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NCAA Tournament: Delaware bids adieu to five-year stalwarts Allen, Anderson

03/19/2022, 11:30am EDT
By Matthew Ryan

Matthew Ryan (@matthewmryan02)

PITTSBURGH, PA — With the result already decided and Delaware's season less than three minutes from coming to an end, Blue Hens head coach Martin Ingelsby made the substitution one final time.

Kevin Anderson and Ryan Allen, two cornerstones of his program the last five years, made their way to the bench for good.

When they got to the sideline, both players walked down the line of teammates and coaches, giving them all hugs before settling in on the bench to watch the final seconds of their college careers tick away.

"After the game, I was just hugging everybody, it was just hitting me, like, wow, it's really over," Anderson said. "I feel like my past five years I really matured, especially with the coaching staff. I matured as [a] man, and they helped me. And I appreciate them so much for that."


Ryan Allen (above) ends his Delaware career third on the program's all-time scoring list with 1,821 career points. (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)

Before the season, Anderson and Allen, along with Dylan Painter — who just finished his third season at Delaware after transferring from Villanova — elected to return for one final year. And what a year it was.

After losing its final two games of the regular season, Delaware entered the CAA Tournament as the No. 5-seed. The Blue Hens then rattled off three wins in three days, all against higher seeds, to capture the second CAA title in program history and send Delaware to the NCAA Tournament for the first time under Ingelsby.

"With the guys this year, I was telling them on the bench, this is like the first time in a long time where I felt like the team was a real actual family and we stuck together no matter what, ups and downs throughout the year," Anderson said.

The departure of Anderson and Allen ends an era of two players that cemented themselves into the Delaware record books and played a pivotal role in building the program to where it is today.

Allen, a 6-foot-2 guard out of DeMatha Catholic (Md.), has been a five-year starter for Ingelsby and is the all-time leader in games played (133) for the Blue Hens. His 1,821 career points are third in program history, and his 304 3-pointers made ranks first at Delaware and seventh all-time in the CAA.

In Friday's 80-60 first-round loss to Villanova, Anderson, a St. John Neumann (Pa.) graduate, scored nine points, giving him 1,351 in his career, putting him 11th all-time in Delaware history. The 6-5 guard is another five-year starter for the Blue Hens, where he has racked up 422 assists, good for fifth in the all-time in the program.

"Kevin and Ryan have been with me since day one,” Ingelsby said. “They've helped build this program to what it is now. And I'll never forget that."


Kevin Anderson (above) started 113 out of the 119 games he played in a Delaware uniform. (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)

When Anderson and Allen got to Delaware, in Ingelsby’s second season, the team finished with a 14-19 record. Every year since then, with the exception of the COVID shortened 2020-21 campaign, the Blue Hens have finished with over .500, and over the course of the last five years Delaware has amassed a 95-67 record (40-41 CAA); they’re 51-32 (27-19) over their last three.

In addition to losing Allen, Anderson and Painter, Anthony Ochefu and Reggie Gardner have both spent five seasons in college, but Gardner has only played three years, leaving the door open for a possible return.

While Painter hasn't been at Delaware for as long as Allen and Anderson, the 6-10 big man has undoubtedly made his impact. Through his three seasons, Painter has posted averages of 11.3 points per game and 7.3 rebounds per game and contributed significantly to the veteran latent group.

"Dylan came halfway through it, and there's no better teammate, there's no better worker, no better representative of our university than Dylan Painter," Ingelsby said.

"I'm excited to see what the future holds for all three of those guys," he added. "I think basketball is in the future. But at the end of day, they're going to graduate from Delaware and they're going to be champions."

With three key players leaving, there will be plenty of minutes up for grabs next season. Ebby Asamoah, who averaged 7.2 points per game on 41.5/40.3/87 shooting splits, will likely see an increased role within the Delaware offense. CAA Freshman of the Year Jyare Davis proved this season that he's a cornerstone for the program to build around, averaging 9.5 ppg and 4.1 rebounds per game.

In addition to Asamoah and Davis, Delaware’s leading scorer Jameer Nelson Jr. and starting big man Andrew Carr are both slated to return.

"I think we all saw [the] level of intensity that we had these last weeks of practices as we went on our run winning games," Davis said. "And I think that next season we'll have that same sense of urgency throughout the year, since we know what it's like to get here, and we'll have a group of guys that are hungry to get back here and win some games here."

When next season finally comes around, though, there will be two familiar faces missing from the crowd. Two faces that have been synonymous with Delaware basketball for the last half-decade.

"It's going to be hard looking down at practice or skill work in the spring and not seeing Kevin and Ryan there,” Ingelsby said, “because they've been such a big part of what we've been able to build.”


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