ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 9, 1996 TAG: 9603120041
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL UTHMAN STAFF WRITER
ROANOKE FALLS in a big way in the NCAA men's basketball tournament.
Roanoke College hadn't scored, Illinois Wesleyan hadn't missed, and Nathan Hungate had been whistled for a charging foul.
Hungate turned, walked down the court and raised his arms as if to say, ``What next?"
Did he really have to ask?
Illinois Wesleyan beat the Maroons 116-88 Friday night in an NCAA South-Midwest Sectional tournament basketball game that defied all memories and comprehension.
``It went from bad to worse," said Maroons coach Page Moir.
Roanoke was down 17-0 before Tim Braun made a bank shot to give the Maroons their first points of the game at 15:20 in the first half. By halftime, the aptly-named Titans were leading 70-23.
Aside from 300 or so Illinois Wesleyan fans who at 4 a.m. Friday boarded buses bound for Salem, the Bast Center crowd of 1,788 was baffled and bewildered. Even though their mouths were wide open, they didn't make a sound. They couldn't pick their jaws up off the floor.
``I couldn't believe they came into our home court and beat us that bad in the first half,'' said Roanoke junior guard Jason Bishop.
Bad was a good word for it. The Titans shot 71.4 percent from the field and 70.0 percent from 3-point range in the first half, compared to 29.4 and 16.7 for Roanoke. Star forwards Brian Crabtree and Chris Simich outscored the entire Maroons squad 36-23. Three Maroons had three fouls. From their comments, fewer than that had hope for a victory.
``At one point I turned to Kevin [Martin, assistant coach] and said, `Hell, are these guys better than Davidson?''' said Moir, thinking back to last season's 93-68 loss to the Wildcats. ``He said, `They might be.'
``We've never been in that situation," said Moir. ``We were shellshocked by the way they hit us in the first half.''
The Titans landed so many of their blows in the first half that coach Dennie Bridges never let his starters take off their warmups in the second. He began the second half with his second team and finished with his third team on the floor.
``We got a good workout in the first half,'' Bridges said. ``We talked about [letting the starters sit] at the half and there were no dissenters.''
Illinois Wesleyan was thinking ahead. The Titans play Washington (Mo.) tonight at 7 for the right to advance to next weekend's Final Four.
But the Titans weren't the only ones jumping the gun. With 3:04 remaining, public address announcer Pete Peterson invited the fans to come out Saturday and watch ``Washington, Missouri, face Illinois Wesleyan.'' Peterson, however, couldn't have been faulted if he had made the announcement long before that.
The final horn came both too soon and not soon enough for the Maroons.
``The lowest point was when the buzzer went off and we realized the season's over,'' said Roanoke forward Jon Maher.
The Maroons finished with a 24-5 record, eighth-best in their history. They won an Old Dominion Athletic Conference title. And they graduate only one player, Steve Camara.
``I know they won't want this to ever happen to them again, so they'll have incentive for next year,'' Bridges said.
Maher had nine rebounds to lead the Maroons. Freshman guard Dewayne Bullock was an unlikely leading scorer with 11 points.
Illinois Wesleyan had four players in double figures, led by Simich's 20 and Crabtree's 16.
Although Bridges said he'd never dreamed he'd coach a game like this - ``Never, not in my wildest dreams'' - he did admit that he'd wished for it. It actually crossed his mind earlier in the night.
``We were watching Washington handle Christopher Newport and I thought to myself, `God, why can't we have a game like this?'''
The answer to that question was a dream for the Titans and a nightmare for the Maroons.
NOTE: Please see microfilm for scores.
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. Brady Knight of Illinois Wesleyanby CNB(left) knocks the ball away from Roanoke College's Tim Braun on
Friday at the Bast Center. Illinois Wesleyan whipped the Maroons
116-88. color.