Pirates fade into sunset

GREENSBORO, N.C. – It was a team built to play in a Final Four, a team Jim Hayford fully expected to take to Salem, Va, next weekend to play for a national championship, and a team that will never be again.

“It was emotional in the locker room,” Hayford, Whitworth University’s ninth-year head coach, said Friday night after his fourth-ranked Pirates had their Final Four dreams dashed by a 74-71 loss to 10th-ranked Eastern Mennonite University in the third round of the NCAA Division III men’s basketball tournament at Ragan-Brown Field House.

“This is just such a wonderful group of guys. It’s tough to accept that it’s over.”

But it is.

Late Friday night, Whitworth officials traveling with the team were scrambling to change plane reservations and get the Pirates, who finished 26-3 and tied a single-season school record for wins, on a Saturday morning flight back home.

It was their last flight together as a team, and while there may well be many future Pirates teams that make similar such postseason odysseys, none will be this team.

Among the missing will be three seniors – Nate Montgomery, Bo Gregg and Eric Beal – all of whom made huge contributions throughout the year as the Bucs put together a school-record 25-game winning streak en route to running the table against Northwest Conference opponents.

All three came up with solid career-capping efforts in the loss to Eastern Mennonite.

The best came from Montgomery, a 6-foot-8, 240-pound four-year letterwinner and the NWC’s reigning player of the year, who will probably be missed the most among the departing seniors.

Montgomery posted a 16-point, 13-rebound effort against EMU, despite the Royals’ relentless inside pressure and physical play.

He leaves having been a part of 91 victories – the most of any player in school history – and four consecutive NCAA D-III tournaments.

Gregg, a 6-5 forward, led the Bucs in scoring with 22 points on Friday and also pulled down eight rebounds. Beal was a rock at the point, scoring 10 points and handing out five assists.

It was the stocky 5-11 Beal who seemed to own the Royals in the early going. He effectively got the Pirates into their half-court offense against suffocating defensive pressure and occasionally found his way past EMU’s long and athletic defenders off the dribble.

But with just less than 9 minutes left in the first half, and the Bucs leading 24-20, Beal picked up his second foul and spent the next 4 minutes on the bench. Once he returned, he never seemed to be able to get his team back in the kind of offensive rhythm it had early.

Whitworth’s biggest issue was its inability to make baskets from the perimeter, where it finished just 10 for 33 from 3-point range, despite Gregg’s 7-for-13 effort.

“I don’t know if it was the travel, the unfamiliarity or what,” Hayford said of his team’s dismal outside shooting. “I’d rather give credit to their defense. I mean, (junior forward) David Riley is a great shooter who is going to leave Whitworth with every 3-point record we have, and he went 2 for 9.

“And Eric (0 for 3) has had games where he’s made seven 3s, so I guess I have to give the credit to their defense.”

Hayford also praised the effort of his team, saying it left little or nothing on the floor in the wake of the season-ending loss.

That effort did not go unnoticed by Eastern Mennonite coach Kirby Dean, who felt Whitworth’s seniors competed like seniors do when facing he potential end of their careers.

“When you get down to those last 5 or 6 minutes and you’re playing against a team that has seniors, they know this is it,” Dean said. “They play at a level that is just a little bit different, because they know (their careers) are about to die.”