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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2010 > March > 07
Sunday, March 7, 2010
WSU closer to NCAA Tournament than reeling UD
So now Wright State is one game away from the NCAA Tournament, while UD is in a free fall toward the NIT.
Early in the season, who would have guessed that?
The Raiders started out 6-4, while UD jumped out of the blocks 12-2.
Now the 20-11 Raiders have a better record than the Flyers and — should they upset Butler in the title game of the Horizon League Tournament Tuesday night at Hinkle Fieldhouse — they’re in the Bracket of 64.
Meanwhile the Flyers, who were the preseason favorites to win the Atlantic 10 this year, have instead tumbled to 8-8 in the league and a No. 7 seed in tyhe A-10 Tournament. They’ll have to run the table — four wins in six days — to get an NCAA bid.
After what happened to them Saturday night that’s pretty unimaginable.
“We’ve got to find a way to pick ourselves up off the mat,” Chris Wright said after UD suffered a stunning 71-66 loss to Saint Louis at UD Arena. And it’s a game where the final score is deceiving.
The Billikens — who came into this game as 12 point underdogs, who dress eight freshman and four sophomores and don’t have a senior — controlled this one most of the way, leading by as a many as 17 in the first half and still by 10 with just 14 seconds left.
So what has happened?
How could a team with so much promise — a team that went to the second round of the NCAA Tournament last year and had everybody back but one player, Charles Little — fall through a trap door at the end of their regular season?
I’ll tell you one thing, I have to go way back to the Jim O’Brien days - back when UD won just four games that season — to remember a crowd as disgusted as this one became Saturday night.
Here it was Senior Night — a big lovefest on the court before the game — and by halftime some folks were booing the team.
Things got a little better in the second half, but Saint Louis pretty much had an answer for everything the Flyers did. Midway through the second half there were some irritated folks behind the south basket who were yelling their criticisms of coach Brian Gregory, who worked the team’s sidelines some 40 feet away.
I’m not sure what’s happened:
Senior Marcus Johnson’s season got derailed early and now Chris Johnson — who for a long stretch was the best player on the team — is in a swoon. And Luke Fabrizius is now hobbled with a bum back and become a non factor. And as the season has gone on, several of the other players have had their flaws exposed.
What makes it so hard to swallow though is that this team looked like world beaters several times this season — beating Georgia Tech in Puerto Rico, running Xavier and Charlotte out of the gym in back to back games in early February and then running roughshod over UMass just a week ago.
“I know we’re not going to quit,” said Wright, “but you have to have faith. Work without faith is dead.”
And right now, this team that once had a Top 25 ranking and visions of building on last season’s NCAA Tournament breakthrough, is in dire need of some of those heart paddles with the juice turned up full bore.
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