SHAWNEE, Okla. – Survive and advance is the long-standing mantra of college basketball in March, and for three games over four days, the Arkansas Tech men's basketball simply found a way to win and now they are NCAA Tournament-bound for the ninth time in program history and will be making their first appearance since the 2016-17 season.
By winning the GAC Tournament, the Wonder Boys will receive the league's automatic bid into the NCAA Division II Central Region Tournament. Their opponent and who they will play in the first round of the regional will be announced tonight (Sunday) at 10 p.m. on
www.NCAA.com
Netting a combined margin of victory of just three points over the first two games and needing to make second-half comebacks, the Wonder Boys, somewhat comfortably beat No. 4-seed Southern Nazarene by 15 points in the championship game on Sunday.
The double-digit victory did not come without some adversity, however, as the Wonder Boys were a little bit slow offensively to start the game and found themselves trailing by as many as eight points, 19-11, with a little over 11 minutes left in the first half.
After reaching that apex trail mark, the Wonder Boys ripped off a quick 7-2 burst to close to within three points of the lead, 21-18, with 9:04 left. Almost two minutes of game time later, the Crimson Storm got a basket to go up by five points, 23-18, with 7:15 left on the clock.
The rest of the half, the Wonder Boys ratcheted up their defense and began to score as well as they closed the final seven minutes of the half on a 15-4 run to surge into the locker room up by six points.
Leading at the break, while not an exact science has been really good to the Wonder Boys this season as they were 18-0 this season when leading at halftime. Fortunately, the stat rang true once more for the 19
th time this season as the Wonder Boys ran away from the Crimson Storm in the second half.
After pushing their lead out to double figures at the 18:12 mark, the Wonder Boys would only allow the Crimson Storm to get as close as eight points of the lead before cruising to the 15-point victory.
In the game, the Wonder Boys had three players reach double figures and were led once more by
Cassius Brooks. Brooks, who would be named the tournament's Most Valuable Player, scored 21 points on 9-of-16 shooting. For the tournament, Brooks averaged 21.3 points per game on 50% shooting overall from the floor (23-of-46). He was also 50% from three-point range (7-of-14) for the tournament and 79% from the free throw line (11-of-14).
Behind Brooks in scoring on Sunday was
Tommy Kamarad with 11 points. Kamarad was named to the All-Tournament Team as he averaged 13.0 points per game and 8.3 rebounds per game. Joining Kamarad and Brooks in being named the All-Tournament Team was
Kade Shaffer. Shaffer averaged 6.0 ppg, 5.0 rpg and dished out 4.3 assists per game as well.
