This Week in Wrenball: "This is William & Mary's Year" (!) (?) (!)

In the early years of this blog, long-lost internet friend Wheelhouse Jerry dubbed us Futile Superfans for our quixotic obsession with William & Mary basketball. We proudly wore that moniker, a marker of our hope in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence.

Justin Pierce, next year's CAA POY

Sometime around 2008, a tiny fissure opened in the clouds, and the futility was washed away by the smallest glimpse of real possibility. W&M first made a CAA Tournament final in an absurdly improbable way, then made another, and still two more, the latter pair in line with growing expectations.

We chronicled the evolution of those expectations in this space as the Tribe backed up its 2008 trip to the tournament final with a more confident run in 2010. That team fell short against regular season champions ODU, but scored an NIT bid, and nearly beat North Carolina. Then, in 2014, those expectations led to perhaps the most gutting loss we superfans have ever experienced.

I wrote this at the end of our story about that last-second loss to Delaware:

"It's a simple game.

So why does it hurt so much?"

Just one year later, FOG:TB Jerry Beach had occasion to ask a similar question after W&M won one of the most entertaining sporting contests I've ever seen live, defeating Hofstra on a double-overtime buzzer beater to advance to the finals. That W&M lost its fourth title game in eight seasons was a bitter pill covered with the spoonful of sugar that remains that semifinal.

I was prepared, as the Tribe closed out a surprisingly successful regular season with an 11-7 conference record (18-11 overall), to be satisfied. In quarterfinal opponent Towson, we face a team that's physically tougher and far more athletic, and used those attributes to drub the Tribe twice this season. In the unlikely event we win that game, we'd likely face top-seeded Charleston. With Nathan Knight, Justin Pierce, and Matt Milon all just sophomores, I was ready to mentally close the book on 2017-18, accept our tournament fate, and retire to blogfight another day.

That's when this happened:

Ken Pomeroy, the guru of modern collegiate hoops statistical analysis, ground up his pile of bones and entrails, added a dash of SAS-based voodoo, decided W&M was a 7% longshot to win the CAA Tournament...and saw the future.

The same W&M that's last in the CAA (and 343rd nationally) in defensive efficiency. That can't stop my mother from getting to the rim. That allows opponents to shoot 48.9% from the field (55.6% from inside the arc). Those guys.

I don't exactly know what KenPom's divinations revealed to him. Was it David Cohn's school-record assist total, or down-the-stretch efficiency. Was it the fact that five different W&M rotation players shoot better than 40% from three, that the only one that doesn't is Nathan Knight, who leads the squad in scoring and offensive efficiency, that Connor Burchfield's .522 long-ball percentage led the nation, that all five W&M starters average double figures in scoring, and each of them is capable of dropping 20 on any given evening? Was it the Tribe's best in America three-point and free throw shooting, or Justin Pierce's emergence as That Guy?

Or was it just fucking karma?

Either way, if Ken Pomeroy is in, then, well, maybe we shouldn't argue.

W&M versus Towson at 2:30 on Sunday for a quarter of the marbles. KenPom knows what time it is.