by By Jack McCarthy Special to the Pioneer Press , St. Paul Pioneer Press

Defending national champion Washington used a 17-2 second-half surge to overtake top-ranked St. Thomas on the way to a 79-64 victory in a Division III men's basketball sectional final at Wheaton College's King Arena.

"Obviously it hurts, (but) I'm extremely proud of the way our kids played all year," said St. Thomas coach Steve Fritz, whose team finished 30-1 and fell one victory short of reaching the NCAA Final Four. "We had the energy going at the end of the first half, but we just couldn't get it going in the second half. It's energy you feed off, but you have to be scoring some points and we could not get our offensive game going."

Washington (27-2) advances to the NCAA Final Four for the third straight year and a Friday semifinal game in Salem, Va.

St. Thomas was trying to return to the Final Four for the first time since 1994, when it finished fourth.

The Tommies played well in the first half, particularly in the final 7 minutes, 39 seconds as they moved from a 24-24 tie to a 41-33 halftime lead.

But the wheels came off quickly in the second half as the Bears' 17-2 run turned the tables. Washington, located in St. Louis, moved out to a 50-43 lead by the 11:50 mark.

"We just hit a rut," St. Thomas senior guard Lonnie Robinson said. "We were getting good looks; they just weren't falling for us. They slowed it down and hit a couple of shots to give them a little bit of momentum. We just weren't able to get that spark that we had in the first half back."

Things continued to get worse for St. Thomas, which missed shot after shot as Washington extended its lead to 61-50 on a Tyler Nading layup.

The Tommies hit only one of their first seven attempts in the second half and made just 9 of 30 (30 percent) in the final 20 minutes.

The Bears, who had 17 first-half turnovers, had just five in the second half and outrebounded the Tommies 25-10.

"I think the difference in the game was probably our experience and poise and the fact that we didn't turn it over 17 times like we did in the first half," Bears coach Mark Edwards said. "I just thought that when we had to dig down, we did it and we came through."

But the Bears also were erratic at times, at least in late stages of the first half. They started strong with six layups in the first eight minutes to take a 17-12 lead. But St. Thomas' pressure paid off as the Tommies went up 20-19 lead on a B.J. Viau steal and an Alex Healy layup at the 9:13 mark.

Washington briefly re-claimed the lead at 24-22 on an Aaron Thompson three-pointer with 7:36 left. But the Tommies mounted a 19-9 run, including a pair of Tyler Nicolai three-pointers, on the way to a 41-33 halftime lead.

"I thought we were able to get Wash U out of some things they wanted to do and force them into situations that they weren't used," Robinson said. "(But) we weren't able to get the pressure on them as much in the second half and get that tempo up and they kind of took it to us."

Nading paced the Bears with a game-high 28 points, while Thompson added 17 and Sean Wallis 13. Nicolai was the only Tommies player in double figures with 15 points, while Robinson and Healy each had seven.

It was geography, not luck of the draw, that determined why St. Thomas and Washington played Saturday instead of in next weekend's Final Four.

Division III national tournaments are organized by geography to keep travel expenses down, so the Tommies and Bears met at Wheaton College, located in Chicago's western suburbs.

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