Ron Snyder, The Examiner
2008-03-17 08:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

Forget Cancun, Mexico. Michelle McCoy expects to spend her spring break in Raleigh, N.C., and she has no complaints.

She and fellow UMBC students will head to Carolina to see their team play its first NCAA Tournament game against Big East power Georgetown. UMBC is the 15th seed in the Midwest Region, while Georgetown (27-5) enters as the second seed.

UMBC advanced to the field of 65 for the first time in the Catonsville school’s 40-year history with a convincing, 82-65 win over visiting Hartford in front of a RAC Arena-record crowd of 3,810.

For Retrievers fans, hundreds of whom stormed the court, the victory marked a moment they had never envisioned when they enrolled at the school.

“This is the most incredible display of school spirit I’ve ever seen at a UMBC sporting event,” said McCoy, a sophomore from Columbia. “I know myself and a lot of other students are already planning to follow the team wherever they go.”

UMBC’s inclusion in the NCAA Tournament is just part of the story for local college basketball fans. The Retrievers (24-8) entered their conference tournament expecting to reach this point.

But almost no one expected Coppin State to return to the postseason for the first time since 1997 by winning the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Tournament in Raleigh Saturday night.

That’s what the Eagles (16-20) did, stunning local rival Morgan State, 62-60, in the championship game. Morgan State (22-10) will now play in the National Invitational Tournament.

Coppin State became the 20th team to make the NCAA Tournament with a losing record, but the first to do so with 20 losses. The Eagles will play in the opening-round game, which features the tournament’s lowest-regarded teams, against Mount St. Mary’s of Emmitsburg on Tuesday night at 7:30 in Dayton, Ohio, on ESPN.

“I think it’s really special,” Coppin State coach Ron “Fang” Mitchell said of the two state teams playing. “It will allow the nation to know there is some basketball being played in this area.”

If Coppin State wins, it will face Atlantic Coast Conference champion North Carolina (32-2) at the RBC Center Raleigh, on the same court where it won four games in five days to take the conference tournament.

For UMBC coach Randy Monroe, his team’s demolition of Hartford culminated 14 years of hard work, including 10 seasons as an assistant, before becoming the Retrievers seventh head coach in 2004.

“It’s something we talked about beginning September 28th all the way up to now,” Monroe said. “We talked about it being our time. That was our motto. We just kept hammering away and talking about how it’s our time. These guys just made it come to fruition. I’m just so proud of them.”

Said guard Brian Hodges, the team’s lone four-year senior: “It was amazing to win the America East championship on our home court, and for us to go out and win was a great feeling.”

rsnyder@baltimoreexaminer.com