Matchup Captures Essence of Tournament

For those of us who like the little nice aspects that justify college basketball, Coppin State vs. Syracuse is just the sort of thing we like. The Eagles are going to play the Orange Friday night in the Southeast subregional of the Great Annual College Hoop Hoopla.

And anybody who doesn’t think that’s hot stuff is missing the point.

Vermont vs. Connecticut would have been another, but -- alas -- life isn’t so unsophisticated that we could have both.

Surely out there in this great land enraptured by the grate of Dick Vitale’s voice and hypnotized by the eye of the tube there are people seriously offended that DePaul was left out and Maryland, too. How could this national championship welcome the likes of Towson State, Ball State and Coppin State? What state of mind gives them a chance to win?

So?

This tournament is a celebration of youth. Even more than the money. Sure, close out the Memphis State basketball program for sleaze, but bring in the Memphis State Tigerbelles for the hot blood of being young.

Do you think for a moment that the Lehigh kids who played the Georgetown giants of Patrick Ewing didn’t cherish their dream? In their hearts they could hear the shrill of the cheerleaders and the throbbing of the fans and see the scoreboard saying they had won. They could feel the things that could happen to cause them to win.

Recall how Princeton came within a tiger’s whisker of breaking the Hoyas’ rock in a thriller in the same round last year. Should man’s reach exceed his grasp? That’s what dreams are for. Jim Valvano used to use that bit of Alexander Pope all the time.

Coppin State is a small, predominantly black school in inner-city Baltimore, with full-time enrollment of 1,406 -- 890 of them women. Could they do that to giant Syracuse? Do you think those 13 naive young men can’t see the big orange flattened in their hands?

“American history is replete with big things coming in small packages,” Dr. Calvin W. Burnett, president of Coppin State, said.

Needless to say there is excitement all the way up to City Hall. After Coppin State won its Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference championship for the automatic NCAA berth and ESPN had chosen to show Georgia vs. Texas instead of the game against Syracuse, Mayor Kurt Schmoke made a phone call to station WBAL. “There is intense interest in this ballgame,” station manager Jeff Beauchamp said. “This is the first time a Baltimore school has made it into the NCAAs. The whole community is talking about it. It’s a classic David and Goliath.”

So it was worked out for WBAL to bring the game home both on TV and radio, with Jon Miller at courtside. Miller is known to do the voices of Bob Sheppard, Johnny Most and most of the rest, but he will do this assignment straight.

“I am the new voice of Coppin State,” Miller said. He has been following the boxscores as far back as December, when Coppin State beat big Maryland. He even knows the nickname.

“My wife and I were on this airplane in January and these guys came on the plane in sweatsuits with ‘Eagles’ down the side,” Miller said. “I didn’t know who they were. So I just walked up and asked.”

Along the way, Coppin State beat Maryland, Creighton and Toledo -- all on the road. Hardly anybody who is anybody would play at Coppin State. The gym seats 2,500 and total attendance for 10 home games was 1,300. Syracuse puts that many in a corner of the Carrier Dome. That’s the big time.

Coppin State won the NAIA championship in 1976 and now this is the big time, too. The big deal is the three busloads of Coppin State students who will head for Richmond and the Syracuse game Friday afternoon with dreams of making the trip again on Sunday. “Because we’re small doesn’t mean we can’t have 13 fine players,” said Burnett, who played at the University of St. Louis with Bob Ferry in the early 1950s. “We think our intercollegiate athletic program is tied very closely to our academic program, trying to pursue our intellectual goals by carrying them onto the floor and succeeding.”

Coach Ron Mitchell finished his college eligibility before he completed his degree work at Garden State College, and while he was coaching at Gloucester County College he went back to Garden State to get his degree. He couldn’t come to the phone because as soon as practice was over he had to run -- literally -- to class where he is working on a master’s degree.