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VIRGINIA BEACH — Omari DeVeaux owed his coach a big play.
He gave him and Virginia Wesleyan a buzzer-beating win over the top-ranked team in Division III men’s basketball.
DeVeaux’s driving layup as time expired lifted the unranked Marlins past No. 1 Christopher Newport 77-76 on Thursday at TowneBank Arena.
“As a young kid you always dream of moments like that,” DeVeaux said, “so for it to happen here in a big stage like that, it feels really good. My hard work’s paying off.”
CNU came out of a timeout and grabbed a 76-75 lead on Jahn Hines’ bucket with four seconds left in regulation — that defensive responsibility lay with DeVeaux.
“Omari didn’t do a good job staying reattached to Jahn, so he owed us one,” Virginia Wesleyan coach Dave Macedo said, smiling.
Macedo opted not to use a timeout as DeVeaux, a sophomore guard from Douglas Freeman High in Henrico County, gathered the ball on the inbounds play.
“It’s something you just make up on the fly,” DeVeaux said. “At first Coach was going to call timeout, but he saw me going downhill, so I want to thank Coach for having so much trust in me to make that play.”
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DeVeaux finished with a game-high 27 points for a young Marlins team that appeared overwhelmed by the top-ranked Captains early.
CNU (9-2), which has been No. 1 the first three weeks of the season, was coming off its first loss of the season Tuesday but stormed out to a 43-25 halftime lead.
“That was probably one of our worst halves we’ve played against CNU or in general,” Macedo said. “I just didn’t like our body language, our energy, and quite frankly we just weren’t playing very well.”
That included DeVeaux.
“He got backdoored for a dunk and that just gave us all the ammunition we needed to push his buttons,” Macedo said. “In the second half, you could see he wanted the ball and we started going to him. When he’s downhill and he’s going left, he can make a lot of things happen.”
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The Marlins (11-1) methodically chipped away at the deficit — an endeavor that took the entire half. Sophomore forward Amarion Wilson, a former Kecoughtan High standout, tallied a tying dunk with 1:10 left and DeVeaux made two free throws for a 75-74 advantage.
“We’re a young team,” DeVeaux said. “We’re still trying to figure out what everybody does and just the balance between what you can do and what you can’t do.”
In contrast to CNU, an Elite Eight team last season that returned eight seniors and three fifth-years, Virginia Wesleyan deploys mostly underclassmen.
“We’re not there yet,” Macedo said. “We’re a young team still growing and maturing, but I liked our fight in the second half and I thought we played with a lot more guts and desire.”
Desire that ended a long drought.
“It’s been a while,” said DeVeaux, asked if he had ever made a buzzer-beater. “It’s been a really long time.”
Ray Nimmo, ray.nimmo@pilotonline.com