Mount St. Mary's coach Jamion Christian has made "This is Our Time" his team's postseason theme.
Fans will find out if this is, indeed, his Mountaineers' time when they play at top-seeded Robert Morris Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Northeast Conference tournament championship game.
It didn't seem likely that this could be "their time" eight months ago, when last year's NEC Rookie of the Year, Shivaughn Wiggins, became the fifth significant player from 2012-13 to transfer out of the Mount.
It didn't seem likely five months ago, when the Mountaineers started 0-5, lost a pair of players to season-ending injuries, and were relying on walk-ons for significant minutes.
It sure didn't seem likely six days ago, when the Mountaineers trailed St. Francis Brooklyn by 19 points with 9:15 remaining in their NEC quarterfinal game and were still down by eight with less than a minute to play.
Christian likes to say they turn adversity into prosperity.
"The reality of it is, we've been through so many tough times together and there's no substitute for that," he said. "Before you win a championship, you've got to have championship character. I think we've developed it over the last two years."
Exactly two years before the Mount's quarterfinal win, former MSM coach Robert Burke officially resigned. While he left behind only a 19-42 record, he also left behind some good players.
Julian Norfleet had just finished his sophomore year as the team's leading scorer, and he spent that year practicing with guards Rashad Whack and Sam Prescott, who weren't yet eligible to play in games because of the NCAA's transfer rules.
"I knew Sam and Rashad were coming in, and I knew we were going to be talented," Norfleet recalled.
That talent came together at the end of last season, with nine consecutive wins before falling at LIU Brooklyn in the title game. The Mountaineers then withstood the defections, the injuries and the rough start to put together their best regular-season conference finish in four years.
They began the NEC tournament with the stunning comeback culminating in Whack's game-winning 3-pointer to beat St. Francis, 72-71. They won 77-72 at Wagner in the semifinal round despite playing on the road, against the hottest team in the league, with Norfleet playing only eight minutes in the first half because of foul trouble.
"Even when certain things don't go our way," Whack said, "we always keep our focus and stay together."
Christian calls that his team's biggest strength.
"We're really close together," he said. "Our guys will play for one another. [They] showed that out there the last two games."
Some of that bonding ocurred early in the season, when the Mountaineers were on the road losing by large margins to the likes of West Virginia, Villanova and Brigham Young.
"You're playing BYU and you're the only people from Maryland there, and they're going on a run, it tests your character," Christian said. "Those games early in the year, although our record isn't great because of it, I thought it made our guys grow closer together."
Now, on a three-game winning streak that matches their best of the season, the Mountaineers play a Robert Morris team that had its own issues en route to a 21-12 overall record and a 14-2 mark in the NEC. Two players quit the team in January and four more were suspended for undisclosed violations of university policy.
The Colonials are led by senior guard Karvel Anderson. The NEC Player of the Year, Anderson scored all of his 21 points in the second half Saturday as Robert Morris beat St. Francis (Pa.) in the NEC semifinals. They also have forward Lucky Jones and point guard Anthony Myers-Pate, the only other players who've been starters all season.
Robert Morris is not deep, and coach Andrew Toole has turned to a 2-3 zone to camouflage any deficiencies. The Colonials have not allowed any team to score more than 70 points since Feb. 1. The Mount leads the NEC in scoring.
"Robert Morris is a great team. They're going to play a ton of zone," Christian said. "We haven't shot the ball too well through this postseason so I think we'd be looking forward to the zone because we have some guys who can really knock down some shots.
"But both teams will be excited. Championship game. NCAA berth on the line."
The significance of how far Mount St. Mary's has come to reach this point, and how much the Mountaineers have overcome, isn't lost on four-year starter Norfleet.
"To go into the championship last year and go all summer and put in the work that we did to make it back to the championship," he said, "it's just tremendous, and it shows how much we believe in coach Christian and the system and everything."
That belief in their coach, that bond that formed through tough times, has the Mount on the brink of its first NEC title since 2008.
"Whatever we do, if we do it together and believe in one another, we can achieve anything," Christian said. "I think you get to watch that every time we play, just how much we believe in one another. It's rarely one person dominating a game. It's always a team effort, and that's the way basketball should be played."
