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Update, 5:53 p.m. Sunday: The University of Detroit-Mercy split its weekend tournament games, losing to Wright State by 82-72 Sunday in the quarterfinal round.
The Titans trailed 37-29 at the half and never gained the lead.
Nearly 4,800 fans were at Joe Louis Arena.
Original column, Sunday morning:
The way the day was playing out, it felt like the University of Detroit-Mercy Titans might be in for a real test against underdog Youngstown State at the Horizon League Motor City Madness tournament. The event kicked off Saturday at Joe Louis Arena in downtown Detroit.
In the three prior games of the tournament’s opening round, the favorites won out, mostly in blowout fashion. So you could say that the time was ripe for one of the big boys to get knocked off.
But then Titans’ senior Carlton Brundidge of Southfield popped for a career-high 28 on the biggest stage of his college career Saturday, almost all of which came on a dazzling assortment of spin moves and floaters in the lane. On this night, he played like a bigger and badder Tony Parker. Don’t laugh at the comparison. For this 40 minute period, he utterly dominated the action. Just for good measure, throw in a game-high nine rebounds for the 6-foot-2 Brundidge, as well.
When all was said and done, Ray McCallum’s No. 6 seed Titans withstood the pesky Penguins from Youngstown St. and got out of Joe Louis Arena with a healthy 13-point victory, 92-79. (*Video highlights are below.)
For Detroit to get through this unforgiving bracket, it needs four wins in four days.
Step one is out of the way. But it was not easy, despite taking on a team that had won just twice in its past nine contests. Several times during the second half on Saturday night, the Penguins would start to mount a comeback.
They’d cut the lead to 9, then to 7, back to 11, then finally down to just 6. The partisan Titan crowd was beginning to tense up. But another Titan senior answered the bell.
Anton Wilson, the silky 6’5” guard from Flint, calmly raised up and buried a triple to stifle the run and bring the Titan ship home safely. McCallum has seen it from Wilson many times before.
Carlton Brundidge, a 6-foot-2 senior guard from Southfield, in Saturday's game. (Photo by University of Detroit-Mercy)
“That shot was huge," McCallum said. "That’s what he does. He makes those kind of plays. I don’t want to say it was a dagger, but it was a big play.”
It was part of an ultra-efficient evening for Wilson, collecting 23 points on just 13 shots, helping to cover for the absence of leading scorer Paris Bass. Bass was supended for the first half of the tournament opener (violation of team rules) and he would play just 11 minutes.
The next hurdle for the Titans, and a much higher one at that, comes in the form of Wright State (3:30 pm Sunday), a suffocating defensive unit that held Illinois-Chicago to just 43 points earlier in the day. The Raiders went 13-5 in league play, and McCallum knows this will be a giant test for his team.
“I’m going to head back and watch their tape, but based on what I did see down the stretch, they finished the season like they were going for that #2 seed," the coach said. " They’re playing at a high level, and we’re going to see a team that’s playing as well as anyone in the conference right now.”
But the Titans will again have the de-facto home court edge playing in downtown Detroit. Joe Louis Arena remains a basketball stadium for the next few days, and the Titan faithful will be on hand to try and help extend the season beyond tomorrow. If McCallum can coax a similar effort from Carlton Brundidge, then we could very well be looking forward to an explosive Detroit-Oakland matchup in the semis on Monday night.
It was far from the most thrilling ten hours hoops in the opening round of this Horizon League royal rumble. The seeds held and the cellar-dwellers were sent home. Today promises to be a different story, and the fireworks should only increase as the tournament inches closer to Tuesday’s final.
The month of March has come to be known in college basketball for its wild finishes and shocking upsets. A win over Wright State would not necessarily amount to “shocker” status; but it would be a surprise, and one that would send good vibrations throughout the Detroit hoops world.
