A Season Inside (13 page)

“We’re all right,” he said. “Just do what we do every day in practice. Don’t try to do anything special.”

They calmed down. Smith scored the first basket on a pretty feed from Brian Miller. Steadily, the Patriots came back. When Earl Moore hit two free throws with 4:32 left in the half, they had the lead 26–25. “They can’t guard us,” Barnes screamed during a radio time-out. “Just keep taking the ball at them.”

On the other bench, Carlesimo, who might have had reason to panic, didn’t. “Basketball is a game of runs,” he said later. “They were bound to come back on us.”

It was 28–28 with four minutes left before the half, but the Patriots couldn’t keep pace. Seton Hall put together a 13–2 run, capped by a Nick Katsikis jumper at the buzzer.

Barnes was calm at the half. “That was their twenty minutes,” he said. “This will be ours. Take good shots, take it to them, and you’ll be the most talked-about team in college basketball tomorrow.”

The Patriots tried. But the Pirates were just better than they were. George Mason got within 56–50 with twelve minutes left but Katsikis hit two straight three-pointers and it was 62–50. From there it was a coast, Seton Hall winning 85–63.

Barnes was resolute in the aftermath. “Stay together,” he said. “We need to learn from this and not bicker about who messed up. We all did. We’ve got a lot of work to do but it’s a long way from here to March.”

He walked out of the locker room. One game into his coaching career, Barnes couldn’t avoid the oldest coaches’ lament in the book: “Men,” he said, looking at his assistants, “we’ve got to get some players.”

Although the NIT gets a twenty-four-hour jump, the official start of the basketball season is the annual tip-off game played in Springfield. This is “The Peach Basket Classic,” named of course for the famous peach basket that Dr. James Naismith put up in 1890 at the very beginnings of basketball.

This game was born in 1979, the idea being to promote the Basketball Hall of Fame by bringing two big-name college teams to Springfield to start each season. Duke and Kentucky played that first game, a rematch of the 1978 national championship, and Duke came from behind to win in overtime. Since then, the game has grown. It is now an automatic sellout each year and it comes at the end of a full week of events.

This year’s matchup is an intriguing one. Syracuse and North Carolina had played in the Eastern Regional final in March. Syracuse had won the game by killing Carolina on the boards. Dean Smith had been so upset by his team’s performance that it was August before he could look at the tape.

In the interim, Syracuse had come up one point shy of the national title, losing to Indiana 74–73 in the final, while Smith’s best player, J. R. Reid, had been charged with assault during a preseason fight in a Raleigh nightclub. Reid and teammate Steve Bucknall had gotten into an altercation with an N.C. State student, and it had ended with Reid spitting at their antagonist.

As a result, even though neither player had been convicted of anything
yet, Smith had suspended them for this game. “When children make a mistake,” Smith said, “you discipline them immediately.”

The suspensions pleased no one. The game’s organizers were less than thrilled that Reid wouldn’t be playing. ESPN, which would televise the game, wasn’t too pleased that it couldn’t push the Reid-Rony Seikaly matchup during pregame hype.

And of course there was Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim, the most put-upon man in college basketball. In truth, Boeheim is one of the nicer guys in the game. He has a sharp wit, is charmingly blunt—“That story you wrote really sucked,” is one way he greets reporters he knows—and is a very underrated coach.

But Boeheim is the victim of his appearance and of his voice. Always, he looks unhappy. He can’t help it. And he does whine. Shortly after the Orangemen had beaten North Carolina in March, Boeheim launched into a diatribe about how difficult it was to get Seikaly to play hard. Seikaly, sitting next to Boeheim, looked at him and said, “Hey, Coach, cool it. We won.”

“Oh yeah,” Boeheim said, remembering.

Even when he isn’t whining, Boeheim
sounds
like he’s whining. His voice is high-pitched and shrill. It was best described by a reporter listening to Boeheim during a press conference who shook his head and said, “You know, if a hemorrhoid could talk, it would sound just like Jim Boeheim.”

Now, Boeheim was in a no-win, yes-whine situation. If his team beat Carolina without Reid, everyone would shrug and say, “Big deal, Reid didn’t play.” If his team should lose to the Tar Heels, people would say, “Can you believe Dean found a way to win that game?”

Smith, naturally, relished this role. Rarely was his team a legitimate underdog, although Smith always tried somehow to make it one. He was always claiming that his opponent had a psychological advantage. Always. In 1981, before playing Virginia in the Final Four, Smith insisted the Cavaliers had a psychological advantage because they had already beaten UNC twice that season. “They’ll be very confident because they know they can beat us,” he said.

Carolina beat Virginia. Then, getting ready to face Indiana in the final, Smith said, “You know Indiana will have a psychological advantage because we’ve beaten them and they’ll want revenge.”

Makes perfect sense.

Now, Carolina really did have a psychological advantage. Smith
couldn’t avoid it. There was revenge. There was the underdog role. There was Reid’s absence. Another Smith saying: “You can always play one great game without a key player.”

So what was Smith’s comment before the game? “I just hope we don’t get blown out.”

Of course.

Carolina didn’t get blown out. Even without Reid, the Tar Heels still had a very talented club. Rick Fox was a freshman with a pro’s body. Pete Chilcutt, a redshirt freshman, played superbly. Combined, they scored 29 points and had 20 rebounds. It would have been tough for Reid and Bucknall, the two players they replaced in the lineup, to match those numbers.

Still, in the early going, it looked like Syracuse might turn the game into a rout. The Orangemen built a 50–39 lead at the half, finishing with a 13–5 spurt that was keyed by Sherman Douglas, the brilliant point guard. By intermission, he had 17 points. Seikaly had 14. Only Fox, playing in his first college game, had kept the game even that close, scoring 12 points.

But Carolina came back. It kept creeping closer and closer, finally tying the score at 81–81 with 1:18 left on a Kevin Madden lay-up. The Tar Heels took the lead at 83–81 on a Jeff Lebo steal that led to a Ranzino Smith lay-up. But Seikaly tied the game with eleven seconds left with two free throws, and Derrick Coleman made it 85–83 by making two more free throws after stealing the inbounds pass.

When Lebo couldn’t get open with time running down, it looked like Syracuse would survive. But Lebo shoveled the ball to Chilcutt, who spun in the lane, tossed up a fourteen-foot jumper and watched it bounce off the side of the rim, off the backboard and
in
—as the buzzer sounded.

Overtime. When a shot like that drops, destiny has taken over. Syracuse led briefly in the overtime, but Madden put Carolina ahead for good with two free throws and Fox ended the game with a thunderous dunk for a 96–93 win.

Syracuse, the top-ranked team in the country, was 0–1. Smith was a genius … again. Boeheim was a goat … already. Rick Fox and Pete Chilcutt were tabbed as stars. Smith was thrilled. “Gee, I hope J.R. can get his spot back in the lineup,” he joked.

All was right with the world in Chapel Hill. And in Syracuse, too. Boeheim was unhappy. That meant basketball season was officially under way.

With its victory over George Mason, Seton Hall was one of eight teams to advance to the second round of the NIT. The other winners were Purdue, Iowa State, New Mexico, UCLA, Florida, Georgia Tech, and Middle Tennessee State.

For the second round, the NIT came up with these matchups Georgia Tech at Florida, UCLA at New Mexico, Iowa State at Purdue, and Middle Tennessee State at Seton Hall. This was part of the problem with the NIT, both the three-year-old preseason version and the fifty-year-old postseason version. Ever since the postseason tournament fell on hard times in the 1970s, every move the NIT makes is based on dollars.

Once, the NIT was as glamorous a tournament as the NCAA. Madison Square Garden was the mecca for college basketball and winning the NIT was just as prestigious as winning the NCAAs. Even after that changed during the 1950s, the NIT was still a very successful tournament. But in the 1970s, when the NCAA began expanding its field, first from twenty-five to thirty-two teams in 1975 and then to forty, forty-eight, fifty-three and, ultimately, sixty-four teams, the NIT fields became weaker.

As the fields got weaker, attendance dropped steadily. By 1977, the tournament was in serious trouble. The games weren’t drawing, CBS had canceled its TV contract, and there was talk of folding the tournament. That was when Pete Carlesimo came up with the idea of holding the early rounds at campus sites.

Carlesimo had just been named the executive director of the tournament and his move probably saved his new job, as well as the old tournament. The semifinals and final stayed in New York. The first three rounds—the tournament expanded from sixteen to twenty-four to thirty-two teams—were played on campus. The money made from those games wiped out any potential deficit in New York.

At the same time that it moved the tournament out of New York, the NIT committee began “reseeding” after each round. What that really meant was that it could create any matchups it wanted. In 1985, when Carlesimo came up with the idea for a preseason NIT, the same “reseeding” formula was used.

Often that means fairness gets left out of the picture. The committee wants certain teams in New York to sell tickets and boost cable TV ratings. Those teams usually get to play at home and play weaker teams whenever possible.

Why then would UCLA, clearly a more attractive team than New Mexico, be sent to play at New Mexico? Easy: The Bruins had drawn an embarrassing 2,100 fans for their opening game in Pauley Pavilion against Oral Roberts. New Mexico had drawn 17,000 for Weber State and would draw 17,000 again. That was a lot of revenue.

The pairings that raised eyebrows, though, were Georgia Tech–Florida and Middle Tennessee–Seton Hall. The consensus was that Tech, Florida, and Purdue were the three strongest teams in the tournament. What’s more, Seton Hall had drawn poorly playing George Mason at Rutgers. Why hadn’t Middle Tennessee been sent to Florida and Seton Hall to Georgia Tech?

The answer was simple. The committee wanted Seton Hall in Madison Square Garden. They were semilocal, they were Big East, and they were coached by Peter John Carlesimo, who just happened to be the oldest of Peter A. Carlesimo’s ten children. The father was retiring at the end of the season as the NIT’s executive director. The son was trying to save his job at Seton Hall. If the Pirates made it to New York, it was a good story. If the committee gave Seton Hall a little extra shove, well, it certainly wasn’t the first time they had greased the skids to get a team to the Garden.

Given a second home game and a beatable opponent, the Pirates kept their end of the bargain, easily beating Middle Tennessee before another tiny crowd at Rutgers. The other winners were New Mexico, Florida, and Iowa State. The surprise of the group was Iowa State, which went into Mackey Arena, shot the lights out, and upset Purdue. It was a loss that created a good deal of anxiety at Purdue. For the Cyclones, it meant a chance to get some media attention in the East.

Coming to New York is still a big deal for a college basketball team. The Garden is still, after all, the Garden. John Condon, who has done the PA for forty years, is still doing the PA. Feets Brodie, who has sat by his side running the clock for the last thirty-one years, is still there running the clock. “I’ve done over two thousand games,” Brodie said. “One of my stopwatches is in the Hall of Fame.”

If there was a way to put his voice in the Hall of Fame, Condon’s would be there. Anyone who grew up in New York can recite all his little sayings: “Score the goal, score the goal, credit the goal to
_____.
That
was goaltending.” And: “New York has ten seconds to attempt a goal. Ten seconds New York.” Condon often wears sunglasses while working to protect his eyes from the bright lights. It gives him an air of mystery.

Of course, New York isn’t just bright lights and glamor. It’s dangerous too. Stuart Greenberg, a manager for New Mexico, found that out the hard way when he was sent back to the hotel before the opening game Friday night to retrieve the contact lenses that Lobo Kurt Miller had left in his room.

As he walked out of the Garden, three young men approached Greenberg, stuck something hard in his ribs, and demanded his wallet. Greenberg had $240 in meal money stolen. Shaken, he still got to the hotel to get Miller’s contacts. They didn’t help. Miller was zero-for-three and New Mexico got blown out by Seton Hall, 88–67.

This was no committee setup. New Mexico had a solid team but the Pirates blew them out from the first minute, leading 50–28 at halftime and never looking back.

No one enjoyed the victory more than Pete Carlesimo. He sat in the stands with his wife, almost motionless the whole game, arms folded, face never changing expression. It was only afterward that he cried like a proud father.

“I’ve been in sports fifty years,” he said softly, “and I can’t remember ever feeling like this. When P.J. took over the program at Seton Hall he had to start from zero. He’s had tough times there but look how far he’s brought them.”

Pete Carlesimo, who is seventy-two, looks like a cross between former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Jabba the Hutt, the
Star Wars
character. He is known as a tough guy, a hard bargainer who gets his way more often than not. There was no toughness in him now, though. Only pride. “A lot of people asked us to explain the draw the first two rounds,” he said. “Look, we take a lot of factors into account and attendance is one of them. But P.J.’s team proved it belonged.”