Come Sail Away!

No, not with Styx, but with the St. Mary's (MD) College sailing team....That's right! The Buffet's first installment of Number Three on Paper, but Number One in Your Hearts! How exciting! And not a moment too soon; in fact, possibly many moments too late: the NCAA Division III men's basketball Final Four, from its perennial home in witch-free but cigarette-ridden Salem, Virginia, tips off this Friday night, when fortunate readers of the Buffet will be safely ensconced in the cozy confines of the Race and Sports Book at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, unless, of course, said readers are quaffing from towers of beer at the Monte Carlo Brew Pub, just a quick stroll up South Las Vegas Boulevard.

But to the hardwood. Missing, sadly, from this year's semifinals is Hotline favorite and presumed Buffet favorite York College of Pennsylvania; the Spartans, the top seed (at 13-3 in the conference [18-7 overall]) in the Capital Athletic Conference tournament, were shocked in the opening round by lacrosse powerhouse and basketball afterthought Salisbury, 76-71, in a packed and despondent Grumbacher Center. Two-time conference player of the year Chad McGowan struggled all night, attempting just three shots in the first half and finishing with only 11 points, well below his season average of 23.4. It was a bitter way for the Dallastown (PA) High School graduate to end his stellar career. Nevertheless, things look good for the Spartans next season, because in south-central, they don't rebuild, they reload.

Salisbury's run in the conference tournament ended one game later against third-seeded and eventual champion St. Mary's (MD)--not be be confused with Coppin State's opponent tonight, Mount St. Mary's: St. Mary's is located in St. Mary's County, near the mouth of the Potomac River, and has a stellar sailing team; Mount St. Mary's is in bucolic Emmitsburg, Maryland, just below the Mason-Dixon Line from Gettysburg (as I'm sure all the Buffet readers who remember seeing the Emmitsburg Pike on the battlefield maps in The Killer Angels will know). Neither school, of course, is the St. Mary's playing Miami (FL) this Friday in Little Rock. St. Mary's (the Maryland St. Mary's; we're back to Division III), in turn, defeated Guilford and Widener to make it to the regional semifinals before falling to Mich Coker's alma mater, Millsaps College--best known for graduating Mich Coker but also known for losing to SuperSweet's alma mater, Trinity (TX), in football this past season on the famous fifteen-lateral play (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHbzQoXuxdU). For their part, Trinity, another Buffet favorite, had a bit of a downturn this basketball season: 18-9 (9-6), and a second-round loss in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference.

But maybe readers want a helping from the actual Division III Buffet instead of just some leftovers from lesser and finished buffets. So on to the games in Salem this weekend:

Our first game (or maybe it's our second game; Buffet staff cannot find an actual schedule for the games) Friday evening features the top-ranked Flying Dutchmen, not of Hofstra University or Lebanon Valley College or even Anville-Cleona High School (as everybody knows, Anville-Cleona, in the shadow of LVC, is the Little Dutchmen, not the Flying Dutchmen), but of Hope College, in Holland, Michigan, home of the Tulip Time Festival (http://tuliptime.org/) facing the eleventh-ranked Washington University Bears in a rematch of the regional finals from last year, won by WashU.

The Dutchmen (27-3) claimed the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association regular-season and tournament championships and are riding a twelve-game winning streak, including wins over Capital, Ohio Wesleyan, and Wheaton to get to the national semifinals. (Why only three wins, you ask? Because they had a first-round bye. Four other schools--Whitworth, Amherst, SUNY-Plattsburgh, and UMass-Dartmouth--also had byes. And no, Buffet staff has no idea why the Division III men's tournament features 59 teams instead of 64, or why those five byes are spread over three regions. Maybe travel times and expenses and missed classes are actually factored into decisions about who plays whom and where in Division III? Is that possible?)

WashU (23-6) is on a more modest four-game winning streak, having lost the University Athletic Association championship game to the University of Chicago, where Abner Ravenwood once taught archaeology. Professor Ravenwood did the first real work on Tanis, collected some of its relics. The Bears have knocked off Wooster, perennial cross-country powerhouse Augustana, Buena Vista, and Milsaps on their way to Salem.

On the other side of the bracket, defending champion and third-ranked Amherst (26-3) faces number sixteen Ursinus (29-2). The Lord Jeffs were shocked in the NESCAC title game by the Bowdoin Polar Bears but rebounded to roll through John Jay (no, not the fired Oregon State coach; that's Jay John), Richard Stockton, and Brandeis to reach their third straight national semifinal. (By the way, are there really Polar Bears in Maine? No, of course not. Northern [York County, PA] High School was also the Polar Bears, despite the fact that the geographic range of Ursus maritimus seldom extends south of the sixty-sixth parallel, well north of south-central PA. Geographically inaccurate animal nicknames bother this Buffet staff member. Note, for instance, that nobody has ever actually seen a wolverine in the state of Michigan [although one has been spotted recently in the northern Sierra Nevada, far south of its presumed range]. Both diamondback terrapins and Baltimore orioles, on the other hand, can be found all along the east coast, including in Maryland.)

The Bears are the Davidson of Division III (and enjoying a season much like York's breakthrough season a few years ago): in the midst of a twenty-three-game winning streak and rolling undefeated through the Centennial Conference regular season and tournament (including two impressive wins over Franklin & Marshall, alma mater of this member of the Buffet staff) and then Baptist Bible, defending national runner-up Virginia Wesleyan, conference rival Gettysburg, and the Coast Guard Academy to reach the final four. And yes, this member of the Buffet staff considers any win over F&M to be "impressive."

And there you have it: Hope v. WashU and Amherst v. Ursinus on Friday, with the winners playing again the next day at 1:00 Las Vegas time for one of those cool NCAA championship trophies. Will the Vegas books have odds on those games, and on the third-place game? Let's hope so. Until then, Go Orioles!