For the entire story in one file, please go here: https://gumroad.com/l/bVSqud
March 12th
Macomb, IL
The first time we had entered the NCAA Tournament, I felt my job was on the line. I hadn’t exactly promised I would get us there, and with the three-year contract I had been given, there was no way it should’ve happened. I was a first time coach dealing with a team I hadn’t recruited. The local Illinois star recruits didn’t want to come, not the Derrick Roses or the Kevin Dillards, the last one is still debated in Leatherneck lore. The three-stars I was able to get I played right away. I felt it was that kind of radical thinking, which had jumpstarted our early progress. If I had more experience, perhaps I would have been more reserved to play so many freshmen, as I am now. History has redeemed my choices.
The Big Dance hadn’t always been very big. When the tournament began in 1939, it only fielded eight teams. And the tournament remained so for over ten years. With basketball spreading, the number of teams invited then doubled to sixteen in 1951. After overwhelming popularity, from 1953 to 1985, the numbers continued to swell, with every school trying to get its program into the tournament. In 1985, the tournament settled into its sixty-four team format, the one people are most traditionally familiar with. It had grown in excess, and in revenue. They even added one more team in 2001 just for a few extra bucks. That one team produced so many extra dollars they want to add three more.
Before Marquette University became known for Dwyane Wade or Jimmy Butler, a different figure had pushed the Golden Eagles into the limelight. The school’s legendary head coach Al McGuire, known for a lot of wonderful quotes throughout his career, is perhaps best known for one that applied outside of his program. Before retiring at 48 years old, nowadays the age a person becomes a head coach, Al McGuire was always quick to put things into perspective. “Sports is a coffee break,” is one of my personal favorites. Another is, “Winning is only important in war and surgery.” In 1977, he told a reporter, “You gotta wear the blue blazer when you go to the big dance.” That year, Marquette won the tournament. The term has been used ever since.
The NCAA Tournament in March has become so important to college basketball that the number of times a team, and the number of teams, that regularly participate in it is often used to categorize the universities these programs are a part of, rather than the other way around. It is like a painter whose work is better known than he is. A program that has reached such recognition is considered a blue blood. A conference often wants several of these blue bloods, in order to bring in more revenue. Conferences with a majority of blue bloodprograms are often referred to as power conferences. The most powerful are known collectively as the Power-Five, the Pac-Ten, the Big Ten, the Big-12, the ACC or Atlantic Coast Conference, and the SEC or South Eastern Conference. The Big East is also a part of the high-majors.
Most other programs belong to conferences that are better known as mid-majors. The term mid-major, in my opinion, is a pejorative. Mid-majors make up the bulk of all basketball played beyond the high school level in America. What part of it is atypical? Yet somehow, its glory has been taken away the moment the richer schools began to dominate the headlines. According to this nomenclature, mid-majors have been in the minority when it comes to winning it all. Other than Al McGuire’s Marquette Golden Eagles, Jerry Tarkanian’s UNLV Runnin’ Rebels had destroyed the Duke Blue Devils by the score of 103-73 in 1990 as a member of the Big West Conference, and my own Western Illinois Leathernecks had taken out the Kansas Jayhawks in 2015. I’ve been trying to make that part of history repeat itself.
The organization of the tournament is done by seeding the programs that get in from 1 to 16, and nobody really knows how the math is done there. My teams have been to the tournament nine times, and most of those teams have been double-digit seeds. Two years ago, we were the number 1 overall team in the country, so our 1 seed was pretty obvious. There is a metric known as RPI which is used to assist with the seeding system. The Rating Percentage Index takes into account a team’s wins, losses, and strength of schedule to create a number that is easily understood. The RPI is not the only measure guaranteeing that a team on the bubble gets in or doesn’t get in, and that is both relieving and distressing. If a program wins its conference-ending tournament the way we have been doing, then there is no question that team is invited. If it does not, I believe the selection committee is more partial toward the high-majors. Again, as objective as the RPI should be, it is clearly more biased for Power-Fives than for mid-majors. We are the only Summit team to ever get an at-large bid, and that happened twice. We were 28-4 one year, and 25-6 the other. The year we took the word Cinderella and burned it in effigy, we were 31-5, a 10 seed, and the lowest seeded team to ever become national champions. Every school thinks they have the best team in the country. After the tournament in 2015, no one could deny it wasn’t ours. If I want to do it again this year, it’ll be as a 7 seed. Our record stands at 29-2. The victory against St. Joseph’s and Duke weren’t nearly as impressive, I suppose.
Whether it is fair or not, the NCAA Tournament is largely selected as the path to deciding who the best college basketball team in any given year is. With its title came endorsements, accolades, and recognition that distinguishes one beyond all other programs, whether it’s a high-major or a mid-major.
I’ve always wondered what the motivation is for coaches to make the jump to the Power-Fives, other than the obvious substantial pay-raise. With that pay-raise were also substantial expectations and demands. Just because a coach can get higher scouted athletes did not mean they are guaranteed success, especially with most of those athletes determined to leave as soon as they possibly can. The one-and-gone behavior is a manufactured one largely due to the NBA’s age restriction. Before it was implemented, stellar teenagers had often made the leap. This extra year is again another way that big programs benefit. They have the means to make a year look like a mild vacation with minimal commitment. I say that facetiously, but not completely without a certain amount of candor.
None of that is the student-athlete’s fault. Everyone is looking for the best offer available to them. The players didn’t demand the school treat them in any way. The schools are the ones who decide to go out of their way. They know what they are paying for. With all that money floating around, it’s still a surprise that student-athletes can’t get any of it. The ruling on the O’Bannon case is going to make things even harder for low-majors, which isn’t really an accepted term, but one often used in coach’s circles. We are also responsible for the never-ending cycle of bias that exists in the college basketball world. How can Western Illinois even afford to pay Bert Draughan for everything he has done here? It might have to start budgeting that in. If that happens, disparity within a university will even become worse than it is now. There are going to be a lot of athletic programs cut. Sports, like capitalism, can no longer be thought of as just a coffee break. The only programs that’ll be left are the ones that have professional teams. Soccer, the most popular sport in the world, is going to need a better 4-year plan if it is going to continue to be on campus, even if MLS champion Kosuke Kojima was a Leatherneck.
Athletic Director Danielle Surprenant and interim president Martin Abraham have a lot to manage. There were almost 15,000 students attending Western Illinois University back when Bud Richards enrolled. By the time Sydney Dupre and Brandin Price come on campus, there will be a third of that. That is just one of the problems the school is facing. In an atmosphere where there is almost no good news, the only thing people associated with WIU or the community of Macomb have to take their minds off these problems is how far our team will go in the tournament. The Peach Bottoms have never been disappointed with our showings. Whether we won a game or not, they’ll still contribute to the Canton Christmas dinner. However, basketball cannot be a sideshow for me. It has to be front and center. It has been my livelihood, and it’s getting hard to see how the board will agree to any kind of salary which would be judged fair to a coach with my standing. I might hate it, but I too must accept it.
Basketball as a business has made several people’s dreams come true. When I began the journey at the age of nineteen, I knew that what I did on the court with my body would not impress anyone. That kind of action wouldn’t draw attention. Like anyone with a job, I have tried to excel at it. Basketball as a business also has a career ladder many have tried to climb. Coming to Macomb from the small city college I had been an assistant at has been my biggest climb to date. After thirteen years, I feel as if it is time to climb the ladder once again.
Every year, there has always been an offer. Every year, I have always declined. What is the motivation for me to stay? Here, I can do exactly what I want to make basketball the beautiful game that it is, and here, the players often stay for the ride. A lineup of four fifth-year seniors and one redshirt junior? In today’s game, that isn’t a starting group that would get national attention. Have there been players who have left early? No program is immune to that. And when they go, you won’t hear me badmouthing them. I’ll be defending them for the efforts they made here until I am no longer at WIU.
Which brings me to the present. With no update on what to expect from my current employers, maybe it is time to start taking some of those offers a little more seriously. Coach Danny and Coach Garik are also getting offers, especially after this year’s record. I know what they are planning to do. No matter what happens in the tournament, their stock is going to continue to go up. WIU is a 7 seed. We aren’t playing easy games. Whether I disliked crediting conferences as high-majors or mid-majors, the fact that they have blue blood programs cannot be discounted. I’ve lost to enough of them in the Big Dance. Danny and Garik will still be rewarded for being in the conversation with them. The question for me is, what kind of conversation do I want to have?
March 14th
Macomb, IL
When the phone rang and the 564 number appeared again, I picked it up without hesitation. They said they’d be calling back and even though I had a lot on my mind, I wanted to hear them out. They had never said they were technically working with the NBA in any regard, but if they were trying to tempt me with a position out of the college game, there is only one professional league that would be of any interest. Everything else would be a step down. After all, at its peak, the Continental Basketball Association, better known as the CBA, had been purchased for 10 million dollars. A large percentage of that went to the players. The coaches were barely able to support themselves. And that is the most successful of the basketball leagues aside from the NBA.
The people on the phone had also never in any official capacity said that they were in any way trying to revive the Seattle Supersonics. However, if an NBA team would ever be coming back to the Seattle area, I can’t imagine the people there ever accepting a team name other than the Supersonics. It was like when the NFL had allowed Art Modell to move the Cleveland Browns to Maryland, but hadn’t allowed him to take the name, just like the Oklahoma City Thunder. When Al Lerner was allowed to create an NFL franchise, he chose the Cleveland Browns. The Browns, like a phoenix rising from its own ashes, were then resurrected. Even though they’ve had little success since their reincarnation, there’s no way the fans of Cleveland would accept anything else. They were just waiting for their hero to come. LeBron James had brought the Cavaliers out of the cellar, someone else would do the same for the Browns. I don’t see how a story like that couldn’t be treasured by the residents of the Emerald City.
There was really no reason for Seattle to lose the Supersonics in the first place. The fans still loved the team and attendance was not a problem. In a way, the modern-day equivalent could be the story of how the Oakland Raiders ended up leaving the city of Oakland. Howard Shultz of Starbucks, a pseudo-Italian Gourmet coffee until it found its own success with sugar-crazed Americans and soon other sugar-crazed people from around the world, wanted Washington to bankroll a new stadium. When the people refused to pay 220 million in taxes for it, Shultz sold the team to a Kansas City businessman by the name of Clay Bennett. Bennett then tried to make Washington pay for a stadium in Renton, a suburb of Seattle for around 500 million. It was clear why he was doing it. He wanted to take the team elsewhere. The Washington legislature has been blamed ever since. It’s not my place to say, but if this new group is being run by Howard Schultz, then this conversation was more or less over.
“Mr. Schultz, in my opinion, probably feels that owning another professional basketball team in the NBA is even more than he’d like to revisit,” the woman on the line said, laughing. “If your party and ours feel that we have a certain consensus on a variety of things, you’ll get to speak with the person who is not Howard Schultz. If things continue looking promising, I know he’ll want to speak to you.”
College coaches have made the jump before, some more successfully than others. Tim Floyd was never going to be successful leaving the Iowa State Cyclones for the Bulls. It had less to do with him and more to do with who just vacated. It was 1998, and asking another coach to replace Phil Jackson without the same team isn’t exactly setting someone up with the tools necessary to win. The opportunities for Fred Hoiberg weren’t quite the same when he left the same school and took over the same team, having ties to both of them, and being largely unsuccessfully running them. The recorso. Lon Kruger left the Illini for the Atlanta Hawks, and returned to the college game after three years, never reaching .500. The same thing happened with both Rick Pitino, who could never convince Larry Bird to come back to Boston, and John Calipari, who lasted three seasons or two seasons and twenty games where he only won three, with the New Jersey Nets before returning to the University of Memphis Tigers in 2000. PJ Carlesimo led Seton Hall to the national championships where he lost to the Glen Rice-led Michigan Wolverines. He was nearly choked to death up in Golden State. Golden State also showed Mike Montgomery he wasn’t cut to be an NBA coach, either. More recently, John Beilien, one of the greatest minds of college basketball, left the prestigious University of Michigan after getting them to two national championships, decided to take his talents to a LeBron James-less Cleveland Cavaliers. Poor Coach Beilien was run out of town before his first year ended.
Again, there are some successful stories. The darling of them is Brad Stevens, who got his Butler Bulldogs to two consecutive national championship games, and lost both of them to blue bloods Duke and UConn. Brad Stevens didn’t need anyone to come through doors, but he opened enough doors for the right talent to flourish. There’s no way Celtics legend Danny Ainge cannot be pleased with how Jayson Tatum and Jalen Brown has developed. The Celtics couldn’t get Anthony Davis, letting him slip to rival Los Angeles Lakers, but who can blame that on the coach?
My main question is this: why now? The NBA has been talking about expanding for years now. I think everyone knows the NBA owes the city one. Allowing politics to take a team away from a city was not good for the league’s image. But it has been twelve years since the move to OKC. Why wait so long to bring a team back to Washington? What else could be involved in the decision?
The city itself has been undergoing what is modernly referred to as gentrification. Wealthy people, who often don’t live in heavy urban areas, invest a lot of money to restore or upgrade them. It displaces a lot of the low-income residents. In Seattle, gentrification was spurred by the tech boom. Landlords wanted to charge a lot more for the people who were making high six figures to remain in tech hubs. However, the tech boom has run its course, and things cannot go up forever. The boom and bust cycle happens everywhere. With all that money at stake, there needs to be assets a city can have to keep its property at a premium. One of the biggest is a sports team. They still have the Nintendo-owned Mariners. The late Paul Allen’s estate is still the owners of the Seattle Seahawks. It seems rather silly to not include a professional basketball team to that array, wouldn’t you say?
I still didn’t give them any answers. I told them that they would have to wait for the NCAA Tournament to conclude. I also still had Western Illinois University to talk to. They told me they understood, and that they would all be cheering for me up in the Northwest. She ended the phone call with a “Go ‘Necks!” shout-out, which made me smile tremendously. Suddenly, just like Coach Danny and Coach Garik, I had something really big to play for, too.
March 20th
Boise, ID
I was surprised to find out that this year’s Western Illinois Leathernecks had both the most points on offense, 91.7, and allowed the least points on defense, 60.4, in the whole country. We had been putting up points in bunches in the Summit, but in our non-cons, we had score more than 90 points in only two contests, against Southern Illinois and Kansas. All our other non-conference games didn’t see 84 points. Sometimes, statistics can be deceiving.
Our defensive mean is real, though. Only four teams had scored more than 75 points against us, and two had been without Billy in the game. I knew we could turn it up when it came down to it. In a close contest with the game on the line, there isn’t a person more intense than Najeeb Goode. The Summit council had to give him the POY last year just from the amount of fear he struck into the league.
Offensively, even though we were getting the numbers I wanted from the bench in the regular season, once the tournament begins, rotations always tighten up. Roberto, for as much as he has grown, probably won’t get off the pine, unless we get into some deep foul trouble. The same goes with Frye, whose contributions on this side of the court have been few and far between. With Borislav, I’d have to see how my starting wings are feeling.
Breaking down the 91.7 points per game, Summit opponents or not, it wasn’t a surprise that Trevor led the team this year with 17.3 a game. There were plenty of games where he was spoon-fed roughly 14 of them. Najeeb had improved on his Summit Player of the Year numbers to the tune of 16.6 per contest, mostly from second-chance points and put-backs. Najeeb is the only player who didn’t need the ball to get his averages. He just always knows where it’s going to be. Billy had been so hot at the beginning of the league year, scoring in the twenties in five straight games, but 12.5 seemed about right. Toward the end, everybody paid special attention to where he was. They had figured it dictated our offense. I’m really more impressed with Billy’s 5.3 assists a game in comparison with the 1.6 turnovers he commits. Ime only averaging 10.4 a game is explainable, since he tends to apply himself more on defense. Also, once the offense began to move through Billy regularly, Ime’s only touches were on jump shots. With Trevor demanding the lone ranger so often, Ime didn’t get as many isolations as he would have liked. Raymond gave me 9.1 points off the bench. Bert averaging a smidge under 10 at 9.6 a game was a real shocker. It seemed like he was in double digits in every game since the Louisville game back in November. I love that he had averaged more rebounds than anyone else on the team, Najeeb included, at 6.3 a contest. He often called himself The Board Man, and none of his teammates really understood why. I did my best not to call each of them by their nicknames. That was a relationship that should exist between the players. Fraternizing with them would only breakdown our hierarchy. Besides, someone needs to remind them that even if they are here to play basketball, they are more than basketball players. If I was going to use a nickname for Bert, it would not be the one he gave himself. I felt he was selling himself short. MPS held more gravitas for me. Mister Post Season. Nobody performs like he does. With the totals of our seven to eight player tournament rotation hovering around 80, I am going to need him to keep doing so.
We were playing at the Taco Bell Arena, on the Boise St. Broncos’ home court. We were taking on the 10 seed Pitt Panthers, who start two freshmen guards, 6’2” Pierre Lemons and 6’4” L.L. Langford. Their frontcourt consists of Jessio Pearson, Jaja Graham, and their center Walter Oliver, is shorter than their power forward. Even though the Panthers look about the right size, I felt we had both the size and the experience factors over them. Bert had a nice matchup on his hands, but I felt the key was going to be Najeeb and Jaja, and what Jaja could do to stop Najeeb from controlling the game.
I tend to break the game down into quartos. The college game isn’t organized by quarter, but by half, yet all the players have been playing four quarters of basketball for most of their lives, so it doesn’t strike me as odd that almost everybody sees the game this way. For me, the first quarto is about us seeing who we’ve got on the other side, so it goes a bit slowly. I try to make me first substitution halfway through, usually with Raymond in for Trevor. I’ll give one of the wings a break a little after. After the ten-minute mark, the second quarto, I’ll pull Najeeb out and put Trevor back in with Diondre, while taking out Billy. This is where I like to get the ball to Trevor. The other center is probably worn down now from having to deal with Raymond, but if they keep the power forward on Trevor, than that will work to our advantage, too. In this case against Pitt, we might not get that little boost, considering the power forward is their tallest player. Around the five-minute mark, I try to have all of my starters back on the floor together.
From the opening tip-off, we knew we were in for a fight. Pitt’s athleticism forced the ball out of Billy’s hands. Our ball reversals were available for someone to take the shot. The Board Man hit his first two right through the net. Defensively, we were giving the freshmen too good of looks. The Panthers’ bigs would pin down and the guards would pop out uncovered at the arc. Since we were hitting from deep as well, I wasn’t too concerned. However, one of our frontcourt guys should have established himself by now.
Bert was doing it from the outside, which wasn’t quite the same. It kept Pitt’s players from having to carry our weight, wearing them out down the stretch. Instead, it was a battle from distance, and we were losing after the first quarto, 16-14. Nobody was panicking. Nobody was comfortable, either.
Najeeb tied the game at 16 with a deep two as time fell under ten minutes in the first half. Diondre was handling the point with Ime and Borislav in the game. We were still allowing that pin down three, this time to their small forward Jessio Pearson. The last thing I wanted was for all of the Panthers’ shooters to be in rhythm this early, especially when we were cold.
I would have preferred to go inside to Raymond around now. Instead, Borislav was finding Ime cutting to the basket. He was trying to tell me I could trust him. For now, he wasn’t just getting a free lunch. We were having our own problems defending similar basket cuts with Najeeb out, though.
Then, one of the most unbelievable plays in the half occurred. On a switch, Diondre found himself guarding Walter Oliver, the Pitt center. When Walter attempted a shot over him, Diondre rose up and swatted it away. Oliver would get the put-back, but Diondre had just made a key statement to Trevor. He was playing far too soft. With a little over four and a half to go, we were down 33-27.
It took longer than usual to get all five starters back on the court again. We had three minutes to go until the intermission, and we were now down by ten. Mister Post Season hit another three to get us going. Trevor was starting to take the pressure off the perimeter. He had 9 points, but wasn’t nearly as assertive as he could be. Then our defense tightened up. Bert got his hand in the passing lane, and the ball wound up in Billy’s hands for a dunk the other way. Billy also knocked down a three inside a minute, and then had another dunk off a great Bert bounce pass to cut the lead to four points. It would have been nice if that was the way we ended the half, rather than letting them hit a basket from the elbow as time ran out. 45-39, Panthers.
Najeeb was upset with our defense in the first half. Trevor and Raymond had seen that pin down screen enough times. They needed to switch and deny those guards from getting the ball. Pitt wasn’t winning inside. They were winning with jump shots. He praised Diondre for playing big on the inside. “We have the best defensive efficiency in the country. Did you just hear me? Our defense is number 1!” I told them, getting more excited than usual. “Now go out there and show me that it’s true.”
In the third quarto, I often turn up the intensity. All the energy I’ve been rotating for usually plays out right here. Najeeb knows it, too. If we haven’t been switching well, when the second half begins, he makes sure that is exactly what we’re doing. The third Quarto is when the Summit POY starts to assert himself, calling for the ball on offense, trying to make our opponents’ bigs move their feet out on the perimeter. As for the fourth quarto, recently, I’ve been letting my starters rest and playing the second unit because of how many blowouts we’ve been a part of. I told myself at the beginning of the year I wouldn’t do that because it made the bench hesitant to play with the starters. Borislav and Diondre have been anything but passive. If I can get all my starters in at around the five-minute mark, depending on the matchups, I can have either Bert, Trevor, or Billy take us home from there.
When the second half began, Trevor was locked in. Off his block from the free throw line, Ime blew past Pitt for an easy layup. Bert had heard enough of Jessio Pearson. He had been outplaying the junior Panther for the majority of the game. A jumper over him, and a converted free throw reminded him that Mister Post Season still had a half to cook.
We tied the game after the first five minutes when Raymond drove to the basket, kicked it out to Billy for three, collected the offensive rebound and put it back up, and then collected it and put it home. That play defines exactly what Raymond can do.
Our guards took over after that. Billy hit one from deep off a Raymond kick out. Then Ime penetrated into the middle and hit a jumper inside the key. Later, on an iso clear out, Ime did his best impression of Hakeem Olajuwon. We had put him in the post more often this season just to use it for the tournament. I needed Ime to be aggressive. It was his last year. There was no reason to hold back.
Pitt wasn’t going away, though. They had found a way to keep things close. With under ten to go, the fourth quarto, a floater in the lane cut our lead to a single point. This was the kind of game I was talking about when the Summit Tournament had ended. What would we do if the run didn’t happen? We were getting stretches of scoring, and our defense was holding so much better in the second half, but Pitt was doing just enough to stick around.
I took Ime out and put his twin Diondre in with eight to go. Diondre drove baseline for a lay-up, drilled a three, and found Trevor inside with a beautiful dime. Nobody said he was getting free lunches.
With seven minutes remaining, I switched over to a 2-3 zone, to confuse Pitt. It worked. A block, a steal, and a defensive rebound followed by a Bert three pushed our lead to ten. It was the first time in the game we were up by double-digits. This was the run we were waiting for. For the next three minutes, our front court scored all of our points. This was what I had waited for. I knew that Pitt was tiring out. With two to go, we were up 90-77.
Our defense closed the game out after that. We still allowed too many points in the second half at 39. 60 points a game was our defensive average. It didn’t mean we’d hold opponents to that in every game, especially from this point on. Our offense finally found itself, scoring 56. Ime Terrell, the player of the game, asserted himself, finishing with 22, the same as his jersey number. He was matched up against a freshman. There was no way L.L. Langford was going to outplay him. Bert had a double-double with 20 points and 10 rebounds, and Billy and Trevor both had 17. Trevor was one rebound shy with 9. Najeeb went 8 and 8, but his defensive calls in the third quarto were the turning point of the game. As a team, we committed no fouls in the second half. I think that is perhaps the most amazing thing I have ever been a part of, and if I hadn’t witnessed it, there is no way in the world I would have believed it. Two fouls committed for a whole entire game, with both of them happening in the first half. If a team could ever do better than that, that team deserved a title far more than we do. Our final score for the round of 64, Western Illinois 95 – 84 Pittsburgh Panthers.
We only scored 11 from the bench, but that was because I only played Raymond and Diondre. I am going to need more from Raymond. If Diondre can keep up his play, we are going to be in good condition from the wings.
We are leaving early tomorrow. Our next game is on Sunday, in Tampa, Florida at the St. Pete Times Forum. I have a lot of thoughts about how unfair the trip is, but it has been a very unusual year. I suppose I should be more thankful that we are still playing basketball. Even if making us go across the country hardly seems to fit the definition of a regional.
March 22nd
Tampa, FL
The next opponent for us, other than the long trip, the Gonzaga Bulldogs. The Zags were a 2 seed, and much like us, a fixture in NCAA tournament play. That wasn’t the only thing our two programs had in common. We both have bulldogs for mascots, ours being Rocky and theirs being Spike, Looney Tunes characters. By now, we are both pretty much the jewels of our conferences, and could probably afford to jump into a larger one. That would probably help to solve a lot of the problems that Western Illinois University is experiencing. After all, other universities with military support are in Power-Five conferences. Mostly, we and Gonzaga were winning by keeping our kids at school, rather than by having kids jumping early. It helps with all kinds of continuity from leadership on down to tradition.
We were very familiar with a lot of the faces in Gonzaga jerseys. We had played them a year ago, when they were ranked No.3 in the polls. It was our last non-conference game before Summit play. We lost to them by four, 75-71, a game I felt we let slip away, much like the game prior to them against Syracuse, 75-74. We responded afterwards by going on a 19 game winning streak. Actually, since that loss to the Bulldogs last season, we have been 49-3. We were basically a whole different team since then, and so were they. They might be a 2 seed to our 7, but I wonder how many people in the country actually felt we were the underdog?
They only had one senior, a guard named Keon Elsey, who was the smallest player on the floor at 5’10”. Just like the Pitt Panthers, their tallest player was power forward Dean Ndiaye, a 6’11” junior. He was the key to their attack, but I was going to bet that Najeeb would own him. Jozsef Hailey wasn’t going to outplay Mister Post Season. Their two youngest starters, sophomores point guard Timmy Carbaugh at 5’11”, and center J.J. Blue at 6’8”, were going to have their hands full with Billy and Trevor.
Bert had been fantastic against Pitt, really carrying the load while Billy and Ime were finding their rhythm. I like the idea of finding him early. It wasn’t something I usually do for the first quarto, but it would set the tempo. After Trevor tipped the ball to Ime, we had all five guys touch the ball, with Najeeb finding Bert in the corner for a three to start the game. A minute later, Trevor was wide open from the deep wing, and the sophomore on him didn’t think he could make it. The best part of Trevor’s game has always been his range. 8-2 Leathernecks.
After a Zag bucket, Bert pump-faked Hailey out of his shorts and drove down the teeth of the defense. That really should have been an And-1. The next possession down, it was virtually the same play we ran to open the game with. Najeeb cut to the high post, received the pass from Billy, and zipped it over to Bert, again wide open from the corner for another three. Bert already had 8 points, and we had played less than four minutes of basketball.
My first substitution was Diondre in for Ime. I knew the two of them liked playing together, but the tandem of Diondre and Billy would get Billy going, and I wanted to put pressure on Carbaugh, the sophomore point guard. Diondre found Billy wide open for a three in the corner. The next time down, Diondre saw Bert cutting baseline and hit him for a wide open layup. 20-9.
As we got under ten minutes, the second quarto, Billy went on a little run by himself to push the score to 28-15. It was all off Najeeb and Trevor rebounds. We were just faster on the break. I knew it wasn’t over, but unlike against Pitt when our run didn’t come until the end, even if Gonzaga came back, it was clear who was in control. So when they hit back to back from deep to cut the lead to four points, 29-25, I didn’t worry. Teams playing from behind will end up wearing themselves out.
Ime was back in with a little over seven to go before intermission. I had to get Billy a breather, and Diondre was playing far too well to take him out. Raymond, in for Najeeb, was inches away from stealing the ball off the inbounds. Gonzaga got a few deep looks to drop, and within three minutes, it was a one possession game, 38-35. With under a minute to go, a put-back And-1 gave the Bulldogs the lead for the very first time. And for the first time, I felt a pang of panic creep over me. We held the ball for the last shot of the half, and formed a triangle with Bert in the post, Billy at the wing, and Ime in the corner, a formation I call ADT. Ime drilled it to give us back the lead at halftime, 43-42.
We were shooting an unreal 6 of 8 from behind the arc, and 50% from the field. Gonzaga was shooting a more realistic 4 out of 13 from deep, but were also shooting 48%. All three of our fouls had resulted in trips to the free throw line, and they made all four of their trips to the charity stripe. We were outrebounded 17 to 13, but I wasn’t too worried about that. It was a deceptive stat, since shots had to be missed in order to get rebounds. And we weren’t missing all that much.
I was really happy with the way we scored, too. Bert led the team with 12, Trevor and Billy had 11 apiece, Ime had 8 and was heating up. Najeeb hadn’t scored yet, but already had 9 rebounds. He was being kept at bay by Dean Ndiaye, for now. Jozsef Hailey wasn’t afraid to take it to Bert either with 15, but a lot of that was with Diondre in the game.
Ime scored five points from deep and off a cut to the basket to put us up 50-45 as play resumed in the second half. The game tightened up after, and halfway through the third quarto, we were holding the same advantage as when we came out of the break, 54-53. Again, we were getting everything from Ime and Bert. I really needed Najeeb to come alive on offense.
With nine minutes to go, he answered. He had a mismatch, and took it to the low post. The And-1 put us up by nine, 71-62. Gonzaga started moving Trevor out by stretching Ndiaye fifteen feet away from the basket. It opened the floor, and they capitalized. Too bad for them Billy was catching fire. Two deep threes put us up by ten, 74-64 with eight left. I had to give Bert some time off, replacing Raymond for him. That stretched Najeeb to the small forward spot, putting him on Hailey. With so many bigs on the court, Gonzaga couldn’t get anything on the inside to fall. It was a Leatherneck block party.
Trevor began to dominate after that. He was involved in the next three plays. First, a block on Hailey. Then a reverse jam against Blue. And then a rebound that resulted in another Ime basket. The only way the Bulldogs were going to stop him was with a time-out.
I put all the starters back in, and Billy immediately spotted Bert for an open three. We now had opened a seventeen point lead, 83-66, with a little over five and a half to go. The run had pushed the game out too far out for the Zags. Every time they started to close the gap, one of us would knock it down. Billy’s shot from beyond the arc with under three minutes was the kiss good-bye. From there, our defense completely shut out Gonzaga’s efforts. The last shot by Najeeb with under ten ticks to go wasn’t necessary, but I knew he wanted to get a double-double. He finished with 11 points and 16 rebounds. Ndiaye’s three at the buzzer also didn’t matter much. We had just closed them out, 94-85.
Everyone was in double digits. Bert had 19, Ime scored 18, and Trevor put home 17. The Player of the Game belonged to Billy, though. Billy led both teams with 24 points and 11 assists, a double-double. He had an answer for everything Gonzaga tried to do down the stretch, which was good, because the bench had only contributed with 5 points, all from Raymond. Diondre had 5 assists, and Orien had 3 boards, but the two of them were going to have to do better. Billy and Bert played way too much at 35 minutes. I need to keep load management in mind, so that what happened two years ago doesn’t happen again. Luckily, we have several days to rest before our next match in the Sweet Sixteen.
For the entire story in one file, please go here: https://gumroad.com/l/bVSqud