Ah, yes. The famous bridge carrying U.S. Highway 30 over the broad and majestic Susquehanna River on its journey from Astoria to Atlantic City and back again and, in this span, connecting York and Lancaster counties in the heart of historic and bucolic south-central Pennsylvania. And it's also the bridge that will carry one basketball team to the other this Friday for perhaps the biggest basketball game of the year. That's right, Buffet readers! It's time for another of the period installments of Number Three on Paper but Number One in Your Hearts!
And what a humdinger the NCAA Division III men's basketball tournament has brought us this year, at least if you're me (if you're not me, feel free to stop reading): York (PA) College--current employer of my father, my mother, and my sister, and former employer of me (any nepotism there?)--heads across the river and into the Garden Spot to take on my alma mater, Franklin & Marshall College, at venerable old Meyser Gymnasium. Where will my loyalties lie? Don't know yet, so before we think about that more, let's look at how the teams made it into the field of 62 (yes, Division III still has the inexplicable byes for the top two seeds; I have no idea why they don't just add two more at-large teams).
Starting with the visitors, York College. The Spartans, of course, are helmed by Jeff Gamber, retiring after this season after 36 long seasons off Country Club Drive. Gamber boasts a career record of 475-414, which might not seem all that impressive, but let's remember that for at least half of his six-squared years there, YCP was a boring commuter school that didn't attract very many students, let alone basketball players, from outside immediate driving distance. In the last decade or so, though, the Spartans have been a much better D3 program, regularly challenging for, and sometimes winning, conference championships, going to the Final Four in 2005, and spending the entirety of the next season as a top 10 program before bowing out in the octavofinals. Gamber has capped his career by being named Capital Athletic Conference (CAC) coach of the year--an award now named for him--this season for the fifth time.
The Spartans have not been a dominant team this season--18-10 record, 10-6 in the conference--and finished in a three-way tie for third-place in the conference and, after whatever the series of tie-breakers is, entered the conference tournament as the fourth seed. Only the top 6 seeds in the CAC make the conference tournament, and YCP squeaked by Frostburg State (13-13, 10-6), 65-61 in the first round before upsetting top-seeded St. Mary's (MD) in a 61-58 thriller in the second round, with junior guard Julian Watson hitting the jumper that put the Spartans ahead to stay with 31 seconds left and senior forward Paul Kouvaris providing the final margin from the foul line with 0.6 seconds left after rebounding the Eagles' last chance. [St. Mary's, by the way, received an at-large bid to the tournament and hosts Bethany (WV) College on Thursday.]
For the CAC championship game, the Spartans headed deep into Confederate Territory to the campus of Mary Washington College, alma mater of my high school friend Dieter and across the Rappahannock River from the bloodiest battle (as far as I know) ever fought on my brother's birthday. (Why is everything in this article about my family?) Mary Washington (18-9, 12-4), the second seed, had survived sixth-seeded Hood College in the semifinals, 56-54. Mary Washington controlled most of the first half, but a late spurt by York cut the halftime lead to 30-26. Kouvaris gave York their first lead, 33-32, with a fall-way jumper with 13:31 left, and a few moments later, York (PA) Suburban HS alumnus Mitch Kemp gave the Spartans the lead for good with a three-pointer--his only bucket of the night--that broke a 34-34 deadlock. From there, York gradually increased the lead, extending it to 6 with three minutes left before forcing turnovers--including a drawn charge by Kemp--on the next four Mary Washington possessions before closing the game out with a comfortable-looking 59-51 margin.
York is led by the previously mentioned Kouravis, the CAC player of the year this season, with 16.9 points and 6.6 rebounds per game. The also previously mentioned Watson seems to be the second best player, averaging 13.1 points per game and leading the team with 2.7 assists. Unfortunately, with 2.8 turnovers per game, he is not an Otter Watch candidate. Nobody else averages double figures in points, but five players average, including Kemp, average at least 6 points and 19 minutes per game. Beyond that, three players average about 5 minutes per game, so it seems like York only goes seven deep in terms of its regular rotation.
So York had a decent overall season, and has been playing well of late, but they have a daunting job ahead of them: Heading into Lancaster to face the Franklin & Marshall Diplomats, the ninth-ranked team in the country and a perennial feature of the D3 tournament.
Gary, Indiana's native son Glenn Robinson--oh, wait a second, not that Glenn Robinson--one of the only coaches (actually, for all I know, the only coach) who's been around for longer than Jeff Gamber, remains at the helm for F&M. Robinson's resume needs no embellishing--over 1,000 games coached, 800+ wins and counting, five D3 Final Fours, etc., etc., etc. Plus, he hung out with the Jackson 5 in the mid-60s. He is one hip cat.
And it seems like he has the Dips on cruise control this season, and I say that both because they have, in fact, cruised to a 25-2 (16-2) record and because it seems like their schedule would make a Syracuse fan blush: as far as I can tell, just two games (a 77-68 win over CAC regular-season champ St. Mary's and an 81-71 win over Liberty League regular-season champs Hobart, where of course I spent my freshman year; again, must everything in this article come back to me?) against teams (neither ranked) in the field of 62. In his defense, I suppose, teams are much more limited in their scheduling in Division III than in Division I, just because they don't have the resources to, for instance, fly to Hawaii or Anchorage or Puerto Rico for a made-for-television game on an aircraft carrier; really, they can only play teams that are within a few hours' van drive of campus. Still, it's a pretty weak schedule this season for the Dips.
Nevertheless, as a player, all you can do is beat the other team, and F&M has mostly done that this season, with, as mentioned, just two slip-ups (one at home and one on the road) in conference play. And they absolutely rolled through the Centennial Conference tournament, stomping Washington 100-69 and avenging one of their two losses against Muhlenberg, 71-55, in the final.
The Dips, like York, are led by the conference player of the year, Georgio Milligan, who, despite his Italian-sounding first name, is a rare African-American at mostly lilly-white F&M. Milligan, a senior guard, is a straight stat-stuffer, leading the team with 18.9 points, 4.9 assists, and 2.2 steals per game. Only one other player--a presumed Islamo-fascist freedom hater (and I should know the type, since I'm engaged to one) from Lebanon, junior forward Hayk Gyokchyan, averages double figures for the Dips, but they seem to be a deep team: five other players getting major minutes, and four more averaging between 8 and 15 minutes per game. They also have three players in addition to Milligan who were named all-conference, one on the second team and two honorable mention--which, I suppose, means that they weren't really named all-conference, but whatever; the F&M website says they were.
So that's it. After watching the Terps be thoroughly out-classed tonight and the USMNT repeatedly pull the off-side trap to perfection (if by "pull the off-side trap to perfection" I mean "play flat across the back and get lucky that the whiny flopping Azzuri couldn't time their runs), I don't really have the energy or the gumption to write much more of a preview. Plus, of course, I don't really know anything about either team, not having actually seen them actually play any basketball. For whom will I root? Dunno yet...One the one hand, F&M's my alma mater, whereas all YCP ever did was exploit my labor. On the other hand, F&M is an absurdly elitist school that would be Rick Santorum's worst nightmare of what President Obama apparently wants our higher education system to be, except of course for the fact that the school is full of the children of snotty rich Republicans. York College, on the other hand, is full of Pennsyltucky natives (as I am) whose parents cling to guns and religion. So, again, whom to root for? Well, the last time York came out of nowhere to win the conference title and get an automatic bid to the third-biggest dance, they went to the Final Four. Still, it's doubtful that they could pull that feat again. F&M, on the other hand, has only lost twice all season and is a top-10 team right now--not necessarily a national championship favorite, but certainly a Final Four contender and a team with a legitimate chance to win the title. So under the theory that, starting in the second round, I'd like the team I'm rooting for to win the whole thing, I'll root for F&M in the first round, too.
By the way, it should be noted that Trinity (TX) (20-8) plays Mary Hardin-Baylor (25-2) in the first round. I know nothing about that game except that "Mary Hardin-Baylor" is a really cumbersome name for a college. Enjoy the D3 tournament, Buffet readers.
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