America’s Team Finally Has a Place to Hang Its Baskets
United States International University has always seemed like one of those nebulous places, ubiquitous to the point of being everywhere and nowhere.
Exactly where was (or is) this USIU?
It always seemed to me that a university with this name would have classrooms in Nairobi, Melbourne, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Warsaw and London as well as maybe Dallas, Minneapolis and Montreal.
As it is, USIU does have facilities in London, Nairobi and Mexico City, but the main campus is tucked among eucalyptus trees in Scripps Ranch.
In a city with SDSU, USD and UCSD, the other initials are USIU. While the others proclaim themselves to be San Diego universities, USIU embraces the globe . . . and gets lost two blocks from home.
Indeed, driving north on Interstate 15, I was never sure if USIU was an off-ramp or a university.
One way to establish an identity, of course, is through intercollegiate sports. The two most visible sports are football and basketball, and USIU has played Division I basketball for six seasons. Incredibly, USIU’s basketball team has managed to play teams such as Louisville, Notre Dame and Marquette and remain completely invisible and anonymous in its own home city.
USIU has done this because its basketball team has been as itinerant as a band of farm workers. You almost had a better chance to see snow in Mission Valley than an USIU home basketball game.
The recruiting slogan should have been simple: “Go to USIU and see the corn fields of Kansas, the skyscrapers in New York, the tobacco fields of the south, the majesty of the Rocky Mountains . . . “
You get the idea. This was America’s Team. Forget the Dallas Cowboys or Atlanta Braves.
USIU went to America.
It wanted to play the big boys, and it did. It played Syracuse, DePaul, UCLA and Stanford, among others. Always on the road.
These guys would take a whacking and keep on packing. If anyone was interested in following USIU, he or she had better be an airline pilot or a traveling salesman or a most persistent hitchhiker.
Not only did USIU have no place to play home games, it had no place of its own to practice . . . other than anywhere someone might stumble upon a basket. There was elation last year when a warehouse was made available for practice. No matter that Bobby Knight probably would have used the joint to store his sport coats.
I understand that this warehouse has been turned into a rather nice facility, though I have never paid a visit. It just sounds too much like the places where I push shopping carts past metal shelves and buy fertilizer and shower enclosures.
However, I was intrigued to learn that USIU had a new home court. I wondered where it might be. I suspected they had probably put a tent over a shopping mall parking lot.
I was wrong. After all these years of literally beating around the bushes, USIU has gone metropolitan. It has taken the show downtown.
Golden Hall is USIU’s new home.
Golden Hall is in the Community Concourse, surrounded by banks, hotels, restaurants, theaters and even City Hall. USIU’s players should arrive with their equipment in attache cases and warm up in three-piece suits. No one wears sneakers in that neck of the woods, except bag ladies and Yuppie joggers.
USIU’s coach, Gary Zarecky, was sitting court side in Golden Hall late Tuesday afternoon. Appropriately, he was dressed in a pin-striped suit and suspenders.
Zarecky had gained considerable notoriety hereabouts for powerhouse after powerhouse at Sweetwater High School, but suffered through an 8-20 season last year in his first season at USIU.
“It’s no fun losing by 30 points,” Zarecky said, “but I recall being 1-26 my first year at Sweetwater, 6-19 my second and 11-15 the third. Those numbers are engraved on my brain. There’s no question I know how to lose.”
But also how to win. He won so much at Sweetwater--70% over 15 years--that rivals constantly muttered that anyone could win with the players who transferred to Zarecky’s embrace.
It got so there was nothing left to be done at Sweetwater ... and everything to be done at USIU. Playing on the road and over its head to establish itself at the Division I level, USIU was 6-78 the three years before Zarecky’s arrival. When he took the USIU job, he had to feel he was handed a life jacket and asked to save the ship.
On this Tuesday afternoon, he was enjoying a simple but hard-earned moment of satisfaction.
“This,” he said, “is a dream come true. We got some credibility last year when we were the highest scoring Division I team in the nation. Now we need some respectability.”
Now it is also a matter of whether USIU can get some of the folks to stay downtown after work for a bite to eat and a taste of basketball for dessert.
“What I want,” said Zarecky, “is to make our games a happening.”
The biggest news is that USIU games are happening in San Diego. Before long, the place will be known as San Diego United States International University.
Or Downtown’s Team.