Conference tournaments are about basketball but also so much more: the fans, parents, bands, cheerleaders, etc. The CAA Tournament is taking place this week in Washington, DC, and we could not be more excited to be there in person! HoopsHD is covering all the angles so you can look forward to an abundance of access in the days ahead. Jon Teitel continues our coverage from DC with a recap of the semifinal doubleheader on Monday.
Another delicious pregame meal: chicken/rice/pita bread/hummus! Let’s tip off a nice mellow doubleheader after surviving back-to-back quadruple-headers over the weekend…please:
GAME #1: Delaware-Towson
As you might expect, the crowd skewed heavily in favor of the top seed: it appeared that at least 75% of the fans were wearing yellow since it a relatively short trip from Baltimore to DC. Coaches Pat Skerry of Towson and Martin Ingelsby of Delaware were just 1 win away from a spot in Tuesday night’s title game:
Towson G Dylan Williamson was coming off a career-high 32-PT performance on Sunday and picked up right where he left off as he scored 12 PTS/4-6 FG in the 1st half:
In contrast, Delaware F John Camden scored a career-high 36 PTS on Sunday…but only scored 2 PTS during the 1st 20 minutes tonight:
It was a tight affair with neither team leading by more than 4 PTS during the whole half, but the 12-seed Blue Hens continued their “Cinder-Dela” story (copyright pending!) on a tremendous 1-handed alley-oop dunk by Niels Lane right before the buzzer (scroll to the 1:50 mark of the following video and tell me if this dunk-of-the-year candidate reminds you of Grant Hill’s famous dunk from his Duke days: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pJXbFsJ8A8) as they headed into the locker room with a 36-32 lead:
Delaware was finally able to build a double-digit lead early in the 2nd half as Coach Skerry called a timeout and tried to save his season. To ease the tension, the mascots decided to have a dance-off:
The Blue Hens have leaned heavily on their starting 5 all weekend, and all 5 of them responded by scoring in double-digits. The X-factor was SO G Trent Middleton Jr.: he had only scored 12 PTS during his 1st 3 tourney games but was big off the bench with 14 huge PTS:
The entire Delaware team combined to shoot a sizzling 55.1 FG% and upset the #1 seed Tigers by a score of 82-72. In the postgame press conference, I asked Niels where his big basket ranks among his all-time dunks. He confirmed that it might have been the best dunk of his life because he did not even touch the rim but rather “threw” it into the hoop:
Coach Ingelsby’s brother Brad is a big-time Hollywood screenwriter, so I queried the coach what his reaction would be if Brad tried to sell him the story of a scrappy 12-seed winning a conference tourney title in a movie called “Cinder-Dela”. He smiled and mentioned that his brother was in the arena for last night’s game, and that his team has provided some good material, but that the key is their belief that they can beat anybody:
GAME #2: UNCW-Charleston
I was running on fumes after 3 straight nights of basketball so I called it a night…but the nightcap turned out to be 1 of the games of the day as UNCW hung on to win it 68-67. That is a wrap for tonight, check back tomorrow when a champion gets “Crowned in the Capital”!
