Box score
HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. - Rory Blanche, Zach Henifin, and their teammates on the Western Washington University men's basketball team will have a chance Saturday to win a national title in a men's sport for the first time in school history.
The Vikings built a 20-point lead early in the second half and held on to beat Stonehill (Mass.) College 71-66 Thursday night in an NCAA Division II national semifinal game at Northern Kentucky University's Bank of Kentucky Center.
The Vikings will play Montevallo (Ala.) University in Saturday's final at 1 p.m. at NKU.
“It's a dream come true really,” said Blanche. “The whole season has been really about our team and having players come off the bench making big plays for us.”
It's the first trip to the men's basketball national final for the Vikings. Western Washington advanced to the semifinals in its only other trip to the Elite Eight in 2001. The Vikings own the 1998 softball national championship and have won seven straight women's rowing national championships.
These players relish the chance to add to that trophy case.
“I played on a lot of teams from high school to community college to now Western that never made a championship,” Henifin said. “This feels amazing. It's all I can say.”
The Vikings made eight of 10 free throws in the final 46 seconds of the game to hold back a furious comeback attempt by Stonehill.
Junior guard John Allen made four straight free throws, junior guard Rico Wilkins made both of his attempts and Blanche and junior forward Paul Jones each hit one of two to increase what had been trimmed to a four-point lead back to 71-63.
Senior forward Patrick Lee's half-court buzzer-beating 3-pointer accounted for the final margin.
“Unlike yesterday, we made our free throws,” Vikings coach Brad Jackson said.
Blanche led the Vikings with 16 points. Allen scored 13, junior guard Richard Woodworth Woodworth scored 12 and Henifin added 10 points to go with a game high 12 rebounds.
Stonehill senior guard Andre Tongo's first field goal of the game with a little more than 11 minutes to play started a string of 10 unanswered points and a 15-2 run that got the Skyhawks to within six points at 52-46 with less than six minutes to play. Two free throws by junior guard Brian Hamor cut the deficit to five, 59-54, with 2:20 to play and a 3-pointer by junior guard Adam Fazzini from the left wing made it 61-57 with 1:23 to play.
The Skyhawks would get no closer.
“We just basically said that we wanted to manage the game out, we did not want to give up threes,” Jackson said. “Keep people in front of us.”
Stonehill was attempting a comeback victory for the second day in a row after rallying from a 10-point deficit with less than 10 minutes to play in a 91-90 win over West Liberty Wednesday.
“We'd come back before,” Lee said. “We just didn't get down on ourselves and we knew we'd make a run and get back in the game. Unfortunately, we just came up a little bit short.”
Hamor led all scorers with 22 points for the Skyhawks, 17 in the second half. Lee added 14.
“I thought our offense was running a little slow so I tried to be aggressive and create a little more,” Hamor said of his second-half effort.
A fast start helped the Vikings hold their lead. Western fell into an early hole for the second straight game and trailed 11-4 in the early minutes Thursday, but used a 16-0 run to take control of the game and outscored Stonehill 28-11 to close the half.
“I thought they dictated the tempo a little bit in the first half,” Stonehill coach David McLaughlin said.
Blanche sparked the offensive outburst with a 3-pointer to cut Stonehill's early lead to 11-8. The Vikings simply took off from there.
“Coach gives us a lot of free reign when we're out there,” Blanche said. “I don't shoot a lot of threes, but I feel confident when I step out there and they're sagging. I just pulled up and hit that one. I feel like a lot of the players feed off of others' energy, so when I get pumped up it kind of helps the whole team to lift up.”
Despite the early deficit, it was a much different start than the quarterfinal. Western Washington trailed Midwestern State 16-2 in the early-going of Wednesday's matchup before rallying for a 64-63 win.
“I was pleased with how we started the game and actually the first half,” Jackson said. “I thought it was good. In the second half, I thought we had pretty good balance offensively.
The Vikings took their biggest lead of the game, 47-27, on a put-back by Woodworth early in the second half, but Stonehill started to find its offensive rhythm at that point.
“At halftime, there was a discussion about being able to push the ball more and we certainly did that,” McLaughlin said. “Give our guys credit. I thought they fought back. I don't think there were five people in that stadium who thought we'd be able to cut it to what we cut it to.”
Count Jackson among those five.
“They made a nice run because we got a little tired,” Jackson said. “I was just pleased we were able to hang on and certainly pleased that we're in the final.”
