Currently viewing the tag: "Mount St. Mary’s Basketball"

Banner Year for Mount St. Mary’s Basketball

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Blair Garrett

Mount St. Mary’s men’s basketball is escorted through Emmitsburg after their NEC Championship win against Wagner College.

Men’s Basketball

It’s been a remarkable turnaround for Mount St. Mary’s men’s basketball.

The Mount defeated Bryant University March 9 in a close game to grab its sixth Northeast Conference (NEC) Championship. The now-reigning NEC Champions have proven that this program has come a long way since major personnel changes were made back in 2018.

Two seasons ago when head coach Dan Engelstad took over a struggling program, there were a lot of questions for a young coach on how long things might take to get going.

Engelstad’s lineup was the youngest in the nation, entirely made up of underclassmen. That young coach grew with his young team, and now the Mount is a threatening squad for any Division I opponent, and they have continued to prove that throughout this season.

The Mount’s NEC title secured their bid to compete in the NCAA Tournament, where they battled Texas Southern University in a play-in game to compete against tournament No. 1 seed, University of Michigan.

With March Madness, crazy upsets, wild finishes, and unforeseeable dramatics are almost expected. To maintain consistency among the top teams in the country is no easy feat.

Mount St. Mary’s just missed out on the opportunity to take a run at the National Title, falling to Texas Southern in a razor-close finish, 52-60.

The game capped off an abridged, disjointed year where cancellations and postponed games became the norm. Battling through all of the quarantines and difficulties that poses for practices, the Mount still had a lot of positives to take away from this season. 

This was the Mount’s sixth appearance in the NCAA tournament, and the first under Engelstad.

Winning the NEC Championship alone makes this season a historic one for Mount St. Mary’s basketball, as they captured their sixth Championship.

Emmitsburg got to briefly celebrate with the Mount on the team’s way home from the NEC Championship game, escorted by Vigilant Hose Co. fire trucks and cheering fans. 

The season may have ended earlier than the team would have liked, but there’s plenty to look forward to for next season. The team has just one senior, giving Mount basketball fans high hopes for another NEC Championship run come next season.  

Women’s Basketball

This season for Mount St. Mary’s women’s basketball has been one for the ages.

Following the team’s stellar regular season was a dominant NEC tournament, where they defeated fourth seed Farleigh Dickson and second seed Wagner College for their fourth NEC Championship in team history.

The championship win over Wagner was particularly sweet, absolutely dismantling a team who had defeated them twice the week prior.

Mount St. Mary’s 70-38 victory over Wagner was the largest margin of victory in an NEC Championship game since 2013, proving that the Mount has put in the work over an arduous 2020-21 season.

The Mount’s balanced attack saw four different players break double-digit scoring, and the team’s suffocating defense held Wagner to just 12 points over the final two quarters. Aryna Taylor and Rebecca Lee led the charge, scoring 18 points each in the victory.

It doesn’t stop there for Mount St. Mary’s, though. This NEC Title is a special one, as it clinches the team’s first ticket to the NCAA Tournament in 26 years.

The team’s last run at a national title was back in 1995, when they took on Alabama, falling in the first round.

A win this postseason would have been a university first. The team faced stiff competition in an intrastate, best-of-the-best game against tournament No. 2 seed University of Maryland.

Mount St. Mary’s fell 45-98 in the first round, but it’s been a season to remember. The team has seized its opportunity for NEC glory in 2021, following last season’s NEC Semifinals cancellation due to COVID-19.

Both Mount squads enter next season as defending NEC Champs for the first time since 1995.

Mount St. Mary’s Basketball Navigating COVID Regulations

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Blair Garrett

Amidst COVID restrictions and global pandemonium, Mount St. Mary’s basketball is still underway.

Precautions have been put in place to keep players and personnel safe, but the season has not been without its troubles. Breaks in the schedule due to positive COVID tests have put a hold on games through mid-December, but games are planned to resume activity once all proper tests have been cleared.

The NCAA has testing set in place to thin out instances of the virus spreading, and athletic programs around the country are dealing with quarantines and shutdowns following any positive tests.

The Mount is no different, and due to positive tests, the schedule has been shuffled around for both men’s and women’s teams. Games against Wagner College have been rescheduled from their original December 15-16 start date to January 26 and 27. All games and times are subject to change, and with record numbers across the country in Coronavirus cases, more schedule adjustments are likely to happen. 

The men’s team kicked off the season on a high note, taking down Morgan State in a close game on the road, where the team’s veteran players took over late to close the game out. The Mountaineers’ historic season-opening victory against Morgan State was the team’s first win against them since 1984.

The Mount hit a skid after its season opener, facing perennially tough competitors University of Maryland and Virginia Commonwealth University, dropping games to both.  

Despite several postponed and canceled games, the team will have time to regroup and lay the groundwork for the rest of the season after the winter break.

Jalen Gibbs and Damian Chong-Qui have been scoring leaders for the past three seasons, and both lead the team by a substantial amount heading into the holiday break.  

On the women’s side of the court, the team has faced similar challenges with COVID creeping into the conversation. Games against Coppin State University, Maryland, and La Salle have all been canceled due to athletic programs dealing with COVID issues.

Despite dropping its first two games of the season, the team has had positive results against tough competition. The Mount’s offense has thrived on a balanced attack, with everyone on the roster chipping in offensively.

Because of cancellations, Mount St. Mary’s has played just one game in Knott Arena this season, but the team’s home-court advantage was apparent.

The women comfortably beat the UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) Retrievers in a full-team effort, shoring up their offensive and defensive struggles from previous games.

The Mountaineers have the bulk of their schedule come January, where they take on more of their usual Northeast Conference rivals in multiple series of back-to-back games that will define the team’s season.

The abridged version of the men’s and women’s season follows unanimously approved guidelines by the NEC Council of Presidents to limit travel and potential exposure for student athletes and staff. From January 7, 2021, through the rest of the season, all games will be against in-conference teams.

Men’s and women’s schedules will be mirrored, too, to help limit the amount of travel programs have to do. Games will also be played on back-to-back days at the same site.

The NEC Tournament has been shortened to just finals and semifinals, with the top four teams competing for the NEC Championship. Regular season play resumes January 7, as both Mount St. Mary’s teams take on St. Francis Brooklyn in an away back-to-back matchup.

Mount St. Mary’s Basketball Mid-Season Wrap-Ups

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Blair Garrett

Men’s Basketball

With a little more than half the season in the books for the Mount St. Mary’s men’s basketball team, it’s time to take a look at the season as a whole thus far.

The team’s sub .500 record may be deceiving for the time being, with the strength of schedule heavily weighted at the beginning of the season; however, there is plenty to look forward to for the Mount throughout the rest of the season.

Mount St. Mary’s has just broken into its most important stretch of games, though, taking on a fleet of in-conference opponents in the coming weeks, where wins are as valuable as gold for the Mountaineers.

While playing just a handful of conference opponents so far this season, the Mount has played promising basketball and displayed flashes of what could make them a consistent machine on the court. The Mountaineers picked up their first conference win Saturday, January 19 against Wagner College, defeating the Seahawks in enemy territory for the first time since 2014.

The Mount has been getting solid contributions from freshmen Vado Morse and Damian Chong Qui, who are both averaging over 13 PPG (points per game) so far this season. Another spot of positivity for Mount St. Mary’s is the team’s 3-point shooting, which has been the bread and butter for the team in building leads in games.

The Mount cruised to a 16-point lead in the first half against conference opponents Central Connecticut, thanks to some stellar shooting from beyond the arc. Sustaining that shooting consistency for the entirety of the game has been a struggle, though, as the team fell off in the second half, ultimately dropping a close game to the Blue Devils.

There are still plenty of positives for this Mount St. Mary’s team to take away from the season. With the youth of this squad beginning to shine, it is only a matter of time until the routine and consistency becomes a staple for this squad, as the players continue to develop into a cohesive unit.

In the midst of a long home stretch for the Mount, the team looks to continue racking up wins in Knott Arena, but improvement on the road will be key for the Mountaineers going forward.

Women’s Basketball

Home court advantage has been a major factor for the women’s basketball team this season, posting a positive win record playing in front of the Emmitsburg faithful.

The energy from the crowd has powered the Mountaineers to post up 80 points three times this season at Knott Arena, with all three of those games resulting in a win.

The Mount has understandably not fared quite as well on the road, winning four of seven games outside of the team’s home court, with several of those losses at the hands of high-caliber opponents like Michigan University and Virginia Tech. 

With the conference games just kicking off, the recipe for the Mount is the same. Stacking wins in close games against conference rivals is a must if the team hopes to make a postseason push in the final few weeks of the season.

The women’s team sports a dynamic threat of youth and veteran scoring, giving the team balance throughout the lineup. Senior guard Juliette Lawless leads the team averaging nearly 18 PPG, with freshman Michaela Harrison and Sophomore Daly Sullivan following with 11.3 and 10.8 PPG, respectively.

With just a few weeks left in the regular season, the team is going to be relying heavily on its star players to continue performing night after night to keep the wins rolling in. Limiting defensive mistakes and capitalizing on the team’s strong 3-point game has worked for the Mountaineers so far this season, with five players clipping above 30 percent, and three of those shooting 36 percent or better.

The team’s upcoming stretch of rivalry games will prove to be the defining portion of the Mount’s season. In the coming weeks, Mount St. Mary’s faces off for the second time this season against Wagner College, Saint Francis University and Robert Morris, where the Mount will look to put some distance between themselves in the conference standings.        

  

Guard Damian Chong Qui added 11 points and a team-high seven assists in the team’s loss to Central Connecticut.