Flames ready for shootout with Cowboys in return to NCAA Tournament

With their fifth appearance in the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament laying ahead on Friday night, the Liberty Flames are looking to continue to raise their national profile and their postseason success that has its roots in the program’s tournament debut over 25 years ago.

Following a 23-win regular season (the most in the Commonwealth of Virginia this year) and third consecutive ASUN Conference championship with a roster led by ASUN Player of the Year Darius McGhee, the Flames are back in the madness of March. They enter this year’s tournament as a No. 13 seed with a 12-game winning streak and will face No. 4 seed Oklahoma State, ranked No. 11 in the country, this Friday on TBS at 6:25 p.m. EST.

“We’re at a stage or point in our program that we want to test ourselves against the best,” Head Coach Ritchie McKay said during Wednesday’s press conference. “A win against an 11th ranked team in the country would be good any time of the year, but especially when the stage or platform is so big it would help build the brand. But we’re an everyday program. We’re trying to grow every single day and although the task is arduous, I think our guys will be really invested in the 40 minutes of opportunity that we do have.”

McKay began his second tenure as Liberty’s sideline general in 2015, and since then, the Flames have garnered a level of program success and league-wide recognition in recent years that they have never seen before. Liberty has completed five straight 20-win seasons — a program first — and its combined 82 wins over the last three seasons rank second in the country in that timeframe. The Flames have also proven themselves as one of the nation’s top defenses over that same span, ranking 19th in Division I in scoring defense in 2018, sixth in 2019, and second in the regular season this year.

Since the Selection Show on Sunday, multiple media outlets like ESPN, SB Nation, and the Indianapolis Star have listed Liberty as a potential bracket-buster team primed to stage an upset this weekend.

McKay and his players noted that a main objective for the Flames on Friday is to trust their systems for offense and defense that have brought them success over the years and to now to Indianapolis.

“We’re an unselfish group of guys who play collectively on both ends of the floor — and we take pride in both ends of the floor — and we take things one thing at a time,” said junior guard Darius McGhee. “As long as we prepare and take care of the game plan that we’ve been given, we’ll be fine and we’ll have a great foot to put forward. As long as we stay within ourselves and continue to be Liberty, I think we’ll be fine.”

Their highly ranked opponent in Oklahoma State will not go down quietly, however, as the Cowboys’ roster includes this year’s presumptive No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft in freshman guard Cade Cunningham, who was named the Big 12 Player of the Year and Freshman of the Year. The Flames will counteract Cunningham and the rest of the talented Cowboys with the “Pack Line” defense philosophy that McKay learned from his time as an assistant coach at the University of Virginia and has executed successfully at Liberty.

“Although Cade gets a lot of credit, which is well deserved, I think you’d be remiss if you didn’t pay attention to the other members of that squad because they’re really talented, athletic, and have a downhill tempo to their offense,” McKay said. “We’re really the sum of our parts. We try to play both ends of the floor equally as well, and we spend a ton of time and attention on being sound defensively then taking care of the ball.”

“It’s imperative that we have a group that’s not swayed by the adversity that the day presents,” he added. “I think one of the separators for us from a lot of other programs … is the character and the unity that this bunch has. It’s really a privilege to coach them.”

As this year’s ASUN Defensive Player of the Year, Liberty guard Elijah Cuffee is expected to play a sizable role in covering Cunningham during Friday’s matchup.

“March Madness is super exciting in and of itself, and then combining that with playing against someone as talented as Cade (Cunningham), it’s going to be exciting and I’m just itching to play like everyone is here,” Cuffee said. “For me, that’s just an extra motivation, going out there against someone that is well known and really good and being able to just go out there and prove yourself against them. For me, I’m excited and can’t wait to get out there.”

Oklahoma State will be the second Big 12 team that Liberty has faced this season with a narrow loss to TCU early in the season. Should the Flames pull off the upset, it would be their first victory over a Big 12 school in program history.

LOOKING BACK: The Flames’ history at the Dance

2013: Liberty managed to make an unexpected return to the tournament in its “First Four” stage against fellow No. 16 seed North Carolina A&T, creating a flurry of media attention for the true underdog.

2019: After winning the Atlantic Sun (ASUN) Conference championship in their first year in the conference, the Flames clinched their highest tournament placement ever as a No. 12 seed, which then resulted in an upset of No. 5-seeded Mississippi State to earn them their first NCAA Tournament victory before falling to No. 4-seeded Virginia Tech in the second round. Liberty received 40 AP Top 25 votes that year, the most in program history.

2020: The Flames once again reached the top of the regular season ASUN standings and won the conference tournament with ASUN Player of the Year Caleb Homesley, who played a critical role in the previous year’s NCAA tournament win. Mere days after punching its ticket to back-to-back appearances in The Big Dance, the onset of COVID-19 caused the tournament to be canceled and left Liberty, like all qualifying teams, wondering what could have been.