By Owen Kaelble | @OwenKaelble
Sports Capital Journalism Program
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Norfolk State senior guard Devante Carter may have only scored four points, but two of them came when it mattered most. With 8.6 seconds to play, Carter drained the free throws after drawing a foul on a mad rush to the basket to give the Spartans a 54-53 victory over Appalachian State in the First Four.
Norfolk State (17-7) completed an historic night for historically Black colleges and universities in the NCAA tournament. The Spartans, from the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, advanced on the same night as Texas Southern of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, marking the first time in tournament history that schools from those two leagues won a game.
The Spartans advanced to a first-round match with the overall No. 1 seed, Gonzaga, on Saturday. Norfolk State’s only previous NCAA tournament victory was in 2012, when the 15th-seeded Spartans beat No. 2 seed Missouri.
Appalachian State (17-12), which had lost its two previous games in the tournament, faced a deficit as large as 19 points and led for just 5:58. The Mountaineers did not have a field goal in the last 5:47 and missed their last 10 shots. But they still had a chance to win, until Justin Forrest’s last-second shot following his offensive rebound fell short.
The game was really a tale of two different halves. In the first half, Norfolk State junior guard Jalen Hawkins couldn’t miss. The New York native scored 20 of his 24 points in the first half, with 12 of them coming from behind the 3-point line. The Mountaineers went 0-for-18 from behind the arc in the first 20 minutes, only made eight field goals, turned the ball over 12 times and were down 16, 36-20, at the break.
In the second half, the 3-point shots started falling for Appalachian State, six in total, and an 18-point deficit with 19:13 to go became a one point lead for the Mountaineers with 7:43 left. The Appalachian State lead would grow to as many as six points, but key stops and big shots, including a clutch layup by senior forward J.J. Matthews with 3:06 to play, helped sealed the deal.
“First half we obviously got any shot we wanted, we were executing the game plan to a T,” said Norfolk State coach Robert Jones. “That’s sometimes the risk you have when your team is doing so well and it’s a 16-point game at half. We try to tell these guys that 16 points is nothing, but once again you’re dealing with 18 to 22-year-olds and sometimes that message doesn’t always resonate. It gets a little sticky.
“And when it got a little sticky the guys responded,” Jones said, “and we did execute in the stretches that we needed to and we executed defensively to finish the game. We got what we call a turkey – like bowling, we got three strikes in a row, three stops in a row to finish the game.”
The Spartans reached the tournament thanks in large part to their leading scorer, Carter. Coming into the game, the senior led the team in scoring with 15.5 points per game, in rebounds with 5.3 per game and in assists with four per game. He was part of an offense that ranked second in the MEAC with 75.2 points per game and a defense that also ranked second, only allowing opponents to score 69.2 points per game.
Carter was held to 1-of-10 shooting, but his teammates came through. Hawkins finished with 24 points along with five rebounds. Junior guard Joe Bryant Jr. offered 10 points of his own, along with four rebounds and four steals. The collective effort epitomizes what Jones sees in his team. “These guys love each other, like brothers,” he said. “When you say family, you can see it. Forget about me preaching it, you can see it these guys are family. They want to do everything they can for their family.
“And the family didn’t want to go home tonight.”
