College basketball season wasn’t a lost cause
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament begins in earnest today – I know, there were First Four games played Tuesday and Wednesday, but for most bracket-picking people it tips off this afternoon – and it will do so without a “local” team.
Pitt, Penn State, West Virginia, Duquesne and Robert Morris all fell short of the tournament field.
That doesn’t mean college basketball was down in the area this year. The California men won the PSAC tournament title and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Division II tournament.
And there was the PAC double at Washington & Jefferson, where both the men and women won Presidents’ Athletic Conference championships and advanced to the NCAA Division III tournament. The W&J men defeated Mount Union for the program’s first NCAA tournament victory in 32 years. The Presidents beat Otterbein, Kenyon and Illinois Wesleyan in 1994, and W&J’s assistant coach that year was a guy named Matt Painter, who is now the head coach at Purdue.
The PSAC championship, NCAA tournament berth and win over Fayetteville State were particularly pleasing for Cal head coach Danny Sancomb, who had three starters from last year’s team enter the transfer portal and move on to Division I programs where they played more than casual roles. With those three players, Cal could have been a national championship contender. Without them, the Vulcans were still pretty good.
“This was a fun group to coach this year,” Sancomb said Sunday night after Cal lost to Gannon in the NCAA tournament. “It wasn’t an easy season for us. We grew as a team. When we were 1-4, we could have tucked our heads and said it’s not our year. But our captains (Bryson Lucas and Dalmon Alexander) kept us steady and led the way while the other guys followed.
“I’m not the easiest guy to play for at times, and these guys allow me to coach them. I believe that if we have the right guys and they allow us to coach them, then they’re going to reach their potential. Our guys were able to do that.”
Cal recovered from that 1-4 start and finished the year with a 23-9 record. The Vulcans went 2-2 against Gannon, which won the Atlantic Regional on Tuesday night, beating IUP 81-74 after trailing by six points at halftime.
The best news for Sancomb is this year’s team had only two seniors. If he can find a point guard to replace Brayden Reynolds and maybe bring in another big man, then the Vulcans could be national title contenders next season.
* If much-ballyhooed prospect Konnor Griffin is going to win a Pirates roster spot for Opening Day, then he’ll have to prove that he can hit better than the .206 spring average he took in last night’s spring training game against Detroit. Griffin has four home runs this spring, but he also has only two singles and no walks in 13 games.
* Time is running out to complete your NCAA basketball tournament office pool entry. Here’s some good advise: Don’t. We all know that the winner of the bracket poll will be the office secretary who doesn’t know if a basketball is filled with air or stuffed, picks winners based on school colors and nicknames, refers to Gonzaga as “Gonzalez” and thinks St. John’s is a high school in Uniontown.
* Did you have Venezuela in your World Baseball Classic bracket pool?
Sports editor Chris Dugan can be reached at dugan@observer-reporter.com