A long and excellent season in men’s basketball
By Joe Vanden Acker
Lawrence Today magazine, Summer 2004
One fist.
Those are the two words the Lawrence University men’s basketball team
lived by during the 2003-04 season. An altruistic group of young men driving
toward the goal of excellence. Five pistons pumping together as one. One team
striving for greatness.
With unparalleled unity, the Vikings pulled a Star Trek — going where
no Midwest Conference (MWC) basketball team had gone before. Not only did
the Vikings win their first conference championship since 1997, they won three
games in the NCAA Division
III Tournament and came within a whisker of advancing
to the Final Four.
Their story is one of desire, selflessness, and esprit de corps, all rolled
into the shape of a heart that defined their love for one another and their
content of character.
“This group of 18 guys became one,” says Lawrence head coach John
Tharp, who was named the MWC and Midwest Region Coach of the Year.
“They were all on the same mission. Every ounce of ego that they may have
had, they said, ‘It’s not about me, it’s about us. I’m
going to do whatever it takes.’”
Next to the word team in the dictionary, there should be a picture of these
guys.
Lawrence 86, Lakeland 51
The Vikings, who finished 24-5, put together an impressive regular season
and clinched the MWC title and the right to host the conference tournament
with
two games remaining. When Carroll College, Lake Forest College, and Grinnell
College came to Alexander Gymnasium the final weekend in February, the
opposition wilted in the oppressive heat of the Vikings’ superlative play and the
fans’ fervor.
An 82-71 win over Carroll in the tournament title game gave Lawrence an
automatic berth in the NCAA tournament. The Vikings huddled around a laptop
computer
in the basement of Brokaw Hall the following evening to watch the tournament
pairings as they were announced live via streaming video, and they let
out a collective whoop when they saw that Lakeland College would be coming
to Lawrence
in four days for an opening-round game.
It turned out to be like shooting Muskies in a barrel. Lawrence rolled
to an 86-51 win, the largest margin of victory in any first-round game.
The Vikings displayed a microcosm of their season by going on a 12-3 run
at the end of the first half and then not
allowing a Lakeland field goal for the first 12 minutes, 27 seconds, of
the second half.
“I think our kids had the mentality that, sure, we’d already achieved
a lot, but losing that first game, a home game, would have been a disappointment,” says
Tharp. “Our kids were focused. That stretch we put together was
truly some of our best basketball.”
Lawrence 72, Buena Vista 66
The prize for beating Lakeland was a trip to Storm Lake, Iowa, to face
the Beavers of Buena Vista University, champions of the Iowa Intercollegiate
Athletic
Conference (IIAC), less than 48 hours later.
With the Beavers sporting a front line that all stood 6-foot-7 and included
IIAC Player of the Year Scott Weber, the undersized Vikings would have their
hands full. The Beavers would also be playing
in front of
2,500 rabid supporters in Siebens Fieldhouse.
“I knew they (BVU) weren’t as physical as we were,” Tharp recalls. “I
knew in the first five minutes of the game, with the way the game was
being officiated and how poised we were, that we could win. We had those
2,500
people there, and our kids wanted to ruin their night.”
Forward Chris MacGillis, ’04, provided the spark on offense, and guards
Rob Nenahlo, ’04, and Jason Holinbeck, ’05, clamped down
on BVU star guard Eric Wiebers, who hit just 4 of 18 shots from the floor.
It was MacGillis who gave this magical mystery tour a shot of destiny.
Lawrence had led since the 14:55 mark of the first half, but the Beavers
clawed back
and finally tied the game with 12:14 remaining in the contest. MacGillis
then drained a 3-pointer, and after a BVU turnover, went up for another
3-pointer. Knowing he was going to be fouled by BVU’s Randy Bissen,
MacGillis heaved the ball toward the basket. It kissed the backboard
at an improbable
angle
and went in. He drained the free throw, to give the Vikings a seven-point
lead, and every Lawrence fan in attendance became a believer.
“After that one went in, I thought ‘God’s on our side today,’” MacGillis
says. “Everything fell into place from there.”
The Beavers never got closer than five points after that, and the throng
at Siebens Fieldhouse sat in stunned disbelief as the final seconds ticked
off
on Lawrence’s 72-66 victory.
Lawrence 86, Sul Ross State 79
The Vikings were now truly in uncharted waters. Since the tournament
reverted to the 48-team field, no MWC team had ever advanced to the
Sweet 16.
The Vikings would head to Tacoma, Wash., and the University of Puget
Sound for the sectional tournament. Lawrence would take on Sul Ross
State University
of Texas, and the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point would face
the host Loggers.
“It was a complete clash of cultures and a clash of styles of play,” Tharp
says of the match-up against Sul Ross. “We did not see a team
as athletic as they were all year.”
Lawrence, a top liberal arts school with its team made up exclusively
of young men from Wisconsin and Illinois, would face Sul Ross State,
located
in the
hinterlands of West Texas (it is 220 miles east of El Paso) with half
of its roster comprised of junior college transfers.
Tharp met Lobos coach Doug Davalos after the Vikings’ morning walk-through
the day of the game, and Davalos asked, “How do you win with 6-foot-4
post players?” He found out a few hours later
.
Tharp knew his season-long sermon of team, team, team could pay off
against the talented, athletic Lobos.
“If we had to play each position one-on-one, we would lose at almost every
position. We had to play with togetherness,” he says.
The Lobos, using pressure defense and all-out aggressiveness, took
the game by the throat early in the second half, and the Vikings trailed
61-43 with
11:55 left.
Just when it appeared the season was about to end, forward Kyle MacGillis, ’06,
slipped on his Superman cape and took the Vikings on his back.
“We knew that we had to change our style,” says Tharp. “If
we were going to go down, we were going to go down swinging.”
The Vikings turned up the heat defensively and became more freewheeling
on offense, and at the heart of it was the younger MacGillis, who
played dogged defense to spark the Lawrence comeback. He went after the Lobos
with the relentlessness of a bear
raiding a Burger King
dumpster.
“The counterpunch of our full-court pressure to their aggressiveness kindled
an urgency within us and swung the momentum in our favor,” Kyle
MacGillis says. “As Sul Ross State became more flustered and
hesitant, we capitalized on their mistakes, as well as making a few
great plays ourselves.
We had
a tremendous feeling of pride in wearing a Lawrence uniform after
that game.”
Kyle MacGillis scored 11 points, grabbed two rebounds, picked up
three steals, and had one assist in the final 17 minutes of the game.
“That was, by far, his best game of the year,” says Chris MacGillis
of his younger brother. “I had a tremendous feeling of pride. He took over
the game. That’s going to be in my memory bank for many years
to come. He single-handedly brought us back.”
Kyle MacGillis got a nice assist on the comeback trail from guard
Aaron Sorenson, ’06.
The Sheboygan sharpshooter scored 10 points in the final 7:29 of
regulation.
The Vikings still needed Chris Braier, ’06, to make a pair
of free throws with 15 seconds left to force overtime. Once into
the extra period,
the Vikings
went on a 9-1 run to seize command of the game and rolled to the
86-79 victory.
“We needed one guy to jump-start us and make us believe, and that was Kyle,” Tharp
says. “And then it was Aaron and Bop (Braier’s nickname)
and Chris MacGillis and then Danny (Evans, ’06) started doing
some things.”
UW-Stevens Point 82, Lawrence 81
With UW-Stevens Point downing host Puget Sound 100-79 in the evening’s
other game, it set up a match-up of two schools from Wisconsin playing 2,000
miles from home, with a trip to the Final Four on the line. It was a surreal
feel inside cavernous Memorial Arena — never had so much been decided
so far from home in front of so few. With a crowd of about 250, dominated by
Lawrence fans, the Vikings and Pointers hooked up in what ESPN would likely
dub an “instant classic.”
Lawrence built a 10-point lead in the first half, but the Pointers
fought back, although they never led by more than three points
in the second
half. The Vikings
looked as if they might have the game won when Evans’ off-balance jumper
fell with 17 seconds left to put Lawrence up 72-69. Nick Bennett, son of Pointers
coach Jack Bennett, with Lawrence’s Holinbeck draped on him,
made a miraculous 3-pointer to tie the game and force the overtime.
The game see-sawed in the extra session, with Braier giving Lawrence
an 81-80 edge on a jumper with just 20 ticks left. The Pointers
responded, and Bennett
found an open Eric Maus, who hit a 15-foot baseline jumper with
only five
seconds remaining to put the Pointers back on top, 82-81.
With no timeouts left, Evans raced the ball back up the court
and found an open Holinbeck, who made 6 of 8 shots in the game
for
18 points,
just beyond
the 3-point line on the right wing. His jumper was dead-center
but just a few inches short. It caromed off the rim, and Lawrence’s
season was over.
We band of brothers
The players and coaches say they still think about the loss to
UW-Stevens Point (which went on to win the national championship)
and about
what might have
been. Instead of remorse, the Vikings have renewal.
“Almost every day I think about it,” says Braier, who was named a
third-team All-American, the first basketball player in Lawrence history to be
so honored. “It
has given me and my teammates the motivation that we need to
get back there. Hopefully it wasn’t a one-time trip. Gosh, I wish the season
started tomorrow and our first game was against Stevens Point.”
Going back to the Elite Eight or even further remains at the
heart of what Tharp and his team, which finished the season with
a best-ever
No.
7 ranking,
wants to do.
“Everyone’s thought process in our program is, we don’t want
to be a one-hit wonder. It takes some luck, but it also takes a lot of hard work
from talented kids. We are going to strive to achieve this on
a yearly basis,” says
Tharp, who could have been quoting Shakespeare’s Henry
V when he talked about his team. (“From this day to the
ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered; We few,
we happy few, we band of brothers.”)
“ All the things that could have separated us never occurred. These guys
truly are like brothers. They had such passion for each other. It’s so
much more than wins and losses. It’s truly like a family. We
had our ups and downs, but nothing divided this group.”
This band of brothers also brought the Lawrence community together.
"The best thing about playing in the NCAA tourney was that it generated a
strong sense of community within Lawrence University,” Kyle MacGillis
says. “To
see how students, faculty, and alumni came together to share
in this experience is something that I will remember just as
strongly
as the
games.”
Tharp agreed and brought everyone into the huddle: “It was the greatest
ride I’ve ever been a part of,” he says. “To
have so many parts of campus — professors, staff members,
alumni, the conservatory — it didn’t matter what
you were or who you were, you became a part of Lawrence basketball.
That’s something
I will never, ever forget and something I will always cherish.”