Trailing by 13 with less than 10 minutes to play in last week’s CUSA Tournament Semifinals game against Kennesaw State, Liberty point guard Colin Porter found Owen Aquino leaking behind the Owls’ defense. He tossed the ball ahead and Liberty’s big man finished. On the next possession, Porter drilled a three from 30-feet. The 5-0 run cut the lead to eight and sparked a run that would lead the Flames to the win and eventual CUSA Championship in the finals the next night.
“One of our players said in the locker room, ‘Colin Porter believed the whole game,'” Liberty head coach Ritchie McKay said last Friday following the game. “When you have a point guard like him, you have a chance to have a special season and that’s been the case for us.”
A special season no doubt. Liberty is currently 28-6, having won the third most games in the program’s Division I history. The Flames went 13-5 in the 8th toughest conference in college basketball, sweeping both the regular season and tournament title for Conference USA. It has pushed Liberty into the program’s 7th NCAA Tournament bid where the Flames will take on No. 5 seed Oregon on Friday night in Seattle, looking for the program’s second ever win in the Big Dance.
“He’s the rock,” Liberty junior forward Zach Cleveland said of his classmate. “He’s the rock on the team. He’s never shook. He’s never flustered. We can always look at him at any time in the game knowing he’s going to settle us down whenever we get too low or too high. He’s the one bringing us up. That’s what a point guard does. He’s the best example of that. Him having that confidence in himself gives the whole team confidence.”
Liberty trailed in that semifinal game against Kennesaw for the first 36+ minutes and by as many as 14. To lose belief at some point during that game would have been understandable, but it was Porter who kept the team believing and sparked their final spurt that led to the comeback win. He did it throughout the CUSA Tournament in Huntsville last week, knowing and providing exactly what the team needed. Whether it was his defense on the opposing team’s top perimeter player, getting his own shot, or creating opportunities for his teammates. In the championship game Saturday night against Jacksonville State, Porter scored or assisted on each of Liberty’s first 14 points to get things rolling.
Porter finished the week in Huntsville playing in 36 minutes in each of the three games while averaging 11.7 points, 6.3 assists, and 2.7 rebounds per game. His 9 assists against the Gamecocks in Saturday’s final was a CUSA championship game record and also tied his career high. Porter was a perfect 3 of 3 from three-point range against Jax State. He shot 52% from the floor in Huntsville and 45.4% from three. Those numbers increased to 68.7% from the field and 66.7% from three in the final two games against Kennesaw State and Jacksonville State. Somehow, he did not make the all-tournament team. He also failed to make one of the top three teams in the postseason CUSA awards that were announced last week just ahead of the conference tournament despite his season averages of 9.3 points, 4.3 assists, and 2.1 rebounds per game while shooting 44.3% from three.
Of Liberty’s six losses this season, three of them were by three points or fewer (FAU in overtime, Western Kentucky, UTEP). Those games certainly could have gone either way with Kaden Metheny having a shot to win or tie the game at the buzzer in two of those and one where UTEP hit a buzzer beater when the game was tied. The other losses were a five-point loss at home to Kennesaw State on Senior Day, an 11-point loss at Jacksonville State in a game that was still in doubt at the final media timeout, and a five-point loss at Louisiana Tech. Porter only played 22 minutes in the loss to the Bulldogs, missing most of the second half with an injury. As special as this season has been at 28-6, the Flames are just a few possessions and a couple injuries away from having an even more impressive record and likely better seed than the No. 12 it received in the NCAA Tournament.
“This group has been committed to being present on the daily,” McKay said. “I think that’s one of Colin’s real strengths. He can look up at the scoreboard, see the score and it not be something that is favorable to us, and he’s not fazed. That’s a characteristic that you cannot teach, that is inherent to who he is.”
