A Season Inside (53 page)

Naturally, there is a letdown. The Tar Heels, rattled briefly, regroup after Smith calls a very rare time-out. Usually Smith hoards time-outs for the last couple of minutes (he hoards to the extent that some people believe Smith thinks that he gets some kind of extra credit in heaven for saving time-outs). Today, he has to call one. Carolina rallies back to within five at 76–71 but Snyder, growing up it seems with each
possession, nails another three-pointer and then, after King steals the ball from Reid, Strickland hits another. It is 82–71 and Carolina is done.

The final is 96–81 and with fourteen seconds left, King gets the farewell he has dreamed about. Krzyzewski takes him out to a roaring ovation and hugs him as he comes to the bench. King goes down the bench, hugging everyone, wanting to hold on to the feeling he has for as long as he can. Seconds later, Strickland comes out too, and the two old friends savor their last ticks in Cameron with a warm embrace. It is the right ending, the kind that King and Strickland deserve.

When it is over, the students stampede the court and cut the nets down in celebration. Watching them, North Carolina Assistant SID Dave Lohse shakes his head. “Don’t these people realize,” he says, “that they just finished third?”

Lohse doesn’t understand. Days like this have nothing to do with
where
you finish. They are about the
way
you finish.

Rick Barnes stared at the television set blankly. He was trying to go through one last tape before it was time to leave the hotel but he was too wired to concentrate. Barnes’s first season as a basketball coach was now down to one game—just as he had hoped it would be—and all he could think about was tip-off, which was now four hours away.

“I hate the waiting,” he said. “I liked it the last two days when we played at two o’clock and got it over with. This eight o’clock stuff is for the birds.”

The last two days had produced the victories George Mason had to have to get its shot at Richmond in the CAA final. The Patriots had been shaky in the opening round against James Madison, playing not to lose rather than to win. But they had survived, and that was no small thing. American, the other favorite in their bracket, had not. The Eagles had blown a 16-point lead and had lost to seventh-seeded William and Mary. That was a break for George Mason. Barnes had all the respect in the world for Chuck Swenson, like him a rookie coach, but Swenson’s team just wasn’t as dangerous as American.

The semifinal turned out to be a breeze. William and Mary had used up all its energy upsetting American and the Patriots led by 20 throughout
the second half. It was Richmond that had to struggle, the Spiders coming from behind to beat North Carolina—Wilmington by just 3 points. So the final Barnes had hoped for was set: George Mason—Richmond.

In many ways, Barnes should have been relaxed for this game. His team now had twenty victories, no small accomplishment for a first-year coach. If it lost to Richmond that was no disgrace. There might still be an NIT bid in the offing.

But Barnes didn’t see it that way. He had primed his team for this since November and he wanted them to play their best game of the season. If they did, he felt they would win. They would make history if they did that. George Mason had never won a conference title and had never been in the NCAA Tournament. Barnes took a long walk along the waterfront that afternoon to try to calm his jangled nerves.

He returned to his room to find a good luck telegram sent by Joe Harrington, the man who had hired him as an assistant at George Mason in 1980. Harrington’s departure to Long Beach State had opened the job for Barnes.

“I remember when we first started and the program had nothing,” Barnes said. “We’d get down and we’d feel like we were never going to get it going. And Joe would just say, ‘Rick, we’re going to get it done. Just keep on working.’ Sure enough, we did. Actually, he did. We’re here tonight because of Joe.”

Barnes was in a reflective, almost nostalgic mood, if that is possible for someone who is thirty-two years old with twenty-nine games’ experience as a head coach. “I’ve been thinking all day about what these kids went through back in October and November,” he said. “They really went through hell every single day. But they stuck with it, they really did. All I want tonight is for them to go out there and really get after it.”

Jack Kvancz, the athletic director and Barnes’s confidant, came in to give Barnes his daily calm-down talk. “There’s no pressure on you, Rick,” he said. “If we win, it’s worth $232,000 to the school. Don’t think that’s pressure. It’s only money.”

First-round losers in the NCAA Tournament receive $232,000. Kvancz could find about a hundred things to do with such a windfall. But he was only kidding Barnes to try and loosen him up. It wasn’t going to work. Not today.

The team arrived at the grimy Hampton Coliseum about two hours
before tip-off. This is a building badly in need of major renovations. In the tiny visitor’s locker room, the Patriots could look up and see a hole in the wall, the one area of the room where the paint wasn’t peeling.

The CAA insists on playing its tournament here because it is a neutral site. If it played at the Patriot Center at George Mason or the Robins Center at Richmond, attendance would be much better and the atmosphere 1,000 percent improved. But the league schools don’t want to give anyone a homecourt advantage. So, each year everyone treks down here to play in a building that has all the charm of the Lincoln Tunnel at rush hour.

While Richmond Coach Dick Tarrant sat calmly out in the arena, doing a TV interview here, a radio interview there, Barnes stayed in the bowels of the arena and paced. “I wonder how many miles I’ve walked today pacing,” he said. He turned to Assistant Coach Wayne Breeden. “I need an Advil. I’ve got my pregame headache.”

Breeden pulled one out of his pocket. “I’ve got an extra. I already took one myself.”

Barnes kept talking aloud. He was worried about the officials. His old friends Hank Armstrong and Donnie Vaden were working the game, along with Rusty (Luv2Ref) Herring. “I’ve got to remember not to get on Hank tonight,” he said. “He may be tight, too.”

Finally, it was time to talk to the players. “Think back to where we started,” Barnes says. “Think back on all the work we’ve done because that’s what’s gotten you here tonight. Everything we’ve done has been because you guys have worked so hard.

“Tonight, though, we’ve got to go beyond hard work. Tonight, you have to be willing to die for this team. Every loose ball has to be ours. Every one! You may have heard Dick Tarrant say that we have nothing to lose in this game because we’re not supposed to win. Well, you know and I know that’s bull. We didn’t go through all of this not to win. You thirteen guys deserve this.

“When you walk back out there now I want you to look up at that CAA banner. When we come back in here tonight, that banner’s ours. Now go get it.”

Barnes was certainly right when he told his team that it should ignore Tarrant’s comment. But in a sense, the point was well taken. Richmond was 23–6, it was the regular season champion, and it had a string of impressive victories. Mason
wanted
to win. Richmond felt it
had
to win. That kind of pressure could work either way.

Tonight, for a half, it worked in Richmond’s favor. The Spiders came out hot, breaking to an early 9–2 lead. Mason got even at 16–16 on a Brian Miller three-pointer but then Richmond went on another binge, opening a 34–24 lead. The Patriots’ advantage was their quickness, Richmond’s was its strength. The Spiders were forcing a halfcourt tempo and dominating the inside. When Mason collapsed on their big men, they kicked the ball out to Rodney Rice, who made three three-pointers and had 16 points by halftime.

A Robert Dykes basket inside cut the Richmond lead to 34–26 with 5:40 left. Then, after a missed free throw by Richmond’s Steve Kratzer, Kenny Sanders had a chance to cut the lead to six. He missed inside, Richmond rebounded and started downcourt. As Sanders missed the shot, Mason part-time Assistant Coach Mike Yohe, easily the most mild-mannered person on the GMU bench, jumped up, thinking he had seen a foul. Yohe never said anything but when he came to his feet, Armstrong, running past, stopped and nailed him with a technical foul.

This was an extraordinary call to make. Technically, an official can call a technical on anyone on the bench other than the head coach any time they stand up. But no one ever does. As long as the bench doesn’t become abusive or start making gestures, referees ignore them. If the behavior of the bench does start to get out of hand, most officials will warn the head coach as in, “Coach, I don’t want your assistants jumping up off the bench or yelling at us.”

Once a coach has been warned, then a technical is his fault if it is called. Barnes had been given no warning and, especially in a game with so much at stake, one would have thought Armstrong would have been giving both teams the benefit of the doubt. If there was ever a game where the old Joe Forte adage—just manage the game, don’t dominate it—should have been in play, this was that game.

But Armstrong didn’t do that. He nailed Yohe with a technical. Barnes didn’t even know who had been called or for what. Armstrong then took a bad situation and made it worse. As Rodney Rice went to the foul line to shoot the two free throws, Armstrong noticed student trainer Dean Ravizzo, who was sitting on the far end of the bench, putting his hand on his neck. Armstrong not only had rabbit ears, he had rabbit eyes. Just as Rice released the ball, Armstrong blew the whistle and teed up Ravizzo.

Armstrong had completely lost control. For one thing, he had messed up the simple act of administering a technical. He had blown
the whistle just as Rice released the ball and the shot had hurtled off the back rim. “He should get that shot over,” Tarrant argued, correctly. To be consistent, Armstrong turned that down. He did everything entirely wrong during the sequence.

A good referee does not call a technical foul on a student trainer who is sitting at the far end of the bench nowhere near the coaches. If he is so sensitive that he objects to the choke sign—Ravisso denied that he had done anything later—he should go to the head coach and say, “I object to the choke sign from that kid on the end of the bench and if anything like that happens again, I’ll tee you.” One can be certain that Barnes, or any coach in a like situation, would clamp down quickly.

Armstrong did none of this. He simply ran amok. Did his past run-ins with Barnes affect his judgment? Who knows. Armstrong is a good official most of the time. But he had been counseled by others in the profession for two years to stop letting his ego interfere with his work. “Stop being such a tough guy all the time,” one supervisor had told him on several occasions.

Tonight, Armstrong had been a tough guy. And he had cast a pall over a championship game. Rice made the next three free throws and on the ensuing possession, Scott Stapleton hit a jumper. Richmond led 39–26. In an amazing twist of irony, Armstrong then pulled up lame on the next trip downcourt with a torn calf muscle. He had to leave the game. The Patriots, just as hobbled emotionally, limped into the locker room down 48–35.

Barnes’s assistants had the most work to do at halftime. They had to convince Barnes not to try to find Armstrong right then to demand an explanation. Outside, Kvancz, normally the cool one in the group, was raging at ACC Commissioner Tom Yeager and Refereeing Supervisor Dan Woolridge. “I’d like to see that son of a bitch pull that kind of crap on the North Carolina bench during a championship game,” Kvancz raged. “What does he think this is, the goddamn Little League, where he’s Mr. Big Shot and can do whatever the fuck he wants to?

“You send the SOB to my place next year,” Kvancz concluded, “and I promise you I won’t pay him!”

In the meantime, the game wasn’t over. Barnes’s job was to convince his players of this. “Get your heads up!” he said. “We’ve been down before and we’ve come back. Right now they’re sitting in there thinking they’ve got it fucking won. They’re in for a shock. Play our way and
you’ll come back. If they get the ball inside, foul them. We can afford to foul. Put them on the line. They aren’t good foul shooters.

“There’s one key here. You’ve got to believe you can come back. Twenty minutes is a long time.” He paused. “Keep your heads up and go back out there and play like champions.”

They did. Sanders, held to five points in the first half, scored right away. Then he stole the inbounds pass and scored again. After that, it was Davis’s turn. He nailed three straight three-pointers and suddenly, in less than five minutes, it was 51–48.

Davis, overexcited, committed his fourth foul, reaching in, and had to come out. Richmond built the lead back to 59–52 but the Patriots came back again. Miller hit a jumper, then a drive. Earl Moore, the forgotten man of the last month, hit a three-pointer. Then he hit another one. Amazingly, Mason led 61–60 with more than eight minutes to play.

From that moment on, it was high-wire basketball, two good teams playing with an entire season at stake. No one could get the lead and the ball. Back and forth they went, the old building now full of life as each team’s fans cheered and prayed and hung on for dear life.

A Davis three-pointer put the Patriots up 69–67, but Benjy Taylor, a little-used Richmond senior averaging 1.7 points per game, answered with a three of his own to make it 70–69. Davis hit two free throws to make it 71–70, Taylor answered again and it was 72–71 with 1:50 to go.

Moore flashed open. His jumper went in and out. Richmond rebounded. There was 1:20 left. The Spiders would have to shoot. They ran the clock down, then tried to go inside to Peter Woolfolk. The pass was long. Moore picked the ball up in the corner, took a step and slipped on a wet spot. He fell, but on tape, it looked as if he kept his dribble. The officials saw only the fall and called traveling. Either way, a tough call.

That gave the ball back to Richmond. The clock was now down to forty-five seconds. Richmond didn’t have to shoot. The Patriots, not wanting to foul, let the clock run to eight seconds before they fouled Taylor, who was 20-of-21 from the line on the season. Coolly, after two Barnes time-outs, he made both. It was 73–70. George Mason needed a three-pointer to tie. Davis, who had been heroic all night, cut to the left wing and with all sorts of hands in his face, fired. The ball clanged off the rim. It was over. Richmond was in the NCAA Tournament.