NCAA TOURNAMENT : Seriously, Tide Coach Is a Wimp : Winfrey Sanderson Isn’t Laughing as ‘Bama Faces Kentucky

Sometimes, Winfrey Sanderson wishes he had a nickname like, well, like his best player, Buck Johnson. Something hard. Something rugged.

He isn’t crazy about Alabama’s basketball players being referred to as “That bunch of Wimp’s.”

Then again, the guy isn’t even sure what it means.

“One night we went to Tennessee for a game and they waved a banner at me that said: ‘What’s a Wimp?’ Tell you the truth, I didn’t know myself. Still don’t.”

No nerds are going to be able to beat Kentucky, that’s for sure, when NCAA tournament play resumes tonight at the Southeast Regional. Kentucky has a record of 31-3 and already has whipped Wimp’s Alabama club three times in Southeastern Conference games.

“The way I look at it, the other three times don’t count,” Sanderson said Wednesday.

Villanova took a similar attitude into last year’s NCAA title game with Georgetown, and look what happened there. Three of the Final Four were from the same conference, the Big East. As for this one, they are not calling it the Southeast Regional for nothing. Tonight’s other game will pit 11-time loser Louisiana State, also of the Southeastern Conference, against Atlantic Coast Conference power Georgia Tech. Had Auburn been sent here instead of to the West, this regional could have been kept all in the family.

“This is sort of the SEC Invitational, and Georgia Tech used to be in this league,” Kentucky Coach Eddie Sutton said.

Some think, despite top-seeded Kentucky’s depth and strength, that Georgia Tech will have the edge at the Omni because it is playing in its hometown. An argument to support that case is LSU’s success in last week’s regional thrillers at Baton Rouge. An argument against it is Syracuse’s being torpedoed at the Carrier Dome by Navy.

Effusive, eccentric Coach Dale Brown of LSU naturally had a few words on the subject of home advantage. “Mercury is orbiting closest to us this week, and next week Venus will be closer, so maybe we should play the tournament on Venus if we want a neutral court,” Brown said. “But then somebody would be mad because we didn’t play on Pluto.”

Go, Dale, go.

“Hey, in 1936, Jesse Owens had to go to Berlin with El Sicko sitting there, and he still won four gold medals.”

Within 10 minutes, Brown also had gotten around to Barbra Streisand, Lou Rawls, Bear Bryant, Vince Lombardi and Soviet pole vaulter Sergei Bubka, just to illustrate ideas and stories. The coach has been spinning such tales from the days he was earning 12 varsity letters at Minot State Teachers’ College in North Dakota.

Wimp Sanderson isn’t nearly so engaging a figure.

He is an unsmiling, self-effacing fellow who spent two decades as an Alabama assistant before taking over five years ago for C.M. Newton. As a head coach he has won more than twice as many games as he has lost, and he has been to the final 16 in three of those five seasons. Nothing wimpy about that.

But he still hasn’t gotten much notice. And neither has ‘Bama basketball.

“If it hasn’t, it’s y’all’s fault,” Sanderson told a press conference.

He suspects that were he more colorful, more of a cut-up and story teller, he might be better known than he currently is.

“I don’t know if I have a particular image,” Sanderson said. “Par-tickler” is how he said it.

“Around you, I’m a guy who doesn’t smile much, frowns all the time and looks like he’s (bleep)ed off at the world. Well, that’s really not true. I like to think I’m a pretty good guy. You ask my wife and my three boys. I think they’d say I was.

“I don’t know. I’d like to be thought of as a guy who was concerned about his players, wants to make ‘em work hard, don’t take anything sitting down. Like I said, I don’t know if I have a particular image, but I bet I do with somma you guys. You guys see me on the sidelines and I’m raising cane and probably say, ‘That guy’s a real (bleep).’ ”

Winfrey Sanderson was named after his mother’s brother, “who got killed playin’ football, blockin’ a punt,” Sanderson said. He did not elaborate. People presume that Wimp is short for Winfrey. The coach says he doesn’t ‘xactly know how that nickname got started.

Asked what his loved ones call him, Sanderson said: “My wife? Gee, I don’t know. Annette, doggone, she calls me lots of things. But most of the coaches call me Wimp, so I’d just as soon stick with that if it’s all right.”

When Wimp was assisting the head coach all those 20 years, he was wondering if he would ever sit “in the big chair,” as he refers to it.

Why did he stay at Alabama so long? “Well, I couldn’t get anybody to hire me,” he said. “No, I’m just kiddin’ there. I could have moved along. Actually, there were two jobs I could have had but didn’t want, and three jobs I wanted and couldn’t get.

“I know people say if you stay in one place long enough, eventually you’ll get what’s coming to you. Well, a lot of times it’s just the opposite. There were a lot of people who didn’t want me to get the Alabama (head coach’s) job.

“After a while you roll so many heads or make so many enemies, you don’t have a chance. And a lot of people didn’t want me because I was a no-name coach.

“You know, I won 18 games my first year, the same number Coach Newton did in his last year. Yet there were people who said I didn’t do a good job. Takes a while to get used to the pressure when you’re sittin’ in the big chair, I guess.”

Alabama is 24-8 after beating Xavier and Illinois in the regional’s first two rounds. Against Kentucky, which is 20-1 against SEC opponents, the Crimson Tide lost by two points at home, got buried by 24 at Rupp Arena and lost by 11 in the postseason tournament championship game.

Kentucky’s Sutton said: “I don’t think they’re the most-talented team in the SEC, and I don’t think we are. But I’d rather be 3-0 than 0-3.”

Both teams are led by forwards--6-8 All-American Kenny Walker of Kentucky and 6-7 sophomore Buck Johnson of Alabama. The SEC this season had no great centers but plenty of slick forwards, including 6-8 sophomore John Williams of LSU, whom Georgia Tech Coach Bobby Cremins branded Wednesday as “a young Magic Johnson.”

Although the bid to the Final Four is expected to be settled between Kentucky and Georgia Tech, the coaches know anything can happen, especially when opponents know a lot about one another.

“There are a lot of top 20 teams I’d like to play before I’d like to play Mississippi State,” Kentucky’s Sutton mentioned.

Sanderson said: “One thing you know about SEC teams is that they’re all pretty tough after chewin’ on each other all year.”

Speaking specifically about Buck Johnson and in generalities about someone else, possibly about a certain someone from St. John’s, Sanderson said:

“I’ve seen so-called great players get their fannies burned on both ends of the floor. The first thing (Johnson) does is that he isn’t always looking to shoot every time he grabs the ball. Another thing is, he’s gonna play defense every time down the court. I can’t say that about some people who won national awards. Maybe we don’t have the most talent in the tournament, but that doesn’t mean we can’t win it.”

Brown had an opinion, of course. Of Alabama’s lack of success against Kentucky, he said: “It can stimulate them or depress them. Just as it can make Kentucky apathetic or give them confidence. Personally, I think it’ll be a bloodbath.”

And if his own team failed to take the national championship, who would win it? “Gosh, I don’t know,” Brown said. “Did Minot State Teachers’ College get beat yet?”