Drake is back in the NCAA Tournament for the third time in the last four seasons after holding off Missouri Valley regular season champ Indiana State 84-80 on Sunday to win the MVC conference tournament, and that’s a treat because we get to watch Tucker DeVries on the biggest stage.
Longwood beat UNC Asheville 85-59 in the Big South championship. Stetson also took down Austin Peay in a close 94-91 battle for the ASUN Conference.
A year ago, DeVries was just 1-of-13 in a loss to eventual Final Four team Miami in a game that Drake led by eight with five minutes left in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. Drake brought in 10 new players this season to build around DeVries and sixth-year senior Darnell Brodie. DeVries scored 27 points in the championship game, using his size to get to the mid-range and shoot over Indiana State’s smaller guards.
He’s one of the best scorers in college basketball and an NBA talent playing for his dad at Drake. Brodie is the one Bulldog who has been on all three of the last three NCAA tourney teams, and he added 17 points and also held Indiana State star Robbie Avila to 15 points on 6-of-16 shooting.
Now let’s address the Sycamores, who like Drake are 28-6. Indiana State will now have to wait a week to find out its NCAA Tournament fate. And this a team that anyone has watched this season would agree we’d rather see in the field than a mediocre power-conference team.
The Sycamores are the best shooting team in the country — No. 1 in effective field-goal percentage — and their explosive offense struggled for much of the game Sunday. The Sycamores looked dead when a deep DeVries 3 put the Bulldogs ahead by 18 with 10:08 left. Then little guard Isaiah Swope, who is playing on an injured knee that will require surgery at the end of the year, got hot and led the Sycamores on a 25-6 run, taking a one-point lead when he finished off a four-point play with 4:08 left.
Drake responded, with the two teams trading leads until DeVries made another mid-ranger turnaround to tie the game at 76. Next time down Drake went back to him and Indiana State ran a double team at him and he found Conor Enright for a wide open 3 that put Drake up for good.
The Bulldogs, who made their first seven 3s, finished 11-of-18 from 3.
Now we wait to see what the selection committee does. Let it be noted that Indiana State has only two losses that would be considered bad losses — at home to Illinois State on Feb. 13 and at Southern Illinois four days later — but glue guy Jayson Kent left the ISU game with 18:31 left with a concussion and missed the Southern Illinois game. Avila also missed an early-season loss at Alabama.
These are both teams capable of winning games in the NCAA Tournament. Hopefully the committee will give us two Valley teams.
Where could Longwood land in tournament seeding?
Longwood is one of the more unlikely conference tournament winners — at least early on in the madness. The Lancers were 14-11 and just 2-8 in the Big South on Feb. 7. But they beat the top two teams in the league, High Point and UNC Asheville, in the final two weeks of the regular season and repeated that feat in the Big South semifinals and championship game as the No. 5 seed.
They upset High Point on the final day of the regular season with a game-winning shot and then topped the Panthers in overtime on Saturday before blowing out UNC Asheville.
This will be the second tournament appearance ever for the school out of Farmville, Va. The first came in 2022. At just 172nd in the NET and 168th in KenPom entering Sunday, Longwood figures to be a No. 15 seed or possibly even a 16 on Selection Sunday, depending on what happens elsewhere.
This team doesn’t shoot a lot of 3s — ranking 347th in attempts, per KenPom — and is just 255th in effective field-goal percentage. So it’s hard to see exactly how the Lancers would pull a first-round upset against a high seed. Then again, no one saw them getting there in the first place. — Brian Bennett, college basketball senior writer
Hats off to the Hatters
Tip of the cap to the Hatters, a new member of the first-timers’ club. It only took them 53 seasons to make the NCAA Tournament. Stetson came into the game ranked 214th in KenPom, and I’m projecting it to be a No. 16 seed, quite possibly starting in the First Four in Dayton.
The team got a taste of what it’s like playing a No. 1 seed in November, when it lost at Houston by 31 points.
Donnie Jones’ squad made it through the Atlantic Sun tournament despite having one of the worst defenses in the country: 333rd in adjusted deficiency, per KenPom, though the Hatters were fourth in the Atlantic Sun in defensive efficiency during league play.
Star guard Jalen Blackmon, who had 43 points in the win over Austin Peay, is the son of former Kentucky standout James Blackmon Sr. and brother of former Indiana player James Blackmon Jr. — Bennett
Required reading
(Phtoto: Isaiah Vazquez / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
