Last place. That’s where the coaches in the Commonwealth Conference picked the Albright men’s basketball team to finish the 2003-04 season. However, the players and coaches did not share that same expectation. With the added incentive of being picked dead last, the Lions set about proving just how wrong the rest of the league would be.

Head Coach Rick Ferry knew going into the season that he had one thing that his first two Albright teams had lacked – depth. Ferry and his coaching staff brought in 15 freshmen and one transfer student to join nine returning players on the Albright roster. The Lions would have to compete to find time on the court, and that, in turn, would make them a better, deeper team when the season began. It would be up to Ferry to determine which combination of players at what time would give his team the best opportunity to win games throughout the length of a rugged Commonwealth Conference schedule.

Albright opened the season by hosting the second annual Lincoln Plaza Tip-Off Tournament in the Bollman Center. Back-to-back wins over Pitt-Greensburg and Stockton State gave the Lions the tournament title, and also filled Albright with confidence to start the season. Three days later Albright dismantled perennial power Wilkes by 18 points to improve to 3-0 on the young season. Three wins. One shy of the four wins the team had managed in each of the previous two years. Things were definitely looking up in the Bollman Center.

“After the Wilkes game, I think the players began to think we could have something special going on,” said Ferry. “Wilkes is an established program, a perennial power, and we handled them pretty well.”

Terron Buchanon ’04 echoed Ferry’s thoughts: “I felt from the beginning of the season that we would have a strong team. It was obvious in practice that we had a group of good players. When we won our first couple of games, though, it just reinforced the confidence that we had.”

The Lions were 4-0 when Lebanon Valley visited the Bollman Center in early December. Four non-conference wins are great, but conference play is another thing all together. The Albright players knew that they needed a win to truly make a statement that things were going to be different this year. In a hard-fought, back and forth contest, Lebanon Valley emerged with a 71-70 win when Buchanon’s three-point shot at the buzzer fell just off the mark. How the Lions would respond to their first loss of the season set the tone for the rest of the year.

Four nights later Albright traveled to Elizabethtown, the two-time defending conference champions, for the first road game of the season. To the casual observer, this game appeared to be an easy win for Elizabethtown.

But Ferry and his Lions knew something that the casual observer did not. This Albright club was not about to let one loss spoil a potentially big season. When the Lions emerged with an 83-78 win, the Albright players and coaches knew it was only the beginning of bigger things to come. “E-town was a big test for us,” Ferry said. “There was a little doubt after the loss to Lebanon Valley. Winning on the road at E-town helped us fortify our thoughts of being a winning program.”

The Lions headed into the Christmas break with a win and a loss at the Rowan Tournament and a tough loss at Villa Julie, but their record of 6-3 was still ahead of most expectations.

Ferry and his staff knew that the schedule facing Albright after the holidays was going to be tough. Albright dropped a one-point decision to cross town rival Alvernia, then fell in overtime at DeSales, the eventual Freedom Conference regular season champs. The Lions then returned to conference play, and when the dust settled at the end of January, they found themselves sitting at 3-4, tied for fourth in the conference, and having lost two straight games.

“At the half way mark of the schedule, we were a .500 team,” Ferry said. “Most people would have taken that at the beginning of the season. But we knew that we were capable of much more. We fully believed that the second half of the schedule was in our favor, and we hoped to take advantage of that.”

During the first half of the season Albright established itself as a team that would never quit, a team that would always search for a way to win, no matter what the circumstances. They found a new way to win to start the second half of the conference slate.

Elizabethtown paid a visit to the Bollman Center, and left not knowing what had hit them. Albright played perhaps its best half of the season, using a 31-5 run in the first 20 minutes to run the defending champs right out of the gym. It was a half that set the tone for a scintillating month of basketball. “That half, that whole game against E-town, set a tone for us for the remainder of the season,” Ferry said. “We used that momentum the rest of the way.”

Following the win over E-town, Albright ran off seven straight wins, sweeping through the second half of the conference schedule with a perfect 7-0 record. They gained a measure of revenge at Lebanon Valley, as Buchanon made a last-second shot to knock off the first-place Dutchmen 78-76. Another road win, this time at Messiah, preceded a 14-point-win over Widener that drew the Lions within a game of first place in the conference race. Successive wins against Juniata and at Moravian clinched a playoff berth for Albright, and the Lions then capped their run with a win over Susquehanna to finish in a tie for first place with Widener for the regular-season crown.

Post-season play awaited the Lions for the first time in three years.

Through a mess of tie-breakers, Albright earned the number two seed in the conference tournament, and the right to host Elizabethtown in the first round. In front of a raucous crowd in the Bollman Center, the Lions erased a seven-point deficit in the final 47 seconds of regulation time to send the game to overtime. E-town’s play-off experience came through in the extra period, however, as the Blue Jays prevailed 99-87. While heartbreaking, the loss did not signal the end of the season for the Lions.

Albright had to wait five days to learn that the Bollman Center would host one more game in this magical season. Ferry’s Lions earned a number four seed in the ECAC Division III South Region Tournament, and would play Johns Hopkins on the home court. The Lions treated the home crowd to one more outstanding effort, as Albright took an 87-78 win to advance to the semi-finals. DeSales would be the opponent, and once again the Lions came up just short, falling 73-72 to end an incredible season.

“We had a great season,” Buchanon said of his final campaign for the Red and White. “It was a little disappointing how the year ended, because I thought we could go far in the playoffs. But we still had a great year. I wanted to go out on top, and I feel like we were able to do that.”

Albright was recognized after the season for its outstanding play. Buchanon, along with Trevor Deeter ’06, were named to the Commonwealth Conference All-Conference First Team. Head Coach Rick Ferry was named the conference Coach of the Year. But Ferry said, as great as the season was and as nice as accolades can be, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

“Building this program is a process,” Ferry said. “This season was a big step for us. We gained valuable experience in post-season play. We learned how to play in front of big crowds, and we got a win in the post-season. These are all things that we will build on, things that will not be new experiences for us next year.”

– Jeff Feiler is sports information
director and head baseball coach.