SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
Not everything comes easy, as undefeated Nova Southeastern’s men’s basketball team found out in getting past pesky Cal State Bernardino in Thursday’s late afternoon semifinals of the NCAA Division I tournament.
Not much attendance — they counted 587 — at the Ford Center in Evansville, Ind., it was a neutral court, and both semis were close calls, with No. 2-seeded West Liberty of West Virginia turning back No. 3 Black Hills State of San Diego, 82-75, in the opener.
But the main attraction was in the closer when top-ranked, undefeated Nova SE of Fort Lauderdale took on the challenge of No. 4 Cal State’s Coyotes and emerged on top 94-87, for its 35th straight success and into the Saturday championship against West Liberty’s Hilltoppers.
In a season in which it is has dominated opponents, Nova SE won via seven points for the fourth time. It has won two others by six and eight points.
While back at Fort Lauderdale beach when the temperatures were in the mid 70s. In this Midwest college arena, the Sharks were expected to feed on Cal State, but it never happened. They did go up by 13 points midway through the first half and by the same in the second half, but couldn’t put the Coyotes away.
Down 66-54 with the clock at 8:04, the underdogs pieced together a pair of runs, the first getting to within 68-64, the second trimming the gap to 75-73. They were tossing them in from outside, playing scrappy, confident defense, and slowing down Nova SE’s transition offense.
But the Sharks had their own response. They got behind the point guard engineering of 5-foot-8 freshman Dallas Graziani, the balanced scoring led by 6-4 sophomores Kobe Rodgers and Will Joakum, with Roberts turning in the team-high 21 points and Yoakum adding 18.
Their team wasn’t all that successful from the foul line (31-42), but these two were, Rodgers made 8-of-9 and Yoakum 7-of-8.
Then there was 6-1 sophomore Jonathan Piece scoring 18, junior R.J. Sunahara deposing 14, and Graziani tallying 13, plus handing out nine assists, taking down five boards, and coming away with four steals.
But the game-high went to the Coyotes senior wing Brandon Knapper, who in 39 minutes, came up with 32 points on 11-for-24 shooting from the field and 5-for-8 from beyond the arc.
Nova SE, which scored over 100 points in 20 of its starts, led at 13-3, and 48-43 at the intermission. When the score tightened, its late run put it up 91-87, but a double technical on Cal Bernardino with 2.2 left put Yoakum on the charity stripe and he converted 3-of-4 as the Coyoyes completed a 33-4 season.
West Liberty (32-2) led from the start in its win, but 28-6 Black Hills State made a game of it late in the first half with a 14-4 run that kept the Hilltoppers’ halftime lead at 37-33, which they maintained and then upped it slightly in the final minutes.
