ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Zach Stenglein and Kevin Underwood scored 21 points each to lead Nazareth College to a hard-fought 78-71 win over Westfield State in the opening round of the NCAA Division III Men's Basketball Championship at the Kidera Gymnasium on Friday afternoon.
Nazareth improves to 24-4, while Westfield's season comes to an end at 22-5.
"I thought Naz played very well and stuck to their game plan, and I thought our group came a little undone at times, and that was the difference in the game," said Westfield State head coach Rich Sutter.
The game was played in front of a sold-out, standing room only crowd of 1,099, including a loud student section in 'white-out' garb.
Nazareth led 36-31 at the half, but got back-to-back three pointers to start the second half to lead 42-33. Westfield had held Stephen Gabel, the Flyers leading scorer at 17.8 points per game, to just six in the first half, but Gabel and Logan Blankenberg sandwiched a pair of threes around a Justin Rennis drive to match their biggest lead to that point in the game.
The game was physical for both teams, including a bizarre sequence that saw three straight fouls on the Owls Gerry McManus with 16 minutes left, before McManus was fouled by Zach on the ensuing inbounds, for four fouls in less than two seconds as the pair battled for position on an inbounds play.
"We like physical. It doesn't bother us," said Sutter.
Back-to-back buckets by 6-8 center Jonathan Park gave Naz a 48-33 lead with 14:50 left in the game and forced Owls head coach Rich Sutter to use a time out.
Park picked up his third foul and went to the bench with 14:28 left as the Owls' Joe Meade completed a three-point play that cut the lead to 48-36.
"We didn't play very well, but I think the crowd possibly, and their defense had something to do with it. They played good defense and the crowd was very intimidating. It was a good crowd, really exciting," said Sutter. "We had our chances, we had a couple of set play calls and we didn't execute very well, we didn't get the ball where it need to be at that time."
Westfield chipped away with Park on the bench, as Kuany Teng drilled a 3 on Hamilton kickout to make it 52-41, then, Hamilton scored layup off a dish from Meesha Ohradka got the lead back to single digits at 52-43 and induced a time out from Nazareth head coach Kevin Broderick.
A fast beak three from the Owls' Justin Thompson trimmed the lead to 52-46 with 10:38 left
Park picked up his fourth on a charge with 9:00 left, and the Owls trimmed the lead again, as Justin Rennis bulled to the hoop to make it 58-55, and Ham trailes on the break and banked in jumper to keep the lead at three, 60-57
An Underwood drive-and-1 with 3:55 left boosted the Flyers lead to 67-60. With 3:16 left in the game, the Owls forced Naz into bad three-pointer with the shot clock winding down, but the rebound squirted out of bounds, and then Underwood scored on drive make it 69-61 with three minutes to play.
"I think the biggest part of tonight was that we played aggressively with the lead, we didn't play to protect the lead. They're a very good team, very good teams are going to make a run, but every time we needed a basket either Kevin or Zach made one," said Broderick.
Westfield got close again as Rennis drove lane for a jumper to make it 73-67 with 1:11 left, and Kumar Brown's putback slam of a Hamilton trimmed the lead to 73-69, but Brown couldn't complete the three-point play attempt with 37.4 left, and Nazareth garnered the rebound leaving the Owls to foul down the stretch.
Thompson led Westfield with 15 points on 4-9 shooting from long range and Hamilton added 11 and eight rebounds. Teng finished with nine points, and Ohradka gave the Owls a big lift in the second half with eight points. Rennis finished his Owls career with eight points and five rebounds.
"Meesha came in and settled us down pretty well at the end, I thought he did a good job," said Sutter.
Park finished with 10 points, nine rebounds and three blocked shots. Zach Stenglein finished with 11 rebounds and was 11-13 at the foul line.
Nazareth finished 26-62 from the floor while the Owls were 26-61 (42.6 percent). The Golden Flyers finished 22-27 from the foul line to Westfield's 14-24 (58.3 pct.).
Nazareth led the Owls 36-31 at the half in a tightly contested first half. JT Thompson was the most consistent performer for the Owls, shooting 3-7 from the three point range, and 3-4 at the line for 12 first half points. Zack Steinglen led Nazareth with 11 points, as the junior guard was able to consistently penetrate into the lane.
"We prepared for them (to drive it) but it's a little difficult to prepare for a crowd like that," said Sutter. " It was difficult to match the angle they were getting to the rim at, off the dribble handoff, they were getting a good angle to cut them off. All in all, I thought our guys did pretty well on it, they made some tough shots over the top of us at times."
Westfield attempted to set the tone early in the game, forcing turnovers on two of first three Nazareth possessions, and took the lid off the game when Rennis banked in a jumper at the 18:48 mark.
Nazareth took 11-6 lead after a steal and fast break dunk by Park to excite the white-out student crowd.
"They had a good home crowd, it probably pumps (Nazareth) up, but I try not to listen to it," said Westfield State's Hamilton.
"That's the type of crowd that you want to be in," said Rennis. "I just think a lot of what we do just got broken down, we just didn't really execute what we needed to execute. It wasn't anything to do with the crowd…. Both teams want to go on, they have the advantage of being at home. It's not an excuse. It's just one of those competitive games that they got."
"We earned having that atmosphere, and it just juiced us," said Zach Stenglein. "We had a zoom with [Nazareth alumnus and former NY Knicks coach Jeff] Van Gundy, and he said the first 36 minutes were on us, and the last 4 the students would help us out, and I think they really did."
Owls were just 3-13 from floor until a Thompson three made it 15-12 with 11:22 left in first half, and he added a shot-clock buzzer beater two minutes later.
Naz's Josh Stenglein drilled a deep bomb of a three pointer to lead 20-15
Zach Stenglien's drive made it 30-23 with 4:12 left, then a breakaway two-handed dunk from Park off steal made it 32-23, for the largest Golden Flyer lead of the half. Westfield struggled at times with possession of the ball, committing 10 turnovers to Naz's six in the opening frame.
Westfield's McManus answered with bucket at the other end, then the Owls foiled a Zach Stenglein drive, and Thompson nailed his third three of the half to trim the lead to 34-31 with seconds left in the first half. A touch foul at midcourt gave the Flyers Kevin Underwood a pair of 1-and-1 free throw with five seconds left in half to take 36-31 lead into the locker room.
"In totality, we'll look back at this year and be very happy with it, but right now in this microcosm it's a little bit difficult. All in all I couldn't have asked for a better group of young men to work with and a better coaching staff to work with," said Sutter.
"We already had the goal of winning the MASCAC – not everybody thought we could do it, and I'm sure nobody thought we'd make it this far," said Rennis. "I'm proud of the team, im proud of how everybody gelled together and worked hard and I like the camaraderie we have, the brotherhood we've built over these 27 games."
Nazareth, which won its first NCAA tournament game since 1988, advances to play UMass-Dartmouth (25-4), an 86-83 winner over Emerson College (18-8) in the other first round game here today, in Saturday's second round game with a 6:05 tip off.
UMass-Dartmouth rallied from a 21-point first half deficit to finally grab the lead on a three pointer from Issac Percy with less than 30 seconds left in the game. After an Emerson miss on the ensuing play, the Corsairs hit a pair of free throws to seal the win. Dartmouth's only other lead of the game was at 2-0 just 13 seconds into the game.
Guard Marcus Azor led Mass-Dartmouth with 27 points, while Adam Seaborn added 19. Emerson's Jarred Houston grabbed 25 rebounds while scoring 16 points. Houston entered the game just percentage points behind Westfield State's Hamilton for the national lead in rebounds per game.
