A Season Inside (60 page)

“If this team is going anywhere in this tournament, it can’t play one careless minute,” Krzyzewski told King and Strickland during those last few seconds. “You better jump all over these guys before Saturday.”

It was going to be tough for King to jump on anyone that night. He was one of six Duke players designated for drug testing. The year before, he had been so dehydrated it had taken him two hours to produce a specimen after Duke’s opening game. This time he was a little better: ninety minutes.

For the NCAA drug testers it had been a long day. They had started with Rhode Island at 2
P.M.
and their work wasn’t done until Billy King produced a specimen at 2
A.M.

It was snowing when Rollie Massimino woke up this morning at 7
A.M.
No matter. Massimino’s mood wasn’t going to be changed by a little snow, even in mid-March. His team was back in the NCAA Tournament and Massimino couldn’t wait to get started.

A lot of coaches around the country have reputations as tournament coaches. Perhaps no one deserves such a reputation more than Massimino. Going into 1988, he had taken Villanova to regional finals four times—without ever being seeded higher than eighth in a regional. In 1985, when the Wildcats won the national championship, they were the eighth seed in the Southeast Regional, meaning they were given a fifty-fifty chance of getting by the first round. Their first-round game that year had been against Dayton—at Dayton.

No one really knows exactly why Massimino’s teams did so well in postseason. It may have had something to do with the fact that he looks
at postseason as a reward for a good season. “He almost never yells during the tournament,” assistant John Olive said. “He thinks that’s for the regular season. You get to the tournament by having a good season. Why should the kids get yelled at because they’ve had a good season?”

Villanova had a noon opener this year against a good Arkansas team. Massimino respected Arkansas but the Razorbacks didn’t concern him as much as the starting time. The last time Villanova had played an early game it had been at Seton Hall. The result had been an 84–58 debacle. Mass was at 7:30 that morning, followed by the pregame meal.

“I hope we’re all awake by noon,” he said. “This game won’t be easy. But this time of year, no game is easy.”

Riverfront Coliseum is not used for basketball very often. Occasionally the University of Cincinnati plays here. Once in a while, Xavier plays a game here. But it has the feel of a hockey arena, especially on a cold day like this one. With the crowd trickling in at game time, the place was cold.

Massimino believes that tempo is vital in NCAA play, that you can run the game from the bench—even with the introduction of the 45-second shot clock—if your players know what they’re doing and if your point guard is in sync with the coaching staff.

For twenty minutes, Kenny Wilson, the tiny Villanova point guard, was in sync with nothing. He played scared, throwing the ball away, missing all five shots he took, and generally looked disoriented. Fortunately, Mark Plansky and Tom Greis were shooting well and Villanova managed a 40–33 lead at halftime.

During the break, Massimino focused much of his talk on Wilson. “Just play your game, Kenny, that’s all,” he told him. “No more, no less. Don’t try to do things you don’t normally do. You’ll be just fine.”

Doug West helped make things fine in the second half. He quickly hit two three-point shots and, at the other end, stuck close to Arkansas’ best player, Ron Huery. “He played old man defense,” Huery said later. “He was pushing and grabbing all over the place.”

Whatever works. Arkansas and Huery found the range eventually, closing the margin to 58–57 with more than ten minutes left. But just when things began to look grim, West rode to the rescue. He hit a jumper, posted up to score again, and then hit a double-pump seven-footer in the lane as he was being fouled.

On the bench, Massimino, his hair going in five different directions
by now, took a deep breath. “Doug West is my boy,” he often said, “and the other kids know it.”

His boy was playing when it mattered most. Arkansas never threatened again. The final was 82–74 and Massimino had won his opening-round game in NCAA play for the ninth straight time. He was so ecstatic that during the postgame interview he referred to Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson as Nolan Ryan. “Nolan Ryan does a hell of a job with that team,” he said.

All that and he can pitch, too.

Nothing was going to take away from this victory. After last year’s nightmare, to be back in the NCAA Tournament and to advance was pure joy for Massimino. His whole entourage, family and friends, had flown out from Philadelphia on the team charter and now they had a whole weekend to enjoy themselves.

As Massimino went back to the hotel to rest, his assistants stayed behind to scout Illinois against Texas–San Antonio. There was little doubt that Illinois would be the next opponent (they ended up winning, 81–72) and the question was could the Wildcats repeat their November victory over what was now a much more experienced and still very talented team.

“Why not?” Olive said. “If you think you can do something, you can do it. Right now, our kids think they can do anything.”

If looking at tape would win a game, Villanova had a great chance. The Wildcats had twelve Illinois tapes with them in Cincinnati. They would all be looked at before Sunday. The work would start that night. First, though, the Arkansas victory would be savored for a few hours. That evening, Massimino took his entourage, thirty strong, to an Italian restaurant near the hotel. Everyone ate, everyone drank, and everyone was merry.

By the time dinner came, Massimino was antsy. He lit his cigar, got up and went into the kitchen to kibitz with the chef and his assistants. Thirty minutes later he was still in the kitchen, signing autographs and talking. It was only one win, but everyone in the Villanova party couldn’t help but talk about 1985.

“All I know is, we’re in Ohio,” said Mary Jane Massimino, who had put up with being a coach’s wife for thirty-three years. “In ’85 we started in Ohio [Dayton] and went to Birmingham. If we win Sunday, we’re going to Birmingham. Something tells me we’re going to win.”

Her husband, finally back from the kitchen, laughed. “Illinois is a hell of a team, you know,” he said to his wife.

“So are we,” Mary Jane Massimino answered.

The snow had stopped. Villanova had not.

By Saturday morning, thirty-two of the sixty-four teams had gone home. There had been two stunning upsets on the second day. The first had taken place in Hartford. There, Richmond, the Colonial Athletic Association champion, the same team that had gone right to the wire to beat George Mason just to get into the tournament, shocked Indiana, the defending national champion, 62–59.

The loss ended a turbulent season for the Hoosiers. They had started well, been in trouble in January, bounced back in February, and then failed in March. In all, their record was 19–10. During the loss to Richmond, Rick Calloway never moved off the bench. One year ago, it had been Calloway’s basket with six seconds left that put Indiana in the Final Four. Now, Knight had no use for him. Three days after the Richmond game, Calloway announced that he would transfer for his senior season. It was a sad story.

Knight was gracious in defeat, giving full credit to Dick Tarrant and to the Spiders. He did sound silly, though, when he claimed the outcome wasn’t an upset. At one point, he challenged the assembled media: “Who here thinks this was an upset? Does anyone think this was an upset?”

No one dared move. When Purdue Coach Gene Keady heard the story, he giggled like a little kid. “I just wish someone would have had the nerve to stand up and say, ‘Bob, that’s the biggest goddamn upset since Chaminade beat Virginia,’ “Keady said. “I’d have paid to see that.”

The other upset, not quite on the Chaminade—Virginia level but stunning nonetheless, took place in Lincoln, Nebraska. Just as Jim Valvano had predicted, N.C. State couldn’t handle Murray State’s quickness. The appropriately named Racers kept getting big buckets down the stretch, and when Vinny Del Negro’s three-pointer bounced off the rim at the buzzer, State’s season had suddenly ended with a 78–75 loss.

The team that benefited most from the upset was Kansas. Virtually unnoticed, the Jayhawks routed Xavier, 85–72 in their opener. In a strange twist, Kansas had become the crowd’s favorite on what was usually a hostile court. Several of the Xavier players had been quoted, when they heard they were going to Lincoln, as saying that as far as they knew, “Lincoln is Siberia with a bunch of Seven-Eleven’s.”

The good folk of Lincoln didn’t take kindly to that line, and they cheered Kansas—which had suffered its most depressing loss of the season in this same building—as if the Jayhawks had turned into Cornhuskers. After a season of bad luck, Larry Brown couldn’t help but notice that the NCAA Tournament had started for his team with two breaks: the crowd turning against Xavier and Murray State upsetting N.C. State.

For Valvano, this was a devastating way to end what had been a terrific season. He had not really thought his team would lose to Murray State, but he had sensed that something had gone out of his team after the Duke loss. The following day, sitting in the stands during the Duke–Carolina final, Valvano had felt a wave of depression sweep over him, almost a precursor of what was to come.

“I cannot for one second put my finger on it, but losing that game was very bad for us,” he said, two days after the Duke loss and three days before the loss to Murray State. “It’s a funny thing because this has been one of the easiest years I’ve ever had in coaching. Everything just fell into place. We needed Shack to get better and he got better. The freshman guards gave us an added dimension and great depth. The guy who got benched [senior Quentin Jackson] happens to be one of the great kids of all time, so he deals with it.

“I hear people saying I did one of my best jobs this year and I can’t understand it. It was an easy year. But now, I’m worried. I really wanted to win the ACC Tournament and I really thought we were going to do it. We missed some foul shots and didn’t win. That should be the end of it.

“But when I was sitting there watching the final, listening to the fans with all the silly things they yell, I suddenly thought just how hard it is to get where those two teams were—in the final. It takes so much effort any year that you get that far. No one understands the work that goes into it. My team didn’t get there this year. Just missed—but missed nonetheless. All of a sudden, something in my mind said, ‘This isn’t our year.’ I hope to God I’m wrong because I look at our regional
and I think we have the talent to get to the Final Four. But we can also lose Friday.”

They lost Friday. Valvano’s premoniton was right. In the short run, he was stunned and hurt. But in the long run, he had everyone coming back who mattered for the ’88 team except for Del Negro. He would sign three junior college players—exactly one year after juco point guard Kenny Drummond had dropped out of school, causing Valvano to vow never to sign another juco—and would have another very good team in ’89.

That was small consolation for Valvano. His team’s season ended in Lincoln.
His
season, however, was far from over.

Round two began with play at four sites: Chapel Hill, Atlanta, South Bend, and Salt Lake City. The upset of the day came in Chapel Hill, where Rhode Island continued its unlikely story by stunning Syracuse. Jim Boeheim’s pretournament assessment of his team had been correct. “When we play well, we’re as good as anyone in the country,” he had told a friend on Wednesday. “But we haven’t played well all year.”

Garrick and Owens were again brilliant. Sore-kneed Kenny Green played the game of his life and Rhode Island pulled the upset. Now, Tom Garrick and his father, unknown outside of Kingston on Thursday, had become a major national story on Saturday.

In the second game in Chapel Hill, Duke easily beat SMU as Billy King shut down Kato Armstrong. The Blue Devils were much sharper than they had been against Boston University, and they ran their record for the year in the Deandome to 3–0. “Sort of like a home away from home,” Krzyzewski quipped.

The same could be said for Purdue. After years of frustration with the NCAA draw, the Boilermakers couldn’t complain this time around. Not only were they the top seed in the Midwest region, but they were assigned to South Bend for the subregional; many of their fans could make the one hundred-mile trip from West Lafayette. With Notre Dame shipped to Chapel Hill, there were plenty of tickets for Purdue people to buy and they made the Athletic and Convocation Center look like a smaller version of Mackey Arena.

The second round opponent was Memphis State, a team that had been on NCAA probation a year ago and had lost two key players at midseason to suspension (because they had agents). Through all this, the Tigers still had talent; Keady and his three seniors were genuinely concerned going into the game.

“This is something we have to get through,” Troy Lewis said. “We’ve never been past the second round. It’s like a barrier we’ve got to get over. Once we do, we should be okay.”

The first half was nerve-wracking. Memphis State led much of the way before a Lewis three-pointer put the Boilermakers on top with only 3:15 left. They led 38–33 at intermission, not home free yet by any means. Then a funny thing happened to start the second half and, strangely enough, it gave Purdue the impetus to turn the game into a rout.

On the opening play of the half, with Memphis State inbounding, no one bothered to cover the Tigers’ Elliot Perry. He went one way, Purdue’s defense went the other and Perry ended up with an open lay-up to start the half, cutting the lead to 38–35. This was, without question, a screwup. The Boilermakers were so stunned by their own stupidity that they started laughing at themselves. Everette Stephens, suddenly looser than he had been all game, hit twice. Todd Mitchell, so tight the first twenty minutes he didn’t come close to hitting a field goal (zero-for-four), dunked. It was 44–35 and MSU Coach Larry Finch called time.