Game Preview: ORU

CC3 about to hit the biggest shot of his career.

After last night's thrilling 58-53 win over NDSU, the Leathernecks have now moved on to the semi-finals where they will face off tonight against none other than Oral Roberts.  The winner will play the winner of SDSU vs Southern Utah tomorrow for the championship and a trip to the NCAA Tournament.  It almost feels like destiny that we are playing this team again.

Before I get in to talking about tonight's rematch against the Golden Eagles, here is a link to the shot I referenced above...

http://i44.tinypic.com/14r3ie.gif

Ceola hit that shot with about 38 seconds left.  It put us up 53-51 and then he hit the free throw (he was obviously fouled) to complete the four point play.  WIU never trailed after that, and like I said above that was the biggest shot of his career.  Ceola had 13 points in the game, 7 of them came in the last 1:15 of the game.  Talk about stepping it up with the game on the line.

Now for tonight's game.  I'm not going to talk about the rankings like I normally do, because everything is pretty much the same, but I am going to talk about my thoughts on the game in general...

This is the biggest game for WIU in a very long time and it comes against the team that has been #1 in the conference all season.  The team that Western has played tougher than any other squad in the Summit:  Oral Roberts.  ORU tore through the conference this year as they only lost one game in Summit League play.  The first time these two teams played, ORU barley pulled off a 71-70 double OT win at Western Hall.  In the second game down in Tulsa, they came away with a 61-51 win, and it was really closer than that.

In order to win tonight, WIU will need to contain Dominique Morrison.  Morrison struggled in their first round game against IPFW, so you know he is going to come out looking for a big rebound.  Western will also need to watch out for the rest of the Golden Eagles as well though because they proved on Saturday that they can win without Morrison.  Plus, WIU will need to get Parks going again.  He has recorded three straight double-doubles.  It would also be big to get Emegano going again.  He struggled a bit the last time we played ORU, but I feel like he was trying to force it a little bit too much as he was playing in his home state and in front of friends and family for the first time since high school.  Hopefully he'll be calm like he was last night.

I really cannot express enough how much a win tonight would mean to this school, this team, and to everyone involved in this season.  Especially after everything that these guys have been through in the past year and being picked to finish 9th in the conference (which would have meant not even being in the tournament).  I am SO excited for tonight, I really can't hardly wait.  The atmosphere is going to be nothing short of ELECTRIC especially because all the SDSU fans will be in the arena rooting for us.  It's going to be so awesome. 

Before I wrap it up, here's a couple other tournament notes:  our Women's team plays in a couple hours against UMKC in their semi-final game.  I know they split with UMKC in the regular season, so they should have some confidence going in to this game.  Obviously I wish them the best of luck.  Who would have guessed that both the Men's and Women's teams would still be playing right now?

On the Men's side of the tourney, Oakland was STUNNED by Southern Utah last night in the 3 vs 6 seed game.  OU was up 81-70 with about 2:30 left to play and ended up losing 84-82...it was insane.  Plus Reggie Hamilton went just 1 of 4 at the free throw line when he could have all but put the game out of reach.  He finished with 31 points, exactly the amount I predicted he would finish with...no big deal.  Souther Utah plays SDSU tonight after our game.

That'll do it for now, tip-off is set for 6pm against tonight.  As always...GO LEATHERNECKS!!!