City of Basketball Love

Jeff Griffith (@Jeff_Griffith21)
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The members of Team City of Gods are no strangers to deep runs in The Basketball Tournament.

In 2015, the group of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. natives fought their way through the northeast region and into the semifinals, before falling to eventual champion Overseas Elite. 

With a thrilling 85-79 victory over the third-seeded Untouchables, a team of Pittsburgh alumni, City of Gods has matched its 2015 installment, locking up a spot in the TBT semifinals Saturday in New York City.

But with $2 million on the line, and the sting of defeat still fresh in their minds, they’re not satisfied just yet.

The return to NYC "feels right," according to City of Gods' Omar Strong.

"It feels like we’re supposed to be here," continued Strong, who graduated from Texas Southern in 2013. "This is what we’ve been planning on along, so like we’ve been saying, we have unfinished business.”

According to the members of City of Gods, they’re not even letting the prize money even slip into their vocabulary, knowing the problems that mindset caused them in last year’s semifinals.

“Last year, we let that consume us, we got the final four after playing a great Syracuse team, and we kind of settled, kind of cashed the check coming into that game, so we’ve yet to bring that money up in any conversation,” George Washington alum Pops Mensah-Bonsu said. “It’s about winning.”

After a first half where the Pitt alums went on an 11-1 run to go up 42-29 into the break, it took a while for City of Gods to claw back into the game. They rode the hot shooting of Strong, who had 14 points, to make it back within three at the 8:11 mark, and didn’t eventually take the lead until the 4:30 mark, going up 74-73 on two free throws by Phil Goss.

A large part of the inspiration of that comeback, as Mensah-Bonsu would attest, came from an intensity standpoint that needed to be addressed between halves.

“At halftime, we had to check ourselves and look ourselves in the mirror,” Mensah-Bonsu said. “It was gut check time, down eleven or thirteen, we looked into everybody’s eyes, we had been there before. Last year in the final four, we lost a similar game like that. I know personally, I told myself, ‘there’s no way I’m going to lose based on effort.’ I knew when I came back in the game, on my end, I was going to make sure they could feed off of my energy.”

“We’ve been in this situation before, we’re battle-tested,” he added. “Now we know what we need to do to win.”

The Pitt alumni certainly noticed that change of energy from City of Gods in the second half, and failed to match it. Ultimately, that allowed for the momentum to shift into City of Gods’ favor essentially for the remainder of the game.

“We could have matched their intensity a little bit better,” said Brad Wanamaker, who led his team with 18 points. “But we just tried to play our game, man, things didn’t go our way. Tough loss, but it’s definitely a game we should have won.”

The Untouchables still fought back to make it a one-point game entering the final minute, but it was Xavier Silas who put a big nail in the coffin by drilling a corner three with 14 seconds left to go up 83-79.

Silas, who played his college ball at Colorado and Northern Illinois and is trying to work his way onto an NBA roster, certainly made his presence felt with his team-high 20 points and a perfect 10-of-10 free throw shooting.

“Phil drove, and I don’t know who it was, but they left the corner open, and that’s probably worst thing you could do,” Silas said. “I just let it go, I couldn’t even see it in, I think it was Gilbert Brown who kind of contested it, but it went in and we went up, and that’s about it.”

Things got very interesting, however, in the final eight seconds. After Phil Goss, a Drexel alum, came away with a rebound following an Untouchables miss, his reaction to the defensive stop drew a technical, allowing the Pitt alums two free throw attempts and possession.

“Phil’s someone who, if you watch him, he wears his emotions on his sleeve,” Connelly said. “Just as much as you’ve got to deal with the good, you’ve got to deal with the bad. That wasn’t anger, that wasn’t showing the other team up, we have the utmost respect for those guys...it was just pure exhilaration of leaving it all on the court and knowing that your hard work paid off. That same emotion that he had out there got us to that situation.”

City of Gods was still able to hang on--thanks in part to Ricky Harris missing both technical free throws--but such an ending provided a fitting finish to a game that was laden with a frustrating amount of fouls.

“We’ve got to make free throws,” added Dixon. “We were awful at the free-throw line, that’s where we lost the game, at the free-throw line. We make our free throws, we win this game easy.”

The heartbreak for The Untouchables was clear after the game, having lost in such difficult fashion after such an exciting run to the final eight; in a way, it emulated their 2009 NCAA tournament, in which many of these players suffered a heart-wrenching defeat to Villanova in the regional final.

Still, they were able to find the silver lining of it all, having united themselves as alumni and also having united the Pittsburgh fan base.

“Initially, just playing with our guys was fine, getting back out there with them,” said Dixon. “And having the support of the fans out there was great, it just felt like we were back in school. We thank them for watching and supporting and everything they did for us along the journey. Wish we could have gone further...feels like the Elite 8 again.”

“We’ll be back next year, that’s for sure,” he added. “We’ll be back."

City of Gods, who said the same thing last year after their semifinal loss, aren’t done yet. They’re poised to take on Overseas Elite, the defending champions who ended their 2015 run, or Trained to Go, a scrappy group of talented Georgia natives, Saturday at Fordham’s historic Rose Hill Gymnasium.

In this year’s trip to the Big Apple, there’s only one thing they plan to do differently.

“Win,” Mensah-Bonsu said. “Win.”