What's the deal with Max Good's clothes?
As Gus Johnson once so emphatically put it when describing Gonzaga's Cinderella run in the 1999 NCAA Tournament, "The slipper still fits!" For the Loyola Marymount Lions it's more like "the suit still fits". When talking about the Lions win over #8 Portland in the Opening Round game of the WCC Tournament on Wednesday, coach Max Good said "I brought four sport coats and one suit, so we plan on playing here Monday."
We've seen three of his sport coats so far.
As we prepare to see the fourth we need to look back on what this Lions squad has accomplished so far in Las Vegas. They won just one game during the WCC regular season. In Vegas they've won three. Never before in the WCC Tournament has the lowest seed won so many games. Back when the conference had eight teams the #8 seed made it to the semifinals five times. LMU was that #8 seed four of those five times.
The Lions have played three games so far in the WCC Tournament and, discounting the overtime period against San Francisco, have had three different leading scorers. Ashley Hamilton led the way against Portland, Anthony Ireland did so against Santa Clara and Godwin Okonji took charge against San Francisco (though Ireland would pass Okonji during the overtime period). Only five times during the regular season did someone other than Ireland lead the team in scoring.
Tonight it was Ireland that led the way but Hamilton that ensured the victory. After a rest in the middle of the second half Hamilton returned to the floor at the 7:00 minute mark. His presence was immediately felt. He scored six straight points for the Lions, recorded a rebound and a block as well as coming up with multiple other defensive stops that didn't show up on the stat sheet.
"It was winning time, we were down six and I knew it was winning time." Said Hamilton of his performance at that time, "I did what I could do to help the team win."
Santa Clara wouldn't go away during that stretch of the game. The Broncos held the lead when Hamilton returned, lost it three more times and tied the game twice. With four seconds left and down by one the Broncos' Brandon Clark, a career 80% free throw shooter, missed from the charity stripe, Taylor Walker got the rebound for the Lions, dumped it off to Anthony Ireland who was promptly fouled by Evan Roquemore. Ireland made the second of his two free throws to push the LMU lead to two. Kevin Foster had a chance to win it at the buzzer but his desperation three fell short.
The Lions have now won three games in three days. That's 300% more wins than they managed in the whole WCC regular season. Can they win a fourth? Will they be tired? "No!" Anthony Ireland said as emphatically as Gus Johnson did about that other WCC Cinderella. Which begs the question, what is the deal with Max Good's clothes, and how can his fourth sport coat improve upon his third, second and first? We'll see at 6:00 PM PST Saturday when the #9 LMU Lions face the original, now much removed, WCC Cinderella, the #1 Gonzaga Bulldogs.
No comments:
Post a Comment