Photograph by Kodiak Creative
With the excitement of March Madness raging, and with Georgia Tech and UGA not providing any tournament thrills yet again, you’d be forgiven for not realizing that Atlanta has a college basketball team on the verge of a national title.
That squad is the Emory Eagles, who will play in the Division III championship game against the University of Mary Washington of Fredericksburg, Virginia, coincidentally also nicknamed the Eagles. The game is Sunday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. (you can watch on ESPN+) in Indianapolis, also the site of the Division I Final Four—only at the Gainbridge Fieldhouse, home of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, rather than Lucas Oil Stadium.
“If I wasn’t excited at this point,” says Emory head coach Jason Zimmerman, “I should go into banking or something.”
Photograph by Kodiak Creative
“Coach Z.,” as he is commonly known, got the Eagles to the Elite Eight last season, where they fell in a heartbreaker to Wesleyan (Connecticut) after knocking off Mary Washington in the Sweet Sixteen. This year’s squad has been led by the senior backcourt duo of Ben Pearce, Emory’s all-time leading scorer, who has poured in 24 points and tallied nearly 7 assists per game on the season, and Jair Knight, who chipped in with just under 19 points per game. Junior forward Ethan Fauss has been the team’s key big man, averaging nearly 9 rebounds to go with 14.7 points per game.
“This run has been rewarding, as I get to spend another couple of weeks with a really special team,” says Zimmerman, a thought echoed by Pearce and Knight. “I’m really excited for our senior class to potentially be the ones to win Emory its first title,” Knight says. Pearce struck a more poignant note. “It’s a great feeling, but bittersweet—win or lose it’s my last college game.” Pearce won the Jostens Trophy as DIII Player of the Year, so he’ll at least have a keepsake from this amazing season.
Photograph by Kodiak Creative
Emory won three tournament games on campus at the Woodruff Physical Education Center, aka the WoodPEC, including an overtime thriller in round two against Roanoke and a defeat of Yeshiva in the Sweet Sixteen that saw five players score 15+ points, led by Pearce’s 26, to offset an incredible performance by Maccabees guard Zevi Samet, who had 43 points in the loss.
The Elite Eight matchup with Illinois Wesleyan, held in Fort Wayne, Indiana, was a back-and-forth classic, which Pearce won with a dramatic three-pointer with 1.4 seconds. Not quite as late as the Braylon Mullins winner for UConn over Duke last Sunday, but thrilling enough for Eagles fans, who celebrated the team’s first-ever trip to the D3 Final Four. It was likely the biggest shot in program history.
“Coach Z. always says, ‘When you shoot, it’s always the best shot in the world,’” laughs Pearce. “I had thought about what I would do in a game-winning situation as I worked out before the game. So I was prepared for the moment, even if it didn’t go exactly as I thought it might.”
“We’ve gotten beat on buzzer-beaters several times over the years in the tournament,” notes Zimmerman, “so it’s nice the karma flowed our way this time.”
Pearce’s shot evoked another famous “moment” in Indiana hoops, Jimmy Chitwood’s winning basket in the movie Hoosiers. Zimmerman is from Warsaw, Indiana, and grew up imbued in both the passion for basketball in the state and the movie’s influence.
“Someone asked me before the game if I was going to show the team Hoosiers, Zimmerman says. “Hell, I can recite them Hoosiers word for word.”
Pearce led the Eagles in last Saturday’s semifinal game as well, scoring 21 points in a resounding 72-58 win over Christopher Newport University of Newport News, Virginia. Fauss, whose inside presence has been a key factor in Emory’s run to the championship game, was again a force, with 15 rebounds to go with his 14 points and strong interior defense. The Eagles outscored CNU 40-23 in the second half to win going away.
Photograph by Kodiak Creative
The victory was Emory’s 27th of the season (against just 3 losses), a new program record to match their first D3 finals appearance.
Mary Washington (29-3) upset defending champs and top seeds Trinity (Connecticut) in the semifinals, wiping out a 16-point deficit in the process, so they will be a tough out. They are led by sophomore shooting guard Kye Robinson, a third-team D3 All-American who scored 21 in the win over Trinity, just under his season average of 24.3 points per game.
“They guard really well,” says Zimmerman of the other Eagles. “They don’t allow you much space, and the way we play we want space . . . they’re a young team age-wise, but very experienced, and of course at this point in the season no team is truly ‘young.’”
So don’t despair over the local college hoops scene; the oft-overlooked Eagles, just forty minutes from a national championship, has Atlanta covered.
“Saturday is 404 Day,” Pearce notes. “What a great chance to celebrate Atlanta and win a championship that same weekend. Hopefully we can win it for the city.”
Update: On Sunday night, Emory lost to Mary Washington 73-75. The Eagles trailed by 15 with under five minutes to go and had a miraculous rally to tie the game late, but lost at the horn when Colin Mitchell scored for the “other Eagles.” Jair Knight and Ethan Fauss had 24 points each. Ben Pearce was injured early on, scoring just 10 points and one basket from the floor.
