A 74-44 loss to Vanderbilt in the first round of the NCAA tournament concluded an up-and-down year for the GW men’s basketball team. A year removed from the most successful season in University history was billed by head coach Karl Hobbs as a “rebuilding year,” but in the end, the squad set history by reaching the NCAA tournament for the third consecutive season after winning the Atlantic 10 tournament.
GW received what appeared to be a good draw in the NCAA tournament: An 11 seed and a first-round match-up with struggling Vanderbilt in Sacramento. During the week leading up to the game, the media focused on Vanderbilt’s proclivity to shoot three-pointers and GW’s new-and-improved trapping defense. GW was about a three-point underdog and many experts predicted the Colonials to ride a wave of momentum and beat a struggling Commodore team.
It did not quite work out that way. After just four minutes, GW trailed 7-0, enough to force them to play catch-up unsuccessfully for the rest of the loss. The press that had forced A-10 opponents into turnovers was useless against Vanderbilt players, who broke the defense down systematically by moving the ball before GW players could get to them, a strategy Hobbs called “perfect.”
The numbers are ugly: the Colonials shot just 27.1 percent, turned the ball over 20 times and never led. No player scored more than Travis King’s nine points. Senior Carl Elliott shot just two for nine in his last game, while junior Maureece Rice scored just three points and missed eight of nine shots.
“We fell behind very, very quickly and that pretty much put us on our heels for the rest of the game,” Hobbs said after the loss.
Vanderbilt junior Shan Foster, who had 18 points, said the Commodores had a set game plan going into the contest.
“We realized if we just took care of the ball, we were going to get any shot we wanted,” Foster said.
But in the A-10 tournament in Atlantic City, N.J., the Colonials seemed to get any shot they wanted. With only one Top 50 RPI win to its record, GW knew it needed to win the tournament to gain admission to the NCAA’s later that month. That’s just what they did. The Colonials were both lucky and good during the tournament – lucky to avoid having to play Xavier and Massachusetts, the teams ranked above the Colonials, good at playing with a newfound intensity.
After receiving a bye in the first round, GW unveiled a new trapping defense in beating Saint Joseph’s 58-48 in the second round of the tournament. The Colonials held Saint Louis to just over 30 percent shooting in a 60-40 win the next night, setting up a favorable finals match-up with Rhode Island. The Rams failed to slow what had become a freight train loaded with momentum and, after being picked to finish fifth in preseason polls, GW won its second-ever A-10 title 78-69.
Senior Dokun Akingbade, whose inconsistent play seemed to coincide with GW’s level of play during the season, had 15 points and nine rebounds in the win. Rice was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
After the win, Hobbs exhaled a deep breath and said “wow.” Despite qualifying for the NCAA tournament, Hobbs said he was not worried about the seed.
“Getting to the tournament is an over-achievement,” Hobbs said. “We don’t care about where we’re seeded and where we are going. We are excited to go out and get some new dancing shoes,” he said.
Freshman Damian Hollis, who scored five points against Vanderbilt, said the Colonials conquered what it set out to.
“In the beginning of the season, we planned on making history by being the third (GW) team in a row to make the NCAA tournament, and we did that. We won the A-10. We set goals and we accomplished those goals,” Hollis said.
The end of this season marked the finality of the careers of Dokun Akingbade, Carl Elliott and Regis Koundjia.
Elliott said, “I enjoyed my experience here. For us to come this far with a young basketball team means a lot to me. They gave it 100 percent every day and I love them for that.”
