Patriots move on to CAA final

By Dave Utnik

Published: March 10, 2008

RICHMOND — This time, Todd Hendley didn’t dunk. The truth is UNC Wilmington’s 6-foot-9 forward hardly touched the ball at all.

Neither did freshman guard Chad Tomko.

By keeping the basketball away from those two players on Sunday night, the George Mason University men’s basketball team accomplished something it failed to do at all during the regular sea-son by defeating the Seahawks 53-41 in the semifinals of the Colonial Athletic Association Championship at Richmond Coliseum.

“Some of the things that transpired in our first two games with Wilmington had a great impact on the decisions we made today because they really hurt us from 3-[point range] and really hurt us in the block,” Patriots coach Jim Larranaga said. “So we tried to take away as many 3-point opportunities as we could and as many post feeds as we could.

“Our guys just worked so hard at limiting their opportunities at those two spots that we were able to control the game with our defense.”

The Patriots (22-10) were so effective on the defensive end that they were able to advance to tonight’s finale against William & Mary despite making only four field goals in the second half.

That’s because they forced the Seahawks into one of their worst shooting performances of the season.

After hitting 26 of 46 field goals during an 82-59 thumping of Delaware in the quarterfinals, UNC Wilmington connected on just 28.1 percent of its attempts on Sunday and the tournament’s No. 2 seed never found a comfortable rhythm.

“I hope we had something to do with that,” Larranaga said.

The Seahawks (20-13) were the CAA’s highest scoring team throughout the regular season — av-eraging 73.6 points per game. They are especially lethal from long range but Mason forced them out of their comfort zone on Sunday.

After William & Mary stunned top seeded Virginia Commonwealth in the afternoon game, the Patriots pulled off another upset as UNC Wilmington went 16 for 57 overall and hit only 4 of 23 shots from 3-point range.

“We just couldn’t score a basket,” Wilmington coach Benny Moss said. “They took us out of what we wanted to do and we had to settle for too much one-on-one basketball and that’s a tribute to George Mason.”

The Patriots had their moments on the offensive end — Folarin Campbell had 15 points and Louis Birdsong 10 — but it was the defensive effort that now has Mason on the verge of capturing its fourth CAA crown and an automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament.

Despite playing the entire second half without shooting guard Dre Smith, who is bothered by a balky knee that locks up on occasion, the Patriots returned to the finals for the second straight season.

John Vaughan, the team’s best perimeter defender, completely shut down Tomko, who went 0 for 8 and did not score and the post players, most notably Will Thomas (14 rebounds), Birdsong and Chris Fleming, held Hendley to one basket.

Just a few weeks ago, Tomko and Hendley combined for 39 points in UNC Wilmington’s 75-73 vic-tory at Patriot Center but on Sunday they were a combined 1 for 15 from the field.

Only center Vladimir Kuljanin managed to find a way to score inside but none of his 10 points came easily. Even leading scorer T.J. Carter, who had the buzzer beating layup back in February, had a tough time scoring 16 points because the Patriots did a tremendous job moving around ball screens and
taking away the Seahawks’ transition game.

A lot of that had to do with Fleming’s presence on the court. He played 17 minutes and scored six points, but his biggest contribution was keeping the ball out of Kuljanin’s mighty paws.

“Chris is probably the hardest working defender in the post that we have,” Larranaga said. “Not to take anything away from Will but the job that Chris does inside defensively is really textbook, taking charges, blocking out, helping on cutters and helping on ball screens.”

Fleming even showed off a nifty finger roll layup in traffic — a shot that pushed Mason’s lead to seven points with just over 10 minutes to play.
“I think tournament play is all about everybody rising to the occasion,” Larranaga said. “It can’t be one guy, two guys. It can’t be just your seniors. You’ve got to have everyone contributing.”