by Russell Vannozzi | Mar 14, 2018 | News Slider, Opinion, Sports
Sunday’s TBS Selection Show brought plenty of anticipation as the Lipscomb basketball team learned the destination of its first-ever NCAA tournament game. The answer? A date with the North Carolina Tar Heels in Charlotte. After the initial excitement wore off, a harsh reality set in: the Bisons must take down Goliath for their season to extend past Friday’s matchup against the defending national champions. Nearly every national analyst has picked the Tar Heels to win, and rightfully so. Coached by Roy Williams, North Carolina has won seven national titles and is routinely in the hunt for a Final Four berth. Most Vegas oddsmakers have the Tar Heels as a 19-point favorite against the Bisons. But North Carolina hasn’t been untouchable this season. While most of their losses came against highly ranked teams, the Tar Heels dropped a 79-75 contest to Wofford on Dec. 20 at home. Just three days earlier, Tennessee came within five points of beating the Tar Heels in Knoxville. Nonetheless, ESPN’s Matchup Predictor gave the Bisons just a 3.3 percent chance of beating the 25-10 Tar Heels. The Athletic’s Ken Pomeroy echoed those sentiments, giving Lipscomb a 4.1 percent chance of reaching the second round. Other media outlets acknowledged Lipscomb’s outside chance at an upset. SB Nation’s Alex Kirshner listed the game his “Category 4: It’s possible. Don’t laugh” upset pick, while Tennessee State coach Dana Ford told 104.5 The Zone’s Midday 180 show that the Bisons’ shooting prowess makes them a contender. “I like Lipscomb’s chances because in order to win in (the NCAA) tournament as a lower seed, you must make threes,” Ford told...
by Erin Franklin | Mar 13, 2018 | News Slider, Sports
For the first time in school history, Lipscomb’s men’s basketball team will be competing in the NCAA tournament. Sunday night, the team, with support from fans and alumni at the selection show held in Allen Arena, found out its seed and destination — a No. 15 seed playing University of North Carolina, a No. 2 seed, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Though this is Lipscomb’s first time appearing in the NCAA tournament, the Bisons have a rich basketball history. In 1999, the NCAA granted Lipscomb dual membership to compete in both NAIA and NCAA. 2001 was the first year Lipscomb played its first full Division 1 schedule, and the Bisons were first eligible for the NCAA tournament in 2003. But before all this, Lipscomb was a small-college basketball powerhouse, known as David Lipscomb rather than just the founder’s surname, that won the NAIA National Championship in 1986. The Lipscomb Greats — Philip Hutcheson and John Pierce Current Athletic Director Philip Hutcheson is part of this strong and established foundation that helped get the Bisons to where they are today. Notably, he was the first Lipscomb athlete to have his uniform (#44) retired. The six-foot-8-inch center ended his career with 4,106 points as college basketball’s all-time scorer, and he was an All-American each of his four seasons. He was named the 1990 NAIA Player of the Year and CoSIDA Academic Player of the Year in both 1988-89 and 1989-90. But Hutcheson was successful even off the court during his time at Lipscomb. He maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA and graduated as Lipscomb’s valedictorian. His roots at Lipscomb run deep — he even...
by Cole Gray | Mar 12, 2018 | BREAKING NEWS, News Slider, Sports
Lipscomb will face the defending champion North Carolina Tar Heels in Charlotte, N.C. Friday in the Bisons’ first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance. The two-seed Tar Heels defeated Gonzaga 71-65 in the 2017 final and are coming off a loss in the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship to the first-ranked University of Virginia. They have won six NCAA Championships in 49 appearances. “We’re not going to be better than North Carolina overall,” coach Casey Alexander said. “We’ve just got to be better than North Carolina in one 40-minute game.” That game will be played at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, the home of the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets. The Bisons cut down the nets in Fort Myers last Sunday, defeating Florida Gulf Coast University 108-96 to clinch its first ASUN championship. Lipscomb was the last team slated into the NCAA Tournament bracket. Charlotte is about 400 miles from Nashville. Alexander said it was the “best-case scenario” in terms of traveling to the game. “I didn’t want to go too far away, where a lot of people couldn’t get there,” he said in a press conference following the bracket release show. “This is kind of the best of both worlds. Anybody that wants to go can go, but it’s a trip for our players for the full NCAA experience.” Bisons play-by-play announcer Jonathan Seamon emceed a watch party for the Selection Show in Allen Arena. Sophomore guards Kenny Cooper and Michael Buckland called going to the Big Dance a “dream come true.” Junior center Rob Marberry thanked the fans, who clapped for nearly an hour for cheerleaders, players and coaches until the Selection Show began. Alexander...
by Spencer Boehme | Mar 11, 2018 | News Slider, Sports
On an overcast day with a wet field, gameplay started two hours earlier than originally planned. But just before the rain could interrupt the contest, the Lipscomb Bisons (8-8) pulled out a 4-2 victory to close out a weekend series against the Michigan Wolverines (4-10) with two straight wins. They did so by not allowing any runs after the first inning. “The story of this weekend was our pitching staff,” Lipscomb coach Jeff Forehand said. “They really just did a great job.” The Bisons began the weekend with a 16-11 loss on Friday in which senior shortstop Blake Thomas and junior first baseman Cade Sorrells each tacked on three runs for the Bisons. The Bisons pitching staff played three, including starting freshman pitcher Max Habegger (0-1), who threw for just over two innings and allowed five runs. Lipscomb followed the loss with a 7-4 victory on Saturday. Starting junior pitcher Chris Kachmar (1-0) pitched six innings and allowed four runs, while junior pitcher Robbie Knox finished off the final three innings allowing zero hits and zero runs. Senior catcher Jeffrey Crisan ran in a team-high two scores. “We didn’t put ourself in a bad spot like we talked about on Friday,” Forehand said of both Saturday and Sunday’s games. “We corrected those things.” On Sunday, the Wolverines began with two runs in the first inning. The first occurred on an RBI double by senior first baseman Brock Keener; the second on an RBI single by senior third baseman Hector Gutierrez. Junior left fielder Miles Lewis and Keener each were credited with a run. The Bisons responded in the bottom...
by Lindsey Nance | Mar 11, 2018 | News Slider, Opinion, Sports
It’s Thursday, March 1, in Allen Arena. The Bisons have just trounced the Jacksonville Dolphins in the conference tournament to stamp their ticket to the ASUN championship game for the first time in 12 years. Now, it’s time to celebrate. The cheerleading team is screaming so loud my ears are ringing beccause we all know what happens next. We have one day to prepare to jump on a plane and takeoff for Ft. Myers, Florida, to take on the No. 1 seeded Eagles. Head cheerleading coach Sherie Eubanks quickly hands out our flight assignments with itineraries, and I run home to start packing for my 5 a.m. flight on Saturday morning. I can’t sleep that night because I am so excited about getting the opportunity to cheer in the Conference Championship game my senior year. On Saturday morning, my teammates roll into the airport one by one, exhausted but so ecstatic for this new opportunity. Our flight takes us to Chicago where we have a three hour layover, and then we are just hours away from our destination and warm, sandy beaches. We arrive at our condo on the beach around 8:00 that night, and we are all so pumped up about the big game on Sunday, we rush to bed like kids on Christmas Eve awaiting their many presents. This is what we have been dreaming of all season, and it is just within our grasp. The Sunday of the game is hectic. We drive to eat, and the streets are flooded with blue and green in anticipation for the championship game. People along the streets and in...
by Lorena Coleman | Mar 9, 2018 | News Slider, Sports
On Sunday evening, Lipscomb’s Men’s Basketball team clinched an NCAA tournament appearance for the first time ever, defeating Florida Gulf Coast University 108-96 to become Atlantic Sun Conference Champions. This win not only secured a spot for the team to play in the NCAA tournament, but also an opportunity for Lipscomb’s name to be recognized nationwide. After the game, ‘Lipscomb University’ became a trending topic on twitter, and the school has since been mentioned in articles by top media outlets such as ESPN, CBS Sports and NBC, which dubbed Lipscomb ‘The Cinderella team of the NCAA tournament.’ For President Randy Lowry, knowing the team is about to enter the Big Dance is “incredibly exciting.” “I think you have to have a little bit of context to know how excited I am,” Lowry began. “Twelve years ago, the first year I became President of Lipscomb, we were playing for the Championship against Belmont at East Tennessee State University. That game came down to the wire. We went into overtime and lost by just a point or two…” While Lowry said he wasn’t able to recognize the significance of the win at that time, he does now. “We were obviously a much younger Division One program with little experience, yet here we were and we were so close and missed it. That (the win) did a lot for Belmont. Over the last ten years they have had a great program, and I think they would all point to that night as the beginning of their ascension.” Though Lipscomb’s team may have fallen short of the Championship win twelve years ago, 2018...
