In the game of basketball as in life, in the end it's not about the destination but rather the journey. The journey for Bloomsburg University men's basketball team this year was filled with amazing wins as well as heartbreaking defeats, which left us all on the edge of our seats.
This year's men's basketball squad was a team of great surprise, and on a night-to-night basis was able to hold its own against anyone it competed with. For a team coming off a 4-23 (1-13) season, the expectations for the ‘09-'10 squad were not exactly that high leading into the season. That all changed in the early part of the year, when the Huskies started turning heads by starting the season with a 4-3 record. The next 10 games for Bloomsburg did not show much in the win column, but gained the team a lot of respect from the Bloomsburg faithful and the rest of the PSAC.
Over this stretch the Huskies went 2-8, including three straight overtime losses to West Chester, East Stroudsburg and Millersville. All of these games, which the Huskies led into the final minute of play, were perhaps the wakeup call for the Huskies. It was over this key stretch of games that the Huskies really proved to themselves, as well as the rest of the PSAC-East, that they could play with any team on any given night and that they were a team that was to be feared in the second half of the season.
Sure enough, the next two times the Huskies took the floor, they left victorious with wins over Shippensburg and Kutztown. The win over the Golden Bears was perhaps the Huskies' most complete game of the season, suffocating the then-number one team in the PSAC in a 70-58 win at Nelson Fieldhouse. After two losses to Mansfield and Cheyney, the Huskies were still hanging by their claws in regards to earning the fourth and final playoff birth in the PSAC-East.
For Bloomsburg to get into the playoffs, it required almost perfect play on the court and no more losses in the season. And give the Huskies all the credit in the world, because coming into the home stretch of the season, with a must-win in every game scenario playing out, there weren't too many people outside of the Bloomsburg locker room that thought this team would be able to pull it off. And pull it off they almost did.
The Huskies busted off a massive four game win streak with wins against East Stroudsburg, West Chester, Shippensburg and Millersville, putting them in a fourth place tie and earning a chance to make the playoffs if they won against the Mansfield Mountaineers.
In the end, the Huskies fell prey to a career night from seniors Ryan Callaghan and Yuseff Carr, who had their way with Bloomsburg defenders all night in a 68-64 win for the Mountaineers. With the loss the Huskies were all but eliminated from the playoffs. Their only ray of hope was a win against Kutztown, who had quickly fallen from grace as one of the nations premier D2 programs this year, and had gone on a terrible losing streak.
Sure enough, the Golden Bears choked away their second to last game of the season, setting the stage for a high-stakes, winner-take-all showdown at Kutztown University Feb. 27 between Bloomsburg and Kutztown. A win for the Huskies would send them to an unlikely playoff birth, something many had not envisioned at the beginning of the season, when Bloomsburg was picked to finish last in the PSAC-East preseason poll.
Playing for their playoff lives, the Huskies were simply not able to stop Steven Dennis and the Kutztown Golden Bears, losing to a team ranked second in the national D2 coaches' poll earlier in the year. It comes as a bit of irony that the Huskies extended their season all the way down to the final few minutes of the last game of the year against a team that was supposed to be the cream of the crop not only the PSAC, but in all Division II college basketball in America.
This last game of the season was won by the underachieving Kutztown Gold Bears, with their unmatched superstar Steven Dennis, against the Huskies, who were your classic over achievers.
All in all, at the end of a very exciting and magnificent season, this year's Bloomsburg men's basketball team was perhaps the most exciting team to watch in the PSAC. Night in and night out, the Huskies were like Forest Gump's box of chocolates. You never knew what you were gonna get from them. And that's what made this team so darn fun to watch and so much fun to be around. To be on the edge of your seat, not knowing what was going to happen next is that great unknown that makes sports so exciting and fulfilling to watch, and that made this team a team that will perhaps be remembered as the benchmark of what future successful Bloomsburg basketball teams will look like.
The destination for this year's team ended exactly where many had expected, with a last game of the season lost to Kutztown. The journey of this season, however, has led us all down a long and winding road filled with excitement, for a team that has rekindled the passion. The journey has brought us a highly competitive college basketball team that we can all be proud of, night in and night out, winter after winter, at Bloomsburg University.
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