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| Meurer earned NCAC tournament MVP honors, carrying the Big Red with 28 points in the title game. Photo by Jace Delgado |
By Greg Chandler
In the final regular season game before the NCAC men's basketball tournament, Denison let a 13-point lead slip away in the final seven minutes and lost to Allegheny, the conference's last-place team, 67-63.
A loss like that would have devastated many a team heading into a conference tournament. Instead, it galvanized the Big Red.
"On the bus on the way home, it was pretty somber," Denison coach Bob Ghiloni said. "But the guys were saying, 'we can beat these guys ... we can win the conference (tournament). It was a bad weekend, but they were confident it could be done."
Despite having only a 9-9 conference record during the regular season, Denison showed its mettle as a No. 4 seed in the NCAC tournament. After a quarterfinal win over Wittenberg to open the tourney, the Big Red then traveled to Ohio Wesleyan's Branch Rickey Arena last weekend and took down both conference co-champions. Denison upended top seed and tournament host OWU on Friday, 95-85, then overcame a 16-point second half deficit to stun No. 2 seed Wooster, 92-81, in overtime to win the tournament and clinch the Big Red's first trip to the NCAA tournament since 1997 and just the second in school history.
Denison (17-11) will take on Alma, the winner of the MIAA tournament, on Friday at John Carroll's DeCarlo Varsity Center in a first round NCAA contest.
The Big Red shot 74 percent from the field in the second half and 59 percent for the game in the win over Ohio Wesleyan, with 6-7 post player Jett Speelman leading the way with 26 points and 10 rebounds. The Big Red also owned the boards, outrebounding the Bishops by a whopping 48-18 margin.
The next night, trailing Wooster 51-35 with 17 minutes to play in regulation, Denison refused to fold. The Big Red mounted their comeback, one possession at a time - a mentality that came out of a competitive tool Ghiloni uses in practice regularly known as "meat ball."
"We play one-possession games - one team gets the ball, the other team's on defense. You don't get one possession each, it's that possession - win or lose," Ghiloni said.
"It came down to guys playing a possession at a time, without knowing the score, without worrying about the clock. They kept saying 'meat ball - let's get this done.'"
It also took a big effort from junior guard David Meurer, who came off the bench to score 28 points, including 18 in the second half and overtime. Ghiloni had taken a gamble earlier in the season by bringing in Meurer, an All-NCAC player as a sophomore, off the bench.
"He's our best athlete and maybe our best player. But things just weren't clicking, and we decided to bring him off the bench," Ghiloni said. "I'm not going to fool you and say David loves this, but I sat him down a couple of weeks ago and thanked him for playing this role, understanding it wasn't easy for him."
Since bringing Meurer off the bench, Denison has gone 10-4. Meurer averaged 22 points a game while shooting 60 percent from the field (21 of 35) in the NCAC tournament and received the Al Van Wie Award as the tournament's Most Valuable Player. Speelman, a teammate of Meurer's at Newark Catholic High School, averaged 21.7 points for the tournament, including 25 against Wooster.
Now, Denison is facing an Alma team that has been the top shooting team in Division III all season, making more than 50 percent of its field goal attempts. But Ghiloni believes the adversity his team has gone through has prepared the Big Red well for NCAA play.
"The good thing about this group is that every time they got punched in the mouth, they responded in a positive way. They took hard coaching and were able to look at themselves in the mirror and say, 'we've gotta do more,'" Ghiloni said.
Ghiloni hopes that "more" will include Denison's first ever NCAA tournament win.
Around the Great Lakes was written by Greg Chandler during the 2015-16 season. He is a veteran journalist and broadcaster who has followed Division III basketball for more than 25 years. He has called Hope basketball for radio, including the 2006 national championship run, and served as the first publicist for the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association.
