The last time the men’s basketball team advanced to the Final Four, head coach Pat Miller was the guard for the 1989 team and eventually went on to win the program its second national championship.
This time around, Miller will get to experience it as a coach after the Warhawks defeated Virginia Wesleyan 76-62 Saturday night, heading to the programs fourth Final Four appearance.
The ’Hawks will travel to Salem, Va., this week and will face MIT at 7 p.m. Friday.

“This group’s effort, regardless of whether we would have made it to the Final Four or not, has been outstanding all year,” Miller said. “I said on numerous occasions this has been a great group to coach. I’m sure they understand that this is an advancement point, not an ending point, and there’s a lot of work to be done.”
After the Marlins scored the first basket of the game, the ’Hawks quickly went on a 15-1 run and lead 15-3 with 15:44 left in the half. After a Wesleyan timeout, sophomore Cody Odegaard decided to take over the game.
In a span of a minute and a half, Odegaard drilled three, three-point shots giving the ’Hawks a 26-13 lead. Odegaard scored 17 of Whitewater’s first 26 points, including five three-pointers.
“I was just in my zone again,” Odegaard said after scoring all of his  points in the first half.
Leading 36-26 at halftime, the ’Hawks began to put the game out of reach.
Now it was senior Chris Davis’ turn to take over.
Davis scored a game-high 33 points, including 23 in the second half. He finished the game shooting 14 of 22.
Because the Marlins were so focused on the perimeter game, it opened up a window of opportunities for Davis.
“They were just one-on-one and everything just started falling in the second half,” Davis said. “Cody hit some big threes that opened it up.”
Odegaard said he knew the gameplan in the second half was to feed the ball to Davis because they would focus on him.
The ’Hawks eventually led by 16 points midway into the second half and remained ahead. The Marlins ended up cutting the deficit to 51-40 with just under ten minutes left, but couldn’t get any closer after that.
“I don’t think we were ever in it,” Virginia Wesleyan head coach David Macedo said. “I thought we got outplayed from start to finish. We got out to such a poor start and it wasn’t one of our better efforts and they had a lot to do with it.”
Miller said part of the reason the ’Hawks have had so much success this tournament is because they have jumped out to leads in almost every game, and have only trailed four minutes and 39 seconds in the entire tournament. He also said this takes pressure off of the offense.
“We’ve gotten off to good starts, but this team has a good focus and a good level of confidence,” Miller said. “When a team is sound on defense, you go into games feeling good because you don’t feel the pressure that you have to hit shots because your defense can hold you up.”
Chris Teasley led the Marlins with 15 points.
In the Elite 8 game against Wheaton, the ’Hawks jumped out to another early lead, 13-2. The ’Hawks ended up leading 36-20 at half, but the Thunder slowly came back, trailing 59-54 with just under two minutes left.
The ’Hawks closed out the game on an 8-2 run to seal the win.    “I knew it was going to be a battle because I have a tremendous amout of respect for coach Shower and his program,” Miller said. “I knew that they had four senior starters who have won a lot of basketball games in a great league.”
“Even at halftime I knew they were going to make a run and I was proud of the way our guys responded to it,” Miller said.