If the final act of the Eagles' season followed any script, it reeked of bitter existentialism.
For the first time in four tries, the AU Men's Basketball team (16-12, 8-6 in the Patriot League) fell short of the PL finals, crashing to a 53-35 defeat at Bucknell in a March 6 PL semifinal before 3,212 hostile fans at Sojka Pavillion in Lewisburg, Pa.
Bucknell's defense gagged AU's offense throughout and suffocated its scoring guards, sophomore Andre Ingram and senior Jason Thomas. Ingram scored five points, all in the second half, on 2-of-12 shooting. Thomas scored one point in his final game, a free throw with 1:22 to play, while missing seven field goal attempts.
The Bison (22-9, 10-4 PL) rode their defense again five days later in a PL-clinching 61-57 win at Holy Cross Friday. The Bison clinched their first-ever PL title and their first berth in the NCAA tournament since 1989. As a No. 14 seed, Bucknell will play No. 3 seed Kansas in the first round of the Syracuse bracket, one of four regional brackets.
In the PL semifinal, despite ending as a convincing Bucknell win, the Eagles lingered through a discombobulated first half that ended with Bucknell ahead, 18-16. But after AU did not pounce on an early second-half stretch in which the Eagles benefited from some questionable officiating, including a called charge on Bison center Chris McNaughton, Bucknell started grinding the Eagles into exhaustion.
A 14-3 Bucknell run - sparked by seven second-chance points - followed AU's missed opportunity and put the Bison up 36-24 with 12:02 left. AU's offense never showed the firepower to dig out a deficit like that.
"We never got going offensively," said AU head coach Jeff Jones. "But what hurt us was when they started being able to score not only on the initial effort, but on putbacks. A couple of those were real back-breakers."
Bucknell outrebounded AU, 42-22, and led in second-chance points, 13-1. The Eagles, who tired late, didn't help their cause by often settling for rushed shots from the perimeter. Ingram, who sat out most of the first half with two fouls, never found his rhythm. While searching for it, he missed shots on four straight AU possessions as the deficit expanded.
The Bison, after shooting 26 percent from the floor in the first half, dumped the ball to big men McNaughton and forward Chris Niesz throughout the second half. Both scored 11 points, while guard Charles Lee added 10. Bison perimeter threat Kevin Bettencourt matched Thomas' futility, finishing with one point, but it didn't matter.
Only senior forward Matej Cresnik played well offensively for AU, scoring 12 points in his final game after scoring a career-high 30 against Navy in the PL quarterfinals. Ingram, despite his futility, finished tied with senior forward Patrick Okpwae as AU's second-highest scorers. Okpwae's five points - and four fouls - came in just 12 minutes of action.
Without Okpwae or senior forward Raimondas Petrauskas as threats, the Bison focused their defense on Ingram and Thomas.
"They do a good job in the way they defend me," Ingram said. "It's not just one straight way. They'll start in man to man, sometimes they'll switch it up, and sometimes they'll double off screens. That poses problems a lot of times."
As time ticked down, most fans watched the scoreboard to keep tabs on a nail-biter in Worcester, Mass., between Holy Cross and Lehigh in the other PL semifinal.
Bucknell would've hosted the championship if Lehigh won, so the crowd roared when the announcer said Lehigh led late, and moaned when he later declared the game had gone to overtime. The Bucknell student section began chanting "Let's go Lehigh" as time ran out, but Holy Cross won, 57-53.
And for the first time since AU entered the PL, the Eagles were out of the final. The reason was simple, Jones said.
"The previous three times (in the semifinals), we played against teams we were better than," Jones said. "Today, Bucknell is better than us. We've been able to accomplish some good this year, but we came in knowing we had certain shortcomings."
AU advanced to the semifinal by beating Navy for the third time this season, 85-83, in overtime at Sojka on March 4 behind Cresnik's 30-point explosion.
The Navy team AU played was vastly improved from years past, and had regular-season wins against Bucknell, Lafayette, Lehigh and Colgate to show for it. But it couldn't surpass the Eagles, who in three wins have beaten Navy by a combined total of 15 points.
After leading much of a hotly contested affair, the Eagles yielded a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from guard Corey Johnson that tied the game at 77 at the end of regulation. In overtime, sophomore guard Linas Lekavicius put AU ahead for good with two late buckets.
Aside from Cresnik, Ingram and Petrauskas scored 13 points each, while Lekavicius added 12.
For Navy, big men Greg Sprink and Matt Fannin each scored 20 points, while guard David Hooper added 17.
