Winning championships is nothing new to Bud Thomas, and the Regis Jesuit graduate added to his title haul Wednesday night.
Thomas, a sophomore starter, helped his Mercer men's basketball team make history in a variety of ways with a 70-67 victory over Utah State in the CollegeInsider.com Tournament championship game in Logan, Utah.
A key member of two Class 5A boys basketball state championship teams (2008-09, 2009-10) while at Regis Jesuit, Thomas contributed 10 points — eight in the second half — as the Bears became the first team from the Atlantic Sun Conference to win a postseason tournament.
"We're trying to get people excited about the program," Thomas said Thursday from Macon, Ga., after a group of students and media greeted the returning tournament champions.
"We start four sophomores, so we're real young, but we're trying to get some excitement going. This was a big step in the right direction."
Mercer also set a school record for victories in a season with 27 against just 11 defeats.
The Bears — who were knocked out of the A-Sun tournament in the semifinals by Florida Gulf Coast in its bid to make the NCAA Tournament — strengthened their remarkable run of play on the road, improving to 13-8 away from their Macon, Ga., home by winning in a very tough place to play.
Utah State had won 100 of its last 106 games at the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum and had the backing of a deafening student section. Mercer, meanwhile, had a contingent of 25-30 fans.
"Their student section is unreal; the arena probably seats 10,000 and half of it was the student section that was going nuts the entire time," Thomas said. "A couple of times when they made a run, you couldn't even think straight. It was like the ground was shaking. ...I don't think too many people thought we'd go in there and win, but we got 'em."
Mercer defeated Old Dominion (79-73), Fairfield (64-59) and Utah State in consecutive road games to close out the CIT Tournament after home wins over Tennessee State (68-60) and Georgia State (64-59).
The 6-foot-6 Thomas — a three-time Aurora Sentinel All-City selection and two-time Player of the Year, as well as Gatorade's Colorado POY twice — started all 38 games for Mercer, averaging just under 8 points and 4.6 rebounds per game. He had his best games of the CIT tournament in the last two, going for 13 points with five steals in a 64-59 semifinal victory over Fairfield and adding 10 points in the final.
Thomas has found the team chemistry and unselfish attitude at Mercer to be "eerily similar" to what he was a part of at Regis Jesuit.
"We have a bunch of versatile young players, so we're not going to have one superstar going off," Thomas said. "All five starters averaged 8-12 points per game, so it helps that other teams don't know what to expect. We're going to make the extra pass and we're going to get a great shot. It's such a unselfish team and we've all bought into the program."
Speaking of his former program, Thomas was as stunned as anybody to see Regis Jesuit's run of three consecutive 5A state championships come to an end when the Raiders lost to Poudre in the second round.
It was Regis Jesuit's first postseason loss since the 2007-08 season — Thomas' sophomore year — when it was eliminated in the Great 8 by Palmer.
"When the final buzzer went off, it felt like I had just lost a game," Thomas said."It was tough to lose like that, but it's a good reminder of how special three in a row were. It seemed for awhile like no matter what we did, we won in the playoffs. ...It's tough for the seniors, but at least they got to be a part of something special in the past years."
