The Morning After, or "0-for-2 is bad"

After all my trash talk to the Hampton bloggers, after all my fired up energy for what promised to be the biggest day in the history of Delaware State University athletics, it ended disappointingly as both the men's and women's basketball team dropped the MEAC title games yesterday to Hampton and Coppin State respectively.

Yeah, we lost. It's disappointing on several accounts because the rise of DSU athletics, which has been sort of a like a mid-pack program in the MEAC for at least the last 15-18 years, has been well documented, and two championships in one of the two major revenue sports (football being the other) would have looked good for State on so many levels. Alas, it was not to be.

The men's game I watched at my sister's house because she had DirecTV (thanks alot ESPN for taking our game off basic cable; you're real geniuses for that), and the Hornets lead 21-17, then the starters sat, as did the intensity. Hampton took the lead into the locker room after Roderick Coleman picked off an errant Alain Walker pass (why Walker was in the game for DSU is beyond me), and layed it up off the glass for a 23-21 advantage that would swell to as many as 16 in the second half. The Hornets fought back to get within as little as two points behind Tracey Worley, Darrin Shine, and Troy Roundtree, not to mention timely baskets by Joe Dickens and Elyon Bush, but they ran out of time, and the Pirates earned their trip to The Big Dance.

I won't take away from what HiU did by blaming our players. Hampton had to win four games in four nights to win the championship, and the last three came against some pretty good teams (Bethune-Cookman, their Seven Cities Rival Norfolk State, and of course DSU). Watching that game last night, there was a different level of intensity the Pirates had from last year's game. They hustled, they rebounded, they actually used the post game this year. The bottom line; they didn't take us for granted this year. We snuck up on the MEAC last year, and this year folks knew what we were going to do, and Hampton was the only team to stop it when it mattered. Congrats to the Pirates, and rep the MEAC well in the NCAA tournament.

As for the Hornets, we will have to settle for an NIT bid, hopefully a home game, but they'll have a full seven months before '06-'07 practice starts to think about the one that got away. But with MEAC player of the year Jahsha Bluntt, Darrin Shine, Troy Roundtree, Aaron Fleetwood, and Joe Dickens being seniors next year, the Hornets have another shot at the MEAC crown. So not all is lost. Well, it is for this year.