Matt Rogers remained at American to pursue a Patriot League title. The payoff — for him and the Eagles — came Wednesday night.
Rogers scored 25 points and added eight rebounds to collect tournament MVP honors as the Eagles routed Navy, 74-52, at Bender Arena to earn their fourth trip to the NCAA tournament and their first since 2014.
Colin Smalls added 11 points for second-seeded American (22-12), which never trailed in its first home conference championship game since 2009. Smalls and Greg Jones Jr. joined Rogers on the all-tournament team.
“It takes me a while to process some things,” Coach Duane Simpkins said. “I’ll probably sit back the next couple days and ponder on it. I know I’m going to be eager to see our name pop up on Sunday.”
Austin Benigni, another all-tournament team pick, scored 18 points for the fifth-seeded Midshipmen (15-19). Navy was the only Patriot League team to win at American this season, but it couldn’t replicate the feat, derailed by the Eagles’ three-point shooting (11 for 25) and the ejection of starting guard Jordan Pennick less than two minutes into the game.
“It wasn’t our night offensively or defensively,” Navy Coach Ed DeChellis said. “We just didn’t play very well, and we all picked a bad night to play the way we did and for me to coach the way I did.”
Many of the key figures in American’s rotation — Rogers and point guard Elijah Stephens most prominently but also forward Lincoln Ball and guards Smalls and Geoff Sprouse — were already in place when Simpkins was hired two years ago. Retaining players after a coaching change is increasingly rare in Division I, and doing so provided the foundation of a championship.
Simpkins, a point guard at DeMatha and Maryland as a player and a longtime George Mason assistant before arriving at American, presided over an injury-plagued 16-16 debut. But with most of the Eagles’ core back again — including Rogers as a fifth-year player using his covid-era bonus year — American harbored title dreams well before the season tipped off.
Rogers was the literal and figurative center of it all, an imposing matchup in the middle at 6-foot-9 with enough versatility to lead the Eagles in made three-pointers.
“Just knowing what we had in the program, what we were building,” Rogers said. “We had a special year last year, and I feel like injuries is the reason we weren’t able to push up the win total. Knowing the group we had coming back and just trusting the process — these coaches trusted me so much and trusted our team so much.”
Navy had won back-to-back road games in the conference tournament to earn a chance at its first NCAA tournament berth since 1998. The Mids were also looking to become only the second team seeded fifth or lower to win the Patriot League tournament; Holy Cross did it as a No. 9 seed in 2016.
Yet the task became much more difficult when Pennick lost his composure just 92 seconds into the contest. With the Mids on offense, Pennick and Jones got tangled up in what looked to be routine jostling until Pennick delivered a below-the-belt shot that was ruled a flagrant-two foul.
“I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a factor,” DeChellis said. “I think it kind of shocked us all, and it was kind of a ‘what the heck is going on?’ kind of thing. The game throws some curveballs at you, and you need to be able to adjust. We didn’t respond real well.”
Without having to contend with Pennick, Navy’s second-leading scorer, the Eagles opened a 9-0 advantage. Navy wouldn’t get closer than three again after Rogers sauntered through the lane and flushed a one-handed slam to make it 15-10.
Rogers had his own run-in with the officials, earning a technical foul with 8:32 left in the half and a second personal less than two minutes later. He sat for much of the remainder of the half, but American nonetheless expanded its edge to 37-28 by halftime.
“They could feel it, like it was the last game of their life,” Simpkins said.
Rogers — irked throughout the tournament for being snubbed in the Patriot League’s player of the year voting in favor of Bucknell center Noah Williamson — scored the first two baskets of the second half. And American’s stout defense tightened up further as the night unfolded.
When Rogers and Sprouse connected on consecutive three-pointers to make it 51-34, the final 13:40 felt academic.
“One of the things he does really well is score the basketball,” Simpkins said. “He helps our team when he hits a couple threes and really stretches the court and now the court gets bigger and guys get driving lanes. Especially when you’re playing at home, you get some of those three balls to drop, you get some momentum, it gets loud, and now you have something cooking.”
Rogers fouled out in the final two minutes, but Simpkins pulled the rest of his starters soon after. It was left to freshman Wyatt Nausadis to heave the ball skyward at the buzzer, setting off a court storm and celebration that was 11 years in the making.
