Widener steamrolls Lyco in title game
By IAN QUILLEN, iquillen@sungazette.comArticle Photos
And as he thought ahead to Saturday’s MAC Commonwealth men’s basketball championship, he refused to buy into the league records and seeding that forced No. 2 Widener to travel to the top-seeded Warriors.
“We’re the beat up Buick,” Friday said of his unassuming, hard-working bunch. “And they’re the Ferrari.”
It was a major sign of respect for the defending league champs. But after Widener’s emphatic 75-61 victory to win back-to-back titles Saturday, the metaphor didn’t go far enough.
Pick any car for the Warriors. The Pride were a freight train, slowly building steam early before shredding anything that dared lie on the tracks. So comprehensively dominant were they after halftime — including a 17-0 title-clinching run — that even Lyco found it hard to imagine a different outcome.
“There is not one excuse I will make,” Friday said. “Widener came in here. They played better today, they deserved to win that game. We have to face it. And we’ll live with it.”
An afternoon filled with furious Pride pressure and wasteful Warriors offense served as a cruel end to what should be remembered as an heroic season.
Eric Anthony led Lyco with 21 points, and seniors Kevin Morris and David Wilson scored 15 and 14 points, respectively, in a final few expected the Warriors (17-10, 7-3) to make. Lyco was picked fifth in a preseason league poll, and after December sat at just 5-5.
“This is as far as we’ve got my whole career,” Wilson said of Lyco, which last won a league title in 2004. “In one sense it was a failure, but in another it was a success. You take it for what it is.”
But despite jumping to an early lead, the Warriors never solved Widener’s man-to-man blanket defense, one that forced 19 turnovers and drastically reduced Lyco’s inside game.
The Pride (22-5, 6-4) held the Warriors without a field goal for a stretch of 14:53 going back to Wilson’s 3-pointer late in the first half. By the time Wilson ended that drought with a driving layup, Lyco trailed 62-45 with 6:15 remaining.
“It just happened so fast,” Morris said of the stretch, which ended Lycoming’s NCAA tournament hopes. “All of the sudden I looked up at the score and we were down 18. It’s tough.”
Millersville transfer Charles Jones scored 16 points and Matt Sosna added 14 points to lead the Pride to an automatic NCAA berth. Their resume may have been good enough for an at-large bid, but they took no chances.
“We were kind of in a fog a little bit for the first 10 minutes,” said Widener coach Chris Carideo. “Our defense got us back in the game and made the score at halftime tied. Obviously our defense took over in the second half.”
After Lyco scored five straight points to force a 32-all halftime tie, Sosna began the second with a pair of foul shots and Jamarr Johnson sank a tough leaner to make it 36-32.
The Warriors answered with foul shots, but after Jemayne Nowlin missed a pair that would’ve given them the lead, Widener started barreling down the tracks.
Tracy Jones hit a putback to start it, and Branden Washington hit a spinning layup after referees ignored Will Kelly’s attempt to draw a charge.
Washington was lucky not to get a technical when he clapped in Kelly’s face as the Lyco freshman layed on the ground. But it showed a meanness the Warriors didn’t match, even after James Oberlies picked up a technical later in the half.
“They did have a swagger,” Friday said of Widener, who outrebounded Lyco 40-32. “And I thought our kids came out with a swagger, and we came out with some energy and some toughness. But when you’re wailing away, wailing away, wailing away and you’re not getting those calls ... .”
The engine kept churning.
Tournament MVP Nyree Miller hit a layup off a steal, set up Sosna for an alley-oop in transition, and hit a 3-pointer off Sosna’s feed to stretch it to 50-38.
Washington then took Bobby Edmunds’ pass, absorbed a crunching foul from Nowlin and still hit another breakaway layup before crashing to the floor.
He missed the foul shot, but Edmunds would make a pair and Jarrell Johnson added a leaner to finish their title-clinching spurt.
“We were in a hole, but our style of play allows that,” Charles Johnson said. “You can be down 10 at times, but you can get a 20-point swing and be up 10 in a matter of 3-4 minutes.”
The Warriors had come back from a 15-point halftime deficit before. But this was different.
“Sometimes it’s hard to get them out of it,” Friday said. “I tried to take some timeouts early to stop spurts. And then we just ran out of timeouts and couldn’t slow them down.”
Friday called his last with over five minutes to go, and Widener still leading by 17. The Warriors pulled as close as 12 on Anthony’s pull-up 3-pointer, but after Jones hit two foul shots, the Warriors opted not to foul.
Instead, the Lamade crowd watched Edmunds deliberately dribble into a shot-clock violation before the benches emptied for the last 27 seconds.
“I’m just really disappointed,” Morris said. “It’s tough to lose a game like that, especially when we did a lot of it ourselves.”
Said Edmunds: “It’s awesome. Back-to-back.” And of the NCAA Tournament? “We want a home game. That’s all we want. We definitely deserve it.”
They’ll get no argument from the Warriors, who won’t want to ponder facing this same team, which loses no players, again next year.
“Right now it’s too early to even think about that,” Friday said. “I think we need to pay respect right now to those 16 guys who put their hands in there for the last time. It’s time to talk about them right now.”
WIDENER (22-5, 8-4)
Charles Jones 4-9 5-6 16; Matt Sosna 4-7 5-6 14; Branden Washington 5-5 1-3 11; Jamarr Johnson 4-9 1-2 9; Bobby Edmunds 2-7 4-4 9; Nyere Miller 3-10 0-0 7; Jarrell Nelson 2-3 1-2 5; Tracy Jones 2-4 0-0 4; Ricky Anger 0-0 0-0 0; Craig Stewart 0-0 0-0 0; Tim Vanderslice 0-0 0-0 0; Jon Evans 0-0 0-0 0; Chris McDevitt 0-0 0-0 0; Tavaris Smith 0-3 0-0 0. Totals 26-57 17-23 75.
LYCOMING (17-10 8-4)
Eric Anthony 4-10 10-10 21; Kevin Morris 3-11 7-8 15; David Wilson 4-6 4-4 14; Richard Varnell 3-5 0-2 6; Greg Sye 1-5 3-4 5; Brandon Wilkinson 0-1 0-0 0; James Oberlies 0-0 0-0 0; Anthony Watson 0-1 0-0 0; Ethan Lee 0-0 0-0 0; Sebastian Sabella 0-0 0-0 0; Will Kelly 0-3 0-0 0; Jemayne Nowlin 0-8 0-2 0. Totals 15-50 24-30 61.
Halftime - Tied 32-32. 3-point goals--Widener 6-14 (Charles Jones 3-6; Matt Sosna 1-2; Nyere Miller 1-4; Bobby Edmunds 1-2), Lycoming College Warriors 7-25 (Eric Anthony 3-9; David Wilson 2-3; Kevin Morris 2-6; Brandon Wilkinson 0-1; Anthony Watson 0-1; Jemayne Nowlin 0-5). Fouled out--Widener-None, Lycoming None. Rebounds--Widener 40 (Jamarr Johnson 9), Lycoming 32 (Eric Anthony 11). Assists--Widener 16 (Bobby Edmunds 5), Lycoming 6 (David Wilson 2; James Oberlies 2). Total fouls--Widener 22, Lycoming College Warriors 17. Technical fouls--Oberlies. A-826
