Tales from the Road
������������ By Gary Braham�� 2-1-2000
�� The site of this years basketball tournament was Lafayette's brand new Kirby sports center.�� The gym looked great, but overall I thought it wasn't as fan freindly as it was at Army the year before, maybe just because Army had a lot of empty seats and could let you get away with more.�� There are three Patriot League teams very close by, so attendance was pretty good.�
�� The first game of the tournament was a womens game vs Army.�� Colgate got off to an incredible start.� They were just getting everything right and Army was falling apart.� The score was 18-2 before Army started to come back due to some Colgate mistakes.� Remembering a dissapointing loss to Army in overtime after we had led for most of the game earlier this year, I knew this game wasn't over yet.� Colgate led 29-21 at the half.� Army would pull to within 4 with 8 minutes left, but Colgate pushed ahead again.� The final was 59-49, and Colgate would move on to the semi-finals for the first time in 4 years.
�� The mens first opponent was Holy Cross.� Now Holy Cross has some really tall guys, who can dunk pretty impressivly.� But you foul them when they shoot,� the free throws are not pretty.�� Thats the sort of game it was.� Holy Cross shot just 37% from the field, but Colgate was taking lots of fouls, and not doing that great on offense either.� Colgate really should have had the lead at halftime, but the teams went to the locker room with a score of 18-18, a really low scoring game.� Colgate got smarter in the second and started building a nice sized lead.� At about the 5 minute mark we were only up by 4, when we began an 11-2 run that would give Colgate the win and set a PL record by advancing to the semi's for 8 consecutive years.
��� The women had the chance to advance to the finals, when the met the Bison of Bucknell.� Bucknell was the favorite, but Colgate did hand them a surprise loss at home earlier in the year.�� It was a slow start for Colgate, we were making mental mistakes and misplaying the ball.� We took the lead briefly, but fell behind again by halftime.� Colgate had its biggest lead of the game, 5 points, early in the second, but it wouldn't last.� The final minutes of the game were extremly exciting.� Colgate was down, but coming back fast.� We kept fouling Bucknell intentionally, and they made 15 consecutive free throws.� Colgate kept coming though.� We had a chance, but 3 of our starters fouled out, which meant we really couldn't go for a tie.� We made two mental mistakes that cost us the lead when a wide open layup was negated by traveling and we fouled a player intentinally when we really shouldn't have at all.� The mistakes cost us the game, and the chance to play in the finals.� It was a real heartbreaker.
��� The mens semi started right after that.� Our opponent was Navy, they had an excellent team, that eventually lost to Lafayette in the finals.� Whoops, just gave away the ending to this game, that's allright, it wasn't much of a game anyway.� We made 33% of our shots from the floor.� Our defense did thier best, but couldn't really stop the Midshipmen.� Our offense just looked unusually slow.� We wouldn't take a shot until the shot clock had just about expired, and even after all that setting up, it wasn't very good.�� Navy held a large advantage in rebounds as well, they took 3 out of 4 of our missed shots.�
��� Pat Diamond had a good game for his last time playing for Colgate, he recieved a nice ovation when he fouled out near the end of the game.� The final score...well, if you really want to know, it was 82-56.�
��� Colgate did have thier share of fans at the tournament.� They were very quiet though.�� Colgate sent the cheerleaders and band as well.� The cheerleaders might have been the best at the tournament, the band, well, they were the Colgate band.� Both these groups provided a lot of energy and cheering during the weekend though.� Like I said, the arena was very nice, except for these flashbulb lights near my head that gave me a headache and made me see a large green dot in the center of my field of vision fo several minutes.� Arch rivals, Lafayette and Lehigh met in the mens semi's, the arena was packed for that one and very loud, but we weren't allowed too see becuase I guess the arena was to small so we got relegated to a hallway behind the gym.� Easton was pretty nice too, we got to walk around it for awhile and saw the Crayola factory.� This was the Patriot League's tenth year.