
By Harlow A. Hyde, the Snoopy Septuagenarian, DeLand
“Not the victory but the action. Not the goal but the game. In the deed the glory!” — Dr. Hartley Burr Alexander, 1922
Athletic competitions take place in the public eye, and as such often plainly exhibit the classic elements of a tragedy, be it Greek or Shakespearean. In Act I, the heroes are introduced. They are young but exhibit character, talent and promise. Initially they have success. In Act II adversity arises and unexpected setbacks threaten to destroy what has been accomplished. In Act III, through determination, perseverance and courage, the protagonists prevail and they seem to have triumphed. But then in the Final Act, fate intervenes — out of nowhere, for no earthly reason, come heartbreak and defeat. This is the story of the 2023-24 Stetson Hatter men’s basketball campaign. Except that in this case defeat is not accompanied by heartbreak. Stetson’s tale ends with heads still held high, along with a combination of humility, pride and joy at what was accomplished. That fact, along with the realization that in life, our defeats often teach us more than our successes.
We’ll begin to tell the story from the middle of Act I, on Jan. 1, 2024 …
As the New Year arrived, the Stetson Hatters were exactly halfway through their 53rd year competing in NCAA Division I basketball. The 2024 edition of the team had proved it was pretty good, in fact quite a bit above average, with nine wins and six losses through the end of December. So far, the season’s highlight had been on Nov. 26: a 85-82 big-time win over UCF, a much larger college in Orlando. But this had been offset somewhat by a strange loss on Dec. 18, 80-88, to Nebraska-Omaha, a member of the small and badly misnamed Summit Conference.
But nevertheless, in retrospect, as of Jan. 1, there were no prominent signs or portents that fortune was going to shine on this group more than it had on any of the Hatter hardwoods in the past half-century. Something had always gone wrong near the end of the season in previous years … so why would anyone dare to hope that 2024 would be different?
As if determined to prove the 53-year hex was now a thing of the past, the Hatters played very good basketball over the first six weeks of 2024, compiling a highly respectable record of eight wins and four losses through a tough slog of conference games. On Feb. 7 they overcame an 11-point halftime deficit to defeat Bellarmine University 84-77 in Louisville, Kentucky. Senior starting power forward Josh Smith scored 19 points and reached the milestone of 500 career rebounds.
A RUFF ROAD —Moise Satine, pictured here with a puppy, a member of Stetson Athletics, was one of the many smiling faces at Stetson’s send off March 20.
In the next game, against a very good club from Eastern Kentucky, the Hatters prevailed by an 8-point margin, winning 87-79. Smith again led the team, played for 39 of the 40 minutes, scored 24 points, and contributed a superior defensive effort. Smith had always been solid and dependable, but since Jan. 1 he had been very successful in elevating his game to a much higher level.
Hot off the victory over the Colonels, things were definitely looking good for the Hatters!
But then during practice just a couple of days later, the late-season curse seemed to return. Josh Smith tore his ACL, and the severe injury meant he was out for the rest of the season. Could Donnie Jones and the team overcome this substantial loss of both offensive and defensive power? It seemed very doubtful, and at first it seemed the predictable pessimism was warranted.
The first game after Josh Smith assumed the role of helping the team from the bench, the Hatters barely eked out a 1-point win, 61-60, in the Edmunds Center against a very so-so squad from Florida Gulf Coast. Then five days later, reality abruptly arrived in the form of a disheartening 75-83 loss at home to Queens, one of the weakest teams in the conference. Obviously, something had to change. Offensive outputs of 61, or even 75 points, were not going to win many more games toward the end of the season.
But coach Jones knows basketball. You can imagine him awake at night pondering options. All seem rather dubious. Finally, like a gambler trying to roll a hard eight with his last chips at the craps table in Vegas, Jones settled on a strategy that certainly was a long shot. All the experts would consider it very chancy, and that is being charitable.
Jones says to himself, “This is a great group of kids, they’re young and would follow me over Niagara Falls in a barrel if I asked them to. They don’t know you can’t win in Division I by starting four guards.” So Donnie goes with the audacious plan! “Men, we’re going with a small team, we’ll speed up the offense, smother them, playing ‘scratch and claw’ on defense (figuratively speaking), and thereby use the talent we now have in the best way possible. We can win with this plan, if you believe in it — and in yourselves.”
In the first game, Donnie’s daring plan worked well — it resulted in a solid 84-72 win over Kennesaw State, and was followed by an equally encouraging 86-73 victory over Jacksonville State. However, the new system has obvious limitations. It works … unless it doesn’t. To demonstrate, the regular season ended on March 1 with a big 59-78 loss to the University of North Florida, a team the Hatters had beaten two months earlier.
So … on to the ASUN Tournament. Twelve teams, all starting with a clean slate, all with an equal incentive to win the conference championship and earn the automatic bid to the NCAA’s Big Dance. The Eastern Kentucky Colonels, strong, good shooters, and fast, sporting a 12-4 conference record, earned the No. 1 seed. Stetson and Lipscomb with identical 11-5 records in conference play were seeded No. 2 and 3, respectively. The difference between being seeded second and third is moot, since both teams are allowed to host the first tournament game they play.
Sometimes a little help comes from an unexpected source. In the March 4 first round, a small surprise occurred when Jacksonville, seeded No. 10, beat the ASUN defending champion Kennesaw State 92-86 in Richmond, Kentucky. The 92 points Jacksonville scored via a blistering 62-percent shooting against a good defensive team raised a few eyebrows among those who closely follow such statistics. Then in a gigantic upset, in the second round on March 5, Jacksonville knocked off top-seeded Eastern Kentucky 67-65 on their home court! People began to ask, “What’s up with these Jacksonville upstarts?”
On the same night in DeLand, Stetson’s new lineup clicked smoothly in the quarterfinals — the Hatters convincingly avenged their Feb. 22 loss to Queens, the eighth seed, with an easy 83-71 victory.
On March 6, after the tournament’s quarterfinal round results became known, a small buzz started to spread through DeLand. In addition to Eastern Kentucky’s defeat, Lipscomb, the dangerous third-seeded team, had been knocked off by seventh-seeded North Alabama. That meant in the semifinals only two highly seeded teams were left: Stetson, No. 2 and Austin Peay, No. 4. And Stetson, as the highest-seeded team still in the hunt, was designated as the remaining host school with the home court advantage — as long as it continued to win.
All of a sudden, people put two and two together and it dawned on them — Stetson was only two games away from the Big Dance! And the Hatters had, for once, what seemed to be the inside track toward winning the conference championship. All it had to do immediately, as in tomorrow, March 7, was beat Jacksonville in the semifinals. On paper, this looked doable. Stetson had beaten Jacksonville twice in regular-season conference play, 71-55 in Jan. and 86-73 in Feb.. Still, Jacksonville was an older team who had suddenly caught fire and was now playing better than at any time earlier in the season. And according to the fates, it’s very hard to beat a team three times in a year.
Well, a blow-by-blow account would be fine, but in reality the last five minutes of heroics tells it all. Down 10 points with only 4:53 left in the second half, Stetson called time out. Donnie Jones calmly speaks to the man of the hour … unleashing his secret weapon. It was a very brief talk, a little come to Jesus chat if you will with Stephan Swenson.
“Start shooting more of your long bombs or we’re done!”
Hatter Jalen Blackmon, a lead scorer for the team, departing DeLand to cheers on their way to March Madness in Brooklyn, New York City.
The play-by-play chart of the rest of the game has the following: 04:37: 3 pt shot good by Swenson! 04:01: 2 pt shot good by Swenson! 03:20: 3 pt shot good by Swenson! 21 seconds left: 3 pt shot good by Swenson! 16 seconds remaining — Stetson has the ball but is still down by two 85-87. Stetson has no timeouts left. But never fear, Swenson has taken the game on his back.
The Hatters work the ball around the horn, Swenson gets loose and receives the pass from Alec Oglesby. With four seconds left, he shoots! He seemed to have launched the shot from Downtown DeLand, the ball arching impossibly high towards the ceiling of the Edmunds Center. Then the orb containing Stetson’s season dropped inexorably toward the rim. Swish! Nothing but net!!! Three-point shot good by Swenson! Seven of nine from three-point range for Swenson for the game. Twenty-nine total points! Fourteen points in the last five minutes, six coming in the last 20 seconds! How did a skinny kid from Belgium learn to shoot like that??? Whew!! That was close! Final score: Stetson by one, 88-87.
This reporter noted, however, that only six players scored for Stetson and only seven had more than five minutes of playing time. The Hatters are a very good team, but they are not very deep.
Now to the finals …
The championship game Sunday afternoon, March 10, against Austin Peay was just as exciting. Jalen Blackmon, the more predictable star of the team, was on fire. He led the way with a tournament record 43 points. But only six Stetson players scored, and only seven got any playing time. Again, this gives you an indication that the team does not have a great deal of depth. The game was tied nine times, and Austin Peay led 39 to 36 at the half. Early in the second half, Austin Peay led by as many as seven, 54 to 47. But Stetson fought back gamely.
Blackmon was unstoppable and Stetson led by a basket or two during most of the final 10 minutes. Still, it was tied at 84 with 1:40 left, and it seemed the outcome was very much in doubt. But after a quick flurry, Stetson led by five with less than 30 seconds to go. A duel of fouls and parading up and down the court to the free throw lines meant the last 28 seconds of playing time took nearly 10 minutes. Austin Peay did have a desperation shot, from more than 30 feet out, as time expired. If made it would have tied the game and sent it into overtime. Thankfully, it wasn’t to be. Final score: Stetson 91, Austin Peay 88.
The half-century of waiting was over! Stetson was going dancing! And as coach Jones says, “You can’t be Cinderella unless you’re invited to the ball.” The sold-out crowd emptied the stands and filled the court in celebration, but not like the out-of-control mobs often witnessed elsewhere. Stetson fans and students have too much class to exhibit any such childish or unruly behavior. President Christopher Roellke wouldn’t dream of it!
The process the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee uses to both select and then seed teams has always been murky to say the least. It is the exact opposite of transparent. This year’s methods, and the results, seemed especially byzantine when revealed to the world on selection Sunday, March 17. It appears that for 2024 the committee relied greatly on AI, which in this case could only stand for Accumulated Ignorance.
AI, along with advice from the Gnomes of Zurich, lessons gleaned from the Chronicles of Narnia, and very great reliance on a random number table. All these factors were used in combination, whilst closely examining the entrails of a freshly killed chicken. Amazingly, this combined “wisdom” resulted in the committee seeding Stetson 16th in the East Region. This despite Stetson’s excellent 22-12 record. For comparison, in the NCAA 2023 tournament a year ago, the ASUN champion Kennesaw State was seeded 14th and placed in the much weaker Midwest Region. In any case, Stetson’s seeding meant they were scheduled to play the defending national champion and No. 1 seed in the entire tournament on opening day! Their opponent was none other than the Connecticut Huskies, who sported a 33-3 record in the regular season, the best of any team in the tournament. Oh well, no one guaranteed the Big Dance would be easy!
Final score: Connecticut 91, Stetson 52. Defeat? Yes. A tragedy? Absolutely not!
Josh Smith, a 6’9” forward, is all smiles March 23 upon their return.
In attempting to properly honor and summarize the Hatters season, nothing is more apt or fitting than the eloquent words Theodore Roosevelt spoke in a little-known speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910 … “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or short coming. Only the man in the arena knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end the triumph of high achievement, or, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory or defeat.”
On March 22, the Hatters, players and coaches, certainly symbolized the ideals of Roosevelt’s men in the arena. They gave us all they had and more. For that, and not the final score, they will be admired and long remembered. So all hail the 2024 Stetson Hatters. We can’t wait till next year!
— Harlow A. Hyde, the Snoopy Septuagenarian, lives in DeLand.