Daily News | Don’t call it an upset: Saint Peter’s shows it has what it takes to keep its run going | David Murphy
Here’s the thing about pressure. You can feel it, or you can inflict it. In the week leading up to Saint Peter’s latest chance at the impossible, Shaheen Holloway insisted that his squad wouldn’t be the ones feeling it. Pressure is playing out your senior year of high school without a Division I scholarship offer. Pressure is entering the transfer portal in search of greener pastures and then asking back on the squad with your hat in your hand.
They had one option, then. In a regional semifinal where they had no business belonging, against an over-sized team with NBA pedigree and a name-brand head coach, the only thing Saint Peters could do was take all of the stress and angst and self-awareness that was supposed to cripple them on this large a stage and they could turn it around and take the other guys feel it. They could crash the boards and win the spots and pick up their men at three-quarter court.
“We know we’re just as good as any team in the country,” said guard Matthew Lee, a former walk-on who hit a huge pull-up three-pointer midway through the first half and sank a pair of free throws with 41 seconds remaining to help position the Peacocks for the win. “As long as we stick to our game, play defense, and give it 100 percent, we feel like we can hang with anybody.”
Yet throughout the night, these sorts of contrasts seemed to consistently work in the little guy’s favor. Ivey was a non-factor: timid, off-balanced, stuffed into a shell by the ball pressure exerted by a rotating cast of defenders who stuck themselves to his grille. Holloway knew that Purdue would attempt to exploit the huge size advantage it enjoyed down low, and he knew that a certain amount of success was unavoidable. What the Peacocks needed to do was make sure it didn’t come easy.
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