City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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With a little more than a minute left in the MAC Commonwealth title game, Arcadia freshman Kyle Reilly stepped to the free throw line with a chance to tie the game. His shot hit the front of the iron.

That’s how close Arcadia’s furious comeback came, but the Knights ultimately fell to Lycoming, 78-73, Saturday night in Glenside. Lycoming, the No. 5 and lowest seed in the week-long tournament, advances to the D-III NCAA Tournament.

The Knights found themselves trailing by as many as 23 points in the first half, but did not go out quietly on their home floor. They whittled the deficit to 16 at halftime, and a late push had them close the gap from 12 to just one point in the final five minutes.

Arcadia even had the ball down by three with less than 15 seconds left, but turned it over before attempting a shot. On the ensuing possession, Lycoming’s David Johnson got the ball and slipped to the floor. While the Arcadia crowd and bench pleaded for a travel, a foul was called and Johnson hit two free throws to ice the game.

Still, the fact that the Knights took a 40-17 deficit with 4:41 left in the first half and made a game out of it was encouraging for coach Justin Scott.

“We’ve been a resilient group all year, so that definitely didn’t surprise me,” Scott said. “We just needed to settle in and get some stops and rebounds. I think we were a little overexcited (at the beginning).

“Once we got into halftime and made some adjustments, I thought that we’d be able to get back into it. We’ve been able to chip away and make games in games that we were down in. It was a rewarding sight, especially in this magnitude of a game.”

Lycoming was able to jump out to such a big lead thanks to a 60 percent shooting clip in the first half, which included a 4-for-6 performance from beyond the 3-point arc. The Warriors started on an incredible scoring pace, too, netting 35 points just beyond the halfway mark in the first half.

Meanwhile, Arcadia (17-10) struggled to get anything going offensively, going just 10-for-29 from the floor (34.5 percent) and hitting just two of its nine 3-pointers.

“They were the aggressors, they took it to us,” Scott said. “We didn’t defend them off the bounce, they were living at the rim and getting out in transition. We were just settling for jump shots.”

It was obviously a much different story in the second half.

Arcadia shot 55.2 percent from the field in the last 20 minutes, made four of seven 3-pointers and went 11-for-13 from the foul line. Junior guard Ryan Kelley scored 12 of his 14 points in the second half and was second in scoring for the Knights behind only Reilly’s 16 points.

Lycoming did not make a 3-pointer in the second half and missed eight of its 18 free throws, but the team scored the game’s last four points to seal its trip to the NCAA Tournament.

Arcadia’s season is not necessarily over with the loss. The team still could be selected for the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Tournament, an eight-team postseason event. Regardless of the postseason, Scott is pleased his roster, which features eight freshman and only two seniors was able to experience this kind of run.

“I looked out there at times and we had three freshmen out there,” Scott said. “There’s only two seniors on the roster so we’ll return a lot of guys who played a lot of minutes and made significant contributions. I think, not just today, but the experiences we’ve had all year are going to help us.”