Connor Seipel
WITTENBERG
For an athlete, finding the right fit in a university can be a little like playing on a television game show, but Connor Seipel thought he had come up with two winners when he was a senior at Groveport.
It came down to Wittenberg and Capital, and the decision appeared to be a lot easier when Wittenberg coach Bill Brown retired in June 2016 after 483 victories in 23 seasons.
But Seipel held off making a commitment to find out whether No. 1 assistant Matt Croci would succeed Brown, and the decision led to a jackpot. He is starting for a team that is 22-1 and has clinched a tie for the North Coast Athletic Conference championship with two regular-season games remaining.
Seipel, a 6-foot-6, 225-pound sophomore forward, is averaging 10.3 points and ranks third in the NCAC in field goal percentage (62.1) and fifth in rebounding (6.8).
“Coach Croci was an assistant and ran my visit,” Seipel said. “Right before I planned to commit, they announced that Coach Brown would coach one more year. Then it came out that he was retiring. There was no guarantee Coach Croci would get the job. Now, this is a place I can call home in every way.”
Croci led the Tigers to an 18-9 record last season, when Seipel played in 27 games off the bench.
This season, though, the good old days have returned in that Wittenberg has a piece of its first championship since 201112 and is all but a lock to get a bid to the NCAA Division III tournament.
“We knew we had talent, but, no, no, I didn’t see this coming because we had so many new guys to work in,” Seipel said. “We beat Capital on a buzzer-beater early in the season, and then we started to think we could do some things.”
Wittenberg has a star in 6-10 senior center Chad Roy, but this is a team in the finest sense in that eight players are averaging between 4.9 and 15.9 points.
“We rotate about eight and nine guys, and the thing is, we’re so unselfish with the ball,” Seipel said. “Everybody scores for us. If you are the other team, you have to account for a lot of guys. We play an inside-outside game. We know we have to have Chad Roy every single night.”
It’s rare for small-college teams to have players with the size and bulk of Roy and Seipel.
“I’m pretty much Chad’s counterpart in the post,” Seipel said. “I get the ball in the post, and we run our plays. It goes according to matchup and who is feeling it. Then I focus on rebounding. I like to think Chad and me can dominate the paint in any game that we play. I try to play strong and try to wear on whoever is guarding me.”
It has been exciting, he said, to get Wittenberg back on top.
“Oh, yes, we’ve built some excitement,” Seipel said. “More and more people are coming to our games. We see pictures of how our arena used to be packed, and we want to return to those days.” DiOrio, a senior forward from Watterson, is averaging 12.9 points and 5.7 rebounds. Matijasich, a sophomore guard from Pickerington North, is averaging 14.0 points and 5.6 rebounds.