Onward!

Winning the CC Championship isn’t the end of the road for the Red Devils

by Tony Moore

February 27, 2013

Adam Honig posted back-to-back double-doubles in the Centennial Conference tournament, leading the Devils to their First CC Championship since 1997.

When Men's Basketball Head Coach Alan Seretti took the reins of Dickinson men's basketball in 2009 and the team went on to finish his inaugural season 4-20, even he couldn't have imagined that three short years later the team would finish 20-7, win the Centennial Conference (CC) Championship and earn its first Division III NCAA bid in more than 15 years.

"It has been an extremely rewarding season and Centennial Conference tournament run due to the struggles the program encountered our first year here," Seretti says. "The turnaround can be attributed to the hard work of all of our former and current players and the diligence of our assistant coaches both on court and on the recruiting trail."

That hard work paid off both for the team and for Adam Honig '14 and Gerry Wixted '15, who were named CC Co-Players of the Week after back-to-back double-doubles (racking up double digits in points and rebounds) in the tournament. To Wixted, the victory over longtime rival Franklin & Marshall College made the championship that much sweeter.

"We went into the final game of the regular season [against F&M] tied with them in the standings, and they beat us pretty bad," he says. "But that just let us get our nerves out. We had to go back to their place again for the CC tournament, and flip a switch—we win by 20. They're a rival and we wanted it really bad, and we just came together, played really well and got the job done."

Getting the job done led to a new school record for wins and ensured the team a first-round match-up with Marietta College in the NCAA Division III Tournament—where the Red Devils have been before but have achieved little success.

"The only time previous to this year that we were able to win the CC title was in 1997," says Seretti. "And the 1997 team lost in the NCAA to Widener 70-62, so we've never won a first-round NCAA Tournament game."

Seretti says that the Devils are preparing for the Marietta game as they would for any other, noting that the team they'll send to the floor Saturday night is the team that got them here. "Each person who has been a member of the program has brought something positive to this journey and enabled us to get to this point," Seretti says. "Our players are excited and looking forward to this opportunity."

From his viewpoint in the thick of things on the court, Wixted says Marietta is a different kind of team, but the Red Devils will be ready.

"They're really fast, smaller than us and they shoot a lot of threes. It'll be a real contrast of styles," Wixted says. "We've got the home-court advantage, a good squad—a lot of seniors with great experience. It's going to be a lot of fun."