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Cardinals get the win they thought they needed, but don't make postseason
February 26, 2007 —
Disappointment. Confusion. Frustration.
As the Cardinals walked off the court Saturday night after a dominating 102-81 victory over rival Northwood, those feelings listed above were just seconds away. They just didn't know it yet.
SVSU went into its final game of the season thinking that all it needed was for Ferris State to lose to Grand Valley State and a victory over the Timberwolves to make its first GLIAC tournament since the 1998-1999 season. The Cards got both and still didn't make the playoffs.
Blame Michigan Tech, which lost to Northern Michigan 56-34 earlier on Saturday. The loss dropped the Huskies to 8-10 in the conference, and, by the end of the night, into a three-way tie with SVSU and Ferris. Everybody except Cardinals coach Jamie Matthews, his assistant Scott Woods, and their families thought that SVSU would be in with a win and a Ferris loss.
Instead, GLIAC rules stipulate that if there is a three-way tie for a seed, the tiebreaker would consider all three teams head-to-head, as opposed to each team head-to-head. Tech went 3-1 against Ferris and SVSU, while the Bulldogs went 2-2. The Cardinals lost to Tech twice and split with Ferris, leaving them, at 1-3, as the odd team looking in. If Tech had won, the tiebreaker would have considered SVSU against Ferris, and the Cardinals would have made the tournament because of an early season win against Grand Valley.
Because Tech lost earlier in the day, Matthews and Woods knew their team was out before Saturday night's game even began. They didn't tell their players until after the blowout win.
"It was an easy decision," Matthews said. "It shows how young we are. A veteran team would have understood the situation."
Maybe, but maybe not. The decision to exclude SVSU from the playoffs came down to GLIAC Commissioner Tom Brown, and it wasn't made until midway through the second half.
There was loose precedent set during the 1997-1998 season, when two sets of teams shared a three-way tie and a 9-8 team made the tournament over a 10-8 team. In fact, the Cardinals were one of the teams that got in that year. Still, George Eastland, SVSU's outgoing interim athletic director, made his pitch to Brown.
"It's his job to make that decision, and I respect that," Eastland said.
The Cardinals were clearly disappointed and confused after the game. As they met with their families and friends outside the locker room, they couldn't explain why they hadn't made the playoffs.
"I explained it to them, but it is still complicated," Matthews said.
Clueless of their impending fate, the Cardinals came out on fire. They battled early foul trouble to centers Kevin Thornton and Mike Zuiderveen, who each had three fouls in the first half, and then went on a 21-4 run in the last five minutes of the half to take a 54-38 lead into halftime.
The Cardinals went 11-of-20 from the three-point line in the first half and 6-of-14 in the second to finish with 17 for the game, breaking the school record of 15.
Of those 17, 13 came from sophomores Lawrence Ross and Dorian Pierce and senior Sydney McDaniel, who set the tone with three treys in the game's first two and a half minutes.
"They came out with an incredible edge and confidence," Matthews said.
Pierce finished the game with 33 points on 13-of-18 shooting, including 4-of-6 from the behind the arc. The six-foot guard also came down with eight rebounds and dished out five assists. Ross scored 23 on 9-of-14 shooting, including 5-of-9 from three-point range, while McDaniel added 14 on 5-of-6 shooting, 4-of-5 on triples.
McDaniel's play showed that he simply didn't want Saturday night to be his last game, as did Martell Summers, who dished out 10 assists, scored six points, grabbed five rebounds, and had three steals. Kyle Sweger, playing in his last game, scored four points in five minutes of action.
"The seniors did a great job of bringing this program through some tough times," Matthews said.
Still, the discussion after the game came right back to the playoffs.
"It's a tough one to swallow," Matthews said. "Every coach has one goal: for his team to be playing their best basketball late in the year, and I think we did that the last three weeks."
The Cardinals won four of their last six games to close out the season. Only five teams finished with more wins than SVSU in the conference, making the Cards' fate even more troubling.
In some cases, the last team to make the tournament ends up facing a vastly superior top seed. That would not have been the case this year, Matthews said, if the Cardinals had grabbed the eighth seed. They would have traveled to Grand Valley, where they won earlier in the season.
"It's an extreme disappointment, because this team thinks it can win right now," he said. "They think they're better than Grand Valley. Each team won once. They wanted to find out who's better."
Despite the disappointment, Matthews was also appreciative about the season.
"We have a good basketball team today, February 24," he said. "On January 24, I couldn't say that. We would have had a great chance (in the tournament)."
With only three seniors departing, Matthews also showed excitement for next year. Many of the league's best teams will be losing most of their best players, Matthews said.
"I'm very excited about what we return," he said. "We're going to miss those three seniors, but it's not like we're scrambling to fill holes."