Teams have alternated wins in last 13 games
The cliché in sports rivalries, as TV announcer Keith Jackson used to intone: “Whoa, Nellie, throw out the records because anything can happen.”
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While Army-Navy football belongs on any list of sports rivalries, Jackson’s old saw really doesn’t apply. In each of the last eight years, the team with the better record (Navy) has been a decisive winner.
For a sports rivalry with less lore, but more in line with Jackson’s words, see Army-Navy basketball.
In the last 13 meetings, the team that won the previous game has lost. Apparently, the primary motivator between the Black Knights and Midshipmen, at least on the basketball court, has been revenge.
That doesn’t bode well for Navy (8-11, 2-2) when it hosts Army (12-6, 2-2) on Saturday before a sellout crowd in Annapolis. Eleven months ago, when the teams last met, Navy was a 59-54 winner at home.
“The programs have been very evenly matched for the last few years,” said Navy coach Billy Lange. “In the game of basketball, in a rivalry game like that, with the number of possessions, the game going back and forth, anyone can win.”
Unlike Army-Navy football, few of the games have been blowouts. The margin the last eight times the teams have met has never exceeded eight points.
An exception was Lange’s rugged introduction to the rivalry, in his first season as a college head coach (2004-05). An Army team that would finish the season 3-23 beat Navy, 63-43, its largest victory over its rival in 35 years.
“The game was at West Point and they actually had to move it because of a snowstorm. We played on a Sunday,” said Lange. “There were very few people there … We had like three kids with stomach viruses and they absolutely handed it to us.”
But two weeks later in Annapolis, in the tradition of the rivalry, Navy settled the score with a 15-point victory.
On Saturday, Lange will have to deal with a vastly improved Army squad, under 32-year-old rookie coach Zach Spiker, who was seven years old the last time the Black Knights had a winning season. Since the Patriot League was formed in 1990, Army has never had a winning record in league play and is the only Patriot team that has not made it to the conference tournament finals.
By contrast, Navy has been to the finals six times since 1994, winning three Patriot League championships.
Despite the disparity, when the teams step on the floor twice each year, it’s time for a “Whoa, Nellie.”
“Part of the reason you come to the Naval Academy is be involved in a great, traditional rivalry,” said Lange. “Our kids relish the opportunity to play in a game like this.”
