By Pat Coleman
D3sports.com

FORT WAYNE, Indiana — The Jahn Hines show turned into the Vinny DeAngelo show but DeAngelo couldn’t quite come up with the final heroics as his 3-pointer was short at the buzzer and Christopher Newport survived to defeat Swarthmore 69-66. The Captains advance to the Division III men’s basketball championship game, to be played on Saturday, March 18, against either UW-Whitewater or Mount Union, at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum.

Hines nearly single-handedly put CNU (29-3) into the lead early in the second half as the junior scored 13 of the Captains’ points in a row.  He went from four points at halftime to 22 for the night, making six of eight shots in one stretch, to take the game from 41-41 to 54-59. His brother, Collin Hines, took it to 58-51 and Trey Barber made a nice move underneath to make it 60-51.

"I want to shout out Trey cuz he brought the defense all to him,” Jahn Hines said afterward. “So once I seen the opening in the high post, I just took it, and hit my first two, and then my teammates would just give me the confidence. So with that and with the defense hanging off, I just let it go and it was going through.”

Swarthmore was not done, however. George Visconti rolled a layup in with 3:57 to play and brought the Garnet crowd to life by cutting the lead to 60-53. After the under-4 timeout, Visconti added a free throw to make it 60-54. George Corzine rebounded a miss when Jahn Hines forced one up off-balance in the lane, and Corzine found DeAngelo for a wide-open 3-pointer, straight on, to cut the lead to 60-57 with 3:15 left.

Rodney Graves answered with a 3 from the right win to put CNU back up by six, but Visconti hit two foul shots for Swarthmore (28-4), DeAngelo hit a three and made two free throws sandwiched around a 1-for-2 performance from the foul line for Graves to tie it up at 64-64 with 1:46 to play. Barber then made two free throws and Hines added two more sandwiched around a missed 3 from DeAngelo to make it 68-64, but CNU missed on several chances to salt the game away as the Captains missed five of six from the line down the stretch.

For a good portion of the second half, Jahn Hines was basically unstoppable for Christopher Newport. Photo by Doug Sasse, d3photography.com

That gave the Garnet a look to tie the game at the buzzer, but DeAngelo's shot fell shot and CNU held on to win.

"In the huddle, we talked about taking it possession by possession," DeAngelo said. "Getting stops was the big thing. We got some really good looks at the very end to try and tie it, they just didn’t fall."

DeAngelo led all scorers with 23 points, but was just 7-for-23 from the floor.

"Swarthmore is so good," said CNU coach John Krikorian. "They execute so well, they're so well coached. What an unbelievable season and team. And these guys here and their teammates, they just have this refuse to lose mentality."

“Mainly, Hines was the difference,” said Swarthmore coach Landry Kosmalski. “He didn’t really miss tough shots, which we knew he can do. He really gave them a lift in the second half.”

Swarthmore had dominated the boards in the first half and locked down Christopher Newport from 3-point range as well, but the Captains were able to answer a 9-0 Swarthmore run with seven consecutive points of their own, and CNU got to the foul line enough to go into halftime down 30-26.

In fact, it was nearly a one-point game at halftime, but Visconti nailed a 3 with two seconds to play to give the Garnet a four-point lead as they sprinted to the locker room.

Swarthmore was able to make Barber practically a non-factor for almost 10 minutes of game time, but he scored six points in the final five and a half minutes of the half to finish with 11.

Meanwhile, Swarthmore outrebounded CNU 22-9 in the first half, and Colin Shaw scored a team-high 10 points on 4-for-4 shooting, including two 3-pointers. Shaw would get just one more field goal attempt the rest of the game, however, and finished with 10.

The Captains came out in the second half and immediately rectified one of those gaps, as Ty Henderson hit a 3-pointer to cap a 7-2 flurry and give CNU a 33-32 lead. Henderson hit another early in the second half as the teams went back and forth before Hines started his run.

In addition to DeAngelo’s 23, Visconti had 21 to lead Swarthmore. Jahn Hines finished with the 22 and Barber added 21, along with three blocked shots, for CNU. The Captains, who reached the national semifinals for the third time in the past six Division III Final Fours, will be playing for the national title for the first time.

Contributing: Riley Zayas