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RW
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| Posted: March-08-2009 at 2:45am | IP Logged
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It's a clean-sweep for both the ETSU men and women's basketball teams, as they each capture Atlantic Sun Conference championships on Saturday in Music City and automatic invitations to the NCAA tournament.
It's the second straight year for the Lady Bucs, and the first trip to the "Bg Dance" since 2004 for the men.
GO BUCS!!!
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ETSU clinches 1st NCAA berth since 2004
By Joe Avento
Johnson City Press Sports Writer
NASHVILLE — The Bucs are going back to the NCAA tournament. And this time there was very little suspense.
Kevin Tiggs scored 13 of his 21 points in the first eight minutes as East Tennessee State took a commanding lead, and the Bucs cruised past Jacksonville 85-68 in the championship game of the Atlantic Sun Conference basketball tournament.
ETSU (23-10) earned the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. It will be the Bucs’ eighth trip to the NCAA, their first since 2004.
“I’ve never felt like this before about the game,” ETSU senior guard Courtney Pigram said. “This just feels really good to finally get to the NCAA tournament. When I get there, me and the guys are going to perform.”
The Bucs’ so-called “Big Three” of Tiggs, Pigram and Mike Smith did their part in their most important victory of the season. Smith led the team with 22 points and 12 rebounds. Pigram, coming off a 30-point performance in the semifinals, finished with nine points and six assists. All three made the all-tournament team, and Tiggs was the MVP after scoring 79 points in three games.
“When you get to the tournament, you’re happy for a lot of people,” said ETSU coach Murry Bartow, who will be making his third NCAA tournament appearance. “But I’m happy for the 10 players. I’ll coach other teams and we’ve got a lot of other people around our program, but I’m happy for the 10 guys.”
The “Big Three” had plenty of help. Micah Williams scored a career-high 16 points, while Isiah Brown added nine points, including three key baskets in the decisive first half.
“Micah’s a guy who has been up and down minute-wise,” Bartow said. “But tonight he got a lot of minutes and he made the most of them.”
Tommy Hubbard, who decided not to red-shirt about three weeks ago, grabbed seven rebounds and defended the Dolphins’ only threat on this night, Ben Smith. Hubbard held Smith in check for a while, but fouled out in the process.
Smith finished with 29 points, many of them after Hubbard had left.
Tiggs scored nine points in a 17-2 run that gave the Bucs an early 21-8 lead. It was the kind of start about which they wouldn’t have even dared to dream.
“We came back against teams with bigger lead, so I thought we could come back,” Jacksonville’s Marcus Allen said.
Beating the Dolphins to just about every loose ball and pressing to keep the pace to their liking, the Bucs continued to pour it on. And they did it in such impressive fashion that the only question remaining over the final 30 minutes was what would be the margin of victory.
“When we were up by 20, I was like ‘Wow,’ “ Tiggs said. “But then I said we just got to buckle down and keep it going because we didn’t want them to come back.”
As it turned out, ETSU led by as many as 30 points in the second half and, even though it got a little ragged down the stretch when Jacksonville cut the lead to 14 with 1:25 left, the damage had been done.
“East Tennessee State had a good game,” said Jacksonville coach Cliff Warren, the A-Sun coach of the year. “I’m disappointed in our effort. We’ve played better than this in the past.”
After Tiggs’ hot start, he disappeared for a while. He picked up his third foul with 6:11 left in the first half and went to the bench for the rest of the half. When Tiggs sat down, the Bucs were up by 14. They stretched the lead to 15 by halftime.
When the second half began, Tiggs was still sitting. By the time he got back into the game, he had missed 11 minutes. ETSU was up 54-30.
The Bucs will enter the NCAA tournament on a roll, having won five games in a row, all by double-digits. The NCAA selections will be made a week from today.
“We’re a pretty good team and we can play with a lot of people,” Bartow said. “It all depends on matchups.”
Jacksonville (18-13) earned an automatic bid to the NIT by virtue of its regular-season championship.
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Win leaves little doubt Bucs are best in league
By Kelly Hodge
Johnson City Press Managing Sports Editor
NASHVILLE – East Tennessee State’s Bucs were admittedly not championship material when they rode out of Buies Creek, N.C., after a six-point loss to Campbell a couple of weeks ago.
They had dropped four of five games and were suddenly out of contention for the Atlantic Sun Conference regular-season championship. Courtney Pigram was mired in an offensive slump. The prospects for a turnaround as March approached were fleeting.
“We were not in a good state of mind, just really struggling,” said coach Murry Bartow. “I credit our players. They said enough is enough.”
The Bucs haven’t looked back since.
Five impressive wins later, all by double figures, they are headed back to the NCAA tournament as the A-Sun champs. Their 85-68 win Saturday night over top-seeded Jacksonville left little doubt that the Bucs are the best team the league has to offer this season.
They’ll try to take their game to the next level when they make their first NCAA appearance in five years.
“We’re a pretty good team,” said Bartow. “We think we can play with a lot of people.”
In a season in which the trio of Pigram, Kevin Tiggs and Mike Smith had to carry a heavy load from the start, the Bucs looked like a well-balanced outfit at the end.
While Tiggs, the tournament MVP, and Smith in particular came up big in the final, youngsters like Micah Williams, Tommy Hubbard and Isiah Brown earned standing ovations from the ETSU faithful for their work. They are the future of the program, and waiting isn’t always easy.
“You just gotta know your time will eventually come and try to play your role for the team,” said Brown, the 6-8 redshirt freshman. “CP and Tiggs are seniors, and Mike is a junior. They’ve been around and you have to accept their leadership. They have a lot of responsibility. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be the Big Three.”
Brown collected five points and nine rebounds against the Dolphins, and his early energy was key in ETSU building a lead that would swell to 30.
Williams finished with a career-high 16 points, while Hubbard had six points and seven rebounds and helped control Jacksonville point guard Ben Smith, much as he did a night earlier against Belmont’s Alex Renfroe, before fouling out with eight minutes left. (Smith subsequently scored 14 of his 29 points).
“Our complementary guys have been great,” said Bartow. “Isiah Brown is going to be an all-conference player without question. Tommy Hubbard, I can’t say enough about him, pulling out of a redshirt two or three weeks ago for the good of the team. We would not be sitting here if not for him. Micah Williams has been up and down minute-wise, but he was great for us tonight.”
The chemistry is something that has been building, even if it was too subtle to tell many nights. This team has turned into an unselfish bunch, as evidenced by a lob from Pigram to Tiggs on a breakaway, even though Pigram was struggling to score.
That’s the kind of leadership that makes an impression. And that’s why all the talk about the “Big Three” doesn’t grate on the others.
“You can’t argue with it,” said Williams. “These three guys have had great seasons, they’ve been great leaders.
“I think the team just peaked tonight, where everything was clicking for us. We had great defensive intensity to start the game and just took it from there.”
Where the Bucs go from here is anyone’s guess. They have to wait until next Sunday to find out their NCAA assignment.
None of that really mattered Saturday night. The team had weathered the storm and delivered a championship.
“We came out today on a mission,” said Bartow. “We were not going to be denied.”
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Lady Bucs dance to title
By Joe Avento
Johnson City Press Sports Writer
NASHVILLE — Karen Kemp got a head start to the Big Dance in more ways than one.
After the East Tennessee State women’s basketball team won its second consecutive Atlantic Sun Conference tournament championship with a 58-52 victory over Jacksonville at Allen Arena, Kemp joined the celebration by dancing in front of ETSU’s supporters.
Her players put a quick end to it. The Lady Bucs ambushed Kemp with a cooler full of water. As the coach did her dance number, with a little help from the team’s mascot, the contents of the cooler made a direct hit, leaving Kemp drenched and sprawled out on the team’s bench.
“I know who it was, right here,” Kemp said, pointing to tournament MVP Siarre Evans. “But it’s OK. Any way they want to celebrate, they can do that.”
The Lady Bucs were celebrating their second trip to the NCAA tournament in as many years, and they earned it with a hard-fought victory over the same team they had beaten in last year’s final.
Evans had 12 points and 15 rebounds for her 18th double-double of the season, and TaRonda Wiles scored 15 points to also make the all-tournament team. Shannon White gave the Lady Bucs a big lift in the first half with 10 points, more than eight higher than her season average.
“It really feels good to get another championship under our belt,” Kemp said. “We had to fight for it for 40 minutes, but fortunately we kept out composure and we were able to bring another championship to Johnson City and East Tennessee State.”
The top-seeded Lady Bucs improved to 20-10, their third consecutive 20-victory season. Jacksonville, the second seed, finished at 19-13.
While Evans was the MVP of the tournament, White was the MVP of the first half. The sophomore forward, who was averaging 1.7 points a game, scored 10 in the first half to surpass her career high.
“I just came out ready to win,” White said. “I just wanted to do whatever it took to help my team win.”
White made five of her six shots, yet Jacksonville was ahead 28-23 at halftime. It would have been much worse without White’s contributions. The rest of the team shot a combined 5 for 27 in the opening half.
“What a huge spark she gave them,” Jacksonville coach Jill Dunn said. “That was the difference in the game.”
Facing the five-point deficit at halftime, Kemp walked into the locker room without saying a word and wrote a simple message on the blackboard.
“We are going to win,” it said.
Her players got the point.
“It let us know that she wasn’t worried about anything,” Wiles said. “It kind of eased our minds so we could just go out there and play.”
A 16-2 run early in the second half enabled ETSU to erase an 8-point deficit. By the time Evans drilled a 3-point shot, the Lady Bucs led 39-33. Jacksonville scored the next 10 points and went back ahead 43-39, but then went cold.
The Dolphins didn’t score for the next 6:10 as ETSU went on a decisive 12-0 spurt to go up 51-43.
Wiles scored on a drive with 2:16 left, giving the Lady Bucs their biggest lead at 55-45. They coasted home despite missing four free throws in the final 1:30.
While Wiles was the Lady Bucs’ leading scorer in the tournament with 37 points in the two games, Evans was an easy choice as MVP. She finished with 25 rebounds while scoring 32 points and made a big play about every time her team needed one.
Regina Omoite led Jacksonville with 10 points. She also made the all-tournament team.
It was the first time in A-Sun women’s tournament history that every game was won by the higher-seeded team.
ETSU will return home and begin preparations for the NCAA tournament, where it fell to Oklahoma State in last year’s first round.
“It feels great,” Evans said. “The first year we went, we were happy to be there. This year we’re hoping to go and win a game in the first round.”
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BugMan
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| Posted: March-08-2009 at 3:30am | IP Logged
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I was tickled to see the broom come out for the ETSU men and women! Both teams have heart and both are well coached.
I just hope the guys aren't a 16 seed. If they are, it's over (one and done), but I can see them at a 15 or 14 knocking off a 2-3 seed. They're a veteran team and with the right match-up could be this year's "Cinderella".
GO BUCS!
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Van_84
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| Posted: March-08-2009 at 7:27am | IP Logged
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ETSU will probably go in as a 14 or 15 seed. There are going to be a couple of 2-5 seeds that are going to go down early, but it all depends on where ETSU is placed. I am hoping for the best that with a little bit of luck that the Bucs (men) could possibly make the Sweet 16. It's a long shot, but all they need is two good match-ups and two hard fought games.
As for the Lady Bucs, I don't have a clue where they will end up being seeded for the tournament. I'll have to wait until the bracket comes out and then see what things look like.
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Brocephus
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| Posted: March-08-2009 at 8:05am | IP Logged
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Good luck to ETSU basketball. Give 'em heck in the NCCA tournaments!
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Bobby Gobble
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| Posted: March-09-2009 at 3:23pm | IP Logged
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I just looked on ESPN and they are saying ETSU will be a 14 seed playing Washington in Round 1. IF ETSU won that game and UT beats Minnesota then ETSU and UT would play in round 2. This was a unofficial bracket thats posted on ESPN
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Van_84
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| Posted: March-09-2009 at 3:27pm | IP Logged
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...and if ETSU ended up beating UT in the Second Round, I would have to sit back and smile. Just think of the local headlines if that were to happen. Nothing against Bruce Pearl, I just love to see the Underdogs win.
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BugMan
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| Posted: March-09-2009 at 5:07pm | IP Logged
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That would be quirky as all get out if they bracket them that way.
What would be cool is if UT or ETSU went west and the other were on the other side of the bracket and they met in either the Elite-8 or Final Four game...wouldn't that be way cool?
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RW
Retired Champ
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| Posted: March-10-2009 at 12:26am | IP Logged
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I've been closely following all the tournaments to see who claims the conference's automatic bids. With Tennessee Chattanooga beating College of Charleston tonight (which I never expected), the Mocs coached by Johnson City native John Shulman, with the 18-16 record will in all likelihood be a 16 seed in one of the regions.
I thought it strange how Charleston and Davidson wound up in the same bracket at the Southern Conference tournament and had to play in the semifinals. With Davidson losing to Charleston, and both teams' records like 26-7, will both or one receive an at-large NCAA bid? If so, it will be the first time in SoCon history the conference had landed more than one team in the NCAA tournament. Not even back when the ETSU Bucs had their super teams in the late 80s and early 90s did the SoCon get two teams in the Big Dance. With Chattanooga pulling the upset to get the SoCon automatic bid, that's hurt Davidson and Charleston's chances for an at-large bid. If the SoCon landed an at-large bid, it would go to Davidson ... all because they have Stephen Curry.
ETSU beat Chattanooga this year.
My buddies and I, we've talked about where we think the Bucs will get seeded, and we think probably a 14 seed. It just depends on if the favored teams win their respective conference tournaments and no underdog does. That's what throws curveballs to the NCAA Selection Committee, when they're considering at-large berths for teams.
Whew, I sure hope the Bucs and Vols couldn't get paired against one another unless it was in the national championship game. Even though I live in Johnson City and ETSU is my alma mater, "My Blood Runneth Big Orange!" and I always pull for the Vols in all sports. I always pull for the Bucs in sports, except when they play the Vols. Back in the early 90s when the Bucs went to Knoxville and beat the Vols, my buddies rode me hard ... because I was pulling for the Big Orange. True, I was. But I will admit it was kind of cool seeing Lil' David slay Goliath in that game. The Bucs have also come close on a couple other occasions in basketball, too. And last year in baseball, ETSU beat the Vols both here at Cardinal Park and in Knoxville.
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BugMan
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| Posted: March-10-2009 at 5:00am | IP Logged
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RW,
I'd be surprised if Davidson or CoC gets in. Davidson I believe smoked CoC in RPI and Strength of Schedule, but it doesn't matter now. They finished 3rd in their conference, and as you've stated, the NCAA has never been kind to the SoCon.
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Topic: ETSU basketball headed to NCAA tourney
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