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Baptiste's blocks set the tone in Delaware's win

03/09/2014, 7:30pm EDT

By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Carl Baptiste set the tone early.

On the first Northeastern possession in a CAA Tournament semifinal on Sunday afternoon, the Delaware starting big man found himself posted up by the Huskies’ star, Scott Eatherton. Baptiste didn’t back down, blocking Eatherton’s shot attempt–after an offensive rebound by Zach Stahl, he got his fingers on another shot attempt.

One possession, two blocks.

Northeastern would go on to miss its first nine shots as Delaware jumped out to a 19-5 lead, forcing three turnovers in the first seven minutes of the game. Blue Hens head coach Monté Ross said afterwards his team’s defense during that stretch was “as energetic as it’s been all year,” and a lot of that had to do with that tough opening stand.

“I think whenever you get plays like that, the rest of the team just feeds off of it,” Ross said. “I think it’s very important that we get off to a good start and are able to get plays like that.”

The Huskies would close that early gap and even take a brief lead, but it wouldn’t hold. Delaware’s firepower was too much, as a guard-heavy attack speared an 87-74 victory that advanced the Blue Hens to their first-ever CAA tournament final.

Delaware’s ability to score this season is well-documented. Senior guard Devon Saddler is the school’s all-time leading scorer, his classmate Davon Usher is averaging over 19 ppg this year, Jarvis Threatt might be the most talented third option in the country and junior Kyle Anderson is a 3-point gunner.

But aside from providing that tough interior presence, Baptiste has a pretty good scoring touch of his own. Although fouls limited him to just 16 minutes against Northeastern, he finished 6-of-9 from the floor for 14 points.

“I love to score, I’m not going to say I don’t, and they understand that too,” Baptiste said. “We work in tandem–if someone has it going, we’re going to get them the ball, if I have it going, they’re going to get me the ball. We all want to see each other score, we all want to see each other be successful.”

Baptiste has had a very solid senior year, far surpassing previous highs in points per game (10.8) and rebounds per game (8.2), and he’s second in the CAA in both shooting (56.3 percent) and blocked shots (1.8/game). Never more than a role player as an underclassman, he’s given the Blue Hens a solid anchor in the post following the graduation of double-digit monster Jamelle Hagins last year.

“He’s the perfect complement to these guys that we have,” Ross said of the senior, who’s played two seasons at Delaware after spending his first two years at Saint Joseph’s. “To have somebody, with this firepower that we have, to have somebody in the lane that we can throw the ball to and we’re confident that he’s going to score the ball when we throw it to him, that’s a great luxury to have.

“The thing with Carl is we’ve always known how skilled of a basketball player he was and effective he could be. He just didn’t get the opportunity that a lot of guys have got because we had Jamelle Hagins and Josh Brinkley ahead of him last year. Even in practice we could see that he could be a really good player for us when his window was expanded. Obviously he was going to get that opportunity this year.”

If Delaware can capture defensively what they did over the first seven minutes against Northeastern and extrapolate that to a full 40 minutes, there’s no reason they shouldn’t take down William & Mary on Monday night for their first-ever CAA title.

“What we’ve been talking about the last couple of days is defense, defense, defense,” Baptiste said. “We know we can score, we know once we get going, we’re going to score. So it’s all about defense. It goes back to what every great coach has ever said–defense wins championships.”