The night before the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference men\u2019s basketball tournament began, Gabriel Ramos \u201922 (Dorado, Puerto Rico) didn\u2019t sleep well.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that he was new to the MIAC\u2014in fact, Ramos led the Scots with one hundred career appearances, a sharp contrast to the rest of a young team that included thirteen first-years or sophomores among the roster\u2019s seventeen players.<\/p>\n
It was<\/em> Ramos\u2019s first playoff game, though, and the first playoff game for the men\u2019s basketball program since 2005. Ramos could feel a different energy churning in the Leonard Center during warmups, when fans started filing in earlier than usual. By the time he launched the ball across the court to leading scorer Caleb Williams \u201924 (Wild Rose, Wis.) for a dunk late in the first half, more than a thousand people cheered in the stands. \u201cIt was the loudest I\u2019ve ever seen the LC\u2014the floor was shaking,\u201d Ramos says. \u201cAnd when we won, everyone rushed the court. I was ecstatic.\u201d<\/p>\n But the team\u2019s story didn\u2019t end there. After the 79-66 win over St. Scholastica in the first round, the Scots upset Carleton in Northfield, 70\u201356. Then they rallied from a thirteen-point second-half deficit to beat Augsburg 76\u201374 in the semifinal to advance to the tournament championship against top seed Saint John\u2019s, the first time in tournament history that a sixth-seed had made it to the final. Mac students traveled by bus and helped pack the stands at all three road games.<\/p>\n In front of 1,800 fans in Collegeville, the Scots came up just short, dropping the conference championship game 75\u201371. \u201cIt hurts to be that close,\u201d says fourth-year head coach Abe Woldeslassie \u201908, who was named D3hoops.com\u2019s Region 9 Coach of the Year and leads the team with assistants Conner Nord and Bridge Tusler. \u201cBut when you step back and look at the season overall, it\u2019s clear that we\u2019re right there. There\u2019s a real buzz around this program, and it\u2019s earned.\u201d<\/p>\n Now the young team will begin to look toward its bright future, knowing that no one will be surprised by the Scots next season. And Ramos, who earned All-MIAC honors along with Williams, will savor a remarkable end to his collegiate basketball career. \u201cThis is what you work for, what you dream about\u2014I feel so blessed it happened,\u201d he says. \u201cThe support from the Mac community gave us memories we\u2019ll never forget.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mac men’s basketball experienced success and fan support during this year’s MIAC playoffs.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":17930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,7],"tags":[253,47],"class_list":["post-17889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-student-life","tag-athletics","tag-athletics-and-physical-education","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17889"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17969,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17889\/revisions\/17969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}