Whitworth men head to Atlanta for first-round of NCAA Division III tournament
The No. 16 Whitworth men’s basketball team is headed south to Atlanta for its Friday matchup against LaGrange College in the first round of the 62-team NCAA Division III tournament.
The 24-3 Pirates will travel Wednesday to pod-host Emory University after Whitworth clinched the berth Saturday by beating Lewis & Clark 69-58 for the team’s ninth-consecutive Northwest Conference tournament title.
The Pirates gathered Monday morning and had to wait until the last pairings were announced before they could cheer their matchup against LaGrange (17-11). While Whitworth has to travel about 2,000 miles, the Panthers of LaGrange, Georgia, have a 67-mile drive up Interstate 85 to get to Atlanta.
Coach Matt Logie said the team expected to end up in either Texas or Atlanta for its first-round game. If the Pirates beat LaGrange, they would play on Saturday against the winner of host No. 15 Emory (20-5) and Spalding University (18-9) of Louisville, Kentucky.
“It’s always neat to go to a new place and play some new teams,” Logie said. “This is the exciting part of the journey. We are going to lay our chips on the table and see how we stack up.”
Instead of 64 teams, the Division III bracket has 62 teams after Randolph Macon (26-2) and Augustana (24-3) were given byes. The championship game will be played March 21 in Salem, Virginia.
Junior forward George Valle, who scored 19 points in the win Saturday over the Pioneers, said he would have been happy with any first-round location.
“I’ve not even heard of them before,” Valle said of the LaGrange Panthers, “but if they are in the NCAA tournament, they’ve got to be good. Every team from here on out is a new test.”
Sophomore guard Kenny Love, voted the conference player of the year, said waiting until the end to hear Whitworth’s name would have been stressful if the Pirates had to hope for one of the 20 at-large selections.
“It was relieving to know we had an automatic bid,” Love said. “I haven’t been to Atlanta before. But I’ve heard of Emory. It will be a fun thing. I always enjoy traveling with our team.”
As the school works out travel plans, Logie said coaches have already started to learn about their opponent. The Pirates have no history with LaGrange but Whitworth beat Emory 86-67 in the second round of the 2013 NCAA tournament in Spokane.
“Every time a bracket comes out, you start scrambling for information,” Logie said. “We want to prepare for all three.”
Whitworth women left out of field
After two consecutive trips to the dance, Whitworth coach Helen Higgs said she was disappointed her team wasn’t one of the 20 at-large selections in the field of 62 teams.
However, Higgs said she knew the snub was a distinct possibility despite the team’s No. 23 ranking in last week’s D3hoops.com poll.
After the teams split their series during the season, the Pirates got within a point of Puget Sound with 2:07 to play Thursday before losing 71-64 to the No. 18 Loggers in the first round of the Northwest Conference tournament.
Despite the end to the season, Higgs said she’s proud of how her team battled to the best start ever in team history (14-0). And the team’s final record of 21-5 is Whitworth’s second-best record in her 21 years at Whitworth.
“If you look at the teams who got in, we played three … and we beat two of them (Puget Sound and Southwestern),” she said. “It’s not just the best teams that make the tournament.”