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Grove City, W&J have followed same path
That could describe the Washington & Jefferson men's basketball team, but it's also the story of the Grove City Wolverines.
In many ways, Grove City's season has mirrored that of W&J. And the teams will cross paths tonight in an unlikely matchup in the championship game of the PAC tournament at Henry Memorial Center. Tip-off is 7:30 p.m.
While W&J (14-13) and Grove City (15-12) enter with rather pedestrian records, there is little doubt they are the hottest teams in the conference, which is remarkable when you consider where they were in December. W&J lost 10 of its first 11 games. Grove City dropped four of its first six. At one point, the Wolverines were 0-3 in the PAC with a pair of double-digit losses.
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"We're playing better defense, which was our bane early on," Lamie said. "This is a very unselfish team, and we've been receiving good contributions from our bench. We've played 27 games, but we're still fresh because we can go to our bench."
Grove City, traditionally a team that thrives on controlling tempo and playing a half-court style while keeping scores in the 60s, has developed a penchant for scoring in bunches. A 101-91 victory at Westminster in the regular season sparked the Wolverines turnaround. Over its last four games, Grove City is averaging 90 points.
"It's not like we're trying to outscore opponents. We're just shooting well," Lamie said. "We knew all along we had good shooters. The problem early on was we couldn't put 'em all together. We'd struggle because only one guy would have a good shooting night."
The Wolverines blitzed Waynesburg 89-60 in the first round of the PAC tournament and upset top-seed Westminster 86-67 Thursday in the semifinals. Grove City scored 50 second-half points and went 11-for-22 from three-point range against the Titans.
"Grove City is hot, hot, hot right now," Bethany coach Aaron Huffman said Thursday night after W&J ousted the Bison 78-75.
The hottest Grove City player might be Mark Smith, a 6-3 senior forward and Peters Township graduate. Though he averages only 9.5 points per game, Smith has scored at least 20 in three of the last five contests.
"He's playing the best basketball of his career and it couldn't be happening at a better time or to a better kid," Lamie said. "He's a quiet kid who leads by example and had been content to be a role player. Now, being a senior, he knows it's time to step up and score."
W&J turned its season around by looking inside, going to 6-4 Wahab Owolabi, 6-8 Josip Lucic-Jozak and 6-5 Matt Vorndran as its first options for points against smaller PAC opponents. That has left senior swingmen Jon Koch and Brandon Studer - the No. 1 and No. 4 scorers in W&J history, respectively - as secondary options but the Presidents have become a better team in the process.
"We've always wanted to establish an interior presence," W&J coach Glenn Gutierrez said. "Early on, we struggled trying to figure out how to do that. It took a while to develop that trust in everyone."
The Presidents' inside-outside balance is already causing problems for Grove City.
"It's pick your poison. If you help inside, then Koch and Studer will get open shots. If you go outside, then you leave the inside exposed," Lamie said. "We'll go into the game with a Plan A, B and C. If one doesn't work, we'll go to the other."
Grove City found something that worked when it defeated the visiting Presidents 74-59 in January. The rematch, in the next-to-last game of the regular season, was won by W&J 84-80.
Notes
Sophomore guard Ryan Gibson (12.1 ppg) is Grove City's leading scorer. ... Grove City last won the PAC championship in 2003. The last title for W&J was in 1995, which capped a four-year run of championships for the Presidents. ... Grove City has outrebounded its opponents by an 83-47 margin in the tournament.
