Washington
CNN
—
The NCAA tournament might be college basketball’s most high-profile showcase of the desperate, win-or-go-home style of basketball that makes March one of the most special times of the year.
But before those games, before millions of people fill out their brackets and start putting their faith in schools they’ve never heard of, potential Cinderella stories battle for their basketball lives.
In front of loud crowds in small gyms, the madness is already spreading – and the soul of college basketball is wonderfully, mercifully, alive.
Take, for instance, the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) tournament, contested over the last few days in Washington, DC’s CareFirst Arena – the 4,200-seat arena in southeast Washington that is sort of the little cousin to Capital One Arena in Chinatown where the NBA’s Wizards and NHL’s Capitals play.
The CAA is expected to send just one men’s team to The Big Dance that tips off next week, the champion of the conference tournament that earns an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. That means after all these games, after all these months of ball, a tournament berth came down to how a team played on one long weekend in the nation’s capital.
What that led to is some of the most frenzied basketball in the college game, the kind of hoops that can only come from players who aren’t sure they’ll ever get to dribble a ball competitively ever again if they lose.
Each foul is so hard it makes you cringe. Every loose ball is met by three or four bodies spilling onto the hardwood to try and capture it. The big fear about college sports these days is that the amount of money pouring into major conference sports is going to rob the game of the passion that makes it special, especially at these smaller schools. There are concerns that the best players from these teams will just go to bigger schools, chasing Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) dollars – and when they leave, those smaller schools’ fans will go with them.
Here, in front of a crowd of diehards that made a couple thousand people sound like a jet engine, those larger worries couldn’t feel further away.
The opportunity and cruelty of tournament basketball
The team that was expected to be the CAA representative in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament next week was Towson.
The Tigers finished their regular season 16-2 in the conference, two games ahead of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. They brought the conference’s player of the year, Tyler Tejada – as well as its sixth man of the year and coach of the year, plus another all-conference player – into this tournament.
A semifinal matchup against the conference basement dwelling University of Delaware on Monday evening seemed like a recipe for an easy path to Tuesday night’s final – even if the Blue Hens had absolutely decimated William & Mary on Sunday to keep their season alive.
Delaware finished third-from-last in the CAA, winning just five conference games. They lost their last regular season game to UNC-Wilmington by 30 points. Maybe that’s why, as the Blue Hens jumped out to a 13-point lead early in the second half, the noise coming from the Towson end of the arena was tinged with disbelieving screams.
The momentum swung wildly. First, it was Towson, making a little run to get back into the contest and injecting their fans with life. But the pesky Blue Hens wouldn’t let the Towson crowd relax – a few big threes, some defensive stops and suddenly the lead was back to 11 with seven-and-a-half minutes to play.
The diminutive Delaware contingent couldn’t possibly muster the kind of noise the Towson fans were putting out. But when each shot went down and the Delaware lead stayed improbably solid, they hollered all the same.
They threw their hands in the air when senior John Camden, the second team all-conference forward fresh off scoring 36 points in the game of his life against William & Mary, kept hitting shots and staring daggers at his bench with intensity etched into his face. They screamed in bewilderment when Niels Lane, the University of Florida transfer, soared high above the basket to slam home an alley-oop on the stroke of halftime.
And, as Towson went into a full court press after hitting a three to cut the lead to 10 points with less than three minutes to go, they moved to the edge of their seats to see if their school – the lowest-seeded team to ever get this far in the CAA tournament – could really pull this off.
With just under two minutes left, Towson’s pressing defense got them within eight, forcing Delaware into turnovers. A Tejada layup with 58 seconds left got them within six. Then the Tigers made it a five-point game with 38 seconds to go. But that’s as close as they’d get.
Two more free throws for the Blue Hens and a missed Tejada long-range three-pointer gave Blue Hens’ guard Erik Timko a chance to ice it with two free throws – and he didn’t disappoint, making it a nine-point game.
Last-gasp threes by the Tigers went awry and reality set in. The Blue Hens’ bench looked ready to explode; Towson looked stunned.
“Each game’s different. We were the best team in the league for four months, we needed to be the best team in the league for three days and we weren’t,” said Towson coach Pat Skerry in a somber postgame press conference.
The dichotomy of March on full display.
These tournaments are the places where basketball dreams either end or go into the stratosphere.
They’re also the kind of place where, in between games, the school-aged ballboy for the College of Charleston can get up some shots, alone on the court in front of bunch of paying customers who are waiting for the game between the Cougars and the UNC-Wilmington Seahawks to get started.
Unlike the Blue Hens, both these teams came into this tournament with expectations. They’re the second and third seeds, and Delaware’s win made their path to the NCAA tournament a lot clearer.
Both groups of fans could feel it – the arena was split almost perfectly in half between teal-clad UNCW fans and maroon-wearing Charlestonians. It was as if CareFirst Arena had a noise pendulum going back and forth.
When the Seahawks made a run in the final minutes for the first half, it seemed like their fans might lift the roof off the arena; each rebound, each bucket, each steal was greeted by a giant roar. A tight game that saw eight lead changes and five ties in just the first 17 minutes suddenly broke open as the Seahawks ran to a 10-point lead at halftime, though a three-pointer at the buzzer from Charleston guard CJ Fulton gave the Cougars some hope going into the break.
A rollicking start to the second half had both teams’ fans standing, living and dying with every whistle and bucket. It took five minutes for Charleston to shrink the 10-point halftime lead to two, bringing Cougars fans to their feet. UNCW’s Donovan Newby answered that rally with another three, restoring the two-possession lead and sending the Seahawks faithful out of their seats too.
UNCW couldn’t quite pull away and the Cougars stayed within striking distance through a cold stretch, eventually clawing all the way back to a 52-52 tie with a little more than seven minutes left on a huge three from guard Deywilk Tavarez.
Suddenly, all the noise was being made by the maroon-and-black side of the arena and the rowdy North Carolinians had lost their voice. A three from senior guard Derrin Boyd – punctuated by a scream of “NO!” from a UNCW fan – put the Cougars in the lead for the first time in what felt like ages.
The Seahawks answered quickly to tie the game yet again, and the lead ping-ponged back and forth as the noise inside the arena reached a fever pitch.
A missed layup by Charleston’s Boyd with 90 seconds left with the Cougars up by a point gave UNCW a chance – and Newby took it with a massive shot from downtown that made it 66-64 Seahawks with 1:10 to play. The clock continued to run and the score stayed the same as both teams missed crunch-time shots.
As the seconds wound down, Charleston had what seemed like one last chance. A quick foul stopped the clock with 10 seconds to play and put Fulton on the line with a chance to tie the game with two free throws – but the senior guard missed them both. However, in a stroke of luck for him, teammate Lazar Djokovic grabbed the offensive rebound and called timeout, giving the Cougars one more crack at it.
The ball was inbounded to Boyd, who dribbled toward the top of the arc and tried to cross his defender over, but he lost the ball in the process.
It rolled toward half-court and the Seahawks jumped on it, holding on as Charleston fouled. Montgomery stepped to the free throw line and, with 3.9 seconds to go, made both shots, giving UNCW a four-point lead and a berth in the final.
Tavarez hit a three as the clock expired for the Cougars, but it didn’t matter – the Seahawks had pulled out a 68-67 win to face the Blue Hens.
“It’s hard when you ask your guys to compete and give the intensity and the effort and the energy and the togetherness at the highest level they possibly can and it doesn’t work out for them,” said Charleston coach Chris Mack after the game.
“I thought they matched our toughness, I thought they matched our physicality,” said Seahawks head coach Takayo Siddle, “and it came down to us being resilient.”
The resilience of Delaware and UNC-Wilmington wasn’t done being tested just yet. Yes, after all that emotionally draining, back-and-forth basketball, the Blue Hens and Seahawks still had to play one more game.
March is mad, but it’s also relentlessly demanding.
At some point in the 20 hours or so between the win over Towson and the final on Tuesday, the word got out among the Delaware faithful: “You gotta get to DC.”
The one-man student representation suddenly blew up into a mostly full section of bucket-hat clad fans. The pep band expanded too, taking over most of section 101 after needing about three rows the night before. Cinderella had a strong wall of noise behind them for the first time in this underdog run.
The teal end of the arena matched the newly arrived Blue Hens’ energy, and CareFirst Arena was a cauldron of noise before tip-off.
In the opening stages, it looked like it was almost midnight for Delaware. The Seahawks were making all the hustle plays, forced four turnovers and held the Blue Hens to just 21% from the field in the first 10 minutes. The Seahawks’ lead grew to 10 and the Delaware contingent – arms crossed, eyes staring blankly at the court – looked shell-shocked.
When the lead grew to 15 with five minutes to play in the first half, Seahawks fans all came to their feet. The game felt like it was teetering on the edge of the blowout before it even got to halftime.
But contests in this of all months can turn on a dime. Two layups and a three-pointer later, the Blue Hens shrunk the lead to eight. Electricity surged through the blue half of the arena. The Seahawks blunted the run somewhat, but it took only five minutes of the second half for Delaware to come all the way back.
With 15 minutes to go, John Camden hit yet another huge three-pointer that brought the Blue Hens – improbably, again – all the way back into the lead, 41-40. The shots were starting to fall in a way they just hadn’t in the first half.
Still, amid the onslaught, the Seahawks wouldn’t fold. The teams traded small leads over and over, the game feeling like it might come down to the last possession.
Over the next 10 minutes, it was a classic tournament basketball game. Neither team could hold on to the lead for more than a few minutes, and it was rare that more than three points separated them.
The back-and-forth contest eventually settled into UNC-Wilmington gripping a small lead, nearing a championship and playing spoiler. The Blue Hens were going to need one last miracle. For a second, it seemed like they were about to get it.
Once again, it was Delaware’s Camden hitting the shot that the Blue Hens needed. Taking the ball from freshman standout Izaiah Pasha in the corner just in front of his bench, he tossed up a three that found nothing but the net as he flew out of bounds.
But the hope didn’t last long.
A defensive breakdown on the next possession cost the Blue Hens. Somehow, Newby snuck away from two Delaware defenders and got himself wide open amid the scramble. The senior guard had ended Charleston’s season the night before with a dagger three and, in the biggest game of his life so far, he did it again with a long two, turning Delaware’s carriage back into a pumpkin. There were 34 seconds to play and UNCW was up by five.
The Blue Hens tried to claw back into it, but Newby would not be denied. He hit two free throws off a quick Delaware layup and then did it again a few seconds later to send his team dancing. The final free throws came after Newby had to stand at the free-throw line, waiting for both coaches to finish drawing up a play for the final seconds.
He stared at the rim and never wavered.
“I was just telling myself, ‘You’re built for this,’ and then I just talked to myself through my free throw routine,” Newby said after the game.
One more missed Blue Hens shot, and it was all over. The Seahawks rushed the floor in joy, tears streaming down some of their faces as Delaware fled the scene. It was the first time UNCW booked a place in the dance since they won the CAA tournament in 2017.
As his team celebrated at center court, Newby found his parents. His mom reached over the rope line separating them and he sank into her arms, crying as the emotions finally let loose.
A few minutes later, he was named tournament MVP.
“It just meant so much,” Newby said of that moment with his family, “because my parents put so much work and so much dedication – so much money traveling – into this craft of mine that I fell in love with. They just did it all for me. So, to be able to feel like I’m paying them back for that by winning this, it just felt really good.”
The Seahawks ended the night cutting down the net and holding an oversized ticket to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, grins plastered on their faces.
Maybe, they’d get stuck in a play-in game next week. Maybe, they’d get run out of the building by one of college basketball’s blue bloods in an opening round game. But maybe – just maybe – they’d bust some brackets. Maybe, they’re next week’s David to some top-seeded Goliath. Maybe, they’d be the real deal Cinderella.
That, beyond anything, is the promise of March.
