They hit you with a 1-2 combo, the best in the NAIA nation.
No. 1 women, No. 2 men.
Matt Smith and Kyle Ross combined for 25 points off the bench to lead the TMU men over Campbellsville (Photos by Dan Weber/NKyTribune
Which is why the No. 3 Campbellsville women, at 14-0 and a perennial top five team, were the underdogs coming into the Connor Convocation Center Thursday.
But why? How?
Suburban Crestview Hills is hardly a basketball hotbed, even if the Thomas More women have three national championship awards (two NCAA Div. 3, one NAIA last season), in their trophy case. And the Saints men, as they will remind you, were No. 1 this season “for a minute.”
AD Terry Connor has a quick explanation. “Good coaching, good kids,” he says without having to think about it.
TMU men’s coach Justin Ray gets down for the ‘struggle’.
He’s right about that order. The coaches come first, as the awards TMU gave to their coaches in pre-game – Jeff Hans for his 300th win in 12 seasons coaching the women and Justin Ray for his 100th in five with the men – made clear.
Hans kidded a sportswriter sitting close to the bench when Connor said every word of the coach was going to be reported. Those words, Hans warned, more likely would be “bleep, bleep, bleep.”
Actually, they were “Pass it,” and “Pick it up,” as it turned out. With 12 assists in a hot-shooting first half that saw them bury seven threes in 12 attempts vs. the Campbellsville zone, that was the idea. Five, six, seven passes preceded some of those field goals.
And while the Saints women led by as many as a dozen points in each half, they had to weather a strong Campbellsville charge that tied it twice – at 49 and 51 – late in the third. But a strong dive-for-the-ball, bust-your-tail rebounding effort turned this into the 78-66 final that kept Thomas More a perfect 16-0.
“The thing Thomas More does extremely well is their rebounding,” CU Coach Ginger High Colvin said of how the smaller Saints turned a 20-16 first-half deficit on the boards into a 19-9 second-half edge.
Hans said the subject of Campbellsville’s 11 first-half offensive rebounds may have been a major halftime topic of discussion and that TMU’s guards had to get in the game there.
Senior guard Zoie Barth says Coach Jeff Hans “is a winner.”
“Hustle plays,” Hans said, “that’s what championship teams do.”
Two of those guards – Zoie Barth and Rachel Martin, who split eight rebounds between them, listened up on their way to team-high 14 and 13 points, respectively with Martin’s a career high.
“It speaks for itself,” Barth said of Hans’ three national titles and multiple coach-of-the-year awards. “He’s a winner – on and off the court. He’s set the championship culture here.”
“Zoie pretty much said it all,” Martin said, “I couldn’t play for a better coach.”
Hans had a one-word answer for what it must be like to play for him. “Hard,” . . . then he followed up with “. . . really hard, I imagine.”
He then explained. “There’s more to it than basketball . . . they understand that,” which was the point of Barth’s response.
This is about much more than hoops as Hans went down the list of his four seniors, where they’ll be in grad school, or business or nursing next year, and whether one of them still has to pass her certification test.
“Zoie and Courtney (Hurst) know what they’re going to be doing,” Hans said, and he could tell you what the others will be doing as well. “It’s that part of it that’s big, watching them walk off that stage (with a diploma).”
But it’s not the only thing as Hans made clear. That award for 300 wins (it’s up to 306 now), “My best answer – I don’t care about the 306, I care about the 27 . . . losses.”
Ask him about this year and forget the 16 (wins). It’s that zero he’d like to keep there. But to be honest, this is not a team that will wow you getting off the bus. They’re not all that big or fast. They are deep, with all 10 Saints who got into the game scoring.
But they have to play smart and tough-minded and shoot the ball from outside and find the open player while figuring out how to keep bigger opponents off the boards.
Thomas More AD Terry Connor with the school’s award for Jeff Hans’ 300th win.
“We have a long way to go,” Hans said, “this is a different team from last year” so don’t call them ‘defending champs’ . . . They haven’t won a thing.”
They haven’t lost either.
And while Hans said he’d have wished for a bigger crowd for his 5:30 game, although it was near-capacity with the students not back on campus until next week, it does impact the men – even a now 13-2 second-ranked men’s team – to hold them over for the second game against an unranked 6-9 Campbellsville team.
“We support each other,” said Ray after a 70-62 win that three times he described with the same word – a “struggle.” But as Ray said after noting that he’s never had a team shoot just nine of 20 from the free throw line, it’s much better to learn the lessons you need to learn in a game you win.
“Hans and I talk to each other every day,” Ray said. “We are family here at Thomas More, “more so than at a lot of places. We’re happy as hell for him.
“You can say we’re No. 2 on our campus,” Ray said of his Saints that are ranked above 228 NAIA teams nationally. “I’m OK with that.”
Especially considering where they were five years ago transitioning with no scholarships from NCAA Div. 3 to NAIA against scholarship teams. And this year, they made it to No. 1 for one two-week voting period and are coming off a Final Four run into the NAIA semifinals last March.
Of that free throw shooting that until this year has been some of the best in the nation, “We’ll address it,” said Ray, an Oak Hills and Mt. St. Joe’s alum. “It’ll get fixed.”
The award for TMU Coach Jeff Hans’ 300th win.
One fix that came through in a game that will not go into the Connor Center time capsule was the way two newcomers stepped up. In only his fifth game, 6-foot-7 Kyle Ross, a transfer from Wisconsin-Milwaukee, led the Saints with 17 points in 24:30 of action, including four of five from three-point range.
“All the credit goes to Coach Ray,” Ross said after his first home game at the Connor Center. “Seeing the ball go down is a confidence booster.”
He got big help from 6-6 Matt Smith, a sophomore transfer from Murray State, who hit four of five from the field for his eight points with five rebounds, same as Ross, in 10:34.
“Any new guy in a college program, it’s a big adjustment,” Ray said. “It takes them a while, it takes me a while to figure them out . . . what we do is pretty complex. Last year’s team was three years in the making.”
As for playing second fiddle to the nation’s No. 1 women’s team, Smith said no way that’s an issue. “The girls’ team is really good . . . we hope their streak keeps going . . . we’re a family.”
“I think our guys get juice from them,” Ray said of how his players want him to get through the pre-game scouting report quickly so they can get back out to watch the women’s game.
WOMEN’S GAME BOX SCORE
CU 17 17 19 13–66
TMU 28 11 17 22—78
CAMPBELLSVILLE (14-1, 8-1 MSC): Pedigo 2-0-1-5, Lee 1-0-2-4, Boyle 3-0-1-7, Pritchett 3-2-0-8, Wilks 9-0-1-19, Bertram 5-3-0-13, Luebbe 5-0-0-10, Sutton 0-0-0-0, Nalley 0-0-0-0, TOTALS: 28-6-4-66.
THOMAS MORE (16-0, 10-0 MSC): Turner 3-0-0-6, Hurst 3-3-0-9, Barth 5-2-2-14, Simon 4-0-2-10, Martin 5-3-0-13, Smith 3-0-1-7, Brenner 3-3-0-9, Jones 1-1-0-3, Whiteman 2-1-0-5, Vickers 1-0-0-2, TOTALS: 30-13-5-78.
MEN’S GAME BOX SCORE
CU 26 36–62
TMU 3 37–70
CAMPBELLSVILLE (6-10, 1-9 MSC): Wallace 8-2-3-21, Brown 1-0-0-2, De Sousa 1-0-0-2, Key 3-1-0-7, Muhammad 8-0-1-17, Milburn 1-0-0-2, Clements 0-0-0-0, Smith 2-0-0-4, Graham 3-0-1-7, Travis 0-0-0-0, TOTALS: 27-3-5-62.
THOMAS MORE (13-2, 8-2 MSC): Jolly 5-0-2-12, Pack 5-0-1-11, Vieth 2-2-2-8, Jones 1-1-1-4, George 3-2-0-8, Ross 5-4-3-17, Draud 0-0-0-0, Smith 4-0-0-8, Coles 1-0-0-2, TOTALS: 26-9-9-70.
Dan Weber is sports reporter/columnist for the NKyTribune. You can reach via email here: dweber3440@aol.com.
