Men’s college basketball
Mount reaches NCAA tourney
Mount fans who arrived hours early to fill Knott Arena almost beyond capacity watched their team control the tempo at the start, but the Mountaineers fell victim to a cold spell while Saint Francis (Pa.) heated up and took command.
Leave it to the smallest guy on the floor to stand tallest.
Junior Robinson, the Mount’s 5-foot-5 junior guard, carried the Mountaineers in the second half and helped his team pull away for a 71-61 victory, giving Mount St. Mary’s its fifth NEC championship.
And another trip to the NCAA tournament.
“We worked so hard for this,” said Robinson, who shed tears while he dribbled out the clock before embracing his mother on the court. “For it to end like this, it’s amazing. I can’t explain the emotion that I had. It was just happiness.”
The top-seeded Mount (19-15) started the second half with a 26-4 run that blew things open, and Robinson was the catalyst. The junior guard scored eight points during the surge, and his 3-pointer with 11:45 to play gave the Mount a 45-34 lead — quite the turnaround, after the visiting Red Flash (16-16) led by eight points at the break and the Mountaineers seemed poised for a letdown.
Robinson wasn’t having it.
He finished with 22 points — 18 coming in the second half — while sophomore guard Elijah Long (John Carroll) scored a game-high 24, and the Mount held the NEC’s top scoring team to its second-lowest output of the season (the lowest was against Texas A&M).
Long earned Most Valuable Player honors for the tournament, and Robinson joined him on the all-tournament team.
“We were down [but] we knew the second half was going to come,” Long said. “We just chipped away little by little and got the ‘W.’?”
Saint Francis guard Isaiah Blackmon made a 3-pointer with 8:33 to go, cutting the Mount’s lead to 49-40. But the Mountaineers responded with a layup from Long at the other end, and two possessions later Robinson drew a foul while taking a 3 and made all three free throws.
Mount St. Mary’s led 54-42, and the celebration was closing in.
Freshman guard Miles Wilson (Mount Saint Joseph) had a double double with 15 points and 10 rebounds, and Long had nine rebounds. Junior forward Chris Wray added 10 points, seven rebounds and three steals.
Long and Robinson crashed to the floor together in front of the media seating after the final buzzer sounded. Players went into the bleachers looking for friends and family members to hug.
The Mountaineers donned white NEC championship T-shirts. They posed for a team photo with the tournament trophy. Then came the traditional net-cutting ceremony, with coach Jamion Christian snipping the final section from the rim and hoisting it to a loud roar from those who stayed to watch.
“The fans are great. The support is amazing. The atmosphere was crazy,” Long said. “It was insane. It was surreal.”
Long had 10 of the Mount’s first 17 points and found easy lanes to the basket almost from the start. He and Robinson penetrated to look for layups or an open teammate on the wing, and Mount St. Mary’s was riding the fans’ energy.
The Mountaineers didn’t make a 3-pointer in the first half (0-for-10), but it didn’t matter in the early going, when they led 19-9 with 8:53 to play in the half.
Saint Francis got hot, however, and closed the half on a 22-4 run while clogging the paint and preventing any of the Mount’s guards to get close. Georgios Angelou’s layup from the left side put the Red Flash up 31-23 at halftime.
The Mount made its fifth NEC championship game appearance in the past 10 years, and third in five seasons under Christian, who wore the net around his neck during the postgame news conference.
“When you play in these games it’s very emotional,” Christian said. “You’re playing for everything you’ve been working your entire life for. It’s similar to a Game 7 in the NBA Finals. I just felt if we could calm ourselves down and put ourselves in a good mental and emotional place, we had a chance.”
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