– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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WASHINGTON — Amongst the awards that will be handed out at the end of the CAA Tournament on Tuesday, an honor for perseverance and loyalty should be bestowed between now and when the confetti calls — and the winner would almost surly go to Monmouth head coach King Rice.
Shockingly enough, it has already been a decade since Rice and his Hawks shocked the college basketball world well before March Madness, when Monmouth (members of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference at the time) racked up non-conference wins against UCLA, Notre Dame and USC before taking care of business in their league with a 17-3 mark and a regular-season title. When Monmouth reached the MAAC Tournament title game and subsequently lost to Iona for the automatic bid for the NCAA Tournament, many in the college basketball world expected the Hawks to hear their names called as an at-large on Selection Sunday, especially given their stellar non-conference résumé.
They received a No. 1 seed … in the NIT, the first team left out of the Big Dance. One year later, the Hawks produced another stellar campaign that saw them better their conference record from the season before (18-2) and finish the regular season with a 16-game winning streak. But a surprise loss in the MAAC Tournament semis against Siena followed, and despite another strong season and national sentiment on their side after the previous season’s snub, the Hawks were NIT-bound again.
Those two historic seasons under Rice, plus the coach’s name recognition after playing for legendary head coach Dean Smith while an undergrad at North Carolina, meant that bigger schools were calling about Monmouth’s head coach, and a move to a bigger school was fait accompli.
But Rice stayed in West Long Branch and at Monmouth. And stayed. And continued to stay.
A decade on and a new conference later, Rice and the Hawks may yet have their March Madness glory together, and No. 4 seed Monmouth is now one game away from the Big Dance after its 74-64 victory over No. 9 seed Campbell in the CAA Tournament semifinals on Monday night. Kavion. McClain led the Hawks with 19 points as Monmouth’s intense pressure led to a whopping 23 turnovers against a Campbell team playing its third game in three days.
There is the chance that the CAA final will be a New York tri-state area affair, as the Hawks will take on the winner of the second semifinal between No. 3 Hofstra and seventh-seeded Towson.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Sunday’s quarterfinals, with photos taken by DC-area photographers Clifford Ray Williams and Michael R. Smith. 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 five pictures in total.
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