Travel restraints lead to charter flight for Pirates
The Whitworth Pirates found out Wednesday morning just how sweet life can be for teams playing in the “Sweet Sixteen” of the NCAA Division III men’s basketball tournament – as long as the NCAA’s travel gurus can’t find you a commercial flight to Holland, Mich.
In that case, you fly charter, which is how the Northwest Conference champion Bucs (21-6) flew on their way back east to begin preparations for Friday’s date with Wheaton (Ill.) College (21-7) in the sectional semifinals of this year’s tournament.
“We caught a huge break,” Whitworth coach Jim Hayford said after learning his team would not have to endure the long security lines, cramped seating arrangements and multistop itinerary so often associated with long commercial flights.
“We’re traveling big-time this time.”
The NCAA had wanted to fly the Pirates to Michigan commercially, but could not make the logistics work. So, according to Hayford, they put them on a 30-seat chartered private jet that made a stop in South Dakota to refuel and then flew them directly to the regional airport in Holland, a city of about 35,000 located near the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.
Had the Bucs gone commercial, they would have most likely flown into Grand Rapids and then bused to Holland.
“This saves us so much time and makes the whole trip so much easier,” Hayford said, noting that his Pirates will spend less travel time getting to the home of sectional host Hope College than Wheaton and Ohio Wesleyan, the other two semifinalists, who were both scheduled to bus in.
As a result, Whitworth arrived in Holland in time to practice at Hope’s DeVos Fieldhouse – the site of the four-team sectional semis – on Wednesday evening, with plans to do the same again today.
Friday’s showdown with Wheaton, a team that tied for second in the Collegiate Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin and earned an at-large berth to the NCAAs, tips off at 3 p.m. PST.
Hayford is hoping things continue to fall in place for his Pirates, who earned a surprising first-round bye in the tournament and then hosted a second-round game in which they turned back Occidental 83-75 to advance to the sectional semifinals and Sweet Sixteen.
“We really feel that right now we can beat any Division III basketball team in the country,” Hayford said. “And we’ve played enough teams from around the country to know that’s a knowledgeable statement. We present tremendous matchup problems for other teams, and we’re executing on offense as well as we have all year.
“We really like our chances.”
Whitworth has won six games in a row after dropping three straight in the middle of their Northwest Conference schedule. The Pirates, who boast a pair of first-team all-NWC performers in league player-of-the year Ryan Symes and his senior classmate, Colin Willemsen, lost their season opener to Chapman, but then reeled off four straight victories and won the Lee Fulmer Classic in Redlands, Calif., where their narrowest margin of victory in the three games they played was 26 points.
The Bucs have benefited of late by the return of sophomore center Nate Montgomery, who missed the better part of five weeks with a severely sprained ankle.
“This will be the first week he’s at 100 percent again,” Hayford said of the 6-foot-7, 222-pounder from Sammamish, Wash., who was starting prior to being injured. “He gives us a big, physical presence, and he can shoot the ball from outside, as well, so it’s neat to have him healthy again.
“We just feel like we’re playing as a complete team right now.”
Ohio Wesleyan (22-7) and No. 1-ranked and top-seeded Hope (25-3) will meet in Friday’s other semifinal at 5 p.m. PST. The semifinal winners are scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. PST on Saturday for the right to advance to the NCAA Division III Final Four in Salem, Va., March 21-22.