Drive for a final title shot

SALEM -- Brandon McCombs does not take a single tick for granted.

From a 33-point blowout at home to a 2-point win on the road, each second he's on the court counts. Garbage time does not exist.

Every game in Salem State's 13-game winning streak is important to the senior forward, who suffered a hairline fracture in his left foot last season in the first round of the Massachusetts Small College Athletic Conference tournament. But none is more important than the one the Vikings will play Friday in the conference semifinal.

The Vikings have been here before. McCombs has been here before.

Last year, McCombs barely played two minutes when Salem State met Bridgewater State in the semifinal.

He doesn't remember it well, but he remembers.

He drove baseline and went up for a reverse layup. He acts out the movements as he explains what happened, working his head under the imaginary basket and clutching with his right hand.

The move was smooth, but the landing was awkward. He came down on his toe and twisted it. He didn't get back up on his own.

"It was the most pain I had ever felt in my life," he said.

"I didn't know what happened. My whole limb went numb. It was a terrible feeling because I know my team needed me, and we had a chance to do something special last year."

As much as it hurt, it also helped. His team may have had a chance to do something special last year, but this is his senior year -- his last chance to do something special.

So he used the ankle injury as a motivator for a season in which he would average 15.9 points and a conference-high 10 rebounds while playing 31.7 minutes a game , the 11th highest average in the conference .

The injury "had everything to do with this year," McCombs said. "It gave me the determination to work harder. I just knew we were capable of going far. So that just gave me the drive to work hard all summer."

He was on crutches for two weeks, and then practically immobile for about a month. Senior forwards and cocaptains Eric Downie and Paul Demosthene already had a lot of the guys on the team running suicides, playing 21, playing 5-on-5. All McCombs could do besides upper-body lifting and school work was watch people play ball.

He remembers the exact day when he was finally ready to get back to work.

Sept. 15.

"From Sept. 15 we were running suicides in the morning every day at 6 in the morning," the 6-foot-5-inch McCombs said. "Before classes, before basketball season, before even the first practice we were doing all this, so we came into the season in shape. We had our focus. We were ready for the season."

If anyone understands where McCombs is coming from, it's Demosthene and Downie , and it goes deeper than just his ankle. They're all in the same situation, with only a few more precious games to play and the game clock looking more like a countdown on their college careers.

"We're seniors now," said Demosthene. "We don't have a next year. This is the only route right now. We don't have a second chance to make it right. This is our only chance. So we have to take this chance seriously."

In his final season, Downie , an athletic forward who can post up and also put the ball on the floor, is leading the conference in scoring with 20.7 points and is fourth in rebounding with 8.4 per game. He's shouldered the on-court responsibilities, but he's also the guy who pulled junior forward Jeremi Taitt aside and shook his hand after he came off the bench and scored 11 points.

"It all came down to leadership this year," he said. "We all knew exactly what we needed to do. And we got it done from the time we lost last year. We really want to go all the way this year, and not just MASCAC, the whole national tournament."

For McCombs, last year's tournament is a distant memory. He holds onto it as a reminder, of freak accidents, of dumb luck, of misfortune. But he feels like this team has done everything possible to put all of that in the past.

"We didn't really appreciate what we could do as a team last year," he said. "So, stuff like that happens. We kind of took it for granted. We didn't work as hard as we could have worked and bad stuff like that happens.

"But this year we've been blessed to stay healthy, work hard, and be successful. . . . This is such a special feeling and a special year for us," he said. "We worked so hard it's like everything's coming full circle. It's like there's nothing that can hold us down now."

One night at the O'Keefe Center at Salem State, after the Vikings had thumped Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, McCombs unlaced his sneakers and undid the tape on his ankles -- both of them.

"I tape them both up now," he said, grinning. "I've learned my lesson."