“This team was headed for something great.”
That was Liberty head men’s basketball coach Ritchie McKay’s first comments when asked about the difficulty of losing the 2020 NCAA Tournament due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus.
As time goes on and we learn more and more about this virus, it’s easier to stomach the loss of the Tournament, but these are memories student-athletes all across the country will never get back. Legacies are made in March.
For the 2019-20 Liberty basketball team, the goal was more than just making it back to the Big Dance. This same group of players did that in 2019, even winning a game, a first in school history, but this team was armed with all the pieces needed to make a March run.
Liberty had four seniors, three of them fifth year guys.
The Flames had the star who could put the team on his back at any moment in Caleb Homesley.
They had the steadying force at point guard in Georgie Pacheco-Ortiz who time after time in his career was able to come through in the clutch.
McKay’s squad had the inside tandem of Scottie James and Myo Baxter-Bell, the best one-two punch of big men at the mid-major level.
Liberty had the electric scorer in Darius McGhee. The defensive star in Elijah Cuffee. The freshmen energy in Kyle Rode and Shiloh Robinson.
The Flames showed glimpses into what they could be in March all season. From the season opening win over Big South favorite Radford where Liberty led by 20 in the first half. To the three games in the Bahamas where Liberty played some of its best basketball all season even without Homesley.
This team started 14-0 following its best win of the season over Akron in Washington, D.C. just before Christmas. The Flames were one of the final three remaining unbeatens left in the country when they fell at LSU in the final game of 2019.
Yes, there was the two game slip up in conference in January. Yes, there were the naysayers about the weak schedule. But this team had its eyes on March all season.
This isn’t Coach McKay’s first rodeo. He knew the potential this team had. He obviously tried his best to up the team’s schedule without much success. But once you get to the Tournament, no high major team can hide from the mid-major who has advanced.
“This team had a confidence,” McKay said. “We wavered a little bit during the year, and the sky was falling after the weekend in Florida, but this team, I’m telling you, they just had that ability to stay close and at any time they could pull away. If we were right on both ends, we would have been a tough out.”
We’ll never be able to answer the question that loomed for this team all season – could it get the job done in March?
That part of the story will always be left unwritten, and it leaves us guessing if this could have been the team to push Liberty to the next level and being a mainstay among the top mid-major programs in the country.
“When you make it to the Sweet 16, your program changes,” said McKay. “That was my disappointment that we didn’t have that chance. We spent five years trying to get here.”
It’s been five years since McKay returned to Liberty from his time at Virginia. It was five long years of fighting through with teams that didn’t have all the pieces and were shorthanded. The team broke through last year and advanced to the NCAA’s Round of 32, but it was this year that everything was building to.
“Losing the NCAA Tournament, we then no longer had an opportunity to be that mid-major that broke through to the Sweet 16,” said McKay. “That shared experience alone – when I was at Virginia and we went to the Sweet 16, and that’s Virginia, it just bonded our group. It’s an incredible thing for everyone – the light that gets shed on the university, the alumni.”
Liberty, like all other programs around the country readying themselves for the Big Dance, will be left with the question of what if. But the Flames do find some solace in being able to win the ASUN Tournament Championship in front of friends and family. Most conferences didn’t get that luxury.
“When the Vines was rocking like it was and Flames Nation was in full force, we were able to cut the nets in the last game in that arena’s tenure, that was a blessing,” McKay recalled.
As the sun has set on this team and this group of seniors, remember them from their best moments punctuated by the ASUN Tournament Championship in front of over 7,700 screaming fans in A Sea of Red at the Vines Center for the last time.
Remember Scottie James’ trademark tomahawk dunk in the final minutes of the win over Lipscomb.
Remember Darius McGhee’s dunk.
Remember Caleb Homesley banking in the three and throwing his arms up Michael Jordanesque.
Remember Myo Baxter-Bell making the three pointer in the final seconds, the final basket to ever be made in the Vines.
“I think those will be the memories that we take away from 2019-20,” said McKay.
“I just think the way it ended, those guys can put a feather in their cap for what they started,” McKay said as he thought about his senior class. “They came to Liberty without any fanfare whatsoever. Scottie James, I think he averaged 1.2 points per game at Bradley. Caleb Homesley was coming off a knee injury and didn’t play his senior season. Georgie, we were the only one to offer him. Myo had to sit out a year, really was a lost puppy when he came to college.”
“I think the celebration is what they achieved collectively as a group, and the kind of young men that they leave Liberty having grown into. They are just phenomenal people.”
Four straight 20-win seasons. 102 wins in four years. Three conference championship game appearances. Two regular season titles. Two conference tournament titles. An NCAA Tournament win.
“The joy that we have is two fold,” McKay said. “Number one, that we get to represent our University in the way that supports our mission, and number two, the Alums that have gone before us. We want to honor them with the labor and the sacrifice that they made.”
“I think the small semblance of success that we’ve had is good for everyone,” he continued. “We feel privileged to be a part of that body, yet we do know, man, there was a greater opportunity and it didn’t come to fruition.”
