Carl Baptiste. Grant Riller. Hunter Woods.
Add John Camden to the list.
Delaware’s senior forward scored a game-high, season-high 36 points on 11-of-15 shooting and 8-of-10 from behind the arc to beat No. 4 William & Mary 100-78 and end the Tribe’s 2024-25 season in the CAA quarterfinal. The 12th-seeded Blue Hens move on to the semifinal to play No. 1 Towson. And as is tradition, the Tribe goes home to Williamsburg after another deflating conference tournament exit.
“It’s disappointing,” said head coach Brian Earl. “It was a new staff with new guys, and I think there was a lot of good stuff we could take away from [the year], but right now I’m disappointed.”
Camden’s hot shooting drove the Hens offensively, but the Tribe’s second-half scoring woes that turned a shootout into a blowout.
The Tribe went blow-for-blow with the Hens in the first half, going into the break with a 49-47 lead. And W&M scored the first 5 points out of the half, with a Keller Boothby three pushing the Tribe advantage to 54-47. But that would be the last W&M field goal for 5 minutes and 34 seconds, until a Chase Lowe layup broke a 14-3 Delaware run. The Tribe would later go another 3 minutes and 44 seconds without a basket, when the Hens utilized a 10-1 spurt to go up 15 with 8:06 to play.
While W&M would cut the lead to nine with 3:46 left, the outcome was still fairly academic, as Delaware turned the Tribe’s desperation threes into easy fast break buckets, including a pair of dunks to punctuate the upset.
“It was on pace for about a hundred,” Earl said. “We had some layups. You need to make those in this game. They did. We didn’t. There were a lot of threes made, but it was at the rim.”
The game’s pace was fast and furious out of the gate, but neither team was especially clean. The Tribe’s pressure clearly bothered Delaware, forcing 8 turnovers in the period. But just about every time the Hens were able to get the ball into the frontcourt, they scored. Delaware hit 10 of its first 12 three-point attempts.
Meanwhile, W&M was sloppy on the offensive end. Though the Tribe only turned it over 4 times in the half, it missed several easy opportunities at the bucket — the team made just 4-of-11 layups through 20 minutes.
But the game opened up down the stretch of the first half. Delaware continued to shoot the three at a high level, while the Tribe matched them triple-for-triple. In a 57-second span, W&M hit back-to-back-to-back threes to turn a 3-point deficit into a 27-21 lead with 10:33 to go in the half. W&M never extended its advantage past 6 points before the break but still went in with the lead. And once the Blue Hens stormed back in front with 16:35 left in the game, the Tribe never led again.
The loss ends the W&M careers of Boothby, Gabe Dorsey, Caleb Dorsey, Matteus Case and Malachi Ndur. Gabe Dorsey, in particular, goes down as one of the Tribe’s best shooters ever. The sniper finishes tied for 27th all-time in career scoring, as well as second in career three-pointers made.
“It’s been a lot different this year,” Dorsey said. “I’m just really appreciative to Coach Earl and the staff for coming in and embracing me and the other returners. It was a really fun year for us playing in this style, being around fun, good people. I know Coach and these guys are going to carry on this culture forward.”