WILLIAMSBURG — Kaplan Arena was magic again Thursday for William & Mary, which notched perhaps its biggest victory of the season, beating Coastal Athletic Association men’s basketball leader North Carolina Wilmington 77-70 in front of a home crowd of 4,205 and a national television audience on the CBS Sports Network.
The Tribe (13-6, 4-3 CAA) improved to 8-0 this season in Kaplan. W&N snapped a four-game losing streak in the gym to the defending CAA champion Seahawks (17-3, 6-1), who have thrived this season on double-digit comebacks, but were denied late after cutting a 22-point W&M lead to four.
“That’s a sore point for me (because) I would love to be good on the road,” Tribe coach Brian Earl said, not entirely jokingly, when asked why his team, 3-6 on the road, is so good at home. “The people here in Williamsburg have really surrounded us, and they’re loud and they’re engaged.
“The students are just great, and our administration has done such a good job of making this an event.”
Add in Tribe players like Kyle Pulliam, who scored a game-high 16 points on his 22nd birthday, as well as Cade Haskins and Kilian Brockhoff, who scored 15 points apiece. Haskins was the early star, with five 3-pointers in the first half — three of them during an 18-point run that lifted the Tribe to a 30-8 lead at the midway point of the first half.
No one in the William & Mary camp deluded themselves that the lead meant “game over.” The Seahawks, with an all-senior starting lineup, rallied from a 24-point deficit to win their previous game (at Stony Brook) and own four other victories in which they trailed from 11 to 13 points.
William & Mary guard Kyle Pulliam drives to the basket against UNC Wilmington center Patrick Wessler during the first half Thursday night at Kaplan Arena in Williamsburg. PETER CASEY/DAILY PRESS
Earl said the mentality of withstanding an almost-inevitable comeback from a team like UNCW begins with learning “we can’t always play at our pace.” The Tribe’s pace is frenetic, but W&M understood UNCW has made its comebacks with persistence.
“The guys have done a really good job of locking in, and us discussing how games are actually won,” Earl said. “We talk about a lot of times you see the highlights, but you don’t see the grind that goes into it.
“Wilmington has been good at that, and a lot of how they’ve done that is taking foul shots at the end of games, and catching up bit by bit by bit. That doesn’t hit the Instagram feed, but that’s how teams win games.”
The Tribe’s lead was 14 points at halftime, but Christian May (13 points) hit two 3-pointers in a run to start the second half as the Seahawks cut the deficit to 49-42. Brockhoff, the Tribe’s 6-9 center, responded by scoring eight of his team’s next 14 points to stretch the margin back out to 12 points.
Led by 7-foot center Patrick Wessler (15 points, 13 rebounds), the Seahawks made a final charge to cut the Tribe lead to 71-67 with 1:47 remaining. Then Brockhoff delivered the perfect birthday present, a pass to Pulliam, who was cutting to the basket and made a layup as part of a three-point play that gave the Tribe a commanding 74-67 lead with 1:21 to go.
“I was just remembering looking at film with Coach and making the right play,” Brockhoff said. “When (the pass) doesn’t get there, it looks bad. If it gets there, it’s a great play.
“KP catches it and finishes ‘and-one.’ Those are the plays you need sometimes to win games.”
They are plays the Tribe always seems to make at Kaplan Arena this season.
“We like to go out there and put on a show on for everybody,” Earl said. “But there’s a lot of people behind the scenes — in administration, and our students and the community — who make you want to go out and play hard for them.”
Note: The start time for William & Mary’s home game Saturday against Hofstra has been moved to a noon start time (from 2 p.m.) because of the threat of snow and ice.
