Whitworth men lose 74-71

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Give Kirby Dean some credit. When it comes to picking your own poison, Eastern Mennonite University’s seventh-year head basketball coach knows how to go with the non-lethal brand. Or at least he did on Friday evening when he decided to dedicate the majority of his defensive forces to covering Whitworth University’s vast array of outside shooters, rather than Nate Montgomery, the Pirates’ immensely talented 6-foot-8 senior center. And while Montgomery certainly gave the Royals some stomach pains with his 16-point, 13-rebound double-double, it wasn’t enough to offset his team’s lack of production from the perimeter as 10th-ranked EMU edged the fourth-ranked Bucs 74-71 in the third-round of the NCAA Division III men’s basketball tournament at Guilford University’s Ragan-Brown Field House. The loss snapped a school-record 25-game winning streak for Whitworth (26-3), which had two decent looks at 3-point shots that could have tied the game in the final few seconds, but saw they both bounce harmlessly off the rim. It also ended the college careers of Montgomery and four of his senior classmates, including Bo Gregg, who finished with a game-high 22 points, and Eric Beal, who scored 10 points and handed out five assists while dealing with EMU’s suffocating half-court defensive pressure. The Royals (25-4), who earned an at-large NCAA berth after sharing the regular-season Old Dominion Athletic Conference title with Guilford and then losing in the semifinals of the ODAC tournament, got 17 points from Todd Phillips and a 15-point, 10-rebound double-double from Eli Crawford. But it was the way his team defended the 3-point line that pleased Dean the most. “We only devoted one guy to (Montgomery), and we never doubled down on him,” Dean explained. “We kind of said that even if he went for 40 (points), we can probably still win the game. We really wanted to take away their outside shooters.” And aside from Gregg, who knocked down seven of his 13 attempts from 3-point range, the Pirates didn’t do much damage from the perimeter. Junior forward David Riley made only 2 of 9 3-point tries, and the rest of the team was just 1 for 11 from beyond the arc. “It was a great basketball game,” Whitworth coach Jim Hayford said. “When your team plays its last game, you want to know it gave its all, and I feel like our team gave its all tonight. We didn’t lose this game, Eastern Mennonite, they beat us, and you’ve got to give them credit. “We’re a really good shooting team, and we shot 25 percent in the second half, and I think their defense had a lot to do with that.” Whitworth turned the ball over 17 times against a Royals team that forced 21 turnovers a game during the regular season. But at least 10 of the Pirates’ turnovers came trying to enter the ball to post, where Montgomery was being hounded by a trio of different one-on-one defenders. “They were very physical inside, and I wasn’t responding to that,” said Montgomery, who made just 5 of 13 basket tries – most of which came from close range. “I wasn’t meeting some of the passes in there. I was settling down, instead of going out (to get them).” Whitworth, after building an early 10-point lead, found itself trailing 71-63 with just over 67 seconds left. But EMU managed to make only 1 of 6 free throws in the final minute and was up by only 74-71 after a pair of George Johnson foul shots with 13 seconds remaining. The Pirates, following a timeout, came back and got Gregg a good look at a 3-pointer from the left wing, but his shot bounced off the rim and into the hand of Montgomery, who dribbled outside the arc an launched another 3-point shot that also missed. “Those two looks from 3 in the last 12 seconds were great,” Hayford said. “We got the look from Bo off a curl and it didn’t get in. And we hoped Nate would get the rebound and dribble out for another 3. “So, we got the shots we wanted. They just didn’t go down.”