Sports

Men's basketball stuns Gettysburg on Alumni Day

Mens-basketball-stuns-gettysburg-on-alumni-day

Austin Dike | Phoenix Staff

Matt Allen presses toward the net against Gettysburg on Saturday.

In print | February 19, 2009

Swarthmore men’s basketball snapped an 18-game losing streak on Alumni Day with a 57-53 upset victory over Gettysburg. The win was the Garnet’s first in the Centennial Conference and moved them to a record of 2-20 overall (1-15 CC). The Bullets, who came in at third place in the conference, left Tarble Pavilion with a 14-8 record (9-7 CC) and fell to fourth in the standings.

In a game with post-season implications for Gettysburg, Swarthmore never intended to roll over for the visitors. “We wanted the game more than they did,” swingman Ryan Carmichael ’11 said. “I feel like we willed the victory.” After falling behind by nine with eight minutes left in the game, the Garnet certainly did something special to pull it out.

The back and forth nature of the game — there were ten lead changes — resembled the mercurial play of Gettysburg over this season. Halfway through their schedule, the Bullets won eight straight games to merit a #22 national ranking. Since then, however, the team has been in free fall, dropping five of their last seven games and slipping from the top spot in the conference standings.

For the first 15 minutes of the contest, Swarthmore drastically outplayed Gettysburg. Over that span, the Garnet built an 11-point lead by staying patient on the offensive end of the court and disruptive on the defensive end. Swarthmore Head Coach Lee Wimberly knew his team had to slow the game down to have a chance at winning. “The only legitimate shot we have at winning is to be patient,” he said. “We don’t have the firepower to score 70 points. The lower the score, the better chance we have to win.”

Co-captain Matt Allen ’10 explained how the Garnet controlled the pace. “We were passing up good shots early in the shot clock for great shots later,” he said. “We ran the shot clock down because no defense wants to play you for 35 seconds every time.” This strategy produced a 28-17 advantage with five minutes left in the half.

The Gettysburg offense finally kicked into gear at that point. Bullets senior guard Dan Capkin, who had left the game earlier with a sore knee, re-entered the action and sank a three-pointer in the middle of a 12-0 run that gave the visitors a 29-28 lead at the break. Gettysburg continued its improved play into the second half. Capkin, who scored a team-high 18 points, and senior Corey Dorsey, who reached 1,000 career points on Saturday, hit back-to-back threes to give the Bullets a nine-point lead with eight minutes left.
At this point, the game looked like many others this season where the Garnet stayed in it for most of the contest but could never close it out. “When they went up nine it was really similar to a lot of games in the past,” Allen said. “I could kind of sense it slipping away. The difference was people just stepped up and made shots when they had to.”

Allen himself stepped up and halted the slippage with a three-pointer. He finished the game 4-7 behind the arc and led the Garnet with 18 points and four assists. The three-pointers vaulted him into eighth place all-time at Swarthmore with 100 career triples. Moments later Carmichael added a three of his own to cut the deficit to three points. Two free throws from co-captain Raul Ordonez ’09 and another Carmichael three put the Garnet up two with three minutes left.

With 1:20 left in the game, Garnet forward Sam Lacy ’11 made a play his coach deemed “critically important.” As the shot clock expired, Lacy launched a three and drew a foul on the attempt. He made all three shots at the line to give Swarthmore a five-point lead. Capkin cut the lead to two with a triple, and Dorsey’s three-point attempt with three seconds remaining would have given Gettysburg the lead, but Carmichael said “[it] had no chance because Danny [Walker ’10] was covering him like a blanket.” Carmichael grabbed the rebound and made two foul shots to put the game away at 57-53.
It worked perfectly against the Bullets’ leading scorer and sophomore center Andrew Powers, who is second in the conference with 18.3 points per game. Powers committed two charges against Ordonez early in the game, however, and foul trouble forced him to the bench for most of the first half. He was never able to develop a rhythm and finished the game with just six points. Ordonez’s three charges on the night gave him a team-leading 20 on the season, two behind the Swarthmore’s single-season record of 22.

Another big factor for the Garnet was the presence of the alumni. “It’s really special when you see all the great players of Swarthmore’s past playing, and then they come out to support us even though our record is not great,” Carmichael said. “I felt the most pride I’ve ever felt for Swarthmore basketball on Saturday.” The victory’s satisfaction was augmented because the Class of ’08 never beat Gettysburg during its four years at Swarthmore.

Take the shuttle to Haverford on Saturday to watch the Garnet attempt to build confidence and momentum for next season and spoil the playoff hopes of the Fords in their regular season finale. The game is on Saturday, Feb 21 at 3 p.m. at Haverford.