Men’s Bas­ket­ball Ends Sea­son on High Note

MISHAWAKA—The last few weeks of the men’s bas­ket­ball sea­son were in­ter­est­ing, to say the least. The team lost seven of its last nine reg­u­lar-sea­son games, in­clud­ing a 117-104 loss to Mount Ver­non Nazarene in the quar­ter­fi­nals of the Cross­roads League tour­na­ment that many peo­ple thought ended the Pi­lots tour­na­ment chances. How­ever, just eight days af­ter that quar­ter­fi­nal de­feat, the Pi­lots were se­lected for the na­tional tour­na­ment.  

“Af­ter we lost to Mount Ver­non in the con­fer­ence tour­na­ment, we gave the team six days off to recharge, re­cu­per­ate and just get a men­tal break,” Head Coach Steve Drabyn said. “We had a lot of guys play a lot of min­utes that they weren’t used to. Once we got back though, we did­n’t look at any other teams. We fo­cused on us and clean­ing up dif­fer­ent parts of our game. Then once we were named to the na­tional tour­na­ment it gave us a whole new boost of en­ergy.” 

Their first op­po­nent in the NAIA Na­tional Tour­na­ment was the sev­en­teenth-ranked team in the coun­try, the Ea­gles of Texas A&M-Texarkana. En­ter­ing this sea­son, the NAIA ad­justed the tour­na­ment struc­ture by ex­pand­ing the teams and adding an open­ing round site. The Pi­lots were sent to Om­aha, Ne­braska for their open­ing round. On March 12, the Pi­lots opened play ver­sus Ea­gles and won 73-69. Now only one thing sep­a­rated the Pi­lots for a Sweet Six­teen berth: the tenth-ranked Prov­i­dence Arg­onauts led by All-Amer­i­can Za­c­cheus Darko-Kelly. The Pi­lots ral­lied from eleven points down with 6:13 re­main­ing in the game to win 85-81. Tre­Vion Crews piled on 39 points for the Pi­lots to carry them into the Sweet Six­teen. By win­ning the first two games in the Na­tional Tour­na­ment, the Pi­lots earned a one-week break be­fore head­ing to Kansas City for the re­main­ing rounds. 

“This sea­son was a roller coaster,” Sopho­more Life Granville, who plays guard, said. “We had some ups and some downs, but it meant that we had to step up. The cliché of ‘every­one has a role’ re­ally rang true for this team be­cause I’m just a role player, but I had to play some min­utes in some big sit­u­a­tions. I think this brought us closer to­gether as a team be­cause of some of our strug­gles. We were heav­ily bat­tle-tested through­out the sea­son, and the mis­takes that we made through­out the sea­son helped us grow. Mis­takes are only a pos­i­tive if you learn from them, and I think we grew ex­po­nen­tially.” 

The team’s first matchup in Kansas City was against the num­ber one team in the na­tion, and the Pi­lots’ con­fer­ence foe, the In­di­ana Wes­leyan Wild­cats, led by All-Amer­i­can and two-time na­tional player of the year Kyle Man­gas. The Pi­lots faced off against the Wild­cats twice in the reg­u­lar sea­son. Both times the Pi­lots lost, but this time the six­teenth-seeded Pi­lots took down the Wild­cats in the Sweet Six­teen with a score of 83-77. The Pi­lots trailed for most of the sec­ond half, in­clud­ing mul­ti­ple six-point deficits in the half. The re­silient Pi­lots, how­ever, did not quit and took the lead back with 2:36 re­main­ing, and outscored the Wild­cats 13-5 in that stretch. With the win the Pi­lots qual­i­fied for their fifth Elite Eight trip since 2008 against the twenty-first ranked Saint Fran­cis Cougars, an­other Cross­roads League team. The Pi­lots split the sea­son se­ries with the Cougars, win­ning on the road and los­ing at home. The Pi­lots blitzed the Cougars with a 44-28 lead with 4:28 left in the first half, but the Cougars ral­lied with a 40-13 run that saw them lead­ing 68-57 with 9:30 left in the game, and the Pi­lots never came back. 

“I was re­ally pleased with the team that we put to­gether,” Drabyn said. “We re­ally did a nice job in our early sea­son prepa­ra­tion. But we ran into a two-week quar­an­tine, where eight guys got quar­an­tined. Al­though we had a cou­ple of hic­cups early, we rat­tled off eight straight games in con­fer­ence play, but then lost three key play­ers with sea­son-end­ing in­juries. We then had to fig­ure out things af­ter they went down. But I am re­ally pleased to see our team's re­siliency af­ter the hur­dles that we faced through­out the sea­son.” 

Next sea­son, the Pi­lots will at­tempt to re­claim the magic that they had at the end of this sea­son. They will lose three play­ers due to grad­u­a­tion, in­clud­ing Tre­Vion Crews, Nick Pluta and Ni­coloy Bai­ley. Crews will leave Bethel as the pro­gram’s sixth lead­ing scorer with 2,223 points. He will also leave with the best scor­ing av­er­age for any Pi­lot in a sin­gle sea­son at 24.6 points per game. Al­though Crews will be a big loss, the Pi­lots will get three cru­cial play­ers back from in­jury, in­clud­ing Zac Owens, Gar­rett Suedekum and Filip Segota.  

“At Bethel, the ex­pec­ta­tions are al­ways high,” Drabyn said. “I think we’ll be bet­ter next year, and that’s not bash­ing the guys that are leav­ing us. It’s cred­it­ing them. They are leav­ing this pro­gram in a great spot. Our cul­ture is very good, and the team chem­istry will be there. I think how we per­formed in the na­tional tour­na­ment will spear­head their con­fi­dence and drive for more.” 

The Pi­lots will also have six of their top nine scor­ers back for the 2021-22 sea­son, in­clud­ing both Jared De­Hart and Nathan Aerts, who in­creased their scor­ing av­er­ages by around seven points per game.  

For more in­for­ma­tion on the men’s bas­ket­ball team, visit www.bupi­lots.com.