NCAA EAST REGIONAL : Florida Finally Invited and Shows No Respect for Established Teams

You look at the four basketball teams in the NCAA tournament’s East Regional and the first question you have is:

Florida?

North Carolina, Notre Dame, Syracuse and . . . Florida? One of the best teams in college basketball?

This is the same college that until 1980 played its home games in a gymnasium that seated 5,400.

This is the college that in the last 72 years has produced one All-American basketball player--Neal Walk, best remembered as the player the Phoenix Suns settled for after losing the coin flip with the Milwaukee Bucks for Lew (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) Alcindor.

This is the college that until a couple of weeks ago had never, ever been invited to participate in the NCAA tournament.

Tonight, as part of a doubleheader at the Brendan Byrne Arena, Florida finds itself in the company of Syracuse, which is making its fifth consecutive NCAA appearance, its 17th consecutive postseason appearance and is attempting to reach the NCAA regional final for the fifth straight time.

Tonight’s other game here involves North Carolina, which is making its 13th consecutive NCAA appearance, and Notre Dame, which, despite its reputation as a football school, has been to 13 of the last 15 NCAA tournaments and 21 of them, all told.

What’s a nice school like Florida doing in a tough regional like this?

Scaring heck out of people, that’s what.

The way the Gators ate up North Carolina State, 82-70, and Purdue, 85-66, in last week’s regional games made people sit up and take notice. That includes Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim, who said: “I was scared to death of Purdue. And Florida beats them by 20 points. Now I’m scared to death plus 20.”

It was actually 19 points, but Boeheim certainly made his point. Florida, with a 23-10 record that is the best in the school’s history, has fast become, as Vanderbilt Coach C.M. Newton described it earlier in the season, a “team without a weakness.”

Florida’s principal assets include a backcourt of 6-4 Vernon Maxwell and 6-0 Andrew Moten, known around Gainesville as the M & M Boys; the Lawrence brothers, Joe and Pat, a starting forward and sixth man, respectively, with matching shooting touches; and a cocky 7-2 freshman named Dwayne Schintzius--pronounced “Shin-sus”--who saw what Louisville did last season and is hoping to become the Pervis Ellison of 1987.

Together, these guys finally have gotten the attention of folks in Gainesville, Fla., who have mobbed the 12,000-seat Stephen C. O’Connell Center and have established attendance records for a state university.

This is what Coach Norm Sloan never was able to attract before he left Florida in 1966 to coach at North Carolina State, and this is what he wanted most when he returned to Florida in 1980. The fans still stayed away in droves, though, when Sloan’s first three comeback teams amassed records of 12-16, 5-22 and 13-18.

Sloan was doubly frustrated, because some of the players he left behind at N.C. State--players like Thurl Bailey and Sidney Lowe--wound up winning the 1983 national championship on Lorenzo Charles’ last-second dunk. Sloan already had his own national championship, though, his 1974 N.C. State team, led by David Thompson, having broken UCLA’s hold on the title.

At long last, Florida has made some strides in college basketball, and has worked up a fever in the community. “It’s nice to finally have people packing the stands and scalping tickets and all that,” Sloan said. “Not that I’m in favor of scalping tickets. But at least it’s a sign of progress.”

Sloan wants more people to be aware of this progress. The other day, after the Purdue game, he came down hard on ESPN and the other television networks for ignoring his school and his conference, the Southeastern.

“That (exposure) is the best recruiting tool you have, and (the networks) always give it to the same guys,” he said. “I know the TV people are going to deny it, but that’s the way it is.”

A victory against Syracuse (28-6) would go a long way toward increasing Florida’s popularity, and the Gators were so impressive in their earlier regional games that, despite their 10 losses, they are favored by a couple of points by odds makers. Notre Dame (24-7) which defeated North Carolina earlier in the season when the Tar Heels were without All-American guard Kenny Smith, is a nine-point underdog against North Carolina (31-3) in tonight’s earlier game.

“Florida is the Cinderella team in this year’s NCAA tournament,” Notre Dame Coach Digger Phelps said Wednesday. “I don’t think anybody really knows just how good they are.”

Star of the show is Maxwell, the junior guard who averages 21.6 points a game. A local hero who grew up four miles from the Florida campus, Maxwell, who publicly guaranteed 20 wins and an NCAA berth before the season started, is a former All-State defensive back who, in Sloan’s opinion, can make it in the National Football League if not the National Basketball Assn.

“Vernon is an unbelievable athlete,” Sloan said. “He and David Thompson are the two best athletes I’ve ever coached. And Moten and Maxwell are as good together as anyone in the country. They can do everything.”

The M & M boys have so excited the home crowds, their fans often attend games dressed as the little candies. Joe Dean, who does TV analysis for SEC games, recently said: “Moten and Maxwell could be the best two open-court players on one team that I’ve ever seen.”

Moten, a senior, is married and has a year-old son, Andrew Jr. In 1985 he had a loud argument with his wife, Tani, and was arrested. Since little Andrew’s birth, Moten has matured greatly, according to his coach.

Sloan has been trying to tap the same maturity in his 7-2, 245-pound center, Schintzius, who just turned 18. The coach admits he didn’t help the kid any with a remark he made shortly after the hotly recruited Brandon, Fla., native signed to attend Florida, a comment that contributed to his conceit. Sloan said in four years, Schintzius would go No. 1 in the NBA draft.

He admits he got carried away. Florida finally had the gifted big guy it had lacked for so long. “I’ve had 7-footers that about all they look good doing is going through airports,” Sloan said. “But Dwayne obviously had talent.”

He also had an attitude. The son of a county sheriff, Schintzius had an ego as big as his body, and his high school coach even had to suspend him for a game, sacrificing the 22 points and 17 rebounds he averaged. “I had an attitude problem. I thought I was great and I was kind of snobby about it,” Schintzius said.

To this day, the teen-ager does not suffer from an inferiority complex. “I think God loaded the gun for me,” he said. “I have to play basketball. He gave me size and a good shooting touch. All that came naturally.”

At Sloan’s urging, Schintzius, who averages 11 points and 6 rebounds a game, has attempted to tone it down a bit. “When I said some of that stuff, I was just a young little dummy,” Schintzius said Wednesday. “Coach Sloan tells me not to say that stuff, that a kid my age is not supposed to be that cocky. I still think I’m a great player and all, but that doesn’t mean I have to be telling everybody.”

Against Syracuse, the 7-2 freshman will go nose to jaw against Rony Seikaly, the 6-10, 240-pound junior who grew up in Greece. Although his talent remains very raw, Seikaly--pronounced cycle- lee--has been a starter for three years, and this season is averaging 14 points and 8 rebounds a game.

Boeheim, the Syracuse coach, thinks his man will have his hands full. “I was very impressed with Schintzius when he was in high school. But he has gotten so much stronger,” Boeheim said Wednesday. “He certainly doesn’t play like a freshman. He’s probably one of the best passers for a big man I’ve seen since I’ve been coaching.”

Watching a 7-2 man score 21 points and get 6 assists to boot against a good Purdue team last Sunday gave the Syracuse coach the chills.

“I still can’t believe Florida beat Purdue by 20,” Boeheim said. “That’s pretty scary.”

Not in Florida, it isn’t.