By Connor Wilson (@Conman_815)
NEW BRITAIN, Conn. — When you arrive to a gym for a college basketball game, you never truly know what product you’re going to get.
That's the beauty of the sport. Any team can beat any team on any night. You could see a nailbiter. You could see a blowout. The possibilities are really endless. Any game could have moments you remember for a long time.
What the fans at Detrick Gymnasium witnessed Monday falls in that last category. What most people thought was going to be a regular old battle between former NEC foes Central Connecticut State and Sacred Heart turned into a 108-106 overtime win for the Blue Devils that featured elite shotmaking and breakout performances across the board.
“You look at the score tonight with the defense, 106 points given up, I don’t think we’ve ever done that in my five years here,” head coach Patrick Sellers remarked. “But we came out with the win, so we’ll take it.”
The star of the show for the Blue Devils was Darin Smith, Jr., as the redshirt sophomore poured in a career high 38 points — 15 more than his previous best — and led the team through regulation, connecting on tough shot after tough shot. After hitting the game-winner against Boston College and scoring a team-high 21 in a win over Rutgers, Smith proved once again that he has elevated his game to new heights in his second year on the court.
“(Sacred Heart) plays a fast-paced game, so we had to keep up with that, and it was just one of those nights,” Smith said. “I played hard and got buckets.”
Joining Smith with a career night was big man Max Frazier. The second-year Blue Devil scored a career-high 24 points and had perhaps one of the top moments of the CCSU season up to this point with a game-winning poster dunk with just 2.1 seconds remaining in overtime. Frazier was able to have a productive night in the post in one-on-one situations, an area he didn’t go to much last year. He was still his usual self in the lob game too, connecting on multiple alley-oop slams.
“He can block shots, he can switch and guard guards, he can guard bigs, he can do a lot of different things,” Sellers said. “He’s a lob threat and can go over everybody and dunk it, even against the ACC and Big Ten guys. I think the sky’s the limit for Max.”
Backtracking to the first half, neither team could really stop each other on the offensive end, and the score ended up 54-51 in favor of CCSU. Smith tied his previous season high with 21 in the first half alone and, despite the defensive struggles, it was a productive half for the Blue Devils overall, having shot a blistering 71 percent as a team.
It was all Blue Devils early in the second half as well. An and-1 finish for Melo Sanchez around four minutes in pushed the lead to 11, but a 8-0 Pioneer run made it a ballgame again. The Arkansas transfer Sanchez finished with a quiet 17 points, and overall, has meshed well in his first year in New Britain.
“Melo fits in perfectly with us,” Sellers said. “He has a super high basketball IQ and he creates so much gravity with Max and Darin, which is why some of those lobs are open too. Happy to have Melo, happy to have him.”
As the half went on, the Blue Devils struggled just a tad offensively to allow the Pioneers to crawl back and take the lead. Smith connected on a layup inside to put him up to 32 points right around the nine-minute mark, but that would be the team’s last field goal until Frazier hit a clutch hook shot to cut the deficit to one inside of 30 seconds remaining in regulation. During that stretch, which ended up a 19-9 run — with all nine for CCSU coming at the charity stripe — Sacred Heart was able to take the lead.
“You have to pick your poison,” Sellers said. “Do you want to live giving up twos, or do you want to give up threes? We tried to mix and match a bit.”
After Frazier’s hook to cut it to one at 91-90, Smith fouled sharpshooter Nyle Ralph-Beyer, who promptly hit both free throws to make it a three-point game. Sellers called timeout to draw up a play to try and tie the game. The result? A clutch game-tying triple from Jay Rodgers on the right wing to make it 93-all with nine seconds left. Anquan Hill of Sacred Heart got a great look at a three for the win, but it came up short, forcing overtime.
“I just wanted to get a good shot, not rush anything or turn it over,” Rodgers said. “It was just instincts at that point.”
Hill had a career night too in addition to the two Blue Devil stars. The preseason first team all-MAAC selection scored 34 points and kept the Pioneers in the game both down the stretch and in overtime.
The Pioneers struck first in the extra session with a Yann Farell three, but CCSU went on a mini 8-2 run, capped off by Smith’s final bucket of the night to take a three-point lead at 101-98. After some free throws and another bucket from Frazier, the Blue Devils took a 104-100 lead into the final minute.
‘Everybody on their team shoots threes, and I mean everybody,” Sellers said. “We just didn’t want to give up threes.”
And Sellers wasn’t kidding. Hill connected on his first three of the night to cut it to 104-103 with 56 seconds left in overtime. Frazier punched back with another lefty hook to make it a three-point game, but yet again, Hill connected from distance to tie it at 106 with 24 seconds to play.
Sellers drew up one final play for the win, a pick-and-roll between his point guard and his center. They ran it perfectly, as Rodgers’ 10th assist of the night ended up as Frazier’s poster two-hand slam over Jaden Slaughter with just 2.1 seconds remaining, the dagger that gave CCSU a hard-fought memorable win.
“Everything was happening so fast, I was just playing the pace of the game,” Frazier said. “Everything just unfolded like that, J-Rod hit me and I had to finish the game at that point.”
The Blue Devils are back in action again on Sunday when they host Division III Johnson and Wales before a trip to South Orange next week to take on Seton Hall.
“We just won a big game against Rutgers, so we didn’t want to come in here and just be flat,” Frazier said. “We wanted to keep it going.”
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