LMU drops another heartbreaker, set to be eighth seed in tourney

It's pretty painful to lose another heart-breaker, but to be honest I think I'm becoming pretty numb to it. The Lions dropped their final game of the regular season tonight, falling to San Francisco 77-75. With 13 seconds and the ball, LMU needed just a basket to force overtime. Freshman guard Anthony Ireland got a decent look from the corner of the key, but the ball rolled off the rim. Ireland, who never gave up on the play, also hit just rim on both of his put-back attempts.

The dagger in the heart of the Lions was once again defending the three. After doing a great job at it all night, and forcing the Dons to shoot just 4-23 from beyond the arc, LMU found itself up by five with just under two minutes to play. But after turning the ball over, the Lions gave up back-to-back threes to San Francisco and couldn't recover.

With the loss, the Lions find themselves the eighth seed at next weekend's WCC Tournament in Las Vegas. LMU will face Portland in first-round action Friday at 6 p.m. A win tonight would have instead seen LMU match-up much more favorably against Pepperdine.

There are, however, two bright spots to take out of tonight's game. The Lions shot an astonishing 95.7 percent from the free throw line, and went a perfect 15-15 from the stripe in the second half. Secondly, LMU received a big offensive game from Drew Viney for the second contest in a row. After going for 30 points Thursday at Santa Clara, Viney led the Lions with 22 points tonight on 7-14 from the field. With Viney putting his shooting woes from earlier this season behind him, the Lions definitely have the right pieces in place to make a Tournament run.

I'll write later this week about key's for Friday's game, etc. But this has been such a tough season, I just really hope we can continue to play competitive games in Vegas but close a couple out, exactly what we haven't been able to do all season long. The fans deserve it, and a bunch of these players and coaches deserve it too.