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If University of Mary Hardin-Baylor fans brought their poker faces, you couldn’t tell Sunday at Philips Arena.
Everyone affiliated with the Texas school of 3,100 seemed to be in the stands. The Crusaders came to the NCAA Division III Championship with the energy of a school ten times its size.
UMHB’s opponent— Amherst College.
In comparison, its fans were fewer in number and, well, quieter.
The school of 1,800 left its mascot and pep band back in Massachusetts (Georgia Tech offered a hand of support in that regard).
Even so, the Lord Jeffs came strong with 10 unanswered points at the start. They’d keep the lead the entire game, but always with the scrappy Mary Hardin-Baylor Crusaders fighting to stay in.
In the end, it was Amherst claiming the Div. III title, 87-70.
One of the Lord Jeff’s top players—Willy Workman—says the team set its sights on getting here the second they heard the championship was going to be in Atlanta.
“The lights are bright, there was a lot of people there, everyone chanting this way, that way,” he says about playing on the Atlanta Hawk’s home court. ”But we knew the hoop was 10-feet tall, a free-throw was 15-feet, and that we had each other.”
Normally, Div. III decides its championship in Salem, Virginia. University of Mary Hardin-Baylor head coach Ken DeWeese called on the NCAA to change that.
“The experience these guys have had, the way the NCAA people and the city of Atlanta have treated us — it’s something that each (Div. II and III) team should have an opportunity to aspire to get to.”
This was the first time in the tournament’s 75-year history all division champions were decided in the same place over the Final Four weekend.
The NCAA says it will consider doing it again, but that no decision has been made.
Following the UMHB-Amherst game, Drury University managed a late-game rally to pull ahead of Metro State University, winning 74-73 in front of the largest crowd ever to watch a Div. II Championship.
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