Ithaca gets off the mat
| Sean Rossi has accounted for
736 assists in three seasons for Ithaca, including 9.3 per game
this year. Ithaca athletics photo by Tim McKinney |
The situation seemed dire. Then again, the season the Ithaca
men's basketball had weathered to that point hadn't exactly been
ideal.
Jim Mullins' squad had successfully overcome a brutal schedule, a
season-ending injury, multiple roster defections and a season-long
chorus of naysayers, both on campus and throughout the local media.
But this -- well, this was too much.
The Bombers, seeded fourth in the four-team Empire 8 tournament,
were on the road, facing the top seed and host Hartwick Hawks.
Ithaca had built a nine-point lead over Hartwick -- a team it split
two regular-season meetings with -- late in the first half, but
absorbed the gut punch of losing sophomore Frank Mitchell to a
sprained ankle.
Mitchell, the Bombers' leading scorer and rebounder, wouldn't be
able to return. This had to be the proverbial straw that broke the
camel's back.
Only it wasn't. Something happened along the way from devastating
injury to inevitable disappointment -- this group refused to
fail.
The Bombers closed out the first half strong and, with some key
contributions from freshman Connor Rogers and junior Chris Young,
held off Hartwick in the second half to accomplish something no
other Ithaca team since the inception of the Empire 8 tournament in
2003-04 had -- win a conference tournament game.
The following day, the Bombers defeated Nazareth for the third
time in three meetings this season and clinched the Empire 8's
automatic NCAA tournament berth.
"It's been a very gratifying end of the year because these kids
stuck it out," said Mullins, now in his 15th season as Ithaca's
head coach. "They really became one, they bonded. I think that the
thing that we really have going for us right now is you've got a
bunch of kids who truly care more about the success of the team
than they do about themselves. It's really been fun."
It's also been historic. For the third time in four years, the
Bombers are NCAA-bound. That's the first such stretch for a program
that dates back to 1929-30. Ithaca has earned at least a share of
the Empire 8 regular-season crown in three of the last five
seasons, but it was always the conference tournament wins that
eluded the Bombers and Mullins.
That monkey is off Ithaca's back. But the road to that
accomplishment was far from smooth.
The Bombers stumbled to a 3-8 start this season, struggling behind
a combination of a tough non-conference slate and a failed
experiment involving 2-3 zone defense. Ithaca...
