At last year’s national tournament, NHTI was knocked out in the first round when JQ Thurmond missed a layup at the buzzer.
“I thought it went in, but then I turned around and saw the look on everybody’s faces and how sad they were, and I knew,” Thurmond said. “That stuck in my mind, how sad everybody looked.”
This year’s NHTI team returned only one player, so even making it back to the USCAA Basketball Men’s Division II National Championship tournament was up in the air. But that one player was Thurmond, and the Lynx took on the competitive and selfless attitude of the 6-foot-4 All-American. They went 21-3 in the regular season, won their conference championship and earned the No. 4 seed in the 2020 USCAA tourney.
The NHTI players didn’t think that seed was high enough, and they went out and proved it by winning the program’s second national championship last week in Uniontown, Penn. There was no perfect bookend game-winning layup at the buzzer for Thurmond, but he was the Tournament MVP, which is more than close enough.
“Last year was on me because I missed the shot at the end,” Thurmond said, “so it was like redemption.”
Thurmond led the Lynx in scoring (18.2 points per game) and assists (4.6 per game) and he was the team’s most versatile and willing defender. He also had plenty of help finding that season-ending redemption.
NHTI’s Nassir Coleman, a 6-foot-7 center from Philadelphia, led the Yankee Small College Conference in rebounding and was a USCAA D-II Second Team All-American. Sean Riley, a 6-4 guard from Washington D.C., scored 14.0 points per game this season and was named to the USCAA All-Tournament team. There were also talented role players, like Pembroke Academy graduate Sean Menard, a 6-0 guard who started 29 of 30 games, scored 8.1 ppg and was fourth on the team in minutes per game (22.3).
Most importantly, the Lynx played together. And then they celebrated together.
“The players wanted to get back to Concord, so we got back on the bus pretty quickly,” said Paul Hogan, who just finished his 20th year as the team’s head coach and deserves more than a little credit. “They were singing and dancing, it was joyous. I never touched the championship trophy until the next day, they slept with it and they had the net around their heads. It was all the stuff you hope kids do. And this team, they really like each other. They really enjoyed and respected each other, and you don’t always get that.”
A week later, they realized how lucky they were to be celebrating a title after a completed tournament.
The Lynx won their championship on March 11. The next day, the NCAA canceled it’s men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, and the rest of its winter and spring sports, due to the coronavirus outbreak. The first games of the USCAA Basketball D-I men’s tournament were played on the afternoon of March 12, but it was halted that night and then canceled.
“It was just terrible when I heard that news, it’s unfortunate for so many players that put in a lot of work for something and now they can’t even get a chance at it,” Thurmond said. “I feel blessed that we got to finish our tournament, but it’s just crazy right now.”
The Lynx, like everyone else, had no idea how their season would end when they began practicing way back in October. But Thurmond didn’t expect a national championship to be involved.
“At first, I was thinking this season was going to be difficult,” Thurmond said. “I thought maybe we could win the conference again, but national, I didn’t know about that.”
Hogan didn’t know either. The coach thought he had some talented players, he just wasn’t sure if they would fit together into a team. It didn’t take him long to find out.
NHTI lost its first two road games of the season, the second a 99-77 thumping at Vermont Tech on Nov. 20. Like so many success stories, the Lynx turned that adversity into opportunity.
“We responded to those losses with some good practices and then the next game against Machais I knew we had something special,” Hogan said, referring to a 106-90 win on Nov. 23 against University of Maine-Machais. “We came out of the blocks strong on both ends of the floor, we were efficient, and I thought, ‘Wow, we can really build on this.’”
They did just that, winning 15 of their next 16 games to close out the regular season.
The Lynx opened their postseason with a 120-89 win in the YSCC quarterfinals against Maine-Augusta. Thurmond recorded a triple double with 12 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists, and Dante Cingire had 15 points, including four 3-pointers.
In the next game, it was Menard’s turn launch from behind the arc. The Pembroke grad, who helped the Spartans win last year’s NHIAA D-II boys’ basketball championship, scored 12 points on four 3-pointers in a 94-86 semifinal win against Central Maine Community College on Feb. 29.
“We knew (Menard) could shoot the lights out like that, but once everyone else saw it, that changed the way they defended him,” Hogan said.
That was the case for Vermont Tech, which decided to face guard Menard in the YSCC final. That left space for Thurmond to score 29 points and Coleman to finish with 25 points and 22 rebounds, but the team’s mental toughness was the real highlight.
The game went to double overtime, and the Lynx trailed by seven points in each of those extra sessions, but they still pulled out a 110-109 win on a layup with just :08 left from, you guessed it, Thurmond.
They took that toughness with them to the national tournament, and they needed it.
“We really didn’t shoot well when we were there, but we competed, and that was the difference for us,” Hogan said.
NHTI opened the USCAA tourney with a 76-70 win against No. 5 Penn State Mont Alto behind a team-high 18 points from Shaquille Barrett, who joined the team in January along with Mustapha Koroma. After that it was a semifinal date with the top-seeded team from Johnson & Whales University Charlotte and NHTI went off for 58 points in the second half on their way to a 98-76 win.
“We just took that game over and ran away with it,” said Hogan, who also coached NHTI to the 2005 national title. “We really shut down their perimeter shooters, and, honestly, that was the best game we played in the tournament.”
The Lynx brought confidence from that win into the final against Penn State Greater Allegheny, the No. 10 seed that upset its way into the championship. Hogan also changed his defensive look, going to full court pressure instead of the half-court pressure his team had been using.
NHTI found itself down 39-35 at halftime, but the strategy, belief and competitiveness lifted the Lynx in the second. They also got 19 points each from Riley and Thurmond and executed with poise down the stretch for a 74-70 win and the title.
“When we got that trophy and we were holding it, it was just a crazy feeling,” Thurmond said. “It’s still hard to think about it. We started one of 78 teams (in USCAA D-II) and we were the best. It was crazy. We didn’t really know how to celebrate. We were just smiling.”
That’s in stark contrast to how last year ended. A day after the season-ending missed layup in 2019, Thurmond found out his father had died unexpectedly.
“That was tough when it happened after that last game and I got the news, but everybody in Concord, they made me feel better. Everyone was very supportive and helped me out in so many ways,” Thurmond said. “Georgia is still my home, but New Hampshire is a wonderful place and I do consider those people like a secondary family to me.”
That extended family circle definitely includes the newly-minted national champs.
“We’re real tight, we’re all like brothers,” Thurmond said, “and that shows on the court, too.”
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20)