It Didn’t Just Go Overtime, but Overboard

How does a team feel after it takes six overtimes to win a basketball game?

“Tired,” Eden Prairie Coach Keith Erickson said after his Eagles finally beat Robbinsdale Armstrong, 45-44, in a boys’ Class 6AA basketball semifinal game at Minneapolis on Wednesday night. “It’s mentally exhausting, like playing another half of the game over.”

“It’s beyond physical endurance,” Eagle forward Jay Helmick said after he followed his own miss with an eight-foot winning shot with 8.5 seconds to play in the sixth overtime.

The NCAA Division I record for overtimes is seven, Cincinnati beating Bradley, 75-73, in 1981.

Add overtimes: Stanford defeated USC in 1923 in four overtimes by the underwhelming score of 24-21.

Trivia time: What is the NCAA championship game record for number of overtimes?

Daylight savings: Raider defensive tackle Bob Golic’s reaction to the NFL’s abolition of instant-replay officiating for the 1992 season:

“Oh, you mean we’ll get home before dark?”

No scrimmage: President Bush displayed a keen sense of diplomacy Friday when he welcomed the University of Miami and Washington football teams to the White House and managed to sidestep the issue over which is the national college champion.

“Today we welcome the people’s choice--the Hurricanes and the Huskies--two great teams, both national champions,” said Bush, flanked by the two teams in the East Room.

“Some thought I should take the ball and go outside and try to settle this thing right now,” he said. “I don’t need this. I’ve got enough problems without getting in the middle of you guys.”

Identity crisis: Last word on the Campbell University Camels, who predictably lost to top-ranked Duke Thursday night, from Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post:

“Prior to the NCAA draw, I’d never heard of Campbell University. I had heard of Campbell Soup and Glen Campbell.”

Invisible man: No one would blame Pittsburgh Steeler Coach Bill Cowher if he had an identity crisis during the the NFL meetings in Phoenix.

First, the h was left out of his name on his placecard for the coaches’ breakfast with the media Tuesday. Worse, he was asked to pose for a photo as the body of Chicago Bear Coach Mike Ditka, who hadn’t shown up for the meetings.

Photographers planned to paste Ditka’s face over Cowher’s later.

Boyz ‘n his ‘hood: “If you didn’t play tough, you didn’t last very long in my neighborhood,” said Charlotte Hornet star Larry Johnson, who grew up in Dallas.

“It was like this: We played basketball Monday through Saturday. If you went Monday through Friday and had avoided getting into a fight, you didn’t go on Saturday because it was going to be your time.

“That’s the way you should learn to play basketball . . . the tough way first. You can get the fundamentals later.”

Trivia answer: North Carolina beat Wilt Chamberlain’s Kansas team, 54-53, in three overtimes in 1957.

Quotebook: The Denver Nuggets’ Scott Hastings, on his sagging team: “We’ve hit the wall, and now there are people standing on top of the wall pouring boiling oil on us.”