Santa Clara Basketball

For the second time in three years, the Santa Clara Broncos have won a postseason tournament. They did not win a national championship (obviously) or even the National Invitational Tournament (NIT).

They won the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament (CIT) in 2011 and the College Basketball Invitational (CBI) this season, a pair of single-elimination tournaments held in each school’s home gym, rather than a central location, for teams that do not make the NCAA tournament or get invited to the NIT.

It’s a nice experience for the players, who get to travel to various locations and participate in postseason basketball, but in truth, both tournaments are a stepping stone to March Madness.

Nobody is going to run around telling their friends that their team won the CIT or CBA. It does little for the school’s branding, the games are difficult to find on television and the games have little national appeal. Each team has to pay an entrance fee, so it’s hardly a bonanza for the schools and conferences involved.

The recent CIT champions are barely even worth mentioning. Missouri State (2010), Mercer (2012) and East Carolina (2013) are still relatively unknown schools. It should be noted, however, that the school Santa Clara beat in the CIT, Iona, has gone on to play in the NCAA tournament the last two years—albeit as a late seed and was quickly eliminated.

Winning the CBA is a little more meaningful. Virginia Commonwealth University won it in 2010 and went to the Final Four in 2011. This year, VCU head coach Shaka Smart was linked to the Minnesota and UCLA jobs before signing an eight-year contract extension with VCU that will pay him $1.2 million. It’s a fair price for putting his school on the map.

The 2010 runner-up, Saint Louis, is a member of the Atlantic 10 and could become part of the new Big East next year. The Billikens are a mid-major powerhouse that won the A-10 this season and have been to the NCAA tournament two years in a row.

Oregon beat Creighton in 2011, was named Pac-12 champions this season and advanced to the Sweet 16 in March. Creighton has gone to the Big Dance for two years in a row since losing the CBA and could leave the Missouri Valley Conference to join St. Louis in the new Big East this year.

Pittsburgh beat Washington State in 2012 and then made the NCAA tournament this year. Washington State still sucks, but, hey, five of the last six teams to participate in the CBA championship have gone on to bigger and better things.

The problem is that Santa Clara won this tournament three years too late.

Kerry Keating arrived at Santa Clara in 2007. He was an assistant under recently fired Ben Howland at UCLA—who was the subject of a Sports Illustrated investigation which revealed that fighting, drinking, drug use and lack of control led to the program’s downfall. Mind you—Keating is a recruiting mastermind who had brought Kevin Love, among others, to California’s largest UC school.

By 2011, when he won the CIT, Keating essentially had his first recruiting class, although many of the seniors would remain on the team in 2012. He received a contract extension through 2014-15 before the 2012 season, despite having a losing record (66-68) and no NCAA tournament appearances at the time.

Not only did Keating fail to take his team to the Big Dance after inking the deal, but his team couldn’t even win a West Coast Conference game. Not one. Part of it was bad luck, senior Marc Trasolini got injured on an offseason trip to his hometown of Vancouver, but most of it came as a result of a lack of discipline.

A promising overlooked recruit, Evan Roquemore, John McArthur, the former East Bay Player of the Year and Niyi Harrison, a local favorite who arrived from nearby Bellarmine Prep, did not start due to a “violation of team policy” (Roquemore was cited for an open container near student housing). On top of that, Foster was arrested for driving under the influence.

The entire season was a car wreck. Keating essentially had a mini-UCLA scandal: smaller school, lesser infractions (no drugs or fighting, as far as we know) and a story in the San Jose Mercury News, not Sports Illustrated. But still, a crucial season lost.

The next year started out with promise. Nobody transferred, which is becoming increasingly common in college basketball, and Foster and Trasolini essentially got a “bonus year” as medical redshirts (Foster missed significant time in 2010 with a broken foot).

With Roquemore, Foster, Trasolini and senior Raymond Cowels III leading the way, Keating had his best team as the head coach of the university. They were his guys, and it was his chance to take the team to the Big Dance.  

After the team beat St. Louis University on the road in their second game of the season, I texted my buddy Nick, who is the biggest Santa Clara basketball fan I know.

He expressed his excitement for this year’s team, saying that he felt this could be a breakout year. I agreed, but tempered my enthusiasm a bit. Maybe they had caught St. Louis off-guard. It was early in the season, and the Billikens might have overlooked this game.

The team continued to win their non-conference games. Granted, it was a sugarcoated schedule, there was a nice win at Pacific, a future WCC team, but there were no contests against Pac-12 schools like neighboring Stanford and Cal—or even UCLA down south. There were some sad losses, Utah State and Santa Barbara, but they came in overtime, and I dismissed it as bad luck more than anything.

The biggest game came against then-No. 1 Duke immediately before the WCC games kicked in. It was televised on ESPN, billed as “a Duke game” where the legions of Cameron Crazies would devour whoever it was the Dukies were facing before having to play their ACC schedule.

This was Keating’s chance to put Santa Clara on the board.

His team came out firing. The score was 38-36 at halftime. I was absolutely glued to my television. No way, I thought to myself, this could actually happen. Of course, Duke pulled away in the second half and won the game pretty soundly, 90-77.

I called Nick immediately afterward. “Dude, we almost beat Duke at Cameron Indoor!” I exclaimed. “What the hell is going on?” He responded by saying that he believed in the team. We had talent, everyone knew that, and while Keating was outcoached during the half, his opponent was, of course, the venerable Mike Krzyzewski.

“If we can give Duke a run for their money, we should have no problem against anyone, except for maybe Gonzaga, in the WCC!” I told Nick. “If we keep this up, I’m getting a ticket to Vegas! I want to see that WCC tournament! Hell, I might even fly out to see them play Gonzaga!”

Like many of my friends from Santa Clara, I no longer live near the university, which is located near San Jose. I live in Minnesota, the place where I was born and raised. I know a couple people who still go to the school, but come June, they will all have graduated.

Two of my friends live in nearby Campbell, Calif., but they are from St. Louis and Seattle, respectively, and they may eventually return home. Nick lives outside of San Francisco, but he is from Sammamish, Wash. One of my housemates lives in Utah now, others have returned to Washington and even the “locals” I knew out there tend to move up to San Fran or down to L.A. after graduation.

This means that outside of Santa Clara basketball (and maybe the baseball team), there is little to bring me back to the campus itself.

It is beautiful, don’t get me wrong, and it has nostalgic value, but if I’m going to travel out to the West Coast, I’m more likely to visit Seattle, San Francisco or even Los Angeles to see my friends rather than the university campus itself. There will be class reunions, of course, but those are every five years, and there may be other alumni events, but nothing like the annual “big game.”

I’m sorry, I’m never going to travel all the way out to the West Coast to see Santa Clara play USC-Upstate, Utah Valley or Utah State. Gonzaga is always billed as a rivalry game, but they’re usually much better than us.

Saint Mary’s is too innocuous to be a true rivalry (it’s a pint-sized school with players who resemble beavers). Brigham Young is a Mormon school, and I don’t mess with Mormons. Everyone else in the WCC is pretty irrelevant.

During my four years at Santa Clara, we never scheduled California’s three biggest programs—Stanford, Cal and UCLA—even though Dick Davey, the man Keating replaced, was an assistant coach at Stanford and Keating himself came from UCLA.

The excuse usually was because they would have to play a road game, but Stanford and Cal are right next door, and UCLA is a five-hour drive (which the team has to do anyway when they play SoCal teams like Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount).

We never played other Catholic schools like Notre Dame, Georgetown or Boston College. We played Duke once. We played Villanova in a down year. We played Washington State, but it’s Washington State.

We never played mid-major powers like Creighton, Butler or Richmond. We played St. Louis once. We played George Mason, but we were forced to.

That could all be forgiven, however, if we beat Gonzaga.

After all, mid-major programs are en vogue now. In fact, school size almost doesn’t matter anymore. However, before Mark Few took over at Gonzaga, mid-major programs were simply stepping stones to major conference schools.

After Dan Monson took the Zags to the Elite Eight and left for Minnesota the next season, people thought Gonzaga, a small school in remote Spokane, Wash., would disappear from the national scene. Under Few, they’ve dominated the WCC and started recruiting NBA-caliber players. They became the barometer by which every other mid-major schools judge their programs.

Santa Clara had beaten the Zags at home, during my four years there, but never on the road.

They opened up the 2012-13 WCC schedule with a win over the University of San Francisco and then got Gonzaga in California for the second game. It came on January 5, during Christmas break for the students and the NFL playoffs for everyone else. In order to get people to attend the game, Keating reimbursed students for hotel rooms—a classy gesture.

The team lost, 81-74.

That didn’t seem all that bad until they lost the next game, on the road at Loyola Marymount (Loyola Marymount!). And then, they lost to non-Jimmer BYU at home (they would also get crushed by BYU in Utah later in the season).

At 11 p.m. CT, February 7, I get a text from Andrew, a housemate of mine at Santa Clara, informing me that the Broncos are on ESPN2. I’m dead tired at the time, but decide to turn it on, just to see if we can beat Saint Mary’s.

What I saw shouldn’t be aired on television: players inadvertently stepping out of bounds, passing the ball to nobody in particular and launching desperate three-point shots from outside the 408 area code. Mission Campus is a sacred place, but what I saw was downright unholy.

The problem is that not much had changed since I started watching Santa Clara basketball back in 2008. The same mistakes were being made…over and over and over again. It was sad: an entourage of fuzzy Australians was manhandling our talented athletes.

Three weeks later, I’m out in Columbus to visit a friend of mine who had transferred from Santa Clara to Ohio State after his freshman year and catch the Gophers-Buckeyes game. Two days before Santa Clara is set to play Gonzaga in Spokane, an advertisement for the game flashes on a television screen at the Midway On High. My friend asks me if I’m going to watch the game. “Depends,” I said, knowing it would be a crazy week and that the game was going to be played after the Minnesota-Ohio State contest.

The Gophers got obliterated that day in Columbus. I didn’t want to witness two blowouts in one day so I opted for a couple more hours of sleep. In the morning I checked my phone: Santa Clara 42, Gonzaga 85. Granted, they were No. 1 in the nation, but that’s also because they get to play teams like Santa Clara twice a year.

Santa Clara would lose to an 11-23 Loyola Marymount team in the first round of the WCC tournament, shattering any hopes of an NCAA tournament berth. With its weak non-conference schedule, there was no argument to be made that the team belonged in the NIT, so the Broncos settled for the CBA.

They won the tournament, of course, but like I said, it was three years too late. Had they capitalized on the CIT championship and even gotten a late seed in the tournament—or at least a NIT berth—they would have set themselves up to make a little run this year.

The bottom line is the graduating seniors on his team were far too good to have never played in a NCAA tournament game. In fact, I believe they were capable of winning a game or two in the Big Dance, but they were never given the opportunity to do so.

Santa Clara could become a strong basketball program one day. The team is located in a populous area that has incredible weather and plenty of opportunity in business and information technology for its graduates.

For the most part, students enter the school ready to support the team, but grow tired of seeing a team with so much potential fail to meet expectations year after year. And the HP Pavilion arena (basketball capacity: 18,500) is a stone’s throw away from campus.

With any success, the Broncos could be like an Atlantic 10/Catholic 7/Big East team on the West Coast. They could be playing Creighton, Notre Dame and Stanford instead of Bethune-Cookman, Wofford and Wagner. With most major media companies launching their own sports networks (NBC, CBS, FOX), they could get on national television for more than the Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s games.

This program could easily win over the heart of Northern California. Cal has a rep of being a hippie school, and Stanford comes off as pretentious, but because it has flown under the radar for most of its existence, Santa Clara pretty much has a clean slate. In fact, if the Broncos were on television enough, I could see random college basketball fans becoming Bronco-backers.

Until Santa Clara wins an NCAA tournament game, however, that will never happen. Nobody cares about the No. 16 seed that gets eliminated in the first round, but people’s ears perk up when a No. 12 seed wins a game. And if that team can duplicate its performance the next year as, say, a No. 10 seed, suddenly they become a Giant Killer. And when you’re a Giant Killer, everybody cares about you come tournament time.

So the question isn’t will Keating be fired? (He won’t.) Or can he make the tournament? (The WCC winner gets an automatic bid.) It’s a question of if a Keating team can win a game at the Big Dance.

I’m not certain he can.

I see Keating as that 15-year-old wiz kid who can build his own engine from scratch, but doesn’t know how to drive the car. He knows his alternator from his power-steering pump and won’t mix up a cylinder head and the intake manifold. He can build an engine with superior horsepower that is also fuel efficient (this is California, after all), but put him on the road and he’s a hazard to everything that stands in his way.

The first time he got in the car, he hit the garage door while backing up. On the next try, he ran into the neighbor's mailbox. On the third time around, he rolled over a stop sign.

He won a legitimized street race (the CIT), however, so he was given some leeway. In fact, he was treated like he won the Daytona 500: He got a sweet contract extension and presumably more money to work with. I get that they don’t want to give him the impression that they’re going to give the car he built to someone else, but he’s still got to prove he can drive it.

A year after the getting the extension, he tried to get on the freeway and totaled the vehicle.

This year, he salvaged the car and won another street race, against a couple opponents who have been in the Daytona 500 before. It was nice, but it was too little too late. A good driver doesn’t blame his engine, just as a good carpenter doesn’t blame his tools. The talent was there, but the coaching was not.

Let me be clear: Keating hasn’t done anything immoral. He let things get out of hand in 2011-12, but he wasn’t throwing basketballs at players’ heads. He doesn’t have any recruiting violations. As far as we know, there isn’t an IT mogul who is paying Kevin Foster by the three-point shot.

The worst thing that Keating has done is simply squander a roster full of players talented enough to win in the NCAA tournament.

What Keating probably needs is another stint in the passenger seat. He’s a great recruiter who should learn coaching from somebody other than Ben Howland. I could see him going to a major-conference school and learning from an older, established coach. Then, after a few years as an assistant, he will be better equipped to run his own program.

I just don’t see him winning an NCAA tournament game in the next few years.

Back in 2007, when he arrived at Santa Clara, all he had to do was put together a roster that was more talented than everyone in the WCC—except Gonzaga. It wasn’t a difficult task. Saint Mary’s was working the Australian pipeline, but that team always had a low ceiling—they were a borderline tournament team at best. Everyone else in the conference was mediocre.

At that time, Keating just had to schedule a bunch of softies before WCC play began to build up the team’s confidence, beat every team in the conference—except Gonzaga—hope to beat the Zags at home and then try to beat them in the WCC tournament. With enough good, four-year players like Foster, Trasolini and Cowels, the task isn’t as difficult as it sounds.

But then Saint Mary’s got stronger, the WCC added BYU, and suddenly, the conference wasn’t a joke anymore. We all learned that the emotional cost of losing to Wagner or Houston Baptist far outweighed the benefit of winning a feel-good game.

The WCC is adding Pacific next year, an underrated mid-major program that was in the tournament this year. Furthermore, by not scheduling bona fide basketball programs—especially Stanford, Cal and UCLA—the team is no longer prepared to play in the WCC.

Before Keating arrived, Santa Clara was considered a clear No. 2 in the conference. To be fair, everyone knew the Broncos would never consistently compete with Gonzaga under Dick Davey, and few people actually believed he could field a team that would compete in the Big Dance, but Davey wasn’t paid much and wasn’t really expected to win.

Those expectations changed, however, when Keating was hired. He was an assistant at UCLA. He was young and bold, telling my freshman class that his team would be in the tournament. He gave booming speeches and was/is a great dresser.

Since he’s come to Santa Clara, however, the team has slipped. Saint Mary’s has passed them. BYU joined the conference. Pacific will join the conference.

I could see Loyola Marymount going out and hiring Jim Crutchfield from Division II West Liberty and reenacting their high-scoring teams of the 1990s. Maybe USF taps into its history (the team had Bill Russell back in the day) and builds a team using that as a recruiting tool.

Suddenly, in the course of Keating’s tenure, the team has gone from a clear No. 2 to a middle-of-the-pack team in a good, but not great, conference. If that happens, it will be really hard to believe that Santa Clara will be able to make the tournament consistently enough to become a legitimate threat in March.

And it’s awful hard to build a fanbase if you can’t do that.

Tom Schreier covers Minnesota sports for Bleacher Report and writes for TheFanManifesto.com. Visit his Kinja blog to see his previous work.

Follow @tschreier3

 

Very few college basketball teams get a chance to end the season with a win. Either George Mason or Santa Clara will be able to finish the year a high note by winning the College Basketball Invitational.

While teams do not usually start the season hoping to play in the CBI, it is often a great stepping stone toward future success. The last three winners (Pittsburgh, Oregon and VCU) were all in the NCAA tournament this season after successful years.

Either squad taking part in this best-of-three series for the championship can build off this performance for next season.

Still, a win will not be easy, as both sides will leave it all on the table in the title round. Here is a breakdown of the championship games that will be played on April 1, April 3 and April 5 (if necessary).

George Mason

How They Got Here

Things did not go according to plan for Paul Hewitt's team. After a solid nonconference season that featured a win over Virginia and close losses to New Mexico and Maryland, the Patriots fell apart in conference play.

George Mason struggled both home and away and finished fifth in the CAA with a 10-8 record. However, the squad woke up for the CBI and won two close games over College of Charleston and Houston to reach the semifinals.

Jonathan Arledge then led the way with 23 points in the semifinals win over Western Michigan and the squad with only one senior is looking to cap off the season the right way.

Player to Watch: Sherrod Wright

The go-to scorer in almost every game for George Mason is Sherrod Wright. The junior is the only player on the team averaging double-digit points at 16.7 points per game and has only been held to less than 10 points in six games this year.

Wright is an excellent scorer that can shoot well from the outside or beat a defender off the dribble and finish at the rim.

He is also incredibly efficient and knows when to pass up a tough shot in favor of a better one for a teammate.

However, the guard has to come through with some big scoring games for George Mason to get a pair of wins.

Key to the Game: Win the Rebounding Battle

George Mason has not been great on the boards this season, but the Patriots will need to win the rebounding battle against Santa Clara to win the game.

The Patriots have a great deal of size for a mid-major team with five players listed a 6'8" or taller. They must use that height to get extra opportunities inside and easy put-backs.

Specifically, Jonathan Arledge and Erik Copes must stay strong inside and secure the ball at every opportunity.

Santa Clara

How They Got Here

Those that say Gonzaga had no competition in the West Coast Conference have never seen Santa Clara play. The Broncos are a very good offensive team that has the ability to play with almost any team in the country.

During the year, they beat Saint Louis and played Duke very tough in Cameron Indoor Stadium. 

In the CBI, the Broncos have kept up the solid play with wins over Vermont, Purdue and Wright State while averaging over 80 points per game. 

If they keep up the pace, they will be very tough to stop.

Player to Watch: Kevin Foster

It is obvious that Kevin Foster wants to end his career on top. One of the best scorers in the country averaged 19 points per game this season, which was his fifth in an injury-filled run with the Broncos.

The guard has scored 2,355 points in his career and he just continues to get better. In three CBI games, he is averaging 30 points per game.

While Foster has a great deal of help on the offensive end from teammates like Marc Trasolini and Evan Roquemore, the senior is the one who runs the show for Santa Clara.

If he gets hot from outside, George Mason will struggle to keep up.

Key to Game: Speed Up the Pace

Santa Clara is at its best when it runs a fast-paced attack. The Broncos have some of the quickest guards around and they can use that ability to get up the floor and attack the rim in a hurry.

Even though George Mason survived a high-scoring game against Houston, this is not how the Patriots like to play. Going fast will get them out of their element, and they will start turning the ball over and forcing bad shots.

Pushing the situation will also create plenty of opportunities on the offense end as George Mason will struggle to guard everyone on the floor.

Predicted Winner: Santa Clara

This battle should be close, and it would not be surprising if all three games are needed after the teams split the first two. However, Santa Clara should be able to come out on top.

The Broncos simply have too much offense, and it will be almost impossible for George Mason to defend them for 80 or 120 minutes of game time. 

Look for Kevin Foster to make his mark on this tournament with a few more outstanding scoring performances. 

Follow @TheRobGoldberg

Nobody expected Santa Clara to defeat No. 1 Duke on Saturday.

The Broncos were coming off a season when they went 0-fer in the West Coast Conference and Duke had won 100 straight non-conference home games going into the contest. By all measures, a 90-77 loss to the Blue Devils was pretty respectable.

Santa Clara can go into their WCC schedule, which will take them to Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s and BYU, knowing that none of those venues will be as crazy as Cameron Indoor Stadium. On the other hand, they could have been better prepared for this contest if they had beefed up their nonconference schedule a little bit.

Preparing for a game at Duke by playing University of South Carolina-Upstate, Utah Valley and Eastern Washington is akin to preparing for a date with a supermodel by having a tea party with a couple American Girl dolls—they just aren’t the real thing.

South Carolina-Upstate, Utah Valley and Eastern Washington are scheduled as easy wins and may make Santa Clara look better in the standings, but they do nothing to help the team get into the NCAA Tournament come March. Seeing as though the Broncos have not won the WCC Tournament since 1987, it would behoove of head coach Kerry Keating and his staff to schedule difficult opponents to boost their RPI and improve their chances of getting an at-large bid at the end of the season.

There is no reason that Santa Clara cannot be able to compete with Duke. That’s right: the Broncos should be able to make this a game.

Both schools are of similar size: Santa Clara admits roughly 5000 undergraduates a year and Duke admits just over 6000.

Both are private schools in prime real estate: Santa Clara has a bucolic campus near San Jose, Calif. and Duke is located in North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

Finally, both schools have a great history in college basketball.

We all know about Duke. We all know about Christian Laettner, Grant Hill, Shane Battier and all the other great players that come out of there. We all know about Coach K and the championship banners and the rivalry with University of North Carolina.

What people have forgotten is that Santa Clara was the first college basketball team to be placed on the cover of Sports Illustrated (they made the Final Four in 1954) and that Kurt Rambis and Steve Nash played there.

The problem is that the statute of limitations is running out on their history.

Nobody remembers the Final Four appearance and SI cover because 1954 was a long time ago. Furthermore, Rambis is probably remembered more for his recent struggles as the head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves* than for his role on the "Showtime" Lakers. Nash may still be a premier player in the NBA, but his playing days have to be numbered.

As soon as Nash retires, which could be as soon as next year, the school can’t play the “We-had-Steve Nash” card anymore.

*I’m sorry Kurt. Really, I am. At least you got that nice ESPN gig.

Therein lies the problem. Former head coach Dick Davey had Nash fall into his lap and never capitalized on it. The team had four good years while he was on Mission Campus, culminating in their defeat of No. 2 seed Arizona in the 1993 NCAA Tournament.

It then laid back and watched Gonzaga go to the Elite Eight, lose their coach Dan Monson, hire Mark Few and take control of the WCC for the next 20-plus years.

In short, a small school from the middle-of-nowhere Washington (Spokane is known colloquially as Spokompton) outrecruited a university in the Silicon Valley.

***

So how does Santa Clara make up for this mistake?

The first place an administration always looks is the head coach.

If you ask school officials, Dick Davey stepped down in 2007. Ask anyone with intimate knowledge of the situation, however, and they’ll tell you, off the record, that a wealthy alum paid off the rest of his contract and he was “encouraged” to retire.

The next year Davey would join Stanford as an assistant coach in 2008. If he was fatigued, (Davey coached at Santa Clara since 1992) taking another coaching job a year after “retiring” is an odd way of showing it.

He left his position at Stanford last season. He did not take another job this season.

It is well documented that the team looked at two coaching candidates—former Golden State Warriors coach Mike Montgomery and Cal assistant Louis Reynaud—before going with UCLA assistant Kerry Keating. Keating had made a name for himself by recruiting superstar players—most notably Kevin Love in 2007.

I arrived at Santa Clara a year after Keating. During a freshman event held in the Leavey Center, the team’s home court, Keating took the microphone and declared “We’re going to the NCAA Tournament this season!” while stamping his foot on the ground.

That year they went 16-17.

The next year they went 11-21.

By the time they started playing my junior year I had spent a year at the school paper and was covering the team as my primary beat. Immediately my friends suggested that I write a column lambasting Keating.

It was tempting.

While working at Bleacher Report that summer I had had an enlightening moment. I was sitting in the car of a former Santa Clara employee, let’s call him Mike, while he was driving me back to my off-campus house following a day of work. He asked me about the basketball program.

“You know,” I told him, “I think they could really turn it into something. Keating now has had four years to recruit his own team. If he wins this year and stays for the long run, Santa Clara basketball could really be something special.”

He stared at me for a couple seconds and then broke into laughter.

“C’mon,” I offered, “it could happen.”

“As soon as he has any success,” Mike told me, “Keating is as good as gone. Face it, Santa Clara is a stepping stone.”

This shouldn’t have been enlightening for me.

Keating was born in Massachusetts and grew up on Long Island. He attended Seton Hall and had two stints as an assistant coach at his alma mater before making a name for himself at Tennessee and UCLA.

What’s to say that he doesn’t come to Santa Clara, make a big tournament run and then leave for Seton Hall* or another big-time program? It worked for former Providence coach Rick Pitino (Louisville), former UMass and Memphis coach John Calipari (Kentucky) and countless others. Why shouldn’t it work for Keating?

*Seton Hall is a member of the Big East and while it appears to be breaking apart, at the time it was a big deal to be a member of that conference.

It was tempting to come out and blast Keating. I could have written a column about how he had never had a winning record and how he had seen big recruits like James Rahon (San Diego State) and Robert Smith (UC-Riverside) transfer. Most pertinently, I could have speculated that if he managed to win here he was probably going to leave for a bigger program.

But I held my tongue.

The team went 24-14 that year, but still finished fourth in the WCC.

Lacking a bid to the NCAA and NIT tournaments, the team entered CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament. Unlike the former two, the 24 entrants must pay to participate in the CIT and word on the street was that an alum covered this cost as well.

The event paid off, however. Santa Clara defeated San Francisco, SMU and Iona, three recognizable programs, en route to a championship.

Nobody is going to write home about how his or her team won the CIT. Many students and alumni scoffed at the victory, equating it to a participation prize. But I stuck with the company line: The team had a 20-win season, the postseason experience was good regardless of how it was attained and, hey, Virginia Commonwealth had made the Final Four a year after winning the CBI, a similar tournament.

During my senior year I snapped.

Keating had gotten an extension through 2015 for winning the CIT. VCU’s Shaka Smart, Butler’s Brad Stevens and Saint Mary’s Randy Bennett had all gotten massive extensions recently, but they had gone to the NCAA Tournament. It’s smart to lock up a good coach before he leaves for a bigger school, but only if he has proven he can win.

To add insult to injury, the team had lost to Washington State, Houston Baptist and Wagner in nonconference play. The team had lost senior Marc Trasolini to injury the summer before the season had started. They were spinning his loss as the reason why things had gone so poorly.

Never mind that they had much-hyped big men like Yannick Atanga from Cameroon, East Bay Player of the Year John McArthur, Mercury News Player of the Year runner-up Niyi Harrison and 7’0”, 270 lbs. Robert Garrett on their roster—without Trasolini apparently you lose to Houston Baptist and Wagner.

At that point I had heard every excuse in the book on why the team couldn’t win: They’re too young, it’s hard to recruit with tough academic standards, it takes a while to build a program, et cetera.

Never mind that many of college basketball’s best teams are made up of young players (Kentucky being the biggest example) or that Cal, Duke, Notre Dame and Georgetown all have competitive admission rates (remember, Santa Clara admitted me) and that Butler, VCU, Creighton, St. Louis University, George Mason and Richmond have all had success as small schools in mid-major conferences.*

*Quick advice for Santa Clara: SCHEDULE THESE TEAMS. Stop traveling around the nation playing Wagner, Houston Baptist and Bethune-Cookman. Play Cal, Stanford or UCLA! Get a couple games against mid-major powerhouses like Richmond, George Mason or Creighton! Travel to Notre Dame, Duke or Georgetown! These are fun and exciting and get your team ready to play Gonzaga, BYU and Saint Mary’s! They bring people back to campus! I’m fine with a feel good win against Houston Baptist every once and a while, but please, please, please I want to see you guys play real teams!

But no: This situation was different. Why? Because that was a convenient storyline.

After two bad conference losses to Portland and Gonzaga I torched the team. I tried as best I could be to fair and reasonable, while also being honest about their poor performance.

Although I got a couple fist bumps walking to class, the PR staff criticized me and I had my access restricted.

As much as my peers liked the article, they also gave me the “I told you so.”

***

As freshmen I came to Santa Clara brimming with excitement about the basketball team. My fellow classmates and I went to the first few games decked out in red Santa Clara gear and yelled at the top of our lungs as though we were at The Phog or the Carrier Dome. I believed in Keating. I believed the team was going to the tournament, that they would become a legitimate rival to Gonzaga, that they could even beat powerhouse California programs like UCLA, Cal and Stanford.

Most people that apply to Santa Clara hold allegiances to universities with winning programs: Notre Dame, Stanford, Cal, Duke, Georgetown, et cetera. A lot of us come in thinking that every Division I college basketball experience is pretty similar; that you had to be present on gameday or else you were missing out.

Eventually everyone wizened up.

Why would you spend your Friday night watching your school get pummeled by Houston Baptist and Wagner when you can be out at the bars or a house party knowing that there is an absolute certainty that you will get drunk and a decent chance you will get laid? Who in their right mind chooses sloppy basketball over sloppy sex?

Well, me I guess.

By the time you’re a junior you learn that the place to be on Tuesday night is The Hut and on Thursday you’ve gotta make an appearance at Blinky’s. These local bars offer drink specials and yet another opportunity to hook up with a person from class.

It’s not as though these were nice bars. As my friend Eric Bates so eloquently put it, “being the best dive bar in Santa Clara is equivalent to being the smartest child in the Palin family.” Still, it beat going to a Santa Clara basketball game.

Apparently, the basketball team eventually caught on too.

Although many of them were underage, many members of the team would be seen out at house parties or The Hut and Blinky’s—even on the night before the game. Point guard Evan Roquemore was cited for an open container on the 900 block of Bellomy Street, where a large concentration of off-campus housing is located. He and two other starters, Niyi Harrison and John McArthur, were benched for the first three minutes of a 74-62 loss to Loyola Marymount late in the season.

Worst of all, star forward Kevin Foster, who was the WCC’s leading scorer at the time and had led the nation in three-point shooting the year before, was arrested for drunken driving.

The things that made the Santa Clara program special—the fact that the players were encouraged to stay on campus for three years and live with other students, that they played pickup basketball after their season and that they were, in general, pretty good guys—vanished within a matter of weeks.

We were just like every basketball program with delinquent stars. The only difference is we lost at a significantly higher rate.

The team finished 8-22 and went winless in the WCC.

***

I expected yet another rash of transfers. I thought this core of players would give up and go elsewhere. After all, it’s not uncommon for players to transfer schools in college basketball—and most don’t need a complete fiasco to do so.

The team started out the season well.

They entered the Duke game 11-2. Following a monumental win over then No. 25 St. Louis University in Missouri, they lost in overtime to Utah State (who had only lost to Saint Mary’s). They only had one bad loss: to UC-Santa Barbara (4-7) again in overtime.

After a drought in the middle of the first half, Santa Clara rallied back, trailing Duke 44-42 at halftime. My Facebook blew up with statuses about the game and a couple friends texted me. Everyone was excited.

For the first time since I had started following Santa Clara basketball, the team was relevant.

In the end, Santa Clara was overmatched. Blue Devils guard Seth Curry dropped a three-point dagger in the Broncos early in the second half and try as they might, they died a slow, painful death.

This team will have to win the WCC to make the NCAA Tournament to become relevant again, but it’s hard not to think this win gave this team and its fans a little bit of hope on Saturday.

Tom Schreier writes a weekly column for TheFanManifesto.com.

Follow @tschreier3

 

On a night when junior guard Kevin Foster passed Steve Nash to become the No. 4 leading scorer in Santa Clara history and junior forward Niyi Harrison produced a career-high 23 points, the Broncos fell 93-77 to the No. 23 Saint Mary’s Gaels.

Following the game, Santa Clara remained in the West Coast Conference cellar, having lost all five of their WCC matchups and extended their losing streak to six games.

Things started out well.

Foster hit his first three of the night and was 4-of-5 from beyond the arc at halftime.

The team made more than half of their shots from the field and led 47-46 through 20 minutes.

“We did what we wanted to do,” said Keating about his team’s effort in the first half.

The first few minutes of the second half went well.

Junior guard Raymond Cowels swatted Saint Mary’s Jorden Page.

The team played disciplined basketball—four of the five fouls called in the first three minutes went against Saint Mary’s.

Harrison’s dunk in transition got the sellout crowd of 4,700 producing at a decibel level that threatened to shatter the windows surrounding the Leavey Center.

Then, before you could say "upset"…

Junior Matthew Dellavedova, the team’s leading scorer and a product of head coach Randy Bennett’s pipeline to Australia, put the Gaels ahead 65-64 with 10 minutes to go.

Two minutes later Santa Clara gets called for goaltending and Saint Mary’s goes up 72-66.

At six minutes Santa Clara called timeout with the score 74-66 and Harrison and freshman John McArthur at four fouls.

At just a hair under the five-minute mark Keating’s got a technical foul for arguing with the officials.

At that point the game was out of reach.

Saint Mary’s was up 79-68.

McArthur would foul out with two minutes to go.

And then…depression set in.

Santa Clara would be outscored in the paint 48-28, be outrebounded 53-38 and shoot just north of 25 percent from the field in the second half—an effort to beat a ranked team in front of the first sellout crowd in two years would come up short.

“We played the way we wanted to against them,” mused Keating, “and, as has been the case in the BYU and certainly the Gonzaga, [and] now the Saint Mary’s game, we played really well in the first half and now we have to carry over and play well in the second half.”

Santa Clara played at their best when they were scoring in transition.

Unfortunately, shoddy defense and over-officiating (there were 55 total fouls called in a 40-minute contest) slowed down the up-tempo game the Broncos wanted to play.

Said Keating: “The game got taken away, it got physical, and we couldn’t get going in transition where we were successful in the first half of the game and the first part of the second half.”

“We had our chance to finish possessions in the defensive end and unfortunately that hurt us because we couldn’t get going in transition,” he continued. “If a team shoots 45 free throws against you, it’s hard to get into the flow, to really get accomplished what we’re trying to get accomplished.”

He appeared particularly vexed about the team’s rebounding.

“We had a chance to get some stops and we didn’t’ come up with the finished product, with some rebounds,” he said, shaking his head.

“That hurts as well—too many offensive rebounds.”

Keating praised Foster and Harrison for their efforts, but acknowledged that their production dropped in the second half—especially Foster, who was 1-of-6 from the field and 1-of-3 beyond the arc in the last 20 minutes.

“They had good practices this week and it carried over,” he said. “We’re trying to go back to those guys when we needed some baskets and weren’t successful doing that.”

He also heaped praise on Dellavedova, Saint Mary’s superstar who ended the contest with 26 points.

“Everyone wants to talk about how they lost Omar [Samhan] and Mickey [McConnell],” he said. “Dellavedova was on those teams too. He’s been the most important player on that program since Day 1 and he’s proven that from Day 1.”

At 8-10, 0-5 in the WCC, Santa Clara will have to win the WCC tournament in Vegas in order to dance in March.

Unfortunately, they will have to play WCC opponents in the Sin City.

Although they are currently ranked, Saint Mary’s (18-2, 9-0) will probably have to win that tournament as well.

While Gonzaga (16-3, 6-1) scheduled Notre Dame, Illinois, Michigan State, Arizona, Butler and Xavier to build RPI this season, Saint Mary’s was busy playing North Carolina A&T, Bethune-Cookman, Kennesaw State, the Little Sisters of the Blind and the Seven Dwarves.

Santa Clara will get another shot at the Gaels on February 11 in Moraga.

Tom Schreier is a Featured Columnist at Bleacher Report.

Follow him @tschreier3.

The Santa Clara men's basketball team has not been anything to write home about through the first 15 games of the season, but there are still a few months of basketball left to be played.

After winning 24 games, defeating Gonzaga at home and winning the CollegeInsider.com Tournament last season, the Broncos currently sit at 8-7 overall and 0-2 in West Coast Conference play. 

The Damage

In December, they lost close games to out-of-state opponents Houston Baptist and Wagner. However, not all of their losses in December were close, as evidenced by a 93-55 drubbing at the hands of Washington State. 

With an at-large bid to the National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament in March out of the question, Santa Clara's only option now is receiving an automatic bid by winning the West Coast Conference. 

The first step for the team is to play well in conference in order to earn a favorable seeding in the WCC Tournament.

The Broncos' first conference game: an 84-74 loss in Portland.

Their second: an 82-60 blowout at Gonzaga.

In Keating's words: "At Gonzaga, we played a lot better than we played at Portland, where we had a very poor defensive performance and found ourselves climbing out of a hole in the end." 

Keating on the Hot Seat

During his five seasons at the helm, his teams have not only been plagued with injuries (Kevin Foster and Marc Trasolini both have missed a season under his watch), but also by defection of high-profile players (Decensae White, Robert Smith and James Rahon).

Trasolini injured his anterior cruciate ligament during an exhibition game and will miss the entire season.

"(He) was primed for a great senior year," said Keating.

"At the time he went down, he was probably our best player."

The result of the injuries and departures has left the team in a state of perpetual youth.

Not counting Phillip Bach, who is averaging three minutes per game this season, Santa Clara will not graduate anyone from this year's team.

That means that the Broncos will not graduate a senior that has made significant, on-court contributions for two of the past three years.

"There's no experience coming off the bench," said Keating, "and it puts pressure on those guys who start the game."

The result is inconsistency.

"We're really young, so we're going to make mistakes," said Foster, who broke Steve Nash's three-point record in a loss to Oklahoma five games into the season.

The bright side is that the team will have another year to grow together.

"We're only going to be the better for it when Marc (Trasolini) returns and we have all those guys come back," said Keating.

"That's the caveat, but these guys are competitors and would like to be good now."

Therein lies the problem: It may take a year for this team to put it all together, and that gives Foster, Trasolini and Co. only one year to work their magic.

Another slip-up next season, and it'll be back to the drawing board for Mr. Keating. 

The Silver Lining

The team's home/road split. The Broncos are 7-1 at home, but 0-5 on the road.

"We've had great success at home, with the exception of the one blown call and missed opportunity against Wagner," said Keating.

Fortunately for Keating and the Broncos, the team will play four of their next five games in the Leavey Center.

"We need all our students to give us that support, coming back energetic after break ready to go, knowing that this is a team that is fully capable of winning all of our home games," said Keating.

"It's all about confidence being at home."

Tom Schreier is a Featured Columnist at Bleacher Report.

Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3

Special thanks to The Santa Clara Staff for editing the article.

Kerry Keating entered the 2010-11 season knowing that he had to win.

Since replacing longtime coach Dick Davey after the 2006-07 season, the former Tennessee and UCLA assistant had yet to have a winning season. After going 11-21 (3-11 WCC) last season, Keating took a step forward this season. His team finished 19-14 (8-6 WCC). Both were career highs for the coach.

With the improved record, Santa Clara participated in the postseason for the first time in 15 years after accepting a spot in the 2011 CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT). They won five straight games in the tournament, including a notable 95-91 victory over rival USF, and finished with a 76-69 win over Iona College in New Rochelle, NY.

“[It’s] something I’ve always dreamed about,” said senior Troy Payne, in reference to winning a championship. “It feels awesome.”

“I’ve been really adamant about our guys setting precedents both individually and as a team,” said Keating of his team, which won 24 games, matching a record set during the 1968-69 season. “For us to go through a 38-game season, to play until the last week of March and be healthy and be academically strong, it speaks volumes to where we can go and it’s a good base for us to build on.”

The next step is an NCAA Tournament berth.

“[We] want to be a postseason team,” said Keating. “That’s always going to be our ultimate goal.”

Three things need to that need to happen in order for the team to build off its championship run, win the West Coast Conference and earn a ticket to the Big Dance.

1.      The team must close out games against non-conference opponents.

The team learned to win close games this season.

It all started with its last-second win over Rice in November. It was an emotional game for redshirt sophomore Kevin Foster, whose older brother Rodney played for the Owls from 2005 to 2009. The younger Foster had missed the previous contest in Houston, near his hometown of Katy, due to injury last season.

With precious seconds ticking off of the clock, Foster, who was 1-3 from three-point range that night, identified the play in front of him breaking down and launched a shot from the corner. His desperation shot gave the Broncos the first lead of the night.

“I had more incentive,” said Foster after the 66-63 victory, “because my brother played there and they didn’t recruit me.”

Before the victory, Keating’s teams had a reputation of relinquishing leads in the last second of big non-conference games. In the previous season, the Broncos had lost to a ranked UNLV team, 66-63. This year, they lost to USC, 86-73 in LA after entering the second period with the lead, and had an opportunity to beat Washington State (85-79 OT) and Delaware (54-53) at home.

“We have to win all of our games in Leavey, or, at least, be closer to doing that,” said Keating. “Now that we’ve raised that awareness of who we can be when we play well…everyone’s going to be coming at us right from the start.

“We’re going to be the biggest game on some early season schedules. We’re also going to have a chance to play some bigger games if teams feel like they can play us now.”

Wins against non-conference opponents will go a long way to boosting RPI rating and building a tournament resume.

2.      The team must remain intact and make progress in the offseason.

This season, sophomore Robert Smith joined James Rahon as another high-profile guard to leave Keating’s program. Smith made an immediate impact at Santa Clara, setting a freshman record for minutes played. However, after starting in 10 games for the Broncos this season, the disgruntled guard left the program.

Smith has yet to commit to another school. Rahon is currently playing for San Diego State, a program that won the Mountain West Conference and lost to UConn as a member of the Sweet 16.

Fortunately for the Broncos, freshman guard Evan Roquemore made a major impact this season despite receiving limited recognition coming out of high school. With his playing time in the postseason, the Nevada point guard topped Smith’s record for minutes played as a first-year player and made the All-WCC Freshman Team.

His major focus in the offseason will be adding weight to his 165-pound frame.

“It’ll help me a lot,” says Roquemore of adding muscle in the offseason. “I’ll be able to defend better, take contact better, and not [have] as many injuries.”

In fact, all three of Santa Clara’s top returners will have to hit the gym in the offseason.

“Evan, Marc, and Kevin have significant work they need to do on their bodies to get stronger and better,” said Keating. “All three are going to come back with significantly different bodies so that everybody knows how hard they worked in the offseason.”

3.      Underclassmen must step into bigger roles.

Graduating seniors Troy Payne, Ben Dowdell, and Michael Santos leave big voids to be filled for the returning players.

All three were leaders on the team.

“I’ll have to step up and be a leader next year,” said Roquemore, a freshman who describes himself as a natural leader. “[Just] being a point guard and a leader naturally. It’s what I need to do.”

Payne and Dowdell provided defensive prowess on a nightly basis. Payne, a junior college transfer from LA, was named Defensive Player of the Year. Dowdell, a product of the Australian pipeline originally tapped by Saint Mary’s, has spent four years at Santa Clara and leaves the program having played the most games in school history.

“Ben and Troy added a lot on defense and with rebounding,” said Trasolini. “John [McArthur] and Yannick [Atanga] and, next year, big Rob (recruit Robert Garrett) are going to need to step up their level.”

Santos was used as a backup point guard this year and provided timely scoring late in the season. Keating has a verbal agreement from Brandon Clark of Merrillville, IN to fill that role.

Santa Clara basketball has undergone significant change.

For the first time since Steve Nash donned Bronco red, Santa Clara expects to win.

Tom Schreier is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained first-hand or from official interview materials from the Santa Clara Broncos.

In their first postseason appearance in 15 years, Santa Clara took the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT) championship by storm.

"It means we're doing our work to get in that group. It's only 140 out of 340 teams," said Head Coach Kerry Keating, referring to his team's postseason appearance. "Obviously we want to be [among] the 68 (in the NCAA Tournament), but that requires us to keep going up."

For a team looking to play in The Big Dance, ending up in the CIT may seem like receiving a consolation prize, but the postseason experience is still highly valuable. Notable athletic programs that have played in the CIT include: James Madison, Oakland, Rider, Old Dominion, Austin Peay, Marshall, Appalachian State and Harvard.

"[To] get used to practicing and playing at this time is an important step for our program to keep taking the steps necessary to be there year-in and year-out," said Keating following the team's final regular season win.

In fact, additional practice has been an emphasis for Keating. His team is traveling to junior forward Marc Trasolini's hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia for a Labor Day tournament. This means his team will have additional practices over the summer.

"It is going to be a unique offseason," said Keating in a conference call over the break, "because our season is going longer, it's really going to streamline our offseason workouts and individual work."

For those who are speculating that Keating is skirting around NCAA regulations like the Bruce Pearls and Rick Pitinos of the world, rest assured this tournament checks out. It counts as an allotted summer trip.

The win is a good omen for Santa Clara, as VCU won a similar tournament last year and is now in the Final Four

In the bigger picture, USF and Santa Clara join three other WCC teams in postseason play. While Brigham Young University is a member of the Mountain West Conference this season, they will join the WCC next year.

"I hope it speaks well to [the WCC]," said Keating in reference to having five 20-win teams in the conference (not including BYU) and four WCC teams (plus BYU) in the postseason. "I know we have good players and we're continuing to get good players as a conference and we're adding a team to our conference that's going to make it even more [competitive]."

BYU and Gonzaga competed in the NCAA Tournament this year and St. Mary's played in the National Invitational Tournament (NIT).

The optimist would say that Santa Clara is following the yellow brick road. That there will be a windfall as a result of the team hosting major contests at HP Pavilion, a contract with Comcast Sports Net that would televise every regular season game; the school will hit a jackpot in Vegas when Orleans Arena sells out and will receive a big check from the John, William and David Fry who will have forgotten that football was dropped in 1993.

The pessimist, however, would feel that they are being led down the garden path and that the CIT Championship still fails to eliminate the fact that Santa Clara's future road to the NCAA Tournament remains clogged. Adding nationally ranked BYU to the conference, in addition to the WCC tournament setup—which heavily favors the conference's top two seeds—means that the Broncos still have obstacles to overcome in order to reach the field of 68.

Coach Keating disapproves of the way the WCC Tournament is currently structured.

"Sure enough, just as I said in the beginning of the year, there's a 20-game winner finishing fifth in our league, which is ludicrous," he said in February, before the tournament. "Our league should be one-through-eight next year, eight should play one, that's how it should be. That's how good our league is."

Only an average of seven non-BCS teams make the NCAA Tournament, meaning that the WCC will not necessarily be granted an at-large bid each year. This year, the Big East had 10.

"It's irrelevant that St. Mary's didn't make it," said Keating. "We could be in that category because we're in a non-BCS conference. It wouldn't be smart for someone to assume that we'd be getting in two or maybe three [at-large bids], you have to earn that, regardless of your conference affiliation."

Thanks to The Santa Clara staff for editing the article.

A seemingly over-confident Iona basketball squad took a hit on Wednesday night. Iona (25-12, 13-5 MAAC) was in good shape out of the gates as the home team, leading by eight points early in the first half.

However, things quickly slipped away from the Gaels, and they could never quite recover.

Here is some quick advice: when the the biggest game of your college career is about to occur, do not spend your time warming up tossing alley-oops and showing the crowd flashy passes. Use the time before the game to actually prepare. They are called "layup lines" for a reason. 

A 22-3 run in the first half put Santa Clara (24-14, 8-6 WCC) on top 30-19. Iona stuck with the Broncos for the rest of the half and trailed by seven points with possession of the ball in the final minute.

However, poor offensive execution by Iona led to an awful shot. The rebound came out to Santa Clara's Kevin Foster, who ran up the floor and hit a three-pointer from just in front of halfcourt. 

But the Broncos could not carry the momentum into the first minutes of the second half.

Iona came out of the gate with a 12-2 run that was sparked by junior guard Scott Machado, tying the game at 40 apiece. 

And then Santa Clara came back with a 15-5 run of its own to take a commanding nine point lead entering the final 11 minutes. 

Iona continued to stick with the Broncos, but a Foster jumper gave Santa Clara its largest lead (14 points) with 7:11 remaining. 

Once again, Iona fought back and cut the lead back down to six points, but the Gaels could not finish off the comeback in front of an angry home crowd.

Iona simply had the chances to beat Santa Clara, but could never do it. Time and time again, the Broncos left the door open for the Gaels, but the Gaels could never get over the hump.

Overall, the Gaels were the better looking team for a full 40 minutes, but they were killed on the glass. Santa Clara dominated the rebounding on Wednesday night, and that easily could have been the difference in the CIT Championship Game.

Foster, the WCC's leading scorer, led the Broncos with 16 points and four assists. However, the sophomore had a mediocre overall performance, shooting 6-for-20 from the field and 3-for-12 from three-point range.

To back him up, Ben Dowdell, Marc Transolini, Ray Cowels, and Michael Santos all scored in double digits. Dowdell, Transolini, and Santos combined for 36 points and 24 rebounds, while Cowels added his own 11 points.

Michael Glover led Iona with 22 points and 12 rebounds. He shot 7-for-11 from the field.

Scott Machado scored 12 points and dished out seven assists, while Sean Armand scored 14 on 5-for-10 shooting.  

The Broncos of Santa Clara defeated Iona 76-69 to win the CollegeInsider.com Tournament Championship in front of a full house at the Gael's Hynes Center in New Rochelle, New York.

Sophomore forward Kevin Foster, from Katy, Texas led the Broncos with 16 points and four assists.  Senior Forward Ben Dowdell, from North Nowra, Australia; scored 14 points and grabbed eight rebounds.  Iona Junior forward Mike Glover, from the Bronx, NY led all scorers with 22 points and 12 points.  Santa Clara out rebounded Iona 50-33. 

Santa Clara previously had defeated Northern Arizona, Air Force, San Francisco and SMU to advance to play Iona.  The Broncos finish the season at 23-14.  Iona won three CIT games over Valparaiso, Buffalo, and Eastern Tennessee. The Gaels finish at 25-12

The game was decided with less than a minute to play with Iona playing furious defense, Ben Dowdell completed a three point play to put Santa Clara ahead 76-67. 

Late in the second half, Ben Dowdell gave Santa Clara a 71-60 lead with a two point jumper.  Iona freshman Sean Armand, from Broklyn, NY kept the Gaels in the game with a three.  Glover followed with a dunk to get Gaels back with six at 71-65 with 2:15 left.  Bronco senior Michel Santos hit two free throws to put the Broncos out to a 73-65 lead with 1:45 left.

Iona came back with four from a lay-up by Trinity Fields an two free throws by Mike Glover to make it 65-57.  Then Evan Roquemore hit a three to keep the Bronco lead at nine 68-57.  Glover hit another free throw to make score 68-58 with 3:53 left.

As quickly as Iona came back, Santa Clara answered again with an 8-1 run capped by a three point basket by Kevin Foster to make score 63-51 with 7:29 to play.

Iona's Sean Armand was the Gael's only consistent outside shooter on the night.  The freshman made a three point shot and a layup conversion from point guard Scott Machado to get the Gaels back with in five at 55-50 with 9:34 left.

Iona came out fast in the second half with a 10-2 run. Senior guard Rashon Dwight led with a layup, then a Mike Glover dunk, followed by a Scott Machado lay-up. It was tied 40-40 on another Scott Machado lay-up.  Santa Clara answered with three point shots by junior forward Marc Trasolini, and sophomore forward Raymond Cowels.  A put back shot by Trasolini put the Broncos back up by eight, 48-40 with 12:47 left to play.

With Iona trailing 29-19, Sean Armond hit a three, Mike Glover made a jumper and Sean Armond hit another three to get the Gaels back within five.  Santa Clara extend their lead back to ten with a jumper and a long three point shot at the buzzer by Kevin Foster, to take a ten point 38-28 lead over Iona to the locker room at the half.

Midway through the first, trailing 16-8 Santa Clara went on a 22-3 run led off by a three point shot from Raymond Cowels, and two straight lay-up baskets by Michael Santos.  Junior guard Trinity Fields hit a three for Iona, but the Broncos answered with a dunk by Dowdell, a three point shot by Kevin Foster, two free throws made by Raymond Cowles, a jumper by Foster, a layup and foul shot by Trasolini, then a lay-up and foul shot by by Ben Dowdell put Santa Clara in the lead by eleven 30-19 with 5:05 ledt in the half. 

Earlier in the first half, after a Mike Santos layup for the Broncos, Iona scored six straight to take a 16-8 lead on a Scott Machado layup, Alejo Rodriquez dunk and two Mike Glover dunks, separated by a short jumper made by the Broncos Ben Dowdell and two layups goals by senior guard Michael Santos. 

Iona went off to a fast start with an 8-0 run with power forward Mike Glover hitting one of two free throws.  Iona Freshman Sean Armand, starting in place of the injured Kyle Smyth, hit a three.  Then, Mike Glover took a pass from point guard Scott Machado and dunked.  After two missed Santa Clara free throws, Glover tipped home a rebound to give Iona an 8-2 lead.

Santa Clara went out to an early 2-0 lead on a jump shot by senior forward Troy Payne. 

The win gives Santa Clara a trophy they can take home to the San Francisco Bay area, and a banner they will undoubtedly place in their gym.  Their coach Kerry Keating, a 1993 Seton Hall graduate talked about the value of the trip for the players, to visit historic places like the place in Dallas where President Kennedy was assassinated, and Ground Zero in New York where he said he had lost friends.  "The players had a chance to learn about life".

For Iona, a disappointing loss for what had been a very positive season.  The Gaels won 12 of their last 14 games, the only defeats coming in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference and CIT Championship games.  Iona's Scott Machado described after the game how frustrating it was for him and his teammates to loss two championship games.  I'll have to remind him about how many big games the Dallas Cowboys lost in th last '60s and early '70s before they reached the summit and went on a streak of championships that earned the "America's Team" label. 

First year Iona Coach Tim Cluess talked after the game about how far his group of players, especially the seniors Rashon Dwight and Alejo Rodriquez, had come during their careers.  He said, "They played for three coaches, helped grow the program back to a high level, and were able to win five post-season games in two tournaments when they had not won any in their prior Iona years".    

Although a disappointing loss for Iona, it was a great night for college basketball in New Rochelle, NY, a chance to play for a national title and trophy, while creating lessons learned and lifetime memories.

Ken Kraetzer covers Iona basketball and West Point football for WVOX 1460, New Rochelle, NY.