PURCHASE, N.Y. - Winning a championship is the ultimate challenge in sports.
Winning a championship in back-to-back seasons is even more difficult, as we've seen with recent losses by the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV and the Golden State Warriors in the 2019 NBA Finals.Â
So much has to go right to even have a chance at lifting the trophy for a second-straight season.
You need a talented group of individuals that play well together and a coaching staff that can maximize the skill set of its players and coaches alike. You also need some luck, especially when it comes to health and keeping the group intact.
Even then, it still might not be enough. But sometimes, in spite of all of those obstacles, a team will manage to go back-to-back.
And that is exactly what happened 10 years ago today on February 26, 2011, as the 2010-11
Purchase College men's basketball team claimed its second-straight Skyline Conference Championship by defeating St. Joseph's College-Long Island,
81-66.
With the victory, the Panthers became the first modern-era Skyline Conference men's basketball team to repeat as champions and the first preseason No. 1-ranked team to win the title in the same season.
After the championship, Purchase played in the NCAA Tournament for just the second time in its history,
beating Hartwick College in the first round by the score of 79-69. That win signified the first-ever win for a Purchase College program in an NCAA postseason setting.
After defeating Hartwick, the Panthers took on the Cabrini College Cavaliers in the second round of the Tournament. Despite leading the Cavaliers by 13 points at halftime,
Purchase fell in the contest, 91-84, to close out its historic campaign.
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Ultimately, the Panthers finished the year with a 24-5 overall record, including a 19-3 mark in games against Skyline Conference foes. The team also had the Skyline Conference Player of the Year in
Marvin Billups Jr. '11, who averaged 19.2 points, 6.1 rebounds and 2.6 steals per game, shot 52 percent from the floor, and started all 29 games as a senior.
Michael McNair '11, the Panthers' other offensive star, earned a spot on the All-Skyline Conference Second Team after averaging 14.9 points per game and was named the Most Valuable Player of the Skyline Conference Tournament following back-to-back games of 21 and 23 points respectively.
Purchase also got key contributions from Chuck Thompson '11 (10.0 PPG and 7.3 RPG) and Corey Orgias '11 (8.7 PPG and 5.0 RPG), which helped fuel the second-straight title.
While the quartet of Billups, McNair, Thompson and Orgias might have lifted the Panthers in both 2009-10 and 2010-11, it was the cohesion of the entire team that earned to the titles.
During the two-year run, Purchase had the same coaching staff of head coach Jeff Charney and assistant coach Chad Charney and had 10 players return for each season, including Justin Walters '11, Derrick Stanton, Angel Gonzalez '11, Maurice Richardson '11, John Simmons '11 and Kevin Major Jr. '11.Â
It's not often that teams have a core group of players that stick around for a couple of years, especially ones with championship talent. But when they do, it's easy to imagine what can be and what they might achieve.
And the 2010-11 Purchase College men's basketball team was certainly proof of that.Â
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