The Saint Mary’s Gaels didn’t exactly come into the NCAA Tournament as potential world beaters. They finished second in the West Coast Conference but managed to win the conference tournament to escape being a bubble team and make it to the dance. They entered as a 10 seed, which already put them at a disadvantage, but don’t tell Omar Samhan’s mother that.
According to this Yahoo article, Marianne Black-Samhan was confident enough in the Gaels’ chances that she bought a plane ticket for Houston, where the Gaels will play Baylor tomorrow night. This isn’t a big deal until you realize that she bought the ticket before the tournament even started. Black-Samhan asked Omar “how important it was to him that she fly cross-country for the first and second round.” When he said it wasn’t “essential,” she skipped on buying a flight to Providence, R.I., and instead bought the Texas-bound ticket.
As she was quoted: “I’ve watched a lot of Omar’s games and usually I have no clue who’s going to win, but this time for some reason, I just felt it,” adding, “I never thought they were not going to win.” Samhan, the team’s leading scorer in the regular season, has stepped up his effort and made sure his mom didn’t waste her money on the flight. In the first round win over the 7 seed Richmond Spiders, he scored 29 points and grabbed 12 rebounds, then had a dominating performance as the Gaels shocked the 2 seed Villanova Wildcats, making 13 of 16 shots and scoring 32 points while grabbing seven boards.
Now, it’s the 3 seed Baylor Bears awaiting the Gaels in tomorrow’s tussle in Houston. Black-Samhan didn’t fly all this way to see her son fail, so look for him to put up another huge performance. Just don’t ask her if she’s bought tickets to Indianapolis for the Final Four. “I have to see him in person, listen to his voice and look him in the eyes to answer that. Then I’ll see if I get that same feeling.”
Photo by SD Dirk via Flickr.