In a trophy-filled weekend of basketball at Brownson Arena, the Mavericks couldn’t grab the most important one. In a ruckus environment, the squad fell 86-75 to Fort Lewis College in the championship game.
The week began with a Colorado Mesa University (CMU) win in the quarterfinals. As the regular season champs, CMU was then rewarded the host for the rest of the tournament. Playing at home gave a chance for home fans to recognize the team who nearly swept all of the major RMAC awards.
Head coach Mike DeGeorge was named the coach of the year, his second straight and third in the last four seasons. Despite missing the final six games with injury, forward Mac Riniker was named the defensive player of year for the second straight season. To top it off, forward Trevor Baskin was named player of the year, after averaging 17 points, eight rebounds, and four assists on the best team in the regular season.
After everyone was recognized before the game, CMU quickly proved why they deserved their awards. Playing 4-seed, Black Hills State University, the Mavs dominated from the start on both sides of the ball, winning 86-59.
“I thought we really competed at the defensive end. It might have been our best defense of the season… I just thought we were dialed in. We were getting great ball pressure, we were really clean on how we were handling the ball screens, and we just were able to put pressure on them and make them uncomfortable,” DeGeorge said.
After CMU won, the 2-seed Fort Lewis Skyhawks then won the second semifinal game, setting up the rematch of the rivalry of some of the best teams in the country. The teams were ranked fifth and sixth in the country respectively, both having 27-3 records prior to the game. Even more was on the line, as both teams were fighting for the right to host the south-central NCAA tournament potentially with a win.
Like they did earlier in the season, the Skyhawks won in a hostile Brownson Arena, and even brought some help this time. A good number of Fort Lewis fans made the trip, and even a handful of their students joined, occupying the front row of the Mesa student section.
CMU once again came out firing early putting on a show. Trevor Baskin did just about everything you can do on a basketball court in the first couple minutes, blocking a shot, hitting a three, dunking the ball, dishing an assist and the Mavs led 12-0 early. They then led 17-2, but quickly Fort Lewis stormed back, and even took a 13 point lead into half at 47-34.
The same kind of tempo maintained in the second half, seeing Fort Lewis by 11 to win the RMAC championship for the second straight season.
“I thought our group competed really hard, and we just didn’t have enough tonight. I think that we were pretty emotional in the beginning of that game, and jumped on ‘em. It’s just hard to sustain those emotions when you get that high,” DeGeorge said.
The signature of Fort Lewis is their full-court trap defenses. With the full-court pressure, it speeds up the opposing offense. Mesa handled the pressure pretty well moving the ball around the perimeter with their signature, shooting a bunch of threes. After starting hot, CMU cooled off and only finished 13/42 for 31%.
Whenever Baskin was able to get the ball, he went to work. He finished with 23 points on 9/10 shooting to go with five assists, but his volume was limited.
“Their defense is made to make us play an up-tempo type of style. We got a bunch of looks in the offense, and it just happened there wasn’t a lot of opportunities, or moments for me to post-up. Like coach said I can live the shots we took, we took a bunch of open ones they just didn’t fall again.
The Mavs are now 0-4 in games against the top of the region this season, and it generally has come down to not making enough shots with the three-point predicated offense. In the four losses CMU is 42/147 from behind the arc for 28%.
However, the Mavericks played good enough defense to win the game, but a special performance ultimately triumphed that. Fort Lewis guard Obi Agbim dropped a career high 33 points on 10/12 shooting. Nearly all of Agbim’s shots were one-on-one jumpers off the dribble, making impossible shots look easy in a championship game.
Agbim is no stranger to the Mavericks, as he and almost all of the Maverick squad is a fourth year player from Denver. Mesa fourth year guards Christopher and Christian Speller played with him in high school, and were 52-2 in their junior and senior seasons, and would have likely won back-to-back state championships if not for the pandemic.
“With Obi (Agbim), he’s always performed like that. Even in our state (championship) game, I know he probably hit like four threes, he always performed (in the championship game). With a guy like that, you got to just play the best defense you can, and make the shots tough and live the results. We can’t really hang our heads too hard, we did the best we could, at the end of the day we just got outplayed,” Speller said.
At 27-4 The Mavericks have nothing to hang their heads about. As a projected four seed in the NCAA tournament, CMU will have at least one more chance to put it together against an elite team. However, With the loss, the Mavs won’t host, and are either heading to Durango or Texas.
