The Wagner Seahawks are moving on in the NCAA Tournament, though they didn’t make it easy on themselves in the closing minutes on Tuesday night.
Howard missed three consecutive 3-point shots that would have tied the game in the last 10 seconds, allowing the Seahawks to come away with a 71-68 win in the First Four of the tourney at UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio.
The win was the program’s first-ever in the NCAA Tournament and comes as Wagner has had to use just seven players due to the extensive injuries it has had to deal with.
The Seahawks will now face No. 1 seed North Carolina at 2:45 p.m. on Thursday.
Wagner will appear in the Round of 64 for the first time in 21 years when it suffered a first-round exit in an 87-61 loss to Pittsburgh.
“It’s phenomenal. You dream of this moment, not just as a player but as a coach to compete for a championship,” Wagner coach Donald Copeland said after the game. “Regardless of what we were going through, we never stopped believing. We never stopped having an expectation of ourselves.
“Having seven players, I would imagine some places might just come in the gym and go, ‘Hey we got seven we just have to go through the motions.’ We never did that. We prepared the right way. We expected to win, even when we did lose and then now to fight in the NCAA Tournament the way we did I think it speaks volumes to the culture.”
Though Wagner led for most of the night, the Bison made things interesting, cutting the Seahawks’ lead to one with less than 30 seconds left in the game.
Howard erased a 13-point deficit with 3:10 left in the second half as Marcus Dockery and Seth Towns hit back-to-back 3-pointers, and Bryce Harris hit a pair of free throws to cut it to 67-62.
Wagner’s Melvin Council Jr. gave his squad a little breathing room with a responding jumper, but Howard’s Isiah Warfield made back-to-back layups with under 1:30 to play, and a Harris layup made it a one-point game with 18 seconds on the clock.
Two free throws by Julian Brown gave Wagner a three-point cushion, and even though Howard had three chances to tie, it could not knock down the tying bucket.
Jordan Hairston missed the first two game-tying attempts and after managing another rebound, Howard’s Dockery couldn’t be the hero either.
“We still were able, I think, to get three great looks at the basket,” Howard coach Kenny Blakeney said. “But sometimes the basketball gods are with you and sometimes they’re not.”
Council finished the game with 21 points (on 10 of 18 from the field), along with seven assists and five rebounds.
Brown finished with 15 points for Wagner, while Keyontae Lewis and Tahron Allen had 10 points in the win.