KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Chants pierced the air.
A locker room exploding with players chasing history made their standing known.
"FI-NAL Four! FI-NAL Four!"
The Carroll College Fighting Saints defeated Pikeville 72-56 on Saturday night in Municipal Auditorium to cement the program's second trip to the Fab Four of the NAIA Division I Men's Basketball National Championship.
"So many emotions," said Saints senior
Matt Wyman, who finished with 15 points, six assists and three rebounds. "I feel like we've been working to get here for four years and now we're finally here. You look around at the other seniors and you look in their eyes and know all those practices and all those summers of lifting and playing 3-on-3 and grinding just for the national tournament... We finally made it over that hump into the last four. It's just unbelievable."
It wasn't easy.
A quarterfinal matchup brings with it a higher demand for execution. Each possession felt as though it were more important than the last.
Each side shifted defenses multiple times throughout the first half, hoping to create any sort of confusion. An extra possession could be the difference in starting or breaking a run.
Carroll (28-7) found the right mix.
Dane Warp and
Match Burnham both had the scoring touch for Carroll early, pouring in points from all over the court. Burnham's 10 points were particularly impressive considering he was whistled for two tough foul calls and scored his points in just seven minutes of court time.
Even as the Saints shifted players in and out of lineups to deal with fouls, Carroll never let up. The Saints were aggressive on the boards and limiting second-chance points. Every contribution mattered. Every rebound, every clean pass, every fundamentally-sound play made the difference -- especially against a physical Pikesville.
The Bears feasted on rebounds just 24 hours earlier, bullying a Benedictine team during a double-overtime thriller. In that Second-Round matchup, Pikeville out-rebounded the Ravens 61-38, pulling down 23 offensive rebounds.
That would not be the case against Carroll.
Carroll greatly limited the Bears' rebounding efforts. While Pikeville out-rebounded the Saints, it was by a mere margin of seven.
Carroll guarded its lead well in the second half, as Pikeville couldn't finish its chances and the Saints found ways to grind out possessions.
Carroll broke the will of Pikeville early in the second half. After working for a 10-point lead at halftime, the Saints were unrelenting in their defense. Holding a team that averages 88 points to 27 points in the first half can test a team's fortitude.
Pikeville crumbled.
The Bears made just two of their first 10 shots in the second half and the Saints kept a stranglehold on their double-digit lead.
"Our defense carried us," said Burnham, who led the Saints with 20 points.
Frustration mounted for Pikeville, while the Saints remained composed.
"We just did a tremendous job defensively," Paulson said. "They could never get going."
Those efforts have sent the Saints to the national semifinals.
The Saints' last trip to the semis came in 2005. While the Saints are making their fourth consecutive trip to the national tournament, and this is the deepest run by this group of seniors, there is a Saint who's been here before: head coach
Kurt Paulson.
Paulson started at point guard on the Saints' 2005 national semifinals team. Now, in his first year as head coach of the Saints, he's steered an experienced team back to the semis.
For the seniors especially, breaking through and reaching their deepest run of the tournament is an incredible feeling. Carroll's descended upon Kansas City with talent before. Teams led by All-Americans like Zach Taylor or NAIA Player of the Year
Ryan Imhoff could not quite find the traction this Saints group has.
Wyman, Burnham,
Ife Kalejaiye and Alejandro Santos have played with them all. All four have believed throughout the year that this team had a championship makeup.
Now the Saints are two wins away from a title.
"I think we're really playing free this year," Wyman said. "I think we're all attacking. We're all looking to score and looking to pass. I think we just have a joy about us where it's so fun to play out there. You're not worried about doing anything wrong. We're just having fun. We're making plays. We're excited for each other. We have experience. It's different. We have three guys, plus Santos on the bench, who have been here three other times. We know what to expect. We've been to the arena. We've played these teams from these conferences plenty of times. We know what to expect. We're experienced out there."
Experience will be a common theme when the Saints take the court for the semis.
Carroll faces Frontier Conference foe Lewis-Clark State for a chance to reach the title game. It's the first known all-Frontier semifinals in the tournament's history.
It will be the fifth time Carroll and LCSC meet this season.
This time it means a little more.
Notes: Carroll and Lewis-Clark State hold a 2-2 record against each other this season. Carroll won the regular-season series 2-1, but the Warriors struck back in the Frontier Conference championship with a convincing win…
Dane Warp (12) and
Jovan Sljivancanin (11) also cracked double-digits in the scoring column for Carroll. Sljivancanin led the Saints with seven rebounds.
