The America East Conference tournament for men’s basketball was held this past weekend at Binghampton University in New York. UMBC was the number 1 seed going into the tournament, and thus far, the rating has held up. Since the AEC is a 9 team conference (Albany, Binghampton, Boston, Hartford, Maine, UMBC, New Hampshire, Stony Brook, and Vermont), there was one play-in game between the 8th and 9th seeded teams to determine which one would lose to UMBC in the first round of the 8 team play-off. The lucky winner was Stony Brook, who actually had quite a zesty flavor after UMBC made mincemeat of them, winning 76 - 60.
The highlight of the game was the outstanding all-around play of “The Doc”, who led the team with 17 points, 11 rebounds and a steal. “Sir Blockswell” Johnson was a close second with 15 points, and had an amazing 5 blocks, his highest amount of the season! Another notable performance was that of “Lean Mean Dribblin’ Machine” Greene, who had an outstanding 12 assists to accompany his 9 points. Oh yeah, and did I mention that the team shot over 50% from downtown? “Spaddy” was 3/4, Greene 3/7, “The Captain” 3/6, and “Flyin’ Brian” 2/3. Nevertheless, through all these magnificent performances, the most bestest, awsome-sweetest part of the game was when “The Doctrine” decided to take a stand against the reffing crew, who, to put it lightly, had a bit of a shotty performance. After a slightly horrendous call, Randy laid into one of those three blind mice the league labels as officials, calling him a “dinglefaussen blurbantang from Shistanburganville, New York”, earning himself the lone technical foul of the game. Of course, the foul was negligiable. At this point in the game, the Retriever’s lead had been in double digits for nearly an entire half. In short, we kicked ass!
After the warm-up game on Saturday, UMBC had to face a much tougher, much more determined team in the semi-finals, Vermont. The Caterpil Catamounts overcame a 10 point defecit late in the second half to overcome the always tough Binghampton Bearcats on their home court.
Due to an atrocious shooting percentage by UMBC, the first half was closer than Constantinople and Istanbul, allowing Vermont to hold a slim 34-33 lead at the break. The second half did not fair much better, in fact, with under 5 minutes left in the game, the Retrievers trailed the Kittycat-amounts by 5, leaving some to wonder if the top seed might be left out of this year’s championship game. “Arrg, not aye”, said “The Captain”, who, along with “Sir Blockswell” (For those of you wondering, this nickname was contrived earlier in the season, before his actual Knighthood status was realized by the Queen, who later, and without any of my own influence, came to the conclusion that anybody who is that freakin’ sweet at basketball must be knighted immediately), led the team to a 12-0 run that gave them a 7 point lead that was never relinquished. Barbosa shot an astounding 15 for 15 from the line, and finished the game with 29 points, matching his third highest, that’s right, third highest total of the season. He has now scored over 20 points in 13 games, eclipsing the 30 point mark twice. “The Doc” had yet another notable performance, scoring 17 points and leading the team (along with “Sir Blockswell”) with 4 offensive rebounds. The game ended as a solid 73-64 win for the Retrievers.
By winning both tournament games thus far, UMBC has put themselves in the championship game for the first time in school history. Because the Dawgs claimed the regular season championship, they have earned home court advantage for the final game of the tournament. The regular season title also granted them an automatic bid into the NIT, though if they can pull out one more win and claim the AEC Tournament title, they would be granted an even more prestigious bid into the NCAA tournament. All of these accomplishments are firsts for the men’s basketball program, and with the women’s team having already experienced the “Big Dance”, the bar has been set. We have by far the best basketball team this school has ever seen, and a very legitimate chance of winning the conference title. The game is this Saturday at noon, and tickets will be $10 for students (I know, it sucks that it isn’t free. But hey, what are two words that go oh so well after suck? IT UP!). If the school record for attendance was broken in the last home game of the regular season, we should be able to break that record tenfold for this game. This is without a doubt, the biggest, most important game that our men’s basketball team has ever played. I not only want to sell it out, I want to break fire codes. I want to have people sneaking in through those doors down by the swimming pool and have the entire indoor track that surrounds the court filled to the wall. I want it to be so loud in there that people walking by get substantial and permanent hearing loss, because they should be inside watching the game! If I haven’t made my point clear yet, all I’m asking is for you and all of your friends, and your friends friends, and your friends friends friends, and everyone else I forgot to mention, to come to the game and yell your asses off! ONE - TWO - THREE, GO BIG DAWGS!!!!!!
