take the next step,” Hartford coach Dan Leibovitz said.
Warren McClendon briefly interrupted the Retrievers’ scoring with a huge two-handed slam, but the Retrievers never skipped a beat, and went into the locker room with a 41-23 lead and points from all seven of the players in their regular rotation.
For the Retrievers, coming out firing right out of the gate was huge, as UMBC had struggled lately with slow starts, often having to claw their way back from big deficits to start the game. “I think we were able to impose our will, and that’s something that we had been talking about for a few days” said Monroe.
With 9:44 left in the game McLendon brought the Hartford cheering section back to life with what was easily the conference’s dunk of the year. The Hawks 6’6″, 260-pound center ran at full tilt on a fast break, effortlessly handled a Zeglinski bounce pass, and in one fluid motion explode to the hoop while throwing down a tomahawk dunk directly over Cavell Johnson. And one possession later when Michael Turner completed an old fashion three point play, bringing Hartford to within 10, 61-51 with nine minutes left it appeared to once again be a ball game.
For UMBC to open the game back up was particularly encouraging, as despite their offensive firepower, the Retrievers have made many games a little too close for comfort this year, and a dunk in the fashion that McLendon made his could have proven to be momentum changing, but the Retrievers buckled down and stepped up their defense.
“We definitely held our composure, and made some plays down the stretch and got some stops and that’s why we won the game” said Greene.
Indeed, lost in all of the Retrievers’ scoring, was the terrific job they did on the defensive end against a Hartford team scoring over 70 points per game, and playing its best basketball down the stretch. “I thought our defense today and our rebounding was the big difference today it ignited our offense,” said Monroe.
With three and a half minutes left Spadafora added the icing on the cake, leaping high above the rim to corral a Barbosa air ball and flushing it through the hoop to put the Retrievers up 78-55, officially ending any chance of a Hartford comeback. Said Monroe: “Matt Spadafora has come light years away from where he first started, he’s playing terrific basketball for us.”
No where UMBC’s defensive presence more evident than in the low blocks on McLendon, as Hartford’s center was fresh off of two straight double-doubles in the conference tournament, and had not only proven to be a difference-maker, but was looking like the best low post player in the conference as of late. After struggling to fit into the team’s system for much of the season, McLendon played a huge role in Hartford’s run to the championship game, and had seemed to bring his best games against the Retrievers, averaging 20 points and eight rebounds in his previous two meetings with UMBC. But Proctor did a phenomenal job making McClendon fight for position every time down the court, and other than his two dunks, McLendon went without a field goal for the entire game.
“I figured that he couldn’t dominate all three games against us,” joked Proctor, before adding, “before he gets in his position my goal was to just get in front of him and make him work for everything he got.” It was yet another tremendous defensive effort from Proctor, who in UMBC’s semi-final win over Vermont held conference Player of the Year Marqus Blakely to nine points, less than half of his season average.
Proctor was equally important on the offensive end all season long, and versus Hartford he proved unstoppable, pouring in a game-high 23 points on an unconscious 10-14 shooting. Standing somewhere around 6’2″ yet somehow finding a way to dominate in the low post all season long, Proctor’s game runs on all heart, and his three-game conference tournament averages of 19 points and 7.3 rebounds landed him a spot on the All-Tournament team.
When it comes to heart, however, no one’s is bigger than the conference’s smallest player, Greene, whom needs to stand on a few phone books to come close to his listed height of 5’8″. Greene’s court vision and passing have been unconscious all-season long, as he is one of only two players in the nation to be in both the top ten for assists and assist-to-turnover ratio. Against the Hawks, as he has done all season long, Greene put on a clinic, dishing out eight assists to one turnover, bringing his tournament totals to an astounding 25 to three total.
It would be easy for many people on paper to dismiss Greene’s totals as simply the bi-product of having so many scorers around him, but in actuality he makes the scorers, as UMBC’s offense runs on Greene driving the lane, drawing defenders, and then hitting open men. It was something that Hartford prepared for all season long and yet, like the rest of the league, was unable to stop. Greene truly put on a passing clinic, making no look and behind the back passes with ease. Greene also displayed how deadly an outside shooter he is, and earned the Tournament Most Valuable Player award.
“He’s just a great point guard, he knows where every one of us likes the ball, and he gets it too us in positions where we can score,” said Brian Hodges.
“He is one tough hombre. If I’m going to go to war and be in the foxhole, I’m going to have Jay Greene with me,” said Monroe. “I think there are a lot of people seeing it not only here at UMBC’s RAC Arena, but people around the world had a chance to see one of the best point guards around. He finds a way to make his team better, he finds a way to make players on his team better.”
For UMBC the day was one of pure, unbridled joy, and signified the complete transformation of a program that two years ago made news waves for all the wrong reasons, as Monroe banned his team from using the locker room because of an attitude and work ethic that he felt could prove cancerous. However, as embarrassing as the events may have been at the time, it’s where Greene feels the program’s transformation can be traced back to, saying, “That was some motivation for us. Any time you get kicked out of the locker room, maybe you don’t know what you’re supposed to be thinking, but I think that was a turning point for this program, where we realized that we weren’t doing things the right way.”
That transformation was fully complete Saturday, as the ever-animated Randy Monroe made it through the entire game with his tie on, something unheard of. “It’s a good sign for us, we don’t really worry about it too much, but it is a nice tie so I’m sure he didn’t want to get it dirty,” joked Greene after the game.
The unbridled joy displayed on the hardwood and cutting the nets down in celebration was shared by the entire Retrievers family, but it had an extra-special meaning to senior Brian Hodges. Hodges is a terrific player and an even more amazing person whom completed his degree in three years and is now working on a masters, and endured the leanest of years during his underclass days at the RAC. But his storybook year wasn’t without a rocky patch, as he missed four games with a badly sprained ankle, and after leading the team in scoring for much of the season, had looked like a shell of himself since the injury.
Hodges rebounded to play by far his best basketball since the injury Saturday, scoring 13 points on 5-10 shooting, including 3 big three-pointers.
“My first year, nobody was in the stands, to see the accumulation over the years is just a great feeling,” said Hodges, who wore the net that the team cut down around his neck during the press conference. “It’s a great feeling, four years of hard work have paid off.”
Added Monroe, “One of the things that I wanted to do personally was just make sure that Brian Hodges had one of these things (nets) around his neck before he left here, and Brian you got it and I can’t tell you how proud I am of you, you deserve it.”
The win was equally meaningful for Monroe, whom has spent 14 years as a part of the Retrievers basketball program, the first ten as an assistant coach. Despite winning the conference’s coach of the year award, Monroe’s coaching abilities have been too easily dismissed by too many people, whom have credited UMBC’s winning simply to the talent he has on the floor. But it must be remembered that Monroe compiled the talent, as he recruited the likes of Greene, Hodges, Fry, and Spadafora, and mixed in transfers Johnson, Proctor, and Barbosa.
And even more incredibly, he got the players buying in to his system completely, as there has never been even so much as a glitch when it comes to team chemistry. Seven legitimate scorers have never feuded over touches or playing time, with Hodges, Johnson, Spadafora, and Fry switching between starting and coming off of the bench at various times this season without uttering so much as a peep.
“Everybody has an ego when their playing this game,” said Monroe. “It says a lot about these guys willing to give it up for each other, and that’s why we’re 24-8 and that’s why we’re America East champions. No one allowed selfishness to creep in. And even if they allowed selfishness to creep in, they did a great job of disguising it. Because it’s one of the things that we talk about as a basketball team – if were going to be the team that we can be this year selfishness was a thing that we had to eliminate, we consider selfishness as a distraction, and both Brian and Cavell have done a terrific job of just coming in where we need them.”
“I don’t think any other team in the nation can say that they have two all-conference players coming off of the bench” added Hodges.
Monroe also showed his X’s and O’s ability by drawing up game plans to neutralize the two of the best low-post players in the conference, and out-coached Hartford prodigy Leibovitz Saturday.
UMBC earned its time in the spotlight, and there was no way that Monroe was going to let anyone take it away from them, not even himself. Despite his coaching accolades, Monroe didn’t want it to be about anyone except his players.
“For me, the greatest moment as a coach is just watching the guys just sit back and enjoy cutting down that net, embracing one another, embracing their families, embracing friends, watching former players come down here from when I was an assistant coach fourteen years ago, there were a slew of former players here, that is what coaching is all about,” he reflected.
Watching the players’ celebration unfold, and watching a happiness and excitement that was so pure envelope the entire UMBC community Saturday was touching, as the Retrievers would let nothing interfere with there celebration, “One thing we can do is enjoy this precious moment,” said Monroe.
But don’t think that the Retrievers are going to simply be happy with making an NCAA appearance, as ecstatic as they may be about it. This is a team that has fought all season long, and they plan to make a strong stand as a heavy underdog in March Madness.
“We’re not satisfied, this is definitely a great thing for this university, and it’s a great feeling for us, but we know that we can compete with other teams around the country,” said Greene. Added Proctor: “We’re UMBC, but we wouldn’t mind making a George Mason impression from a few years ago.”
For Monroe, the tournament is all about keeping an even keel – don’t simply be happy to have made it, but also don’t get so wound up that you don’t enjoy the amazing accomplishment. As he described it, “Let’s go for a ride, let’s go for a nice ride, that’s how we look at this thing.” What a ride it has been.
