GOLDEN
The last two seasons have been full of firsts for the Fort Lewis College men’s basketball team. In Saturday’s opening round of the NCAA Division II South Central Regional Tournament, the Skyhawks will try for one more, and doing so will be a monumental task.
The fifth-seeded Skyhawks (25-6) will open the tournament with a 7:30 p.m. Saturday game against the decorated pride of the Lone Star Conference, fourth-seeded Tarleton State (22-7). The game will be played on the home floor of Colorado School of Mines in Golden, as the Orediggers earned the top seed in the tournament.
After rolling off back-to-back 25-win seasons for the first time in school history to go along with a school-record home winning streak and a school record winning streak against Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference opponents, FLC has a chance to vault the program into even higher regard with its first ever win against a Lone Star Conference team in the regional tournament.
“We understand how good they are and their tradition and their history, and it’s a great opportunity for us,” Fort Lewis head coach Bob Pietrack said. “But, when the ball goes up, it’s just another 40-minute game. We’re going to prepare like we do every game, and it’ll be nice to have our full team back.”
The Skyhawks went through a string of bad luck at the most crucial part of the season. Senior point guard Will Morse fell ill with mononucleosis shortly before the first matchup against Colorado Mines and hasn’t played since the Feb. 17 overtime loss that snapped the 30-game home winning streak. At the time, Morse was the league leader in assists and assist-to-turnover ratio.
“I’m just glad to have at least one more game with these guys,” Morse said. “We’re finally healthy as a unit, and I think the time off didn’t just help me see some things differently from the sidelines, but it also gave the other guys time to blossom.”
The tough string of luck didn’t just end with Morse. In what could have been a RMAC regular-season title clinching game against Westminster, Rasmus Bach took an elbow to the mouth that sidelined him for a portion of the game, and fellow senior Ross Buchman took a shot to the back that caused lingering problems and kept him out of the RMAC Tournament’s final four. FLC is finally back to full strength, and there’s no better time.
“We haven’t been healthy since before the Mines game, so that’s exciting,” Pietrack said. “We’ve been without Will for about a month now and we’re extremely happy to have him back. It’ll be great to have (Buchman) back, too, and I think we’re a much better team with him helping out on the interior. Both of those guys are seniors, and their poise and leadership out there were sorely missed.”
Buchman and the FLC big men will have their work cut out for them against the bigs of Tarleton. The Texans have a pair of 6-foot-7 post players that do the work down low in redshirt freshman Anthony Davis and senior Romond Jenkins. Jenkins averages 13 points and 11 rebounds per game and has registered a whopping 18 double-doubles on the season. Davis has improved all season. With the two bigs doing work down low, the Texans allow only 66 points per game and outrebound the opponents by a 6.9 margin.
Guards Chantz Chambers and Ridell Camidge are the keys to the car that drives Tarleton State. Chambers averages 14 points per game and scored in double figures in 15 of the last 17 games. Camidge leads the Texans in scoring at 14.7 points per game.
Like FLC, things haven’t gone so well down the stretch for Tarleton State. The Texans come into Saturday’s matchup on a long layoff. Their last game was a March 2nd, 85-82 overtime loss to Angelo State in the Lone Star Tournament’s opening round. It was the team’s fourth consecutive loss, as the mighty Texans haven’t won a game since Feb. 11. At that time, the team was ranked first in the region.
Fort Lewis led the RMAC with an average of 90 points per game. The league’s player of the year, senior guard Joshua Blaylock, has played his best basketball at the end of his impressive career. Blaylock led the league with 20.5 points per game and has averaged 26.1 points in the team’s last six games. Every game from this point forward could be Blaylock’s last in college.
“No matter what, I just take it one game at a time,” Blaylock said. “I’m treating every one of these games like it might be my last.”
Though the overtime loss to Colorado Mines in the RMAC Tournament finale might still sting a bit for the Skyhawks, it may be a blessing in disguise. FLC’s second leading scorer, Rasmus Bach, certainly likes the venue of the tournament, which could’ve flipped to Texas-Permian Basin if FLC would’ve beat Colorado Mines. Bach dropped 29 points in the 102-98 loss to the Orediggers, and Fort Lewis will play its eighth game at Lockridge Arena in the last two years. Bach is averaging 19 points per game, and the team is 6-1 in the seven games at Lockridge over the last two seasons.
The familiarity with the arena along with the increase in elevation may just be the break FLC is due for.
“I don’t know if it’s an advantage, but we have confidence here,” Bach said. “We can’t expect that, though. We have to play desperate. We have to play like our season is on the line from start to finish.”
The Skyhawks and Texans are scheduled to tip at 7:30 p.m. The winner will face the winner between No. 1 Colorado Mines and No. 8 University of Arkansas at Fort Smith.
jfries@durangoherald.com
If you go
Who: No. 21 Fort Lewis College vs. Tarleton State
What: NCAA Division II South Central Regional
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Colorado School of Mines’ Lockridge Arena in Golden
Twitter: @The7thFreezer
How to watch: The Irish Embassy Pub in downtown Durango will host a watch party in the Underground beginning at 7 p.m. Light appetizers will be provided. Fans may also purchase their own food and beverage items. The Underground will host watch parties for each FLC game in the regional tournament.
