BY SPENCER CAMPBELL
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER
The brackets for the 2009 National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Division II Basketball National Championships were announced on Thursday, and both the King College men’s and women’s teams are cast in the roles of underdogs.
The men’s bracket, which seeds only the top 16 squads, left the Tornado unseeded and matched up against the No. 9-seeded team Eastern Oregon Mountaineers (23-7) of the Cascade Collegiate Conference in the first round. King will play Eastern Oregon at 4 p.m. on Mar. 12 at Keeter Gymnasium in Point Lookout, Mo.
The Mountaineers were ranked as the No. 10 team in the nation in the NAIA’s final top-25 poll and finished tied for first in the CCC, a league that featured four top-25 programs.
Eastern Oregon is led by two senior wing players in Kris Groce and Neil Fryer, who average 15.1 points and 14.3 points, respectively. Senior Paul Carollo, a 6-foot-5 post, occupies the middle for the Mountaineers, averaging 10.9 points and 9.2 rebounds.
However, the Mountaineers feature a deep bench with seven players averaging more than eight points. Eastern Oregon is the 12th-highest scoring team in the nation at 84 points.
King, the 23rd-ranked team in NAIA Div. II, will counter with its own big-3, junior point guard Kyle Savely (21 points), sophomore guard Mark Dockery (13.3) and senior forward Ben Bosse (12.4). The Tornado (24-7) score 79.7 points per outing.
“I don’t really know much about them at all,” Savely said. “A lot of us, we just don’t really know what to expect. I don’t know if we’re going in there with the underdog mentality ... I just think we’re going to go in there and play our game and see how it turns out.”
Eastern Oregon has lost two of its last three games, while King is coming off an emotional 22-point comeback win over Bluefield College in the Appalachian Athletic Conference Tournament’s championship game.
On the women’s side, in which all 32 teams are seeded, the Tornado (14-17) garnered No. 8 and will face No. 1-seed College of the Ozarks (Mo.) Bobcats on Mar. 12 at the Tyson Events Center in Sioux City, Iowa in the first round.
During the 12-year reign of coach George Wilson, the Bobcats (26-5) have visited the NAIA National Tournament 10 times and have finished runner-up to the national champions three-straight years heading into the 2009 tourney.
College of the Ozarks is the third-ranked team in the nation and its 81.6 points is the fourth-highest in the country.
Like King, whose offense revolves around the post play of sophomores Anisha Buchanan and Ashley Deans and the perimeter play of senior guard Kristi Moody, the Bobcats scoring is led by freshman guard Kayli Combs (15.9 points) and post players Lindsy Murray (14.9 points, 5.9 rebounds) and Emily Bell (11.1 points, 5.6 rebounds).
Ozarks is currently riding a 15-game winning streak, while King’s No. 8 seed means that it was ranked between the 29th and 32nd spots in the tournament.
“I told the girls that we have an opportunity, and we need to take advantage of it,” King coach Michele Williams said. “Nobody think we’re even going to remotely win a game, so we just need to play hard and see what happens.”
scampbell@bristolnews.com|(276) 645-2543
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