March 8, 2008
Box Score
By Adam Raeder
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Published Sunday, March 9, 2008
In his final game as a Nanook, Mike Titus could only watch with the game on the line.
Watch Colin Matteson finish off a comeback with an improbable 3-point shot. Watch Jake Linton snatch the victory away with much easier shots.
And the Nanooks' lone senior watched a 92-88 overtime loss to Saint Martin's that ended Alaska's season and showed just how far they'd come along the way.
"Ending up fouling out, that was a bummer, especially because the game went into overtime, but those guys, they played hard, they played through it and they gave it their all," Titus said.
Even when the Saints seemed to have put the game away.
Trailing almost the entire game, the Nanooks pulled back within two early in the second half only to see the Saints respond by opening up a 18-point lead.
But the Nanooks fought back with a 21-4 run that set up Matteson's improbable shot.
Two Linton free throws gave Saint Martin's an 81-78 lead with 17 seconds left, and the Nanooks looked for sharp-shooter Mladen Begojevic for the tying shot.
Begojevic's try with 5 seconds left hit nothing but air, and David Cannamore sprinted along the baseline to save the ball from going out of bounds, throwing it to Matteson 35 feet out.
With 2 seconds on the clock, Matteson could only catch and shoot. The junior forward's shot was long, but he got the help he needed as the shot banked in to force overtime.
"I just saw David there save it from going out of bounds. I tried to get open and it felt good coming off my hand," Matteson said.
But the Nanooks couldn't find another miracle in overtime.
Matteson's layup pulled Alaska within one, 88-87, with 1:46 to play in the extra frame, but Linton, the top free-throw shooter in NCAA Division II play, hit two free throws and Bill Richardson connected on two more to send the Nanooks to their 22nd loss on the season.
"You've got to go (to the line) with confidence," said Linton, who went 16-of-16 from the charity stripe en route to a game-high 32 points. "You've done them all the time in practice, you've just got to go up there confident."
But even in the loss, the Nanooks (2-16 Great Northwest Athletic Conference, 5-22 overall) showed the type of will that was absent earlier in the season when 20-point losses were commonplace.
"We just played hard, we refused to give up," Alaska coach Clemon Johnson said. "Something happened to this team, I wish I could bottle it and keep it for next year. The last four or five games, we just kept fighting. We decided we were tired of losing in this manner and we just came out and started playing basketball."
It just wasn't enough to send Titus out with a win.
"It's bittersweet. You know, I think my body's read for this, the grind and stuff to be over," he said after tallying eight points and two assists. "You don't want to stop playing, you want to play forever, but careers come to an end. We almost had it there, we would have went out with a bang, for sure."
Just how different is this Alaska squad from when Titus' senior year began?
Of the five players who started Alaska's first game against Simpson University, two -- Philippe Jourdain and DeRay Carger -- weren't there to see the last game.
Nash Maynard, who tallied 17 rebounds Saturday, wasn't even with the team in that early contest.
And of the 12 players who saw action in that first game, only seven were on the Patty Center court in the finale.
That's why the Nanooks, trailing by 18 and with their bench even shorter than usual because foul trouble, weren't about to quit -- they'd learned a lot about adversity by then.
"This past last half of the season, we've come in with the mentality that we never give up, no matter how far out of reach this game might seem," said Matteson, who had a game-high 31 points. "(The coaches), they all say `Keep fighting,' and that's what we try to do."
And that's what Johnson and the rest of the coaching staff are still telling them, even after the season's final buzzer.
"The message I just gave them in there was: Hey gentlemen, you've got to continue to do this throughout the summer," the first-year coach said. "You can't go home and get fat and lazy all over again, we've got to continue from where we are.
"I just informed (them), next year that I will bring more help. I'm on the road as soon as tomorrow arrives to bring them help. We've got some scholarships available and we're going to see what we can do as far as moving up in the standings in the GNAC next year."
