Ho-lee Crap.

[damont]

I don't blog about sports a whole lot. I don't follow them as much as I used to, though I still do. I follow college basketball in general, especially women's, but I don't talk about it a lot. And, in particular, I don't mention my alma mater's hoops teams much. Well, in the last 20-mumble years there hasn't been much to talk about there. Now, in my undergrad days, the W&M men's basketball team was considered "dangerous". Beating teams from the ACC happened often enough that ACC teams thought twice before scheduling the Tribe. The most memorable of those was slightly before my time, when a North Carolina squad ranked second in the nation came to Williamsburg and got beaten 78-75 -- but I remember listening to road wins against Duke and Wake Forest on the radio as an undergrad, and the infamous "term paper" home game against U.Va. my senior year that the Tribe won by a point at the buzzer. The Tribe men had six seasons in a row at .500 or better, always won the first round game in the conference tournament, got scrod by the refs in the ECAC South championship game my sophomore year, and lost to David Robinson and Navy the next two years.

The year after I graduated, the bottom fell out. Since then, the Tribe has only had small flashes of glory and has mostly been mediocre at best to pretty bad at worst. They had only been to the CAA semifinals a handful of times, and usually lost their first CAA tournament game. They have *never* won two games in the same CAA tournament, let alone three, and have *never* been to the CAA championship game... until now.

I was at Damon's yesterday, playing trivia with fuzzface00 and montuos and killernurd, when the CAA semifinal results scrolled across the bottom of the ESPN screen... and I yelled "HOLY CRAP!!!" Why? I had just seen: "William and Mary 56, VCU 54." The Tribe men have won three straight games on shots in the last 10 seconds: a three-pointer against Georgia State with 1.5 seconds left to win by one, another trey with 7.5 seconds left to break a tie against ODU, and a 6-foot jumper with 2.6 seconds left to break a tie against VCU. Saturday against ODU, W&M shot the frickin' lights out in the second half: 73+ per cent from the floor, including 6-of-7 from 3-point range. I cannot imagine being a fan in Richmond this weekend. I'm surprised nobody's had a heart attack!

So tonight it's W&M, pockets stuffed to overflowing with house money, playing George Mason for all the marbles and a Golden Ticket (only this one says "NCAA" not "Wonka"). I won't even try to predict what will happen.

EDIT 10Mar08 2345: lost the conference final by 9 points. The team's shooting went cold -- 38 per cent. Well, at least they got a game on ESPN once (main programming, not ESPN2 or any of the specialty channels).

EDIT 14Mar08 0200: Somewhere I read that this was only the third appearance in a conference championship game for the W&M men's b-ball team. *BUZZZZZ* Try again... it was the sixth. W&M lost four Southern Conference finals (to West Virginia, 1958; to G. Washington, 1961; to West Virginia, 1965; to Furman, 1975) and one ECAC South final (to J. Madison, 1983) prior to this year's appearance in the CAA championship game.

Comments

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I won 2 or 3 games, though for one of them Fuzz was in the loo for the first half. Someone else beat us all in one game. Fuzz may have won one; I don't remember.