Thomas More came within inches, and a split-second, of putting two Northern Kentucky teams into tonight’s NAIA National Basketball Championship games.
The TMU women, who have been there before, will be there again, making it look easy against a much bigger Central Methodist (Mo.) team with an 82-62 start-to-finish semifinal dismantling. This one was pretty much over when the Saints put together a 14-0 run to end the first half to win going away Monday at the Tyson Events Center, Sioux City, Iowa.
For the TMU men, it looked like it was over as well, only in the other direction as the undermanned Saints, down one starter, trailed a big, deep Talladega (Ala.) team 37-21 with 1:47 left in the first half at Kansas City’s Municipal Auditorium.
“These guys have a lot of fight in them,” TMU Coach Justin Ray said, even without Reid Jolly, unable to dress for the game with a kneecap issue suffered in Saturday’s game. “That’s 13 points sitting right there on the bench,” Ray said.
And in a game decided in overtime on a wide-open missed follow rebound that 6-foot-8 freshman Noah Pack had in both hands before pushing it off the backboard as the clock ticked down to the final second – and then, somehow, some way — it didn’t drop through as Pack dropped to his knees.
TALLADEGA 78, THOMAS MORE 77 the scoreboard said.
“He’s pretty torn up,” Ray said. “Him and all the other guys. But we’re not there without him.” Pack contributed 18 points and five rebounds.
As Ray told his team, “At the end of the day, we played well enough to win. And if that shot goes in, we feel completely different right now.”
If that shot goes in, Northern Kentucky has two teams going for national championships on the same night.
But it will be a 32-5 Talladega team that shot the ball lights-out, hitting 10 of its first 11 on their way to a 58.5-percent shooting night (31 of 53) including nine of 19 from three-point range, that will play for the title.
The nation’s top defensive team, holding opponents to 58 points a game with eight steals, Talladega didn’t have as much luck with the Saints who scored 68 to tie it in regulation – a 47-31 comeback in just under 22 minutes while allowing the Tornados just two steals the entire game.
Credit TMU junior Ryan Batte, the Mid-South Conference Plyer of the Year, who looks like he may deserve that same award for his NAIA play with 33 points and nine rebounds. The 6-6 versatile veteran was a mismatch for whoever Talladega, with players 6-8, 6-9- and 6-10 along the front line, put on him.
Pack, coming on for Jolly, was also a tough matchup in his 34 minutes. But in the 45-minute game, TMU played just seven players with freshman reserves Wyatt Vieth and Casey George totaling 34 minutes between them. Senior Garren Bertsch played all 45 minutes, Batte 42.
“How special this year was,” Ray said, ticking off the accomplishments of the program from the Mid-South Conference regular season championship to earning the first trip to Kansas City to a best-ever 31-5 record. “They’ve been playing basketball for a long time at Thomas More,” Ray said. And this season was as good as it gets.
“When they put this team into the Hall of Fame at Thomas More, these kids will realize how special this year was,” Ray said.
The large and loud crowd at the TMU Watch Party at Dickmann’s Sports Café in Ft. Wright knew they were watching something special when the Saints, who never led, tied it at 66 with 39.9 seconds left on Bertsch’s three-pointer. Then freshman Jacob Jones stepped up with 2.9 seconds left to hit a pair of free throws to send the game into overtime.
Thomas More jumped out to three different leads – their first in the game – in overtime. But Talladega’s Edwin Lewis, off the bench, would hit a pair of threes in his six-for-seven shooting night on the way to 15 points. In his first two games in Kansas City, he’d scored just three points.
TMU WOMEN 82, CENTRAL METHODIST 62
“We did a good job attacking them,” Hans said of his smaller, quicker, sure-shooting Saints in their semifinal matchup against a Central Methodist (Mo.) team (31-6) that eliminated a defending national champion Westmont (Calif.) team that beat Thomas More in last year’s title game.
Alexah Chrisman led the way with 18 points on eight-of-12 shooting as the 6-1 grad student looked like she was inspired going against the 6-4 and 6-3 Central Methodist players. Starter Kelly Brenner and Taylor Clos, off the bench, each scored 14 while Emily Simon added nine.
For the game, TMU hit 50.0 percent from the field (30 of 60) to CMU’s 32.8 (22 of 67).
In tonight’s championship, TMU (31-4) will be facing something of a surprise participant in a 29-8 Dordt University team from an hour away in Sioux Center, Iowa, a 53-52 winner over No. 1 Southeastern of Florida team that finished 33-2.
“They’ll have more fans than we will but we’ve got a lot of support,” Hans said, “all our parents are here.”
And back for the second year in a row, after winning a pair of NCAA Division III national championships in 2016 and 2019, is Thomas More. “I think we’re getting used to it,” Hans says.
But what you never get used to, he said, “is the joy you get from winning it all and cutting down the nets. We want this team, these four seniors, to have the same joy those teams did. There’s nothing like it, to give them a championship.”
Which is why, just as he started watching the Dordt video, Hans said he’ll “be up all night” getting ready for Tuesday’s championship. “We’ll do as much as we can to get them ready.
“We won’t change much,” he says. “We want them to trust the system, to trust the offense, to trust the defense. They know we’ve got one more game to play. And we’ll be playing in the last game of the season . . . and that’s a good
thing.”
A very good thing.
