Elite Company: Bentley plays in NCAA quarters tonight
By Sean Jacquet, Daily News Staff
The Bentley College men's basketball team has waited 369 days for
another shot at the Elite Eight.
Tonight, the Falcons finally get that chance.
The No. 1 Falcons lay their flawless 33-0 mark, as well as their
school and New England record winning streak, on the line in a
first-round matchup with No. 17 North Alabama tonight at
Springfield's Mass Mutual Center (8:30 p.m.).
Admittedly, the ``smallest, most unathletic team'' in the field,
according to Falcon sophomore guard Jason Westrol, the Northeast
Regional champs will be facing a team that is armed with plenty of
size, quickness and athleticism. The South Regional champion Lions
(27-8), despite failing to win their Gulf South Conference's (GSC)
regular-season title, have won 12 of their last 13 games to reach
Springfield.
Though the Lions runs a tight, six-man rotation, they won't slow
the pace down, averaging 86.8 points per game (fifth in Division
II), thanks in large part to their sharpshooting from 3-point land.
Like Bentley, NA relies on crisp, precise ball movement in the
quarter-court set to either get to the rim or find an open trey
and, also like the Falcons, plays with four guards and one center.
But that's where the similarities end.
``They're a high-scoring team. They play roughly six people, so the
media timeouts are to their advantage, and all six of them can
shoot 3's,'' said Bentley coach Jay Lawson before his team left the
Dana Center for Springfield Monday. ``They have a rotation like us
in that everyone except for center is essentially a guard.''
Led by 6-foot-6 fifth-year senior guard Casey Holt, NA has
ratcheted up their already prolific offense recently, scoring 99
and 97 points, respectively, in their last two victories. The
Lions' all-time single season scoring leader (625 points this
season) and GSC East Division Player of the Year, Holt (17.9 ppg,
8.6 rebounds per game, 41.7 percent 3-pt) is always a threat to go
off for 30, having done so five times this season.
Fellow first-team All-Gulf South Conference All-Star senior guard
Quinn Beckwith (16.2 ppg, 42.3 3-pt) is equally dangerous from the
perimeter, while 6-6 junior forward Isaac Gay (10.6, 4.8 rpg) can
also hit from distance. Junior point guard Kenny Johnson (13.7 ppg)
quarterbacks the high-scoring attack.
Still, the most troubling matchup problem might be 6-6, 300-pound
junior center Thomas Fraise. In addition to posting 15.1 ppg and
7.3 rpg, the 25-year-old former Army Reservist has drained 42.1 of
his attempts from 3-point land. How well Bentley starting center
Mike Sikonski - the Falcons' largest player at 6-7, 230 - and Nate
Fritsch (6-6, 210) can handle Fraise will be crucial to whether the
Falcons can advance to face the winner of today's Grand Valley
State/Winona State contest in the semifinals tomorrow night (8:30
p.m.).
``He's a beast,'' said Lawson of Fraise. ``He can step away and
shoot the 3, he's tough to get around in the post, soft hands, good
finisher. And everyone around him is versatile. Other than him, the
other two guys who play forward (Holt and Gay) are similar to
Fritsch and (junior guard Lew) Finnegan, they're basically guards.
We're going to have to guard the inside and help to that guy and
also guard 3-point shooters at every position and that's the
challenge.''
One of the best defensive outfits in D-II, the Falcons might have
the chops to clamp down on NA, which has been held under 70 points
only three times this season. Bentley, meanwhile, ranks ninth in
D-II in scoring defense, allowing only 61.2 points a game and has
yielded more than 70 points only seven times.
As they have all season in rolling to 65 of their last 66 over the
past two seasons, the Falcons will count on unparalleled depth and
balance. Westrol (15.0 ppg, 6.5 rpg, 3.0 assists per game),
Finnegan (13.7 ppg, 4.9 rpg), redshirt freshman Mike Quinn (7.6
ppg, 2.6 rpg) and senior Yusuf Abdul-Ali (11.7 ppg, 4.40 rpg, 4.0
apg) at the guards with Sikonski (4.4 ppg, 2.4 rpg) at
center/forward. Fritsch (13.0, 5.5 rpg), a fifth-year senior
forward and 2008 All-American, will be the sixth man, while
freshman guard Tom Dowling and freshman forward Brian Tracey are
second and third off the bench.
For its part, Bentley has exactly been a slouch offensively,
averaging 77.6 ppg, while burying 37.6 percent of its 3's
(265-of-705). The Falcons have demonstrated the ability to win two
different ways in consecutive games, grinding out a 60-41 win over
Bryant in the Northeast semis before out-sprinting Assumption,
88-72, in the final.
Yet the Elite Eight is a completely different ballgame, something
that was hammered home for Bentley last season in a 64-51 loss to
Winona State, which was then the defending national champion and
working on a 56-game win streak. Now better prepared to deal with
the hoopla surrounding the tournament after having been through the
ringer last season, the Falcons are intent on playing with the
aggressiveness that they lacked at times against Winona last year
and that has carried them back to this point tonight.
``I'd like to think that we'll be more ourselves on the court
because we're more used to what we'll be handling,'' said Lawson.
``When you have experience, you handle it all and enjoy it all and
when you go between the lines, you hope to play the way you did all
year long. Winona State had a lot to do with it last year how we
didn't play as aggressively as we normally did. They had the
experience last year, the 56 straight wins the national
championship the year before, they went through all the thing the
year before. And if it plays out for us the way it did for Winona,
at least for that first game, then I'd be very happy that it did
help us being there last year.''