BOSTON – One thing is a given with Tony Shaver’s teams at William & Mary: they will never stop competing. There were plenty of reasons one might see a team mail it in on Wednesday night, but the Tribe rallied from a 16-point deficit in the second half to take CAA leader Northeastern to double overtime before succumbing 95-91. It left Shaver hoping that more of the positives from the game carry over than the negatives, as there were some of both.
When you’ve lost seven games in a row, traveling to play the conference leader and the hottest team in the conference is probably not the best medicine. Sometimes, it’s not your night, and that was pretty much the case on Wednesday for the first 25 minutes as Northeastern had a 46-30 lead and appeared to be in complete control of the game. Northeastern got inside the zone often for baskets and good chances they didn’t cash in. They also got some easy baskets off turnovers, at times utilizing a light press. It looked like a matchup of an undefeated conference leader and a team one game out of the bottom.
Then it all changed. The 16-point deficit gradually shrunk, and before you knew it, overtime was upon us. Then a second overtime came.
“We did a lot of good things in the second half,” said Shaver. “I’m disappointed in how we started the ballgame. It’s been a little bit of what our team has done in the last two or three weeks, we’ve had that one stretch that just destroyed us.”
Shaver said he had mixed feelings after the game. It was a game that for 25 minutes, they had no business winning, or even having a shot at it. But moral victories are not in his repertoire. Shaver hasn’t won over 400 games in his career with moral victories. The bottom line still matters, and the Tribe is 1-6 in CAA play and has lost eight straight. It matters to the players, too.
“We pride ourselves on being a tough basketball team, and we weren’t so tough in the first half,” said sophomore guard Marcus Thornton. “Going into halftime, we talked about it, and we didn’t want to go out like that. We came out and did what we needed to do, it just wasn’t enough.”
Shaver changed up the starting lineup drastically on Wednesday night after using the same starting lineup for the first 17 games. Thornton and Tim Rusthoven were the only regular starters who were on the floor at the tip, joined by Julian Boatner, Terry Tarpey and Tom Schalk. The idea was to get more production out of some of the positions, and while Tarpey had some good minutes early and the struggling Boatner was 2-4 from long range, the others didn’t do a whole lot. Then again, a few of the regular starters didn’t, either, especially Thornton and Brandon Britt, the two most important players.
The Tribe went basically as Thornton and Britt did, as neither scored in the first half but came alive after intermission. Britt scored 12 points on 4-7 shooting after intermission (he missed his only shot in the first half) and gave the Tribe its first lead of the night in the first overtime. Thornton scored 23 points after intermission on 7-12 shooting, including 5-7 from long range (he was 7-16 and 5-9 on the night).
Thornton said he and Britt changed their mindset to attack more after trying a little too much to involve others in the first half. While it’s nice to facilitate, they are two players that have to force the action to be successful and for the team to be successful. With that, the Tribe shot 73 percent in the second half and over 63 percent after intermission. As they attack, they open up more chances for others like Rusthoven, who had a career-high 25 points to go along with 11 rebounds and five blocked shots before fouling out.
“I thought it was huge,” Northeastern head coach Bill Coen said of Rusthoven fouling out. “They were running plays through him, he was getting rebounds.”
While the offense hasn’t been very good in CAA play, the defensive end is where the statistics will jump out at you. The Tribe allows over 74 points per game, is being out-rebounded by nearly five per game and allows opponents to shoot 46 percent from the field. You can understand why Shaver described this as “a great concern”. They out-rebounded Northeastern on Wednesday night, and that along with the play after the first half is what Shaver hopes will continue.
“The last thing I said, and I’ve got to believe this, is maybe we re-discovered ourselves a little bit in that second half,” said Shaver. “We played with a level of confidence and flair that we did earlier in the year. We’ve just got to keep that up.”
The good thing for the Tribe is that a lot of this has come on the road, as they recently had a three-game road swing and Wednesday marked the fourth of five away from Williamsburg. Four of the next six are at home, which will give them a chance to get some momentum going. Shaver knows it won’t be that easy and reiterated that they have to take advantage of being at home, but it will be a welcome change.
“I’ve coached for 37 years and never been through a stretch like this,” said Shaver. “Out of 21 days, we’ve spent 16 on the road.”
Their hope is that they not only go home, but that they take much of the second half and the overtime periods along with them.
