It was by far their closest call since the start of the season, but the College of Idaho men’s basketball team will have to put all the mistakes and potential pitfalls behind them.
The Yotes still have a date with destiny on Saturday night.
The College of Idaho nearly saw a 23-point second half lead, and their title hopes, almost completely evaporate before their eyes Friday in the NAIA semifinals. But despite all the momentum in the world going against them over the final 12 minutes of the game, the Yotes were still able to find a way to hold on for a 73-72 win against Ottawa (Ariz.) to move on to the title game.
“It’s a lot of excitement for me and everyone else on the team,” said freshman Samaje Morgan, who had 12 points on his 19th birthday. “We’ve worked so hard for the last six or seven months and we’ve been waiting for this moment. It’s just very exciting. We have all our fans here, so it feels like we’re playing a home game. We’re ready to take it all.”
After a quick breather, the Yotes (35-1) will go after the red banner on Saturday. Forty minutes to go, 40 minutes from making a strong case to be the best team in College of Idaho history, heck, maybe even Cascade Conference history.
The College of Idaho squares off against Indiana Tech, at 6 p.m. MDT in Kansas City, Missouri, looking to capture the second national title in program history and get a banner to join the 1996 National Championship banner that hangs in J.A. Albertson Activities Center back in Caldwell.
“Every single day,” College of Idaho coach Colby Blaine said when asked if he ever looks at that banner and pictures hanging another next to it. “We talk about the national championship every day. We want to have a great experience, but because of our experience, we put ourselves in a position to play for a national championship tomorrow. We talk about it every day.”
Charles Elzie led the way with 21 points, while Drew Wyman scored 11.
Friday’s win snapped a 16-game streak which had seen the Yotes win by double-digit points, including a 31-point win in the Cascade Conference Championship and a 48-point win in Monday’s NAIA Round of 16.
However, the more important streak — the 35-game winning streak — remains intact and thus, so does the Yotes national title hopes.
The Spirit (25-10) certainly did all they could to put that streak in jeopardy, as well. OUAZ had a chance to tie the game with a 3-pointer in the closing seconds, but Straton Rogers got a hand in front of a shot by Josiah De’laCerda, who had made five 3-pointers up to that point, and made the block. The shot ricochet off Rogers’s hand and inside the 3-point line, where De’laCerda was able to catch it, but only had time to put up a relatively harmless 2-point basket before the final buzzer sounded.
“Straton is an elite defender,” said Blaine. “He can move laterally, he can move vertically, so we definitely felt comfortable having him in in the end. But the more impressive part was he did it without fouling. We didn’t plan on fouling, we wanted to guard them and get that deflection like we did. So, I’m just proud of him for stepping up and being ready for his moment.”
For the first 30 minutes or so, Friday’s game seemed to be playing out just like the Yotes’ other two in Kansas City — a 98-50 win against LSU Shreveport in Monday’s Round of 16 and an 83-66 win against Tougaloo (Miss.) in Wednesday’s quarterfinal.
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The Yotes found themselves in an early deficit, but took a 18-10 lead with a 9-0 run. By halftime they had built the lead to 36-21 and once again seemed to be on their way to another blowout victory when a dunk by Paul Wilson put the Yotes ahead 50-27.
From there, the Spirit started cutting into the lead. At first, it was slow. The Yotes still maintained a 12-point point lead with less than three minutes left.
Then Ottawa began fouling. And the College of Idaho started struggling at the foul line. Possession after possession the Yotes came away with just one free throw, or even worse, two missed ones.
And Ottawa capitalized, hitting 3-pointers and cutting into the lead.
The real momentum shifter, however, came with 22 seconds left, following a 3-pointer by De’laCerda. The Yotes threw away the inbound pass and OUAZ got an easy late up, making the score 69-67.
But despite all the pressure, the Yotes never allowed the Spirit to take a lead.
“We knew they were a good team and they had a lot of fight in them,” said Morgan. “It’s the Fab Four, they’re supposed to be here. So, we knew it was going to be a dog fight. We just had to stick to our game plan, keep our composure and know at the end of the day, if we keep on playing as hard as we can, it will come to us.”
The Yotes finished by making their final four free throws, with Johnny Radford making two, then Elzie hitting two huge free throws with 5.5 on the clock after OUAZ hit a 3-pointer to cut the lead to 71-70.
Elzie had been 4 for 12 from the free throw line up until that point.
“I was like ‘I’m not going home,’” Elzie said. “I had to treat it like it was practice and that took the pressure off. I’ve been having a mentality of ‘no pressure, all focus’. That’s what I was thinking.”
The free throws meant at worse, the game was going to overtime. It didn’t come to that, thanks to Rogers’ block.
Now with one more win, the job will be finished.
“That game is going to help us,” Blaine said. “If we get in that situation tomorrow, we’re going to now have a resource to lean on and we’re going to be able to execute down the stretch. All we have to do it is for one more game.”
