WILLIAMSBURG — William and Mary has been on the other end of these situations before, and too many times for head coach Tony Shaver’s liking. In fact, protecting the lead has been one of the Tribe’s bigger issues this season.
But Sunday night, after a first half Shaver described as “horrendous,” the Tribe rallied from an 18-point deficit to beat James Madison 68-62 at Kaplan Arena. Sparked by a 3-2 zone and the poise you’d expect of a veteran team, the Tribe remained a game back of Hofstra and UNC Wilmington in the CAA standings.
“Something we really needed, to be honest with you,” Shaver said. “Big step for our basketball team. We’ve been in the lead at halftime a number of times and not played the second half the way we wanted.
“Today, we were horrendous for 20 minutes and they were very good for 20 minutes. For our guys to stay together, stick together, come out and play as hard as we did and see the execution level reach another stage was really very important for our club.”
Down 18 twice in the first half, the last time with 4:03 remaining, the Tribe (15-6, 7-3 CAA) was able to make it to halftime down only 12. Then, W&M began the second half with a 15-2 run and took a 41-40 lead on Daniel Dixon’s free throws with 13:31 left in the game.
“We knew we weren’t playing the way we should be at halftime,” wing Omar Prewitt said. “In the second half, we played team ball.”
James Madison (16-7, 6-4) had made 12 of its first 18 attempts from the field, 6-of-8 from the 3-point arc. But in a sudden and stunning reversal, the Dukes made four of their next 25 shots. They were 1-of-12 from the arc in that stretch.
“It was a tale of two halves here,” JMU coach Matt Brady said. “We played really, really well in the first half, but the tables got turned on us a little bit.”
A key was the Tribe’s 3-2 zone, which Shaver used more than usual.
“More than we anticipated because they have so many great shooters,” he said. “I thought we did a good job finding the shooters and matching up with the shooters.”
Greg Malinowski’s short baseline jumper put William and Mary ahead 54-53 with 5:41 left. For good, as it turned out, though there would be some drama.
Dixon’s 3-pointer with 2:02 remaining gave W&M its biggest lead to that point, 60-55. But Shakir Brown answered for Madison, hitting a 3 from the left corner to make it 60-58.
W&M’s Sean Sheldon scored underneath off an assist from Terry Tarpey. After Brown missed a 3, and an official review ruled the ball out of bounds off JMU, Dixon went 2-for-2 from the free-throw line to make it a six-point game with 36.2 seconds left.
The 12-point halftime deficit was the Tribe’s largest of the season.
“We made the necessary adjustments at halftime,” said Dixon, who led the Tribe with 17 points. “We weren’t worried at all. We knew we’d take one possession at a time. We knew we couldn’t make one shot to make up the whole deficit, so it was about getting stops and score to get back in it.”
It was a better feeling than, say, the Howard game, when W&M blew a 20-point cushion and lost 79-77. Or even some of the games the Tribe held on to win after squandering comfortable leads.
After shooting 32 percent in the first half, the Tribe hit 56 percent of its shots the rest of the way. W&M was also 11-of-13 from the free-throw line, 6-of-6 in the final 36.2 seconds.
Johnson can be reached by phone at 757-247-4649.
