West Liberty's Malik McKinney (1) reacts after fouling out during the team's NCAA college basketball game against Nova Southeastern for the men's NCAA Division II championship in Evansville, Ind., Saturday, March 25, 2023. (MaCabe Brown/Evansville Courier & Press via AP)

Sometimes in sports, the story-book season has a cruel ending.

West Liberty’s men’s basketball team endured that Saturday afternoon inside the Ford Center in Evansville.

Playing in their second NCAA Division II National Championship game in school history, the Hilltoppers fell short of achieving the ultimate goal, 111-101, and watched Nova Southeastern, which is coached by former West Liberty head coach Jim Crutchfield, celebrate its first national championship in any sport.

“In the big picture, I am very proud of this team and these guys,” West Liberty head coach Ben Howlett said in the post-game press conference. “We have nothing to be ashamed of. Though it didn’t happen for us (Saturday), we had a fantastic year.”

The Hilltoppers, who finish at 33-4, won’t wait long before they officially turn the page to the 2023-24 campaign.

“As I said after we lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament (last season), ‘we’ll be back,'” Howlett said. “This (loss) will ignite me, our players and staff to work even harder. We’ll take two weeks off and then we’ll begin our preparation for next year.”

Howlett, who played for and coached with Crutchfield before taking over the reins, was complimentary of the Sharks and his former coach.

“I congratulate Coach Crutchfield and Nova Southeastern,” Howlett said. “I am happy for him. He deserves a national title, but having said that, I am extremely disappointed for our guys.”

Crutchfield, who spent 28 years at West Liberty in multiple capacities including tennis coach and faculty member before being named the head basketball coach, tried his best all week to keep the focus off of his connection to the Hilltoppers and strictly on Nova vs. West Liberty of 2023.

“It wasn’t until Thursday afternoon (in the semifinals) when I really thought, ‘we’re going to be playing West Liberty for a national championship,'” Crutchfield said. “We didn’t talk about West Liberty in terms of my having been there or Will (Yoakum) having played there. We talked about them as a basketball team and prepared that way.”

It showed. Nova Southeastern scored the first six points of the game and never allowed the Hilltoppers to get the lead. They inched as close as two a few times in the first half, but it was usually either R.J. Sunahara, Will Yoakum, who transferred to Nova from WLU last offseason, or red-shirt freshman Dallas Graziani which had the answer to keep the Hilltoppers at bay.

For instance, West Liberty had cut the lead to four inside 20 seconds to play in the half, but Yoakum, who finished the game with 31 points, drilled a 3-pointer to make it a 55-48 reading at halftime.

“The 3-pointer by Will right before half was huge,” Howlett admitted. “We had been fighting and fighting and got it to four, but they had the last possession (of the half) and drilled a 3. We went zone on that possession and they caught us.”

The Sharks started to really stretch the game out in the early portions of the second half. As fouls mounted, West Liberty appeared to lose its composure at times.

Actually, the Hilltoppers were called for an astounding three flagrant fouls and two technical fouls in the game.

Included was a flagrant two against Ben Sarson when he caught Yoakum with an elbow to the chest on a free-throw blockout. After review, Sarson was ejected.

“I couldn’t see the replay on some of those (flagrant) calls,” Howlett said. “Obviously, those plays and the composure issues were a real detriment to our team. Similar to the late 3 in the first half, we had been fighting and fighting to stay close and we kept giving them two free throws. Just uncharacteristic plays.”

The first technical came against Malik McKinney after he had been called for his fifth personal foul. The other was on Christian Montague, who received a technical when he appeared to be jawing with a Nova player.

All told, Nova shot 29 of 39 at the foul line in the game, which featured 52 fouls.

Compounding the free throws, a few empty trips by the Hilltoppers and the continual strong shooting by the Sharks, the Nova lead swelled to as many as 17 at 98-81 with 5:53 to play.

The Hilltoppers, who hadn’t lost a game since Jan. 21 at Wheeling University, weren’t going to go away quietly.

Behind All-American Bryce Butler, Zach Rasille and Montague, the Toppers chipped away. The Toppers got as close as five at 106-101 with 29 seconds to play after Butler hit a jumper.

Forced to foul, West Liberty put Kobe Rodgers at the line and he sank one of two.

The Hilltoppers didn’t score again. They came up empty on the ensuing trip and Nova was able to stretch it back out from the line.

“We had a tough time getting stops,” Howlett said. “I thought we were scoring at a high level, but we just couldn’t get the stops we needed when we needed them. We made some stupid plays, which is frustrating.”

Butler led the way for West Liberty with 32, hard-earned points. He also collected nine rebounds. Montague added 19, while Steve Cannady and Rasile evenly split 22. Chaz Hinds added 10 and McKinney finished with nine despite being saddled with foul trouble.

Nova, meanwhile, was led by the aforementioned big three of Yoakum, Sunahara and Graziani. The trio combined for 83 points. More impressive was the fact that they were a combined 26 of 44 from the floor. Rogers added 13. Graziani, who is listed at just 5-ft-9, also had nine assists, three rebounds and three steals in 38 minutes of action.

“Dallas Graziani was a big key for us,” Crutchfield said. “Coming into the game, I think both teams were wondering how effective their full-court pressure would be. I thought Dallas was able to send a message early on how he was going to handle it. Plus, we made them pay to press because we scored once we broke it.”