PSAC championship game recap - ESU 90, West Chester 85

NCAA Division II Tournament selection show (10:30 p.m., ncaa.com)

Column on 1990 PSAC champions (PDF)

EAST STROUDSBURG – Twenty-two years ago, Pocono Record sports editor Tom DeSchriver envisioned East Stroudsburg University's 1990 PSAC men's basketball championship team – the only one in school history until this weekend – returning to campus 25 years later to be recognized at halftime of an ESU-Millersville basketball game.

DeSchriver wrote the column as the Warriors came back from western Pennsylvania after vanquishing the defending champion Marauders, 108-102 in double-overtime, to cap an improbable run to a PSAC title at Slippery Rock.

Five members of the 1990 team – Lamarr Alston, Stan Brown, Evan Engle, Todd Painton and Lonnie White – had an early look at the reunion in a locker room in West Chester's Hollinger Field House at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday night after the Warriors' 2012 team joined the 1990 squad as PSAC champions with a 90-85 win over the Golden Rams.

That team, led by seniors Jonathan Roberts, the late Ed Urie and Jacques Armand, along with Painton, Keith Fisher and Mike DelGrosso, will gladly induct current Warriors Terrance King, Duane Johnson, Whis Grant, seniors Eric Bryan and Russell Graham III and the rest of the 2012 team into their fraternity.

The parallels between the teams are strikingly similar, beginning with the bench. ESU 10th-year head coach Jeff Wilson was a 26-year old assistant under Sal Mentesana, who took the Warriors from a three-win season the year before his arrival to the PSAC title in his third year at the helm.

Wilson later followed Mentesana to Division I Lehigh before returning to Koehler Fieldhouse in 2002, inheriting a four-win team from the year before. Implementing Mentesana's 94-foot style to build the program, ESU was in the PSAC Tournament in his fourth year, the NCAA Tournament with a school-record 24 wins in his eighth and earned its second PSAC title and third NCAA Tournament appearance this winter.

The 1990 Warriors were 17-12 before their PSAC Tournament run – 75-72 vs. Cheyney, 103-102 (OT) at No. 2-ranked Slippery Rock and 108-102 (2OT) vs. Millersville. They were 8-8 in early January after returning from a trip to Hawaii, where they were 1-5 in a seven-day stretch against several top Division II programs, before going 13-5 to finish the season in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

The 2012 Warriors were 17-11 entering the PSAC Tournament and trailed at the half in all three of their games, winning 99-91 (OT) at Kutztown and 66-58 vs. Mercyhurst before ending West Chester's 10-game winning streak in the final.

Much of the credit for their resiliency can go to a tough early season schedule, when they were 6-5 on December 9 but lost by a combined 12 points to eventual WVIAC champion West Liberty and runner-up Charleston in a season-opening tournament at Shippensburg, and fell 65-64 on a late tip-in to two-time defending PSAC champion IUP.

The comeback kids – the first No. 4 seed to win a PSAC title since 1991 – were down at least seven points in every game last week. They trailed by seven at Kutztown, 11 vs. Mercyhurst and 10 at West Chester before storming back with big second periods to move on.

Both teams were seconds away from elimination before advancing, the 1990 team in the semifinals against Slippery Rock and this year's team in the quarterfinals at Kutztown.

Keith Fisher hit a jumper with less than 10 seconds left for the win over the Rock 22 years ago.

And Terrance King began a run that rivals anything in program history with an offensive rebound, putback and three-point play with 6.2 seconds left to force overtime on Tuesday night at Kutztown after the Golden Bears took an 83-80 lead on a three-pointer by Micah Fraction with 22 seconds left.

The free throw gave King, a career 61.8-percent foul shooter entering the season, a 10-for-11 night from the line and a career-high 27 points. He proceeded to score ESU's first five points in OT, including another three-point play, to finish with 32 points and 10 rebounds to put the Warriors into the PSAC Final Four for the third straight year.

Against Mercyhurst, the Lakers slowed ESU's tempo and led 33-25 at halftime. The first five minutes of the second half were a different story – the Warriors went on a 19-2 run, keyed by seven points from Bryan, and never relinquished their lead to reach the final for the second time in school history.

On Saturday night, West Chester put the Warriors down early again as they trailed 21-11 eight minutes into the contest on a floor where they faced an 18-4 deficit exactly two weeks earlier, when WCU won 71-65.

And just as they did all week, Wilson's team came back. An 8-0 run gave the Warriors a 59-56 lead with 13 minutes left, and after West Chester made it 75-all at the 4:24 mark, they put together another 8-0 stretch to win the championship.

That burst, capped by an offensive rebound and emphatic dunk by King with 1:52 to play, sealed Tournament MVP honors for the second team All-PSAC East selection and 2010 PSAC East Freshman of the Year.

King had 67 points and 34 rebounds in the tournament, eerily similar numbers to the 64 points and 39 boards from Jonathan Roberts – arguably one of the top five players in PSAC history – in 1990.

Roberts posted three straight double-doubles – 12 points and 13 rebounds vs. Cheyney, 27 and 13 at Slippery Rock and 25 and 13 vs. Millersville. King had one double-double, with 32 and 10 at Kutztown, and missed two others by one point and one rebound – 9 points and a career-high 15 rebounds vs. Mercyhurst, and 26 points and 9 rebounds against West Chester.

King's averages of 22.3 points and 11.3 rebounds for the week are almost identical to Roberts' average of 21.9 points and 11.4 rebounds over the final three years of his career, when he was the three-time PSAC East Player of the Year and a two-time All-American.

With King putting the Warriors on his back, the rest of the team stepped up in supporting roles.

Duane Johnson, ESU's first team All-PSAC East forward, averaged 13.3 points and 6.7 rebounds and played lock-down defense on each team's top perimeter player – most notably limiting Mercyhurst's Matt Lee to 11 points on 4-of-17 shooting on Friday night.

Johnson, who won the 2009 state title as a senior at Penn Wood, had three all-around games – 12 points and 8 rebounds at Kutztown, 9 points and 8 boards vs. Mercyhurst and 19 points, 4 rebounds and 4 steals in the title game. His baseline drive and impressive right-handed dunk with 8:30 left gave ESU a five-point lead, energizing the Warriors and their hundreds of fans who made the trip to Hollinger Field House.

Russell Graham III, who was second team All-PSAC East, returned from missing all but seven games last year due to injury to have an exceptional season at point guard, scoring 12.6 points per game and ranking second in the PSAC in assists. His 164 assists this season are sixth in school history.

A transfer from New Hampshire, Graham was originally recruited by ESU out of Norristown High School before a state tournament run landed him a scholarship offer in the America East Conference, where he was third in assists per game as a sophomore. He came back to the Warriors last year before his season-ending injury, but was a catalyst for the postseason run, tying his career-highs with 19 points and 9 assists at Kutztown and scoring 16 points against West Chester.

Eric Bryan, the Warriors' lone four-year senior, had his first career double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds on the same floor where he suffered an injury on February 18 that forced him to miss his Senior Day game a week later.

Limping into the postseason, Bryan had 7 points and 4 rebounds in 14 minutes at Kutztown before posting 11 points – including 7 in the 19-2 run – against Mercyhurst and his double-double in 33 minutes in the championship game. The Warriors' first round game in the NCAA Tournament will be the 113th of his career, fourth-most in school history.

Whis Grant, the lone underclassman in the starting lineup, is the first freshman to lead ESU in scoring on a postseason team in school history and ranks second all-time among Warriors freshmen with 420 points (14.0 per game). He has scored at least 18 points in 11 games this season, including 30 in his first collegiate game against No. 6-ranked West Liberty in a 96-92 loss, and a team-high 18, with 14 in the second half, in the semifinal win over Mercyhurst.

Grant has won a championship in three straight seasons. He helped Plymouth-Whitemarsh to a state title as a senior in high school in 2010, won the national prep championship at St. Thomas More (Conn.) last year and produced 14.0 points per game, right on his season average, while shooting 23-for-24 at the foul line in three PSAC Tournament games.

Freshman guard Matt Tobin, the Warriors' top bench scorer with 7.9 points per game, was a junior in high school at Hopatcong (N.J.) when he watched his brother Mike lead ESU to the NCAA Tournament and its school record-setting 24 wins in 2010. Two years later, he holds the Sussex County scoring record with 2,350 career points and has scored 244 points in his first season at ESU, including 35 three-pointers and a huge three-point play as part of the first 8-0 run in the second half on Saturday night.

The rest of the bench includes two imports from Detroit in guard/forward Gerald Bridges, Jr. and point guard Blair Ramsey. High school teammates at University of Detroit Jesuit, Bridges came to ESU along with Johnson and King as part of the heralded freshman class in 2009-10, while Ramsey played a season at Division III Adrian (Mich.) before making the trek east on Interstate 80.

Bridges, a shooting guard/wing his first two seasons, has played more than 20 minutes per game this year, primarily as a backup to Johnson, King and Bryan in the frontcourt. He has still maintained his outside touch, going 41-for-113 (.363) from the three-point line, and has pulled down more than four rebounds per game. He hit a three-pointer in each PSAC Tournament game, all in key situations, for a team that averaged 6.3 three's per game entering the postseason but won their title making just seven during the week.

Ramsey missed almost all of the fall semester due to injury but returned to play in 19 games behind Graham at the point. A solid defender and floor general who has just 14 turnovers in 150 minutes of action, Ramsey capped the initial 8-0 run in the title game with two free throws and is 20-for-24 at the line this season.

Freshman Lamont Tillery, a standout basketball and football player from Pocono Mountain East, has also played valuable minutes at both forward spots and is averaging 4.0 points and 2.5 rebounds per game. Other contributors have included redshirt sophomore forward Dan Clapp, redshirt freshman guard Muhamadou Kaba, sophomore forward Zechariah Runkle, redshirt junior guard Matt Labick and freshman center Kevin Anema from Pocono Mountain West.

Led by the experience of Bryan, Johnson, King and Bridges – who will all set a school record on Saturday with their ninth career postseason game – the 2011-12 Warriors know they still have work to do, but will be able to reflect when the season is over.

And some day, they will be the teammates who gather to greet a future Warriors team in a gym somewhere in Pennsylvania after winning another PSAC championship.