SALEM, VA—The Roanoke College men's basketball team had its dreams of repeating as Old Dominion Athletic Conference champions dashed on Monday evening, suffering a 90-83 loss to the Hampden-Sydney Tigers in the league's title game.
The Maroons, who were looking for their first back-to-back conference championships since the 1987-88 season, fall to 21-6 on the year. Roanoke now must wait until Sunday evening to see if it received an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. With the championship, the Tigers received the league's automatic bid.
For the first 10-plus minutes of the first half, the lead changed hands three times and the score was tied four times. All that changed with 9:30 to go in the first half when HSC's Jay Patrick drained the first of two consecutive three-pointers to give the Tigers a 21-20 lead. Roanoke would never be even or ahead the rest of the contest.
Scoring just nine points in an 11-minute stretch midway through thee first and the Maroons found themselves trailing by as many as 11 points in the first half. Over the final 1:45 of the half, the Maroons used a 7-2 run to cut the HSC lead to six, 40-34, going into the intermission.
Out of the locker rooms, the Maroons got a three-pointer by sophomore guard Robby Pridgen (Akron, OH/St. Vincent-St. Mary) to trim the lead to three, but that would be as close as the team would get. Trailing by seven with 14:29 left on the clock, the Maroons were all but 'eliminated' as the Tigers went on a 10-0 run to push their lead to 17 points. The Tigers had their double-digit lea for the rest of the time, until Ben Halterman (Fort Defiance, VA/Fort Defiance) hit three as time expired to make the final margin seven points.
The Maroons were hurt By Hampden-Sydney's free throw shooting and ability to get to the line. In the ball game, the Tigers out scored the Maroons, 31-11, from the free throw line, and actually made almost double what the Maroons took (31 HSC makes, 16 RC attempts). The Tigers also dominated the glass, outrebounding the Maroons, 46-36. Of those 46 boards, 18 came on the offensive end, leading to several second chance points.
Jason Strickland (Charlottesville, VA/Covenant) turned in what should have been an MVP performance scoring 27 points in the championship game on 10-of-18 shooting. In the three-game tournament, Strickland averaged 24.3 points per game. When he scored his 19th point against the Tigers, he became the second Maroons to reach 1,000 career points this season.
Strickland, along with fellow fourth-year player Brad Dunleavy (Roanoke, VA/William Fleming), was named to the All-Tournament team. Dunleavy scored 23 points in the championship game and also added four assists, three steals, and a block. Pridgen had 12 points for Roanoke and handed out a career-high eight assists.
