Colonials Are Worth Seeing

Admit it, some of you are down in the dumps. It’s Sweet 16 weekend. And the dance card looks empty.

Washington is a hoops worshipping town. Usually, this is the big weekend of the basketball season. Over the years, Maryland and Georgetown, as well as George Washington, Virginia and Navy, have traveled to the round of 16.

My suggestion: Around noon on Saturday, tune to ESPN2 to see George Washington play North Carolina in the Sweet 16 -- for women. The Colonials are what Washington has left. And, after winning 24 of their last 25 games, they’re a lot.

Their East Region semifinal starts at 11:36 a.m. EST. You don’t need to see the opening tip. This one’s either going to be a heartstopper with GW getting a chance at an upset that might propel them to the Final Four. Or the Colonials are going to get their doors blown off by the No. 1 seed. By halftime, you’ll either have your teeth sunk in a barnburner. Or you can go mow the lawn.

If you’ve missed the exploits of the Colonial women this season, you’re excused. They began the season 3-4, including a 26-point loss. That will get you all the anonymity you want. Coach Joe McKeown worried and fretted, which is what he does well; just check out all his prematurely distinguished gray hair.

McKeown gathered his three senior stars -- Tajama Abraham, Lisa Cermignano and Colleen McCrea, the star, the shooter and the team leader. Desperate times called for desperate measures. After six straight seasons of being ranked between sixth and 24th nationally, was the GW program falling apart?

“Coach, just calm down,” said McCrea, a point guard who is among the few standouts in college hoops whose grade point (4.0) is higher than her scoring average (3.9). “We’re going to go 16-0 in the league.”

Since the Atlantic 10 usually sends three or four teams to the NCAA Tournament, that was quite a boast. “If you do, I’ll let you shave ‘16-0’ on my head,” said McKeown.

“I might have been the only one who heard him say it,” said McCrea this week, “but I never let him forget it.”

Luckily for McKeown, his hair has grown back nicely since a barber shaved the “16-0” on the back of his head two weeks ago. Just to make sure he didn’t look like Anthony Mason on national TV, McKeown got a buzzcut this week anyway.

“We thought he’d weasel out of it,” said McCrea. Of course, he didn’t. Dean Smith might not let you carve on his sacred coif. But this is women’s basketball. So everything is a little different and, in some ways, a little more appealing. This is a sport where skill levels have risen astronomically in the past 20 years, but the size of egos hasn’t kept pace.

“If you are a purist, maybe this is the version of the game you like the best,” says McKeown. “The women’s game now is like the men’s game in the ‘70s when Bobby Knight had his best (Indiana) teams. We play that passing, cutting, screening, play-without-the-ball game. Our passing is beautiful. The ball is always hopping. Passing in men’s basketball is awful.”

To get a feeling for these Colonials, consider McCrea. She’s the one who keeps the ball hopping. On Saturday, she needs two assists to break the GW career record.

On defense, she’s reading your mind, jumping in a passing lane and leading GW team in steals. From the neck up, she epitomizes the McKeown teams of the last eight years. This GW squad has nine women on the dean’s list. In recent seasons, a Fullbright scholar and a Rhodes scholarship nominee came off GW teams. “We don’t recruit bad students,” says McKeown. “When players get here, they are surrounded by instant role models -- like Colleen. You mirror your environment.”

So, it’s no shock that McCrea has the second-highest grade-point average in the accounting school and already has a job lined up with prestigious Price Waterhouse. Most coaches worry about their team leader flunking out. McKeown was scared that McCrea would have such lucrative business offers that she’d graduate early and “leave us in December.”

She’ll need all her brains and skill on Saturday. North Carolina (29-2) is seeded No. 1 in the East and ranked No. 5 to GW’s fifth seed and 16th ranking. Carolina steals you blind and runs you to death. And they eat up point guards. To the Tar Heels, McCrea may look a lot like brunch.

“They are track stars. They can be awesome,” says McCrea. “But we match up well. We can control tempo and play good defense. They’ve struggled against teams with strong post play.”

Translation: McCrea can control tempo. McCrea can get the ball to Abraham and Noelia Gomez, GW’s leading scorers, both 6-foot-3, in the post. McCrea’s physical and intuitive defense can can set a tone. Why take so much responsibility? Why aim so high?

“I always put a lot of pressure on myself. That’s when I’m at my best. Otherwise, I get lackadaisical,” she says. “If you’re going to do something, why not find out how good you can be? ... I always wanted to be the pure point guard. Last year I was injured (for 12 games). I looked at the team and saw how much they needed someone to control them. Since then, I’m so relaxed. I’m finally at this level of comfort.”

Can McCrea and the Colonials go deeper into the tournament than any GW team before them? Maybe that’s not quite the right question. Remember, this is women’s basketball.

“I just want to have great memories,” says McCrea. “That’s why I came here. And I’ve got them. We won 102 games (in four years). We only lost four times at home. We went to the Sweet 16 twice. I’ll never forget that standing ovation when I came out of my last home game. I’ll always remember my teammates crying at the Sweet 16 celebration.”

For McCrea, and her fellow seniors who’ve won so much for GW, it’s indeed time to balance the accounts. Before they close their books, why not take a look?