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An in-depth look at a part of Division III

Posted Feb. 26, 2002

David met Goliath on Sunday night at Webster University.

Brady Barke leads balanced scoring for Webster.

But this was no matchup on the basketball court that took place inside the University’s student center. Instead, it was a party thrown by the men’s and women’s teams, which joined together to learn their NCAA tournament fates.

Playing the role of David was the men’s team (13-12), a surprise winner of the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and a decided underdog this Thursday in a first-round game at Maryville (Tenn.).

Assuming the role of Goliath were the No..21 Lady Gorloks, who steamrolled to a perfect SLIAC record and who will have reasonable expectations of at least a sectionals appearance when they play host to Aurora on Wednesday.

But while these Gorloks approach the NCAA tournament from very different positions, they do share one important thing.

They’re both very surprised to be where they are.

"We know we are the underdog, but anything can happen," Webster men’s coach David Kaneshiro said. "We’re excited to be playing, and we’ll go in there (against Maryville) and play as hard as we can, just like we have in every game."

A conference championship was supposed to be impossible this season for Kaneshiro’s team. Not with the graduation loss of last season’s conference MVP Jeff Reis. Not when the Gorloks went just 2-9 in their non-conference schedule, and especially not when a 16-point home loss to MacMurray on Jan. 9 left them 2-10 overall and 0-1 in SLIAC play.

But their fortunes changed in exactly 16 seconds.

The Gorloks followed the loss to MacMurray with a win over Greenville and then won at Maryville (Mo.) 80-77 when junior Ryan Jacquot hit a pair of 3-pointers in the game’s closing seconds.

"We were 1-1 in conference at that point," Kaneshiro said. "If we drop to 1-2, who knows if we are here right now."

From that point, things began to steamroll. Up next was an upset win over conference favorite Fontbonne. A loss to Westminster (Mo.) proved to be a minor setback, as the Gorloks responded with five consecutive wins.

Exactly one month after the MacMurray loss, the Gorloks were 8-2 in the SLIAC and in the thick of the conference race.

"They are a tight-knit group with great chemistry," Kaneshiro said about his team. "They worked through some adversity early in the season. When they finally broke through, it snowballed."

Along the way, the team developed a unique identity. The Gorloks finished 11-3 in conference play, with seven of those wins coming in games decided by five points or less.

"I don’t know what to say about that," Kaneshiro said. "After we found ways to win the first couple of games, our confidence grew. In the last three minutes, we knew we would find a way to pull the game out. That confidence, I don’t know if it was there in the non-conference schedule."

Kaneshiro, 29, a second-year coach out of Beloit College, has succeeded with youth — the Gorloks roster list 12 freshmen and sophomores — and balanced scoring. His lineup features senior Brian Jones (8.8 points per game), sophomore Nate Hawthrone (8.8), Jacquot (9.2), junior Tim McDaniel (9.4) and sophomore Brady Barke (11.7).

As is their trademark, the Gorloks waited until the closing seconds to pull out the SLIAC title, winning the conference on the final day of the regular season with a win over Principia and a Fontbonne (10-4 SLIAC) loss to Westminster.

This will be the second trip to the NCAA Tournament in three seasons for the Gorloks, who lost to Franklin in the first round in 2000. Kaneshiro was an assistant coach under Lance Randall that year and two players — Jones and senior guard Richard Haskell — remain from that team.

Like the men’s team, the Lady Gorloks have a roster dominated with underclassmen, and how the freshman in particular were going to contribute was coach Ryan Barke’s biggest question heading into this season.

"We thought we had potential," said Barke, 27, an Illinois College graduate. "We looked at our roster, and we had a good returning nucleus and a really good recruiting year. But we start one freshman, and the first five players off the bench are all freshman."

Barke’s answer came seven games into the season, when his team rallied to win on the road against Millikin.

"That’s the first time I thought we really pulled everything together," Barke said. "That was when I really thought this was going to be a special team."

Success was expected for the Lady Gorloks, who had improved steadily in Barke’s first two seasons, going 13-12 in 1999-2000 and 15-10 last season. But perhaps the best indication that this season was going to be different came in the team’s second — and, at the moment, most recent — loss of the season, a 81-76 defeat at top-ranked Washington University on Jan. 3.

At that time, the Bears had defeated three other SLIAC opponents by an average margin of 33 points. But this game turned out to be a challenge for the four-time defending national champions, who led by just three points at halftime and had to hold off a late surge by the Lady Gorloks.

"I told my team to approach this game as a wonderful opportunity, to cherish it, to enjoy it and live in the moment," Barke said. "That was a great game. If there were any remaining doubts about how good we could be, they were erased after that game."

Jaclyn Taylor is second in scoring and leads with 3.5 assists.

Since their loss to Wash U., the Lady Gorloks have won 16 consecutive games by an average margin of 25 points. They went 14-0 against a SLIAC schedule that featured two other strong opponents in Fontbonne (20-4) and Greenville (19-6). During this streak, they have won just one game by less than 10 points, a 71-62 victory over Westminster on Jan. 24.

The Lady Gorloks are led by senior forward Halley Spann, the program’s all-time leading scorer (1,493 points) and its top scorer this season at just under 19 points a game.

Barke’s starting lineup also includes senior Laura Stuhlman (6.8 points, 3.2 assists per game), sophomores Tara Fortschneider (12.0 points, 3.1 rebounds) and Jaclyn Taylor (10.2 points, 3.5 assists), and freshman Tara Moriarty (7.5 points, 2.9 rebounds).

The Lady Gorloks’ success has come with unprecedented recognition, including their first-ever national and regional rankings, and was rewarded with a first-round home game in the NCAA Tournament, the first-ever to be played in Webster’s Grant Gymnasium.

Not bad for a program who owned just one winning season (13-9 in 1992-93) before Barke arrived and whose biggest claim to fame was when it broke a 40-plus game losing streak that covered it first five years of existence between 1986-91.

"It probably makes the success we’ve have in the past three years just a little bit more special," Barke said. "It wasn’t like we came in and took over a program with a storied past and lots of tradition and success. We started from scratch, myself, my assistants and my players."

The Lady Gorloks have already beaten Aurora this season (80-76, Dec. 21) and a win in their first-round game could set them up for a rematch in the second-round against Millikin. All of which has left the team thinking about a trip to the Sectionals — duplicating conference rival Fontbonne’s Cinderella run last season — and beyond.

"Obviously, our goal is to make it to Terre Haute," Barke said. "We have the talent to do that."

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