Mount St. Mary's has been a .500 team the past two regular seasons, going 29-29. The Mountaineers are a good-but-not-great 20-14 in Northeast Conference play over that span.
But the Mount becomes a different team once NEC tournament play begins. During Jamion Christian's two years as coach, his team is 5-1 with the lone loss coming in last year's NEC title game. The Mount soundly beat Robert Morris, 88-71, Tuesday night to win the NEC championship and qualify for the NCAA tourney.
So, what happens to this team come tournament time? Christian said the way the Mountaineers play becomes a major advantage.
"I think our style really benefits [us] in a tournament setting because the [defensive] pressure is going to wear you down," he said Tuesday night. "The more games you play in a tournament, the more fatigued guys are. Coaches have a tendency to play their best players longer and so if we can get past the first game,basically our opponent has fatigued legs."
Christian has said since he arrived at the Mount that he wants his team to be the best-condition in the league, so the difficult practices and running regimens that take place before the games begin are all done with an eye toward March. He also reduced his top players' minutes over the final five regular-season games in an effort to ensure they would be fresh for the NEC tourney.
It's not just the defense, however. Christian said all the different sets the Mount runs on offense help this time of year, too.
"We have a lot of different things that we run, so I think we're a very difficult scout," he said. "We may play you the first time and run 30 plays, the next time we might run 30 different ones, and the third time we can run something totally different.
"So I think that's a big strength of ours when we play in tournament games, that if we can win the first game then it becomes a scouting battle between the coaching staffs, and I think we've been able to win that, obviously, five times in the last two years."
One of the keys to Tuesday night's win, however, seemed to be the way Christian simplified things on offense. He said he only called four plays all night, which he said was "definitely a career low for me."
The idea was simply to allow his players to make players, figuring senior guards Julian Norfleet, Rashad Whack and Sam Prescott would be in the right place and make the right plays.
"Last year I felt like a tried to overcoach a little bit during the championship game," Christian said. "And this year I wanted to make it about our players, make it about our team."
Some 300 fans made the trip to Robert Morris on Tuesday, with a few of them wearing "Sixth Man Club" T-shirts. The sight of those shirts was ironic as the NEC publicly acknowledged earlier in the day that the Mount had six players on the floor for 2.5 seconds against St. Francis Brooklyn in the quarterfinals.
It was in that game that the Mountaineers rallied from 19 points down midway through the second half to eventually win 72-71 on a Whack 3-pointer. To pull close enough for the last-second victory, however, one of the key plays with under a minute to go occurred when Whack stole an inbounds pass and took it in for a layup. Video evidence showed six Mountaineers on the floor during that sequence. Had any of the three officials noticed, that rules infraction would've resulted in a technical foul that would've been quite damaging to the comeback.
NEC commissioner Noreen Morris issued a statement Tuesday saying that she was "reviewing the incident with the NEC coordinator of officials as well as the administration and coaching staffs of the involved institutions."
Still, it was unclear what, if anything, could be done days after the fact, even as video of the sequence went viral on deadspin.com.
The Mountaineers returned to campus early Wednesday morning and were honored at a school rally on Wednesday afternoon. Christian said they would take a few days to enjoy the win before returning to practice Friday.
The Mount finds out its destination and opponent during Sunday evening's NCAA tournament selection show on CBS. With 16-16 overall record, the Mountaineers are expected to be assigned to one of the "First Four" games - first-round matchups to be played March 18-19 in Dayton, Ohio.
The Mountainers were also sent to Dayton the last time they qualified for the tournament, in 2008 when there was only one opening round matchup, known as the "play-in game." They beat Coppin State in that one for their first Division I tournament win.
Even without knowing the identity of his team's next opponent, Christian was already confident the tournament-tough Mountaineers will be every bit the matchup problem in the NCAA tourney they proved to be in winning the NEC tourney.
"I think our style of play is going to be difficult for any team we play," he said. "I know our guys are really excited."
