Tales from the Road
By Gary Braham 2-1-2000
The site of this years basketball tournament was Lafayette's brand new Kirby sports center. The gym looked great, but overall I thought it wasn't as fan freindly as it was at Army the year before, maybe just because Army had a lot of empty seats and could let you get away with more. There are three Patriot League teams very close by, so attendance was pretty good.
The first game of the tournament was a womens game vs Army. Colgate got off to an incredible start. They were just getting everything right and Army was falling apart. The score was 18-2 before Army started to come back due to some Colgate mistakes. Remembering a dissapointing loss to Army in overtime after we had led for most of the game earlier this year, I knew this game wasn't over yet. Colgate led 29-21 at the half. Army would pull to within 4 with 8 minutes left, but Colgate pushed ahead again. The final was 59-49, and Colgate would move on to the semi-finals for the first time in 4 years.
The mens first opponent was Holy Cross. Now Holy Cross has some really tall guys, who can dunk pretty impressivly. But you foul them when they shoot, the free throws are not pretty. Thats the sort of game it was. Holy Cross shot just 37% from the field, but Colgate was taking lots of fouls, and not doing that great on offense either. Colgate really should have had the lead at halftime, but the teams went to the locker room with a score of 18-18, a really low scoring game. Colgate got smarter in the second and started building a nice sized lead. At about the 5 minute mark we were only up by 4, when we began an 11-2 run that would give Colgate the win and set a PL record by advancing to the semi's for 8 consecutive years.
The women had the chance to advance to the finals, when the met the Bison of Bucknell. Bucknell was the favorite, but Colgate did hand them a surprise loss at home earlier in the year. It was a slow start for Colgate, we were making mental mistakes and misplaying the ball. We took the lead briefly, but fell behind again by halftime. Colgate had its biggest lead of the game, 5 points, early in the second, but it wouldn't last. The final minutes of the game were extremly exciting. Colgate was down, but coming back fast. We kept fouling Bucknell intentionally, and they made 15 consecutive free throws. Colgate kept coming though. We had a chance, but 3 of our starters fouled out, which meant we really couldn't go for a tie. We made two mental mistakes that cost us the lead when a wide open layup was negated by traveling and we fouled a player intentinally when we really shouldn't have at all. The mistakes cost us the game, and the chance to play in the finals. It was a real heartbreaker.
The mens semi started right after that. Our opponent was Navy, they had an excellent team, that eventually lost to Lafayette in the finals. Whoops, just gave away the ending to this game, that's allright, it wasn't much of a game anyway. We made 33% of our shots from the floor. Our defense did thier best, but couldn't really stop the Midshipmen. Our offense just looked unusually slow. We wouldn't take a shot until the shot clock had just about expired, and even after all that setting up, it wasn't very good. Navy held a large advantage in rebounds as well, they took 3 out of 4 of our missed shots.
Pat Diamond had a good game for his last time playing for Colgate, he recieved a nice ovation when he fouled out near the end of the game. The final score...well, if you really want to know, it was 82-56.
Colgate did have thier share of fans at the tournament. They were very quiet though. Colgate sent the cheerleaders and band as well. The cheerleaders might have been the best at the tournament, the band, well, they were the Colgate band. Both these groups provided a lot of energy and cheering during the weekend though. Like I said, the arena was very nice, except for these flashbulb lights near my head that gave me a headache and made me see a large green dot in the center of my field of vision fo several minutes. Arch rivals, Lafayette and Lehigh met in the mens semi's, the arena was packed for that one and very loud, but we weren't allowed too see becuase I guess the arena was to small so we got relegated to a hallway behind the gym. Easton was pretty nice too, we got to walk around it for awhile and saw the Crayola factory. This was the Patriot League's tenth year.