A year ago, when Mount St. Mary's reeled off nine wins in a row to reach the Northeast Conference tournament title game against LIU Brooklyn, the Mountaineers were beaten soundly. Coach Jamion Christian said then that perhaps the lights were too bright and his team wasn't quite ready for the moment.
Now they're ready, he said Saturday after the Mount beat Wagner 77-72 in an NEC semifinal.
"I feel like we're a 100 percent better team than we were a year ago because we can withstand tough times," Christian said. "A year ago we won nine games in a row, but we didn't trail in any of those games and we were playing the bottom half of the league most of those games, and then we did play well in the conference tournament. But we're playing better now because we just have more substance."
The fourth-seeded Mountaineers (15-16) play at top-seeded Robert Morris (21-12) Tuesday night at 7 for the NEC title. The two teams played at the same site in a semifinal won by the Mount last March.
But last year Christian had to spend a lot of time convincing his players they were not the same team they had been the past two years under the previous regime, when they went 19-42. He didn't have to convince them of anything this year.
"A year ago, we got the chance to get to the championship game, and I talked to Julian a couple of days after and he said,'Coach, you know, you talked about us being able to win a championship from your first day here and I didn't necessarily believe that. You talked it into existence,'" Christian recalled.
"The difference is now, all year, we didn't talk about championships, but we worked at a championship level. We were championship-connected with one another."
The Mountaineers got the expected production (53 points) from senior guards Norfleet, Rashad Whack and Sam Prescott against Wagner, but they also got a big game out of forward Gregory Graves off the bench. The 6-foot-7 sophomore scored 12 points and grabbed seven rebounds, providing a lift with an alley-oop dunk in the second half when Wagner was rallying.
"The young guy's really starting to come along. He's a really versatile player," said Christian, calling Graves a 'big-time' high school player from Virginia who led his team to back-to-back state championship games. "He's great in games like this because he played a lot of games in high school as the best player on the floor. [Saturday]
"He has a confidence level that sometimes we have to try to break down a little bit. But the reality of it is, in games like this, guys like him and [freshman] Byron Ashe are going to play well because they're fearless."
And now they get their biggest test to date, against the regular-season league champions and NEC Player of the Year Karvel Anderson.
"They're one of the best teams in the league, probably one of the best mid-major teams," Christian said. "Anytime you're playing meaningful games in March, you know the team you're playing against is going to be talented."
