The lights go out on Blackbirds’ season
DAYTON, Ohio — After all of it, the basketball was exactly where the Long Island University Blackbirds wanted to it to be, and the scoreboard was everything they could have asked for. Two points separated the Blackbirds and Radford. The ball was in the hands of Joel Hernandez, who’d been brilliant for the better part of a month.
Just under four minutes to go in the first game of this NCAA Tournament.
“Joel had a nice one he just didn’t put in,” LIU coach Derek Kellogg would say later. “I think they’re a very good defensive team, well-coached. We were getting to the free-throw line a bunch there. I thought we missed a couple easy layups.”
Jashaun Agosto, who had 16 points for the Blackbirds: “I like battling. We all like battling.”
It was right there. The Blackbirds had been to six NCAA Tournaments since re-elevating the program back to Division I in the early ’80s. This was their turn. This was their time. Hernandez, a fifth-year senior who’s experienced just about everything a player can endure — and celebrate, including LIU’s improbable run to the Northeast Conference title — was about to deliver them one more time.
He made a strong move to the basket, and was swallowed by the Radford defense. No problem, he got his own rebound, went in strong for the tie again …
And, well, sometimes that’s how these March fairy tales end. We want them all to end with somebody making a 3-pointer at the buzzer, with someone taking a ball coast-to-coast through an entire defense. We want those “One Shining Moment” moments.
When most of these games are decided more routinely than that.
Radford’s Devonnte Holland grabbed the rebound, the Highlanders pushed it up the floor at the UD Arena, Travis Fields Jr. spotted up from 3-point range, open, and canned the jumper with 3 minutes and 33 seconds to go. And that was the that. The lead grew to five, to seven, to nine. It ended 71-61.
Back to Brooklyn for the Blackbirds.
Heck of a run. Though it’ll be hard to convince any of them of that for a while.
“I wanted to let the guys know and the administration and staff at LIU how proud I am for our team, to battle through some adversity throughout the year and continue to push and fight forward,” said Kellogg — who, a year after being fired by Massachusetts, guided LIU to its first conference title in five years.
“What a really great group of kids who represented our university at the highest level. They lost but they were outstanding.”
Which is a shame, really, because for so much of the game it seemed like this would be the perfect summation of all the Blackbirds had done, of a season in which the first time they were above .500 was when they were cutting down the nets at Wagner in the NEC finals. Radford led by as many as nine points early, but LIU was able to shave all but two of that cushion by the half.
Radford pushed that 30-28 lead to five, 33-28, but the Blackbirds rushed back to take their first lead, 38-35, on a 3-pointer by Julian Batts 3:32 deep into the second half. But after Radford went on an 18-6 surge to take a nine-point lead the Blackbirds had one last push in them.
Agosto made two free throws to slice the Radford lead to 59-58 with just over five minutes left, and Hernandez’s foul shot put them in position to tie, trailing by two, 30 seconds later. But that was that. Back to Brooklyn for the Blackbirds.
“It was definitely fun,” Agosto said. “It just sucks we couldn’t come out with the win.”