Whitewater
He wore jersey No. 4, hence his former teammates’ in-game tributes and the four pushups each player does preceding each and every workout.
“It’s been the most difficult yet interesting year I’ve ever had,” said Pat Miller, in his 22nd season as coach. His Warhawks (25-7) face Mount Union (29-2) at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
“I remember last summer after it happened some guys were talking and they said, ‘We’re going to go win a national championship for him.’ My thought was, ‘Don’t put that on yourselves. That’s too much.’ But to their credit, they’ve really bonded around him.
“They’re definitely playing memory to honor him.”
Whitewater, playing in its first NCAA tournament since 2017, enters Thursday on a nine-game winning streak.
It beat Wabash College and Case Western Reserve in Cleveland in Rounds 1 and 2, then Johns Hopkins in overtime and Oswego State in the Sweet 16 and Elite 8, respectively, in Ashland, Virginia, last weekend.
The Warhawks beat Wabash by seven points, with their next three games all ending as one-possession affairs.
“They’ve gotten better as the year went on,” Miller said. “We started out the year (losing to) Hope and North Central (to fall to 2-2). Both are good teams that have fifth-year guys. You could see our potential, but we had to learn our systems better and we had to get better defensively and establish our roles.
“I kept telling them, ‘Look, you guys will be better than these teams in February and March. You just have to stick with the plan.’ We were 4-3 at one point, but to their credit we just really have an unselfish group of players and they just kept working, kept developing and tried to get better defensively.”
Whitewater finished third in the WIAC at 9-5 behind eventual winner UW-Oshkosh and UW-La Crosse. It was a 74-71 victory at La Crosse on Jan. 25 that helped set the stage for the Warhawks’ late-season surge.
“I think that’s when they said, OK, we can beat the best teams. That was the added confidence they needed,” Miller
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Miles Barnstable, a freshman from Sheboygan and Howards Grove High School, is UW-Whitewater's leading scorer, avering 16.2 points a game.
said. “Since then, we’ve been on a really great roll.”
Whitewater’s last loss came at home to Oshkosh, 72-68, on Feb. 8. After beating River Falls by two and LaCrosse by four – once again on the road – Whitewater put it all together in a convincing 92-79 victory at Oshkosh in the WIAC tournament championship game.
“If we wouldn’t have won the conference tournament, I’m pretty confident we were not going to get into the NCAA tournament,” said Miller. “And again, I think that game showed them how good they can be. Oshkosh is outstanding. They’re very good at home and not only did we win the game, but we controlled it from start to finish.
“And now going on the road for the NCAA tournament, we always joke that we’re in dark uniforms, the computers don’t like us, we’re always predicted to lose.
“But I think they have that confidence now.”
Whitewater’s opponent, Mount Union, enters the Final Four on even more of a roll, owner of a 13-game winning streak.
The Warhawks have ridden a balanced offensive attack to success this season, ranking first in the WIAC in scoring (80.9 points per game) and
field-goal percentage (48.9) and second in three-point accuracy (38.1%).
What they do well is get to the free-throw line. The Warhawks have shot 201 more and made 155 more than their opponents. In the NCAA tournament, Whitewater has shot 25 more and made 11 more than its opponents, a huge deal considering its four victories have come by a total of 14 points.
Whitewater is a bit unusual in that its leading scorer, Miles Barnstable, is a freshman. A Sheboygan native and Howards Grove graduate, the 6-foot-2 guard is averaging 16.2 points per game on 49.4% shooting. He’s also hit a teambest 63 three-pointers at a 43.8% clip and knocked down 89.4% of his teamleading 143 free throws.
Delvin Barnstable, his 6-4 junior brother, is a transfer from Marian College who ranks third in scoring at 11.9 points per game while leading the Warhawks with an average of 6.2.
“The Barnstables are just cold-blooded,” Miller said. “They don’t change expression. They don’t react to anything. They both look like they’re 12 years old. They’re both exceptional athletes and extraordinarily competitive and tough kids, and I think we just have that fabric throughout this group.”
McFarland’s Trevon Chislom is Whitewater’s best big man at 6-7, averaging 15.7 points on 54.7% shooting and Racine St. Catherine graduate Jameer Barker chips in with averages of 10.1 points and a team-high three assists.
“We’ve had different guys step up in different games,” said Miller. “Trevon Chislom has been great for us this year. He had an uncharacteristically poor night (against Oswego State) but (Franklin’s) Carter Capstran stepped up with 21 points and double-digit rebounds and just had a fantastic game.
“So, when we haven’t been firing on all cylinders we’ve had different guys step up. Being able to score from different positions has been really valuable. We’ve had teams where if you took 1-2 guys away, it was hard for us to score.
“This year we just have a lot more options, which has served us well.”
Tragedy aside, it’s been a tremendously gratifying season for Miller, a 2019 Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame inductee. He was also a 2006 inductee into the Whitewater Athletic Hall of Fame as a player.
Miller is seeking Whitewater’s sixth national title and the fourth he will have personally had a hand in. He was a star guard on the Warhawks’ second championship team in 1988-89 and coach when they won it all in 2011-12 and 201314.
“It means a lot,” Miller said of the Final Four return. “We had a frustrating stretch – the year before COVID was the worst year of my career. We just had a bad combination of personalities and probably not enough talent in our program. We kind of cleared house after that year, then we had COVID, we had a lot of good players and last year we made good strides with good guys and felt like we were headed in the right direction.
“Then, Derek’s death this summer – he was our leading scorer, our leading rebounder, our best defender and that was obviously a big blow for many reasons other than basketball but from a basketball perspective obviously a significant blow.
So, coming into this year there was uncertainty. But these guys have rallied around each other, they’ve accepted their roles, they’ve played extremely hard. They just have a toughness.”
Swarthmore plays Christopher Newport in the first national semifinal game at 4:30 p.m. Thursday.