– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
Follow @Koiki_Sport Follow @ALOST_Official
WASHINGTON — Being inside the nation’s capital playing for a bid for the NCAA Tournament engendered memories for head coach Takayo Siddle and the UNC Wilmington Seahawks in the recent past. All bad memories.
Finally, after staring another nightmare in the face during tonight’s championship game, the dream of making the NCAA Tournament finally came true as the Seahawks came through at the very end to leave Washington D.C. as the latest team to earn their Big Dance invitation.
Donovan Newby scored 17 points, including a key jumper with 34 seconds remaining as No. 2 seed UNC Wilmington held on to end the Cinderella run of No. 12 Delaware 76-72 to win the CAA Tournament title and the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. UNC Wilmington breaks a tie with Old Dominion by winning a league-record seventh conference tournament title, and will make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2017.
Newby was a member of the Seahawks team that lost in the CAA Tournament championship game in 2023 to the College of Charleston, the second of back-to-back years the Seahawks were defeated at the final stage of their conference tourney, and things seemed to be slipping away again when Delaware wiped out a seven-point halftime deficit to grab the lead 4:30 into the second half at 41-40. The Blue Hens’ advantage increased to its largest of the game, 48-44, on a Reilly trey with 13:23 remaining, but UNCW clawed back and pulled even on a Khamari McGriff turnaround jumper a minute later and neither team led by more than five the rest of the way.
Delaware came up just short in becoming just the third team in NCAA D1 history to win five games in five days to win a conference tournament.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Tuesday’s final, with photos taken by DC-area photographer Clifford Ray Williams. After clicking on a photo to enlarge the picture, press the left and right arrow buttons on either side of the caption to scroll through the rest of the pictures that appear on the first page, Also, click on the numbers and/or arrow appearing immediately below the picture grid to load the next set of photos. There are 34 pictures in total.
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