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WASHINGTON, D.C. – With the top two seeds gone in the 2026 Coastal Athletic Association tournament, the next two seeds have stepped up to take their place, and now they’ll meet for the CAA championship.
The No. 4-seeded Monmouth Hawks rode their relentless defense to a 74-64 CAA semifinal win over the upstart, No. 9 Campbell Fighting Camels before CAA Rookie of the Year Preston Edmead banked in an off-balance, twisting, 28-foot, right-wing 3-pointer with 0.3 seconds left in overtime to get No. 4 Hofstra Pride by the No. 7 Towson Tigers, 68-65, in overtime, at CareFirst Arena.
Careless Campbell played right into Monmouth’s hands
For Monmouth (19-14, 11-7 CAA), it’s usually whether the Hawks can score enough that dictates their success. But defensively, head coach King Rice’s team is almost always pesky and relentless with making opposing teams work offensively.
Although Campbell (16-18, 8-10) was ready for that, there’s a small margin for error with valuing the basketball against Monmouth, which seeks every opportunity it can to force a turnover.
After a tournament win over eighth-seeded Stony Brook and a shocking victory against top-seeded UNC Wilmington, head coach John Andrzejek fully expected to be playing for a title instead of the Hawks.
“I didn’t prepare well for this press conference,” Andrzejek said after his team’s season was ended by Monmouth, which reached its first CAA final. “I really thought we were in a good headspace and we were a very confident team coming off the Wilmington game.”
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After committing only eight turnovers while ousting UNCW, the Camels had 23 against the Hawks, including 15 in the first half, which allowed Monmouth to take 16 more shots (36-20) and make two more (12-10). That helped the Hawks to a 30-24 halftime lead despite Campbell shooting 50% to Monmouth’s 33.3% in the opening half.
“When we were able to get shots, we got really good shots, but we did not get anywhere near enough of them, and that’s the reason Monmouth’s moving on, and we’re not,” Andrzejek said. “We knew what [Monmouth’s] gameplan was gonna be. We were not surprised by anything we saw today. Our No. 1 key was to take care of the ball, and [Monmouth] led the conference in creating steals and forcing turnovers… and for whatever reason, we weren’t quite good enough against [that] tonight.”
One reason for that might have been Campbell having a bit of a letdown one day after pulling off what Andrzejek called “one of the best wins in the history of the conference,” adding, “I think we were a little emotionally low in the tank. It’s hard to keep bouncing back with your body, and when you’re tired physically, that can affect your presence of mind.”
Though disappointed, Andrzejek wasn’t looking for excuses.
“Give Monmouth credit,” he said. “They contest every pass. Every pass is hard to make, they have very active hands on the ball, they’re constantly trying to poke it away. I knew it would be a challenge [but] I never thought we’d have 23 (turnovers). I knew 14 was possible, and we were trying for 11 or less.”
As the turnovers kept mounting, the Camels could only hang around for so long. A four-point game with 14:39 left grew to as much as a 15-point margin about nine minutes later.
Rice noted the team effort in stopping Campbell. “We have multiple guys that are defenders,” he said.
He also stressed the importance of aggressively trying to win any tournament, as imparted to him by his former head coach Dean Smith, when Rice played point guard for Smith at North Carolina.
“You have to win the tournament,” Rice said. “No one’s going to give it to you. You have to go and take the tournament or somebody else is gonna take it. We’ve been saying that for a few days once we got to the tournament. I didn’t talk like that before the tournament, but now that we’re here, it’s like, ‘Guys, you gotta take it,’ so we’re coming tomorrow to try to take this tournament.”
Pride survives a CAA battle for the ages
While Monmouth’s tough defense led to a comfortable win, good defense, high intensity, physicality, and grit from both Hofstra (23-10, 12-6 CAA) and Towson (19-15, 9-9 CAA) yielded a very tightly-contested stalemate until Edmead emerged as the last-second hero.
In a clash that would’ve made for an all-time classic CAA championship game, the competition was fierce for a full 45 minutes and couldn’t have been closer. The Tigers never led by more than four points, the Pride never by more than six. Towson won the first half, 28-27, Hofstra flipped that and won the second half by the exact same margin. There were nine ties and 10 lead changes. Each team shot an identical 23-for 62 until Edmead’s game-winner made the Pride 24-for-63.
“A gutsy, gusty win by my guys,” Hofstra head coach Craig “Speedy” Claxton said. “I thought they fought from start to finish, and credit to Towson. They did not lie down. They were preseason favorites for a reason, and I told [my] guys before the game that the team that we saw last time (when Hofstra led by 26 points at halftime and won at home, by 22, on Feb. 7) is not the team that we were going to see tonight.”
In addition to all of the ways the game was close, each team’s stars also stepped up, even if a couple of them started slowly.
CAA Player of the Year, junior guard Cruz Davis, scored 18 points, had five rebounds, recorded a game-high four assists, and finished 6-for-11 from the floor after missing his first six shots. Edmead scored a team-best 22 points, while making 5-of-13 shots from 3-point range, including, obviously, the biggest of all.
For Towson, fellow All-CAA Third Team junior guards Tyler Tejada and Dylan Williamson each did all they could to keep the Tigers in the game.
Tejada scored a game-high 29 points after scoring 35 points in the second round and 30 in the quarterfinals, for a CAA tournament record total of 94 points. Williamson added 15 points, coming up big down the stretch, overcoming his prior issues against Hofstra.
Williamson started 3-for-13, making him an abysmal 5-for-40 over nearly three games against the Pride this year, but then finished 4-for-7 and answered five straight points from Cruz (that put Hofstra up, 49-44 with under eight minutes left in the second half) with the next seven points, to move the Tigers ahead, 51-49.
After Edmead hit a clutch 3 to give the Pride a 55-52 edge with 2:12 left in regulation, Tejada sent the game into overtime while drawing Davis’ fourth foul on a tough three-point play that tied the game, 55-55, with 1:06 left in the half.
Another Tejada and-1 tied the game, 58-58, and fouled Davis out with 3:40 left in overtime.
“I have a lot of trust in my teammates,” Davis said. “As soon as I went out of the game, Preston gave me a hug and told me he got me, so… I know they got my back.”
A Tejada jumper kept Towson within 65-63, which allowed the Tigers to tie it up again, 65-65, on a second-chance, reverse layup with 20 seconds left.
That set the stage for Edmead’s heroics, as the freshman guard with the poise of a seasoned veteran dribbled to the right wing and launched his memorable shot over Williamson.
“Coach said, ‘get one last shot, and I [saw] the time ticking down, and I just shot it,” Edmead laughed as Claxton added with a wide smile, “As simple as that.”
As crushing as it was, Towson head coach Pat Skerry handled the shot in stride.
“He banked it in from [28] feet,” he said. “You can’t defend it much better. It’s a tough way to lose your last game.”
It’s said that sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good. Edmead was both, but in that case, very fortunate that his shot was off to the right enough that it could luckily bank in to send Hofstra to its first CAA championship game since 2020, when the Pride last qualified for the NCAA Tournament, but never played in it due to a global Covid pandemic cancelling the tournament two days later. Hofstra hasn’t played in an NCAA Tournament since 2001, the year after Claxton led the Pride there as a former star player in 2000.
Monmouth hasn’t been to the NCAA tournament since 2006 while Rice, the Hawks’ coach for the past 15 years, in the NEC, MAAC, and now the CAA, is seeking his first trip to that tournament as a head coach.
As Campbell found out against Monmouth, turning around quickly the next day after a big, emotional win can be a challenge, but now Hofstra must do the same against the same team that ended the Camels’ season.
“We have no choice but to put it past us,” Claxton said. “We’ve got to get ready for a tough Monmouth team. They’re playing well also.”
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