BOSTON – One win at the end of a 5-25 season isn’t going to magically make it a good season. Old Dominion’s last go-round in the Colonial Athletic Association has been anything but memorable, to say the least. But the Monarchs did go out in about the best way they could given the circumstances, beating regular season champion Northeastern 81-74 in Boston on Saturday and leaving town feeling like they salvaged what they could.
“After the game I jokingly talked about how there’s only going to be five teams that end their season with a win this year – the winners of all the tournaments and us,” said interim head coach Jim Corrigan with a smile.
That wasn’t all Corrigan did to lighten the mood.
“What was our goal going into this game?” he asked of sophomore Richard Ross, who replied, “Undefeated in March.” Corrigan continued: “So now we’re going to be undefeated in March.”
This season didn’t go the way anyone in Norfolk would have scripted it. While the Monarchs looked on paper like a rebuilding team with seven of their 12 players having never checked into a college game before the season, no one expected this kind of fall from grace. No one expected them to set some school records for futility. The Monarchs never won consecutive games all season and have had to endure losing streaks of nine and ten games. They had their worst start in CAA history in losing their first ten conference games.
The numbers aren’t pretty. The Monarchs finish the season being outscored by just over six per game, barely shooting over 40 percent from the field while allowing opponents to shoot over 45 percent, shooing below 28 percent from long range and allowing opponents to shoot nearly 39 percent from there. In CAA play, a lot of those numbers are worse, including an unthinkable one: they were out-rebounded coming into Saturday’s game. (On Saturday, they out-rebounded the Huskies by seven to finish with a slim positive rebounding margin.) It all adds up to a 5-25 record.
“It’s the best of times and it’s the worst of times,” said Ross, who led five Monarchs in double figures with 17 points and nine rebounds to go with three blocked shots. “You have times that are really good, when you know that one of these days everything is going to come together because we just continue to stay hard and stay together. There’s times, of course, where you hit those lows, where you just think nothing’s going right and nothing is ever going to go right.”
As if all of the struggles on the court wasn’t enough, head coach Blaine Taylor was abruptly fired in early February after a great run of success at the school, this season aside. The winningest coach in school history was surely not fired for wins and losses, at least one hopes. This season ended a run of eight straight postseason appearances that included three CAA titles. This season was an aberration, not a continuation of a downward trend over several seasons.
But once Taylor was let go, the Monarchs played better and had more wins than they had the entire season to that point, as they finished 3-5. It might not have been so much about Taylor being gone as much as the players feeling like the coaching change was as much about them. Sometimes players feel like they are responsible instead of the coach because they play the games, not the coach. Whatever the case was, they were a different team after Taylor’s surprising departure.
“People will see the kind of people they are, that they didn’t quit, when nobody on the planet would have faulted them if they had given up, if they had thrown in the towel, at any point, even at the end of a game,” said Corrigan. “They never did that.”
On Saturday, the Monarchs took it to the Huskies early and often, taking advantage of the Huskies not being ready to play. They led by as many as 25 over eight minutes into the second half, then had to stave off a Husky rally that started out slowly but became a furious one in the last couple of minutes, by which time it was too late.
Old Dominion is done for the season and for their CAA tenure, as they are not eligible for the CAA Tournament and certainly won’t be playing in a postseason event. They head to Conference USA in an uncertain state, as one figures they will look for a permanent replacement to Taylor on the bench and will come in fresh off a forgettable season. Corrigan has been at the school for 19 years through two coaches, so whether he remains is a question mark.
But all of that is for another time, especially for the seniors as they won’t play a game in Conference USA. Saturday won’t make up for the whole season, but the Monarchs will at least close on a better note than feeling like they played better but couldn’t get the result on the bottom line.
“When it comes down to it, when you’re having a tough season like this, any win is going to make you feel better,” Ross said.
