Meet me in a land of hope and dreams.
A very happy and enthusiastic hello to everyone out there! Our spirits have been high here at CNU men's basketball this week. It's tough for them not be after we captured the 2012 USA South conference tournament championship on Sunday, and along with it an automatic berth into the NCAA Division III National Tournament!
We knew going into the conference tournament last week that we were going to be in for a tough fight, and Methodist and Greensboro certainly put us to the test in the semifinal and championship rounds. There were multiple times during both games where we faced adversity. During the Greensboro game we were even down six at halftime.
Our guys hung tough though. They stuck together and trusted each other – evidenced by our sharing the ball and taking great shots in the second half of the Greensboro game. We shot 82% from the field in that half and got enough stops defensively to pull away for the conference championship win!
Winning the USA South tournament was a culmination of a lot of hard work and dedication by the players and coaches. Seeing the guys smile and celebrate afterwards proves that it was all worth it. For me personally, it was a phenomenal feeling getting up on that ladder and cutting down my piece of the net. In my five years of coaching college basketball, this is my first trip to the NCAA Tournament. Hopefully this doesn't end up being my only trip to the tourney, but no matter what I will always look back and remember the first time I went “dancing” with the 2011-2012 CNU Captains.
Sunday's celebrations gave way to Monday's anticipation of finding out who/where we would be playing in the first round. On Monday afternoon, the coaching staff, CNU administrators, and some of the players who didn't have class all gathered in the Freeman Center to watch the selection show. There we saw “Christopher Newport” pop up on the screen underneath “Western Connecticut State” in the part of the bracket hosted by Franklin & Marshall College. With that, the coaching staff went feverishly to work trying to find out all we could about WestConn.
The Colonials are a 20-6 squad out of Danbury, CT and the Little East Conference. Their overall won-loss profile allowed them to receive one of those coveted at-large berths into the tournament. Most importantly to us, Western Connecticut is a well-rounded squad led by DaQuan Brooks, the third-leading scorer in the nation at 28.5 points per game. Brooks is a dynamic player who will surely be playing professional basketball somewhere next season. In short, like practically ever other team left in the field, Western Connecticut is very good.
With four days to prepare, the coaching staff has been working tirelessly to get ready for Friday's matchup. Game planning and strategy take on even more importance in a setting like the NCAA Tournament. The unfamiliarity teams have with one another can lead to competitive advantages or disadvantages depending on what coaches can garner and analyze about their opponent – and convey to their players – in the days leading up to the game.
Prepping to defend a player the caliber of DaQuan Brooks presents its own unique challenges as well. The bottom line is you only get one chance at this, and so as a coach you better focus on all the details and have your team as well-prepared as possible. This is why over the past three days I've watched enough game film on Western Connecticut that I probably could be arrested for stalking in some states.
The key now is to get the players ready to execute and perform at a high level, which is the only way to survive and advance in an event as super-competitive as the NCAA Tournament. Winning and advancing in tournament play comes down to mastering the fundamentals: defense, rebounding, timely shooting, and taking care of the ball (and, of course, having some luck too!).
The NCAA Tournament is indeed a fantastic event, and an amazing opportunity for those lucky enough to play in it. It's a chance to compete for a national championship, to be crowned the very best in NCAA Division III. Only 62 teams out of 405 who started this ride can say they have that chance right now. After Friday night, 32 will be left standing with that opportunity. Once Saturday passes, that number will be down to only 16.
Reaching this part of the journey is extremely difficult, so when you get here it is essential that you do everything you can to make the most of it. This means not being happy just to be in the tournament– the teams that advance are the ones who aren't satisfied and are driven to reaching the elite levels of tournament excellence.
The NCAA Tournament is rarified territory – it provides those in it with the opportunity to achieve successes that many want to attain, but only a select few actually reach. It is the land of hope and dreams. Our journey has taken us here; how long we can stay and whether we turn that hope and dreams into reality is up to us. Tune in Friday at 5:30pm to find out!
