Back to Table of Contents | Back to Main Index
Previous Sports | Send mail to The Voice


Ambassadors wrap up hard season






The '99-'00 Ambassadors.

The Mulnomah Bible College's men's basketball team, the Ambassadors, finished a rollercoaster season last month with mixed results: an All-star American player, second place in their final tournament, a seasonal record of 13-17, improved rebounding, injured players, and deeper friendships.

Decided wins in the first two games gave the Ambassadors a promising start. They decimated the University of Puget Sound, 100-72, with point guard Henry Barrera scoring 29 points. The following day, Barrera scored another 29 points as the Ambassadors kept up the pressure and defeated a National Athletic Inter-collegiate Association-Division 1 school, Westminster University, 73-71.

But then the Ambassadors hit turbulent waters, losing their next three games. The season continued with a checkered record. The team won six of 11 games by Christmas break.

The Ambassadors endured an equally challenging second half of the season; they won against such colleges as Eugene Bible 93-46 and Columbia Bible 92-53 and 84-63. They also suffered substantial defeats: Evergreen State 39-91, Walla Walla 67-92, Northwest ChristianCollege, 59-83, and Warner Pacific College 54-75.

Losing two out of three games, the Ambassadors lost their two-time National Christian College Athletic Association Division II West-Regional Championship title. They finished the season placing second in the Pacific Northwest Christian Conference tournament and winning 13 of 30 games.

The record, however, tells only half the story. The Ambassadors ended the season ranking among the top 20 out of 64 Christian colleges in the NCAA Division II conference. Barrera, a senior and four-season veteran, was named NCAA Player of the Year. Barrera was also one of the top 10 players in the national division to be selected for the All-star American team.

Veteran Ambassador guard Larry Peacock, No. 33, said, this has been the most unified team he has played on in the last three years. Ambassador's guard Matt Baldwin, No. 12, agreed, saying the friendship he has found on and off the court has been encouraging.

"Seeing as we had all new guys on the team, and this is the first time we all played together," Baldwin said, "we did fairly decent."

"We've gone through things that are hard to deal with like close losses and games that maybe we should have won, injuries and stuff," guard Nick Sirianni, No.15, said. Those struggles brought the team together in a way they may not have otherwise experienced, the Gresham, Ore., freshman said.

Injuries and illness handicapped the Ambassadors. Sirianni, who was a high-point scorer (24 points against Lincoln Christian), slashed two tendons in his wrist on a loose mirror while motivating himself off-court during the Multnomah-Walla Walla game.

"For me, it was more of a shock at first," Sirranni said. "I couldn't believe it happened." That injury put Sirranni on the bench for the rest of the season. Forward and guard Ryan Moffat, No. 25, couldn't play for nearly two weeks due to a bronchitus infection.

"[The injuries] hit us hard because we don't have that many players," Coach Chris Reese said.

The size of the 10-member team also affected the Ambassadors' performance against larger schools.

"Overall, our kids have done a real good job of handling the pressure playing the better schools," Coach Reese said. "We come up short because we are young and don't have the numbers."

Those numbers were a crucial factor in Multnomah's second loss to Evergreen State College (57-74), a National Athletic Inter-collegiate school with an average student body enrollment of 4,000. Referring to that game, Coach Reese said, "Friday night we got tired. When you get tired, your feet don't move, and when your feet don't move, it's hard to play defense. You're beat to the basket. For 35 minutes we played a really good game, and we got tired."

Larger teams have a deeper bench--they have more team members on the bench to draw from. NAI schools have on average 10 strong players compared to Multnomah's five or six. "Our first five, or six or seven can usually hang in there," Coach Reese said. "But NAI schools will have extra on the bench that are just as good as my first five or first seven, which makes them stronger." With a large bench, Evergreen keeps up the intensity by rotating tired players out.

Coach Reese said that despite the frustrating loss, he and the team were proud of that game. "We felt like, hey, we did our best. And that's how we look at those games--did we do our best? Did we get better? We played some of the best defense we've played all year," he said.

Playing the harder teams, Peacock said, was good because it helped them play better.

The Ambassadors' defense improved as the season progressed. The teams' rebounding was "getting pretty bad" after Christmas, Coach Reese said. The players resolved to improve, and by the end of the season they accomplished that goal.

"Out of our last 10 games," Coach Reese said, "only two teams have out rebounded us." Their free throw percentage also went up from 56 percent to 58 percent before Christmas to almost 70 percent at the season's close.