Fairmont State is hoping the third time will be the charm.
The Falcons have played for two Mountain East Conference men's basketball tournament championships in the league's short history, and both times they have come up short. Sunday, they'll get another shot.
Fairmont State cruised past Shepherd 93-65 on Saturday in the MEC semifinals to set up a showdown with West Liberty, which defeated Wheeling Jesuit 105-95 in the second semifinal. The title game is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. at the Charleston Civic Center.
"Tonight was really a special night," Fairmont State coach Jarrod Calhoun said. "I thought our kids were really locked in. We beat a really good team."
The Falcons (29-1) used bursts of scoring to open both halves in establishing a healthy lead on the Rams, and once they were well out in front there was no slowing them down. FSU came at Shepherd in waves, playing 11 players in the game. Shepherd didn't have an answer as the Falcons' bench outscored the Rams' bench 29-5.
"Our rotation is seven guys pretty solid, maybe eight on some nights," Shepherd coach Justin Namolik said. "Coach Calhoun plays 10 guys, 11 guys. It definitely wears on you. It's a factor."
Calhoun, who will attempt to become the first coach to guide an MEC men's team to both the regular-season and tournament championships, said that depth allows him to play a certain way. That way, as it turns out, has been pretty successful for the top-ranked Divivion II team in the country.
"We don't play guys a lot of minutes because we're playing so hard," Calhoun said. "We're doing everything West Virginia does on defense. We're doing everything, in a weird way, that the Golden State Warriors do on offense. We want to shoot within the first five seconds. If not, we throw the ball to Matt [Bingaya] and good things happen. It's real, real simple. When the ball moves, this team is really good."
Bingaya, the MEC men's basketball Player of the Year, led all scorers with 21 points and was the game's leading rebounder with 11. He was one of four Falcons to finish with double-digit scoring. Vonte Montgomery chipped in with 15 points, as did Shammgod Wells (who also helped with eight assists) and D'Ondre Stockman scored 11.
"I thought Sham was the difference tonight," Calhoun said. "I thought Sham really took the game over. Vonte, in my mind, has played his best in this tournament. He's made shots, he's played defense. Matt is Matt. He played 20 minutes and gets 21 points. He's a very, very hard, difficult matchup and he's a willing passer. When we have a high assist number - we had 19 assists - we're hard to beat because we have five guys who can make shots."
Fairmont State's defense caused Shepherd problems, but probably not in the way it expected. The Rams were able to beat the Falcons' full-court pressure, but once in the half-court that pressure turned up and gave Shepherd fits.
"They're deep, they're athletic, they hound you for 40 minutes," Namolik said. "For us, we had a hard time with their pressure. I didn't feel like it was the press in the full court that bothered us so much, it was kind of more in a half court when they really amped up their pressure. For us as a team, we don't really have an off-the-bounce type of guy that can create things on his own. We really rely on each other to move the basketball and they made that difficult for us."
Naim Muhammad led Shepherd with 15 points while A.J Carr scored 14. Winston Burgess scored 12 and grabbed 10 rebounds. Steffen Davis finished with 11 points in the loss for the Rams.
Contact Tom Bragg at 304-348-4871 or tom.bragg@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomBraggSports.