The best screenwriters in Hollywood couldn’t script this any better.
On Sunday, Liberty will play for the ASUN Championship for a second straight season, and the Flames will have to do so against the same team it defeated last year on their home floor, the Lipscomb Bisons.
No one is surprised the Flames have made it to Championship Sunday. Liberty was the preseason conference favorite and returned a quartet of seniors who played a large part in the team’s success the past few years.
But Lipscomb? The Bisons aren’t supposed to be back in the ASUN Championship game for a third straight season. Not after seniors Garrison Mathews, Rob Marberry, and Eli Pepper graduated. And certainly not after lead guard and rising senior Kenny Cooper transferred and head coach Casey Alexander left for cross-town rival Belmont.
The Bisons lost its first four Division I games of the season, and fell to 7-13 overall and 2-5 in ASUN play after dropping four straight in mid-January. But behind first year head coach Lennie Acuff, who had a storied tenure at Division II Alabama-Huntsville, and sophomore big man Ahsan Asadullah, Lipscomb has been on a tear. They have won 10 out of 12 entering Sunday’s championship bout and are the only ASUN team to defeat both Liberty and North Florida this season.
They outlasted the Ospreys on their home floor in the semifinals Thursday night thanks to a runner in the lane by Andrew Fleming with 3 seconds remaining. They barely made it to Thursday, as they had to come from behind in the final 5 minutes against FGCU in the quarterfinals Tuesday night before winning, 68-63.
“They really present some challenges for you because of their inside presence with Ahsan Asadullah who has really come on and I think still has one of the highest usage rates in the country,” Liberty head coach Ritchie McKay said. “They have other good players around him – Buckland is terrific, Fleming has really been playing well, K.J., the freshman, has been really good for them. We’re not surprised (they are here). We knew when we played them here the first time that they were a tough out.”
Perhaps upset about not winning ASUN Player of the Year, Asadullah has been on a different level in the first two games of the tournament. He had 40 points and 14 rebounds against FGCU and then 27 points and 19 rebounds against North Florida. It looked like he was headed for another 40 point performance against the Ospreys as he scored 10 points in the first 4:17 of game action and had 18 points by the 7:51 mark of the first half.
“He’s a really talented player, really complete, good passer, good at finishing right around the basket,” Liberty’s Scottie James said. “We’ve got to work on making his catches tough, just trying to make him uncomfortable, make him take tough shots. He’s a good player, so he’s going to score, he’s going to get some assists. We’ve just got to work on making it tough on him on every possession.”
But it’s Liberty who has the league’s Player of the Year in Caleb Homesley, and Homesley proved why he deserved the honor Thursday night as he scored a game-high 26 points and drew a charge in the final minute. That turnover was Stetson’s only scoreless possession in its last 10 times it had the ball. It was Caleb’s 9th 20 point game of the season and his 6th in the last 9 games.
Homesley is part of a senior class that is the best in program history. Homesley, Georgie Pacheco-Ortiz, Myo Baxter-Bell, and Scottie James have risen the expectations and national profile of Liberty basketball to a level that was once only dreamt about. They can put another feather in their cap by getting the Flames to 30 wins on the year, a new program record besting last year’s mark, and earning a second straight NCAA Tournament berth for the first time in school history.
For the Flames, the path to Sunday’s championship game was one the program has never traveled. Liberty was the preseason favorite and then raced out to a 14-0 mark, one of the final three unbeaten teams in the country, and were 19-1 early in conference play. Many speculated on whether or not the Flames could finish the ASUN season unblemished.
“I’m really proud of our group,” McKay said. “It takes a great deal of maturity and mental toughness to endure the expectations that have been on our guys all year long since being 14-0 and hearing the news about we might not lose a game or we’re going to run through the ASUN. I heard Mark Few on Sirius XM talking about how everyone thinks they’re just going to run through the WCC, but that is just not realistic for Division I college basketball.”
The first two ASUN Tournament games finished much closer than the experts predicted. The Flames were favorites by an average of 16 points against NJIT and Stetson, but the combined margin of the two games was 10. But Liberty has made it where everyone expected them – the program’s third straight conference championship game.
“We knew this is what we wanted to get to,” senior Caleb Homesley said of Sunday’s championship game. “We knew it was going to be hard, we knew we were going to get everyone’s best shot. It’s a good thing that we get to host for a conference championship.”
This series between the Flames and Bisons is quickly developing into the ASUN’s premier rivalry. Two straight meetings in the league championship game will do that. The last four games have been decided by 6.75 points. Lipscomb was the last team to win in the Vines Center – Liberty has reeled off 22 consecutive wins since then.
Just one week ago in the regular season finale, Lipscomb blitzed the Flames early, putting Liberty in a 23 point hole by the 11 minute mark of the first half. Liberty was able to cut the deficit to five on several occasions, but could never get over the hump.
“We haven’t been down 20 points in a long time,” said McKay. “That certainly got our attention. The game settled back in, our guys kept chipping away. Our execution has to be better if we’re going to hope to advance to the NCAA Tournament, our guys are well aware of that.”
For 30 years, the Vines Center has been the home to Liberty basketball. On Sunday, Liberty will play its final game in the storied arena. The Flames would love nothing more than to close it out in styles by celebrating a conference championship.
“As a senior, that would be great,” Myo Baxter-Bell said. “That was something we hoped for at the start of the season. It would be great to come back and say I was on that team that won the last game in the Vines Center. That’s something that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.”
It’s been 16 long years since the last time Liberty played for a conference championship and NCAA Tournament bid on its home floor, but that streak comes to an end Sunday. In 2004, Liberty blitzed High Point, 89-44, in the Big South Championship game behind 29 points from freshman Larry Blair. The environment in the Vines Center for that one certainly played an impact.
“We want to win at Vines,” senior point guard Georgie Pacheco-Ortiz stated. “Win a championship at home with the home crowd, with Flames Nation supporting us.”
Still, it’s been the road team that has won the ASUN Tournament Championship in each of the past two years. Liberty won at Lipscomb last year and the Bisons won at Florida Gulf Coast in 2018. The Flames hope to end that streak Sunday and become the first ASUN back-to-back champion since FGCU and Dunk City won it in 2016 and 2017.
“When you have such an old group, I think our guys realize the insignificance of the number by your name, of being at home,” said McKay. “The crowd (Thursday) night had an impact on the outcome. They injected another dose of energy in our guys that we rode in the second half and were able to prevail. I hope it’s raucous. I hope it’s sold out. Our fans could have a lot to do with the way we play.”
One last go round at the Vines. A trip to the NCAA Tournament on the line. ASUN Championship game rematch. Liberty vs Lipscomb. The stage is set.
“The significance of the game, the fact that it’s on ESPN, it’s the last game of the Vines tenure, I think all those externals make it that much more of a story,” McKay said. “But once the ball goes up, it will be two teams that are trying to continue their season in a place that we all started out the beginning of the year hoping to go. I think it will be a highly competitive game.”
