Men鈥檚 Basketball Wins Conference Championship
On March 7, the 黑料专区 men鈥檚 basketball team capped off an 11-2 season in memorable fashion, defeating Averett University 72-70 to capture the USA South East Division Championship. The , achieved despite Averett cutting into several Pfeiffer leads, came down to the Falcons鈥� Dorian Miles and Tyjarek Simmons hitting clutch free throws at the end of the game.
Pete Schoch, the head men鈥檚 basketball coach at Pfeiffer since 2018, refused to take much credit for the victory. And he did have reason to feel confident enough about his team鈥檚 prospects to hold off on the typical animated coaching one often expects to see in playoff games. During the regular season, his players inspired him to become less of a coach and more of a lead collaborator who encouraged and embraced input from his players. This meant, for example, that he could go with his players鈥� strategy at halftime if he felt it was better than his own, knowing that they had often hashed out the needed adjustments among themselves even before arriving in the locker room. Or, he could get behind some of their ideas for tweaking a play or for defending elements of an opposing team鈥檚 offense.
鈥淵ou could really do whatever you wanted to out there, as long as you played hard on defense,鈥� said Diez Mungro, a guard from Latta, S.C.
The Falcons soared on the court this season because of some exceptionally fine talent. Freshman center Miles, of Greenville, S.C., gave the team a strong game inside the paint. Miles had been highly recruited. He said he chose Pfeiffer because the school 鈥渇elt like a place that really wanted me to be here.鈥�
Miles, Mungro and Jamaal David, a guard from Clinton, Md., were named to the USA South All-Conference East Division team. David missed several games at the end of the season because of an injury, but still offered advice and encouragement from the sidelines.
David and Mungro were among nine seniors who pulled everyone on the team together with one common goal.
鈥淭hey had the kind of experience that could help them win several close games this year, games they might have lost last season,鈥� Schoch said. 鈥淭hey really wanted to win something and were able to play that way. They had a mature outlook; they never got too high, and they never got too low.鈥�
Mungro echoed these sentiments, lauding his team鈥檚 chemistry. 鈥淚f one of us saw something that the other players didn鈥檛 see, he was able to communicate that,鈥� he said.
The Falcons began to jell as a championship-contending team at their lowest moment, namely when Schoch came down with COVID in mid-January. This caused a two-week delay to the start of the season as players quarantined in an isolated area of a dorm on campus. It also increased the number of weeks that Pfeiffer went without competing against other teams, albeit in scrimmages and exhibition games, as these were cancelled because of COVID outbreaks as well.
In the end, Pfeiffer鈥檚 men鈥檚 basketball team played its first game on Feb. 5, two days after the quarantine ended. (All of Pfeiffer鈥檚 sports programs resumed at the start of the current spring semester, having been put on hold since last spring because of the pandemic.)
As Pfeiffer鈥檚 basketball players whiled away day after day in quarantine, they did a lot more than attend and prepare for Zoom presentations of classes. They ate together, they played video games together, and they talked basketball. They developed a chip on their collective shoulder as they recalled that coaches of USA South teams had predicted Pfeiffer would finish fourth in the conference鈥檚 East Division.
They also watched plenty of hoops on television. And, thanks to the miracle of streaming, they even scouted the strengths and weaknesses of other conference teams as they watched them play on their laptops and smartphones.
Schoch鈥檚 sickness 鈥渨as devastating,鈥� David said. 鈥淏ut, everything happens for a reason. It definitely brought us together closer as a team. It made us hungrier to get back on the court and just win. That鈥檚 what we did.鈥�
Ken Keuffel, who authored this article, has served as Pfeiffer鈥檚 Assistant Director of Communications since December 2019. He welcomes story ideas from Pfeiffer鈥檚 faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends. The form for submitting story ideas is Story Idea/News Item Request Form.