A Trip to the Pit (Part 2)

A big thank you again to our friend "Gooch." He attended UD's game at New Mexico and concludes the tale of his legendary journey as follows: (For part one, click here.)

Because of me the Flyers lose the game by two instead of four. There I said it. I don’t mean to brag, but I do make a difference. I immediately make my presence felt in the first minute of regulation. UNM wins the tip, drives down the court and feeds their big man Hardeman. And guess what? He gets fouled. That will be the first of 33 team fouls that the Flyers allegedly commit. London gets him on the arm and he goes to the line. At this point in the game, the crowd is still getting settled and those paying attention just anticipate the rest of the night being this easy, so they don’t feel as though they need to cheer. That leaves the door wide open for me.

I've been blessed with a good arena voice. For some reason it carries well, even in the most hostile environment. Or at least I think it does. This time I'm sure it matters. Hardeman goes to the line. . I anticipate that this galoot will 1. Be a weak foul shooter and 2. Come to the line at an important point later in the game. I know he is one of their most important players, so I feel that his is a head into which I would like to get. He ambles to the line, the big tree of a man. He is at the basket nearest us and in front of the student section. The students of course do the old "home town hush," quieting down the crowd. The fools. I still can see it.

The basketball looks like a melon in his oversized hands. I try to note any Shaquillian hitch in his first free throw stroke, just to judge how easy it will be. It seems fairly smooth. He makes the first, hitting nothing but the net. The crowd cheers briefly and quiets quickly for the second one. My plan has worked; they have been lulled into a false sense of security.

The crowd is hushed. Hardeman draws his right wrist back so the ball is parallel to the floor. He then begins the ball on its path to the basket. “Just like in practice, just like in practice,” I can almost hear him thinking. As the ball moves from the palm of his hand to his fingertips, out comes one voice penetrating the silence:

"BRICK!"

The ball, originally intended to roll off of the middle finger instead rolls off of his right ring and pinky fingers, making a line drive toward the rim. It glances sharply off of the right side of the rim and hits the backboard, line driving into the arms of Chris(t). In unison, the half of the student section closest to us pivots on their heels and shakes their thumbed fists at me. I immediately point to Knachel a la Chevy Chase in "Spies Like Us." I don't think they buy it.
One point for us and Hardeman can suck it. He ends up going 2-5 from the free throw line. You’re welcome.

Unfortunately, that was the Flyer highlight of the first half. The first ten minutes are:

UNM- 4/10 FT; 3/7 FG; 1/2 3-PT; 4 Fouls; 1 BLK; 8 REB (2 OFF); 2 ASST; 1 TO; 3 STL
UD- 4/6 FT; 2/4 FG; 0/5 3-PT; 10 Fouls; 2 BLK; 12 REB (3 OFF); 2 ASST; 6 TO; 1 STL

The score ten minutes in is 13-8, but the feeling in the crowd is that we are lucky to be so close and if UNM could make free throws, it would be a different story. Hard to disagree with that.
I would like to point to Rob Lowery’s play from the first time he entered the game at 18:10 until he is pulled at 16:02 - He runs fourteen seconds off of the shot clock and then hoists up a 20 foot three that misses the basket entirely. He would be serenaded with the old air ball chant from this point forward. UD gets the ball back on a steal and then fourteen seconds later, Lowery turns the ball over. UNM drives and Lowery blocks Hobson and gets the rebound (way to go Rob!). Then he assists Marcus on one of his two field goals on the night. Seeing a Marcus Johnson field goal is like seeing a unicorn with a two dollar bill swimming in Atlantis. Then Lowery commits a foul and gets pulled.

I only highlight Rob's struggles because they are a microcosm of how the team struggled overall during the first ten minutes. A lot of fouls, not many field goal attempts, a lot of turnovers, not many assists and horrendous three point shooting. But at least we made some free throws. Yet we’re only down by 5 and holding UNM to 13 points. Our defense has to be the highlight of the game as they kept us in it until the end. Our offense, however, BLOWS!

One more word before we speed along through the rest of the game, the fouls. For the game, UD fouled UNM 33 times to UNM’s 21 fouls of Dayton. In retrospect, that shouldn’t have been surprising given that two of the officials - Rick Batsell and Kevin Brill (12520 263rd Ave Se, Monroe, WA 98272) call an average of 38.8 and 37.5 fouls per game respectively. They are also Mountain West refs, so they have incentive to, let's say, keep it even in favor of the Lobos. There were spells during the first half where they just took over.

The second ten minutes of the first half were more of the same:
UNM: 7/8 FT; 3/9 FG; 1/2 3 PT; 5 Fouls; 0 BLK; 10 REB (3 OFF); 3 ASST; 8 TO; 4 STL
UD: 2/2 FT; 4/10 FG; 1/8 3 PT; 4 Fouls; 1 BLK; 12 REB (7 OFF); 1 ASST; 6 TO; 3 STL

Halftime score: 29 University of New Mexico- 23 University of Dayton

The highlight of the half is a Josh Benson put back dunk and CJ stepping it up at half's end. Also Paul Williams played well in his limited playing time.

It seems like we have a lot more fouls called on us than do the Lobos, however it is because of the 10 fouls during the first ten minutes that all four times the Lobos go to the line in the second quarter of the game, they are in the double bonus. UNM only committed 9 Team fouls in the half to our 14. That being said, we do well on the glass, especially the offensive glass at this point. We are forcing turnovers. If we could just make some shots, we'll be in business.

The halftime show is pretty lame. Sumo wrestling and some award goes to a has been for doing something only a few people care about. The people sitting around us begin engaging us in conversation. We see that they are starting to take our Flyers seriously. They didn't expect the game to be as close and competitive as it is. They are also appreciative of our enthusiasm, what with our yelling "Defense Flyers" and "Let’s go now Flyers" at opportune lulls in the cheering. Because I'm in the zone, I didn't notice it, but I found out later that the student section was getting more and more agitated with us throughout the first half. If I knew that then, I would tell them the same thing I will tell them now. Suck it.

The first 10 minutes of the second half go like this:
UNM: 1/1 FT; 3/7 FG; 2/2 3 PT; 5 Fouls; 2 BLK; 6 REB (1 OFF); 4 ASST; 6 TO; 1 STL
UD: 1/2 FT; 5/10 FG; 2/7 3 PT; 4 Fouls; 0 BLK; 8 REB (5 OFF); 3 ASST; 1 TO; 5 STL

Score with 10 minutes to go is 44-40 UNM

Clearly this is the best quarter of the game. We actually had the lead on the offensive prowess of London Warren. Within 1:30 seconds, London got 1 steal, a dunk, a layup (after a steal from Chris[t]), and an assist on a dunk to Chris(t). It is at this point in the game where the Flyers have the most hope. It is also here that the Lobo fans start to recognize LW as one of our best players. More than three different people say as much to us as we file out of the game.

Alas, our hope is short lived. After the London run, Roman Martinez hits a three, Lowery misses a jumper, Chris(t) misses a layup, Martinez hits another three, Paul Williams misses a three. And it all commences to go to hell. Finally, the last 10 minutes shape up like this:

UNM: 14/22 FT; 5/10 FG; 0/0 3 PT; 6 Fouls; 1 BLK; 13 REB (5 OFF); 2 ASST; 2 TO; 2 STL
UD: 7/10 FT; 2/4 FG; 5/7 3 PT; 14 Fouls; 0 BLK; 15 REB (6 OFF); 4 ASST; 3 TO; 0 STL

Final Score: 68 New Mexico- 66 Dayton

Unfortunately for us, the last 10 minutes look a lot like the first. A lot of fouls and a lot of three point attempts. We do make more this time, but that is mostly thanks to CJ, whom I think we can all agree is special.

I do give the Flyers one more point when Hardeman misses a free throw at the 4:58 mark. I made a point not to overdue my "Brick" call throughout the game, knowing that using it too much would just make it cliché, so I sit on it for many, many free throws until a time when I think it will work. At 4:58, I yell Brick for a second time and Hardeman obliged. For the record this is much more difficult than the first time because the crowd is much louder than before and I have to pick the split second of silence before he shoots to yell. It works again and Knachel will verify its effectiveness if no one believes me. It’s the least I could do.

Overall, we rebounded well (43-32). We defended adequately to win (UNM shot 47%). We just sucked on offense except in two short bursts (London and CJ in the second half). We ended the game shooting 34% from the field and 24% from three (7% in the first half). But you know what, at the end of the game, Knachel and I weren’t really that disappointed.

Could Lowery have played point guard better? Sure. Maybe a good point guard shouldn't hoist 11 threes. Could Marcus Johnson have woken up from his season long slumber? Yeah, I guess he could have. A lot of teams would expect a senior in a big game to attempt more than four shots. But we had some people step it up. The fact is that we played a really tough team in a really tough environment close.

Going into this game, we knew that it was a can't lose proposition as far as our long term tournament goals. The loss actually raised our RPI, the closeness of the score may mean something to the tournament committee in March and our players know that they could have won if they only made one more three pointer or if they only committed two fewer fouls. It is definitely something they can build on. I don’t think a lot of recent Flyer teams could have come into the Pit and played a team this balanced and confident this well.

Dark, is this what Father Barletta called “sweet lemon?”

A few things that stick out now that it’s over are:
1. The Pit can get loud and it gave us a feeling of what fans of other teams feel when they come into the D-rena. However, it was only loud for about the last 10 minutes, but at those times, my eyes were bouncing in my skull like when I’m at a really loud rock concert. The Flyers did a good job of holding their composure.

2. The UNM fans are pretty cool. They seem knowledgeable about basketball and they had no problems with us making asses out of ourselves. At the end of the game, we shook hands with all of those around us, wished each other's team a good year and wished each other a Happy New Year. It was very cordial. Knachel mentioned that it is something we would never see on the east coast.

3. As we were leaving Knachel and I both got stopped by different people who wanted to express how impressed they were with the Flyers. The man I spoke with said he heard we would be tough, but he didn’t think we would be "the toughest team they played all year." He also mentioned that it is impossible to believe we aren’t ranked. I agreed. I blamed ESPN.

4. The next day as we were walking around historic Old Town Albuquerque, we were stopped a few more times by more UNM fans who wanted to talk about the Flyers. They may still be talking about us.

It was altogether a pleasant experience seeing a game there. Even though some parts could have been better than others.