Posted: Feb 28, 2019
Bulldogs in Washington to face No. 2-ranked Whitman in NCAA 1st round
WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- Texas Lutheran, making its fourth NCAA tournament in five seasons, faces No. 2-ranked Whitman (Wash.) in the opening round Friday of the NCAA Division III Men's Basketball Championship.
Game time is set for 7:30 p.m. pacific (9:30 p.m. central) in Whitman's Sherwood Athletic Center.
Whitman (26-1) is the Northwest Conference champion. The Blues received the conference's automatic berth to the NCAA post-season.
TLU (18-9) and Head Coach Mike Wacker received the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference's automatic bid to the tournament after winning the program's fourth SCAC tournament in five years.
The Bulldogs and Blues will be joined in Walla Walla by Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference champion Pomona-Pitzer (25-2) and American Southwest Conference champion University of Texas at Dallas (24-4).
Pomona-Pitzer and UT Dallas play at 5:30 p.m. on Friday. The winners meet at 7 p.m. Saturday in Sherwood Athletic Center for a right to play in the NCAA DIII "Sweet 16."
TLU won its fourth SCAC tournament crown by holding off a determined University of Dallas squad 99-95 Sunday in double overtime in TLU's Memorial Gymnasium.
The Bulldogs advanced to the NCAA Division III Men's Basketball Championship Tournament for the fourth time in school history. The Bulldogs are 0-3 in their previous three trips to the NCAA post-season.
In Whitman, the Bulldogs will be facing one of the most high-powered offenses in all of collegiate basketball. The Blues are third in NCAA Division III in scoring, at 104.9 points per game, and they rank first in scoring margin, defeating foes by an average of 23.8 per contest.
Whitman's Jack Stewart, a senior wing, is seventh in the country in three-point field goal percentage (.477). He averages 2.63 made three-pointers per game.
Fellow wing Austin Butler, another senior, is among the national leaders in assists and assist-to-turnover ratio.
Whitman has four players scoring in double figures. Joey Hewitt leads the Blues at 16.2 per game. Six different players average at least 8.4 per contest.
TLU is led by a senior class that includes All-SCAC performers Nathan Josephs (San Antonio/Clark) and Harris Jowell (Brock/Brock) and four other seniors - Shawn Hamilton (San Antonio/MacArthur), Jackson Willoughby (Port Aransas/Port Aransas), Jacob Kouremetis (San Antonio/O'Connor), and Alex Cage (Austin/McNeil) – that all contributed to TLU in the program's run back to the NCAA tournament.
Josephs, Hamilton and Willoughby each were named to the SCAC All-Tournament Team, and Willoughby joined the likes of former Bulldogs Jordan Kouremetis (two times) and Sterling Holmes as an SCAC Tournament Most Valuable Player.
Josephs leads TLU in scoring (13.4 ppg), assists (4.3 apg), and steals (1.3 spg). He dished out 116 assists in 27 games and made 63 three-pointers. In the SCAC Championship final against the University of Dallas, Josephs played 43 minutes and had 18 points, eight assists, five rebounds and four steals. TLU won in double-overtime 99-95.
Josephs was an All-SCAC Second Team selection in 2017-18. He has led TLU in scoring and assists in each of the last two seasons.
Jowell, who suffered an injury late in the regular season, played in the SCAC tournament win over Trinity before sustaining an injury in the Trinity game that likely will keep him out of significant action in the NCAA tournament. Jowell is a four-time SCAC champion and in the Bulldogs' top-five for career wins at TLU.