Small Schools Make Strides in Tourney

Tennessee-Chattanooga, Coppin State and the College of Charleston have a long way to go to catch North Carolina and Dean Smith, who became the leaders in college basketball’s all-time coaching victories by winning NCAA tournament first- and second-round games this past weekend.

But that monumental achievement was nearly overshadowed by the efforts of unheralded teams such as Tennessee-Chattanooga. The Moccasins, champions of the Southern Conference, beat third-seeded Georgia and sixth-seeded Illinois to become just the second No. 14 seed to advance to the round of 16.

Coppin State became just the third No. 15 seed and the first Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference team to win an NCAA tournament game, routing second-seeded South Carolina, 78-65. The Eagles then nearly became the first No. 15 seed to win a second-round game, falling short against Texas, 82-81.

“They went all out with reckless abandon,” Texas guard Al Coleman said before his team played the Eagles. “It didn’t matter to them that they were playing South Carolina.”

Other lower seeds also made strong showings, including No. 12 College of Charleston, another first-round winner (over Maryland) and narrow second-round loser; No. 16 Fairfield, which played Smith and North Carolina virtually even before losing, 82-74; No. 15 Murray State, which played Duke to the final seconds in the first round; No. 14 Old Dominion, which did the same thing against New Mexico; and No. 12 seeds Princeton and Valparaiso, who respectively gave California and Boston College extremely difficult games.

Following his team’s 73-70 escape from Murray State, Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said part of the reason for the early-round upsets and close calls is the timing of the start of the NCAAs -- that players from smaller leagues aren’t worn down from the nightly battles in leagues such as the Atlantic Coast and Big Ten conferences.

But perhaps at least as germane is Krzyzewski’s acknowledgment that players such as Murray State guard Vincent Rainey or Tennessee-Chattanooga’s Johnny Taylor -- the Southern Conference player of the year -- could excel anywhere.

“You can’t tell me that Vincent Rainey couldn’t start for us,” Krzyzewski said. “And if you get one player like that who can set an aggressive tone, then it becomes an entirely different team.”

A team that has no fear of going against the likes of Maryland or Georgia. Before their first-round game against fourth-seeded Villanova -- a team with at least four solid pro prospects -- the players from 13th-seeded Long Island University expressed so much confidence that one would have thought they were going to apply for entry as an NBA expansion franchise.

That cockiness was borne in part from the presence of Charles Jones. Although Jones, who transferred to LIU from Rutgers, didn’t talk the talk, his nation-leading 29.9-points-a-game average imbued his teammates with a bit of bravado.

One of those teammates was starting center Johnnie Drew, who played in high school alongside a pair of college stars: Texas’s Reggie Freeman and St. John’s Felipe Lopez. These days it’s not a big deal for college players to face a star because the players from smaller schools often already have faced them in high school, summer leagues or AAU tournaments.

Players such as Rainey, who totaled 23 points and 10 rebounds against Duke, often have to go to smaller schools because of the decrease in the NCAA’s men’s basketball scholarship limit from 15 to 13.

According to Kansas Coach Roy Williams, Chauncey Billups, a second-team all-American this season at Colorado, ended up with the Buffaloes only because the Jayhawks -- down to their last scholarship before the 1995-96 school year -- instead gave it to Paul Pierce, now a starting forward for the Jayhawks.

“I loved Chauncey Billups,” Williams said. “Telling him that we couldn’t sign him was the toughest phone call that I’ve ever had to make.”

Equally important as being able to give fewer scholarships are NCAA rules prohibiting the number of times college programs can even look at, or evaluate, high school stars.

“It happens more and more that players fall through the cracks of the bigger schools,” said Murray State Coach Mark Gottfried, an assistant coach for the UCLA team that won the 1995 national championship.

Although it only paid off in an NCAA victory this year, Coppin State Coach Ron “Fang” Mitchell for years has scheduled big-name teams in an effort to prepare his teams for the MEAC schedule and ostensibly get them used to playing the types of teams they would play in the NCAA tournament.

In this year’s NCAA tournament, the teams that once were the big bullies are learning that they’re the ones who should be afraid.