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Around
the Nation

Posted March 5, 2003

So who let
you guys in?

The security guard stops the coach and his team before they reached the entranceway.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Excuse me, but what are they doing here? This is supposed to be an exclusive club and we can’t be letting in people with your kind of record.”

“No problem,” says the coach, flashing his credential, and with that, the security guard suddenly steps aside and graciously holds the door open.

That’s the season in a nutshell for the Milwaukee School of Engineering, which made this season’s NCAA Tournament despite finishing with a 12-16 record. The longer version is of a team that started 0-6 and was 4-14 heading into its last game in January. Perhaps the fact that six of the losses were by four points or less foreshadowed what happened next. The Raiders got hot, and one they took to winning they didn’t stop. They finished the regular season 10-15, 5-7 in league play, than beat Concordia (Wis.), Maranatha Baptist and regular season champ Lakeland in succession to win the Lake Michigan Conference tournament.

MSOE had the second-best record in its league over the last half of the season and entered the conference tournament as the No. 6 seed with six wins (including one loss that became a conference win, though not an overall win, due to Concordia’s forfeit) in its last seven games.

After beating Concordia, which had edged them out twice in the regular season, the Raiders caught a break in drawing last-place Maranatha Baptist for a semifinal at "home" at Wisconsin Lutheran (their usual home, US Cellular Arena, which is shared with UW-Milwaukee, was unavailable). MSOE won that game by six points. The final exam of the season would come after a week’s worth of final exams of an academic variety, since MSOE’s rigorous schedule runs on quarters.

“I think that may have been a good thing,” Good said. “We didn’t have time to worry about the game. Our guys believed going into the tournament that we had as good a chance as anybody.”

The week’s worth of studying went out the window early though, as both teams ended up playing a style that was a stark contrast to anything that had taken place earlier in the season. Somehow, MSOE put up a season-high 91 points on a team that had allowed 55 points or less in each of its three previous games.

“We pushed the ball, they pushed the ball, it turned into a footrace,” Good said. “Lots of shots, no turnovers, and fun to watch.”

The Raiders get most of their scoring from 6-7 senior forward Adam Lewis, who has led the squad in scoring in rebounding in all four of his seasons there. Center Matt Hopf came up big in the championship game, netting 27 points. Freshman point guard Jeff Mikos overcame a rough start to lead the LMC in assists and steals. Backcourt mate Justin Kramer is the defensive stopper and according to Good “is the difference between losing by three or four and winning by three or four.”

So here they are, the little guys (their big low-post presence weighs 195 pounds) in town, unnoticed in Milwaukee, well under the shadow of the likes of Marquette. The task of facing UW-Oshkosh in the opening round is hard enough, but just for the heck of it, we wondered if Good could envision a scenario of having to get past the front door guardsmen at the Salem Civic Center in a couple of weeks.

“If there’s any coach that tells you he’s not thinking about that, well then he’s not telling the truth,” said Good after much laughter and some self-proclaimed, beating-around the bush, coach-speak. “We know that it’s silly to even talk about it. We know that not a lot of people are thinking we’re going to win (one game). I just hope we go out there on Thursday, put ourselves in position to win, and can go from there.”

You’ve got questions, we’ve got questions, everyone’s got questions after seeing NCAA Tournament pairings that made us scratch our head a bit. With that in mind, we thought we would come up with a few and try to answer them, with a particular emphasis on teams playing first-round games.

Who really wants to go back to the Final Four?
Plenty of people come to the Final Four from great distances, but rare are those that do who aren’t actually playing in the game.

Eastern Connecticut State junior Allison Coleman is one. She and a friend decided to go at the last minute and drove 15 hours each way to Terre Haute, Ind., last year to watch the women’s games.

“I just didn’t want our season to be over,” said Coleman, whose Warriors take on SUNY-Farmingdale in the first round on Wednesday and hope to do better this season after losing to Springfield in the second round last season. I had been to the Final Four when it was at Western Connecticut, and I wanted to see what that Final Four would be like.”

Coleman’s devotion to the sport is obvious in the way she plays. After watching her in one game, the closest comparison we could draw — in terms of style of play and value to her team — was someone who plays 15 minutes away from ECSU, Connecticut All-American forward Diana Taurasi. Both are capable of making unbelievable plays in any number of ways — be it passing, rebounding or shooting — and making their teammates better players. Coleman honed her game over the summer by playing almost exclusively against men’s players, which she said fine-tuned her fundamental play.

There’s one thing that comes with being the second most well-known player in Connecticut. By the time the NCAA’s come around, there’s no secret who is going to have the ball in their hands most of the time. Coleman, who has shot 20-for-65 in three NCAA games, said she was lucky to get any postseason touches in which she wasn’t immediately double-teamed.

“That kind of stinks,” she said with a laugh. “I liked being the unknown freshman, but that comes with the territory.”

Coleman knows that if she makes the trip again this year, it will be a lot better if she can bring her teammates along. She made it a point to stress their value — including center Morgan Perry and guard Kathleen Burdelski.

“I think this year, we’re a lot more athletic,” said Coleman, a two-time All-American who averaged 17.2 points, 11.9 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 4.4 steals per game this season. “We have more scorers and a lot more experience. I think that’s going to help us.”

Buena Vista men’s basketball coach Brian Van Haaften is another one whose pilgrimage was quite lengthy. He and Jostens Award winner Adam Jones had to take four flights to get from Sioux City, Iowa, to Salem. It was a rough ride, with plenty of down time spent in airport lobbies, but the experience made the travel well worth it.

“We bounced all the way there, on small planes, 40-passenger flights,” said. “It was a great trip. It was good to see those teams. I felt that our program could certainly compete with them. I feel the same way today.”

Buena Vista (25-3) is the first IIAC back-to-back champion in 23 seasons and has won 18 straight games, beating Wartburg 72-70 in the title game on a buzzer-beating basket by sophomore guard Eric Wiebers (34 points). The strength of the team is in its dominance on the glass, as the Beavers rank second in the nation in scoring margin. The two seniors that have shared the center spot for four years, Chris Petersen and Robbie Beyer, have combined for All-American numbers of 2,000 points and 1100 rebounds. Both shot better than 60 percent from the field this season. That duo has 96 wins in their Buena Vista careers. One hundred would get them on a plane back to Salem.

“I would hope that we would be able to get there a little easier next time,” Van Haaften said. “I know that playing won’t be any easier though. We understand that every team out there is an excellent team. We’re ready for the challenge.”

Hey, didn’t you used to be somebody famous?
Montclair State men’s basketball coach Ted Fiore got a good laugh when we asked him that.

“I don’t know about famous,” he said. “Maybe, infamous.”

Fiore is well known in northern New Jersey, having previously coached Division I St. Peter’s to a pair of NCAA bids and throwing a first-round scare into a University of Massachusetts team led by Marcus Camby in the 1995 tournament.

This is Fiore’s first trip to the NCAA Tournament with the Red Hawks in his fifth season of coaching, after leaving a job as an assistant principal at a high school to re-enter the field.

The Red Hawks trademark has been defense and an ability to get contributions from everyone. The team’s sixth-leading scorer this season, senior guard Ben Martinez, scored the winning basket in the New Jersey Athletic Conference championship game on a coast-to-coast drive and layup with 1.9 seconds remaining in double overtime to beat Ramapo.

“People talk about our big guys (top scorers Antwan Dozier and Jerome Trawick), but our other guys have been magnificent,” said Fiore, whose team drew last year’s runner-up, Elizabethtown in round one. “What’s really been significant for us is that each night, someone different takes on the hero role.”

Getting back to “celebrity status” wasn’t easy. Montclair won a pair of nailbiters over two teams who were a combined 23-1 at home this season. It marked Montclair’s first NJAC title in 21 years.

“When you’ve been around as long as I have, those are the games you really enjoy,” said Fiore, who won 290 games coaching high school and another 151 in nine seasons at St. Peter’s. “I hope there is more than one left for us.”

“We just happened to find each other at the right time,” said Jarman, whose team, the host squad in the DIAC Tournament, swept three games in three days to win the league championship for the second straight season. The Monarchs finished in fifth place in the league during the regular season, but enter their first-round game at Maryville at 19-9 on a 10-game win streak.

“Some people are saying that we won because we were the home team (in the tournament), but we’ve been playing very well,” said Jarman, whose team didn’t win its first title in the 28-year history of the program until last season. “We had the talent all year, but maybe there was a lack of leadership early. Our juniors, Stacey Holland and Lauren Maloney, have taken up the leadership recently. They tell players it’s time to step up. We didn’t have someone doing that (for awhile). The coaches had to do that. When we’re shooting well, this is a very tough team. In my eyes, and in the eyes of others around here, we know we could have won every game we played.”

Holland, the second leading scorer on the team behind LaTasha Watlington, earned DIAC Tournament MVP honors one year after her sister Kelly did the same. Stacey hit four 3-pointers in the championship game win over Christopher Newport a year after Kelly nailed six trifectas in the title-clinching game.

The play of senior reserve Brandy McCollum also helped the team in an intangible way. McCollum missed the first semester’s worth of basketball with a seriously painful stress fracture in her leg, but came back in great shape. She may have only scored one point in the championship game, but her effort was very valuable.

“We have a lot of fighters on this team,” said Jarman. “The injury was disappointing, but she didn’t quit, and I think that served as inspiration for her teammates.”

Who do we wish was here?
Our publisher has been wanting us to write about Grinnell in the worst way, and we were all set to do so when a couple of mix-ups resulted in us not getting to talk to head coach David Arsenault until it was too late. Grinnell lost its conference championship, the MWC, to Illinois College.

We’ll get to the Grinnell story someday, because it is one worth telling to those unfamiliar with their way of play, best described as “hockey-style hoops.”

This season’s Pioneers squad did live up to its nickname, by having an unprecedented (to our knowledge) eight players average double figures in scoring on what Arsenault described as his deepest squad.

Who is Meredith?
In coming up with this question, we pondered the possibilities — was that the actress that played Alex Keaton’s mom on Family Ties (Baxter-Birney) or the actor that played the Penguin on Batman (Burgess)?

Seriously speaking though, Meredith, located in Raleigh, N.C., was named after Thomas Meredith, who founded the institution for Baptist women, which initially served as a sister school to Wake Forest. Rather than call female athletes “Demon Deacons,” the athletic department chose the nickname “Angels.”

Carl Hatchell, the husband of University of North Carolina women’s basketball coach Sylvia Hatchell, is 247-98 in 14 seasons as head coach of the program, which advanced to the NCAA Tournament this season for the second time in school history.

The Angels returned four seniors and three juniors to this year’s squad, though all of the freshmen on last season’s team transferred out after the college raised its tuition significantly. Point guard Tina Harkness and forward Tracy Sumner are the top scoring threats on a team that visits Randolph Macon in the opening round.

“We play an up tempo style and like to fast break,” Hatchell said. We’re heavily experienced on the top end of the roster. It’s certainly been an interesting year.”

STILL NO DEW CREW: Thanks to the folks that submitted their “Cameron Crazy” photos, including the folks at Wooster who were dubbed Division III’s version of the Cameron Crazies by USA Today several years ago.

We’ve received two more submissions this week and they are shown below. We encourage other fan groups to send us their photos during the NCAA Tournament.

Note that apparently craziness comes with a big flag, just ask Wooster fans.

Notes for Around the Nation are compiled with the help of sports information directors across the country. If you have suggestions or information for this column, please send it to mark@d3hoops.com.

2008-09 columns
Feb. 20: York (Pa.), no cliche
Feb. 13: St. Thomas writing history
Feb. 6: George Fox on hunt
Jan. 30: Brother, brother
Jan. 23: Growing a program
Jan. 16: Dudek's rare feat
Jan. 9: Ravin' about Anderson
Dec. 18: Chicago marooned at 0-9
Dec. 12: De Luca back on track
Dec. 4: Ithaca surprises
Nov. 21: Augie gets some delp
Nov. 13: Is repeat possible?

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