The Journey of a Lifetime

What a week it was with Winthrop.

I miss the fellas already: Money, Beast, Scratch, Dan the Man, Bip, Top Dog, Bubbles, Sweat Pea, Fish Tank, O’Dog, JP, Earl, RC Cola.

Winthrop University advanced to the NCAA tournament for the first time last week, not bad for a school at which, until 1974, the students wore dresses.

Funny, but the final act was as predictable as Rodman in drag.

You knew Winthrop would end up Lossthrop.

Never has a 16th-seeded school defeated a No. 1 in the 14 seasons since the tournament expanded to 64 teams.

That wasn’t going to change because you shadowed the team for a week and grew fond of the kids and coaches; because you hung out with players from sunrise until curfew and, uh-hum, beyond.

Winthrop wasn’t going to shock the world because you had unfettered access and uncovered that five players at midseason got tattoos in Gastonia, N.C; that the coach’s wife has a thing for Steve Lavin; that Winthrop guard Roger Toxey couldn’t shake a cold.

Tournament death did not take a holiday because you were a fly on the wall as first-year Winthrop Coach Gregg Marshall and staff put together a game plan they honestly thought could work.

Auburn didn’t care that you saw Winthrop players get floor burns at practice, hug relatives in the stands at the RCA Dome here, beam like kids at Christmas when their new warmups arrived.

Who was anyone kidding?

The Winthrop Eagles clocked into the NCAA tournament at 3 p.m. EST last Thursday and checked out before Duke’s first bed check.

Auburn put the wood to Winthrop, 80-41, in a first-round South Regional game.

The tightwad NCAA wanted to put Winthrop on a flight back home to Rock Hill, S.C., that night--”Go ahead and finish up that shower, though.”--but Winthrop returned home Saturday.

“Do we get, like a watch or something?” Winthrop freshman forward Dan Tollens wondered.

What was the point, someone had asked Marshall. Why do 16th-seeded teams even bother?

Marshall could have melted rock with his laser stare.

This was never about getting out of the NCAA tournament.

It was about getting into it.

It was about daily struggles: blisters, ointments, sprained ankles, fragile egos, tape and fleeting moments in the sun.

It was about getting picked to finish last in the Big South Conference and finishing first. It was about a promising coach from a school with a funny name taking a spatula and flip-flopping a 7-20 season to 21-7 in one year, using three walk-ons and one player recruited by e-mail.

“It’s about the journey,” Marshall said. “I lost a grandparent this season. Players lost relatives. Incredible things take place on the journey.”

Four months ago, freshman forward Eyo “Bubbles” Effiong was in Beirut, Lebanon, fighting a maze of red tape that delayed his letters of transit.

After the thumping by Auburn, Effiong said he considered playing in the NCAA tournament a miracle.

Three weeks ago, a doctor diagnosed string-bean sophomore shooting guard Robbie “Money” Waldrop with a swollen spleen. Waldrop said the doctor told him he could die if he played. Waldrop missed two games, got a second opinion, and scored six points against Auburn.

After the 39-point defeat, Waldrop said, “My dream came true, no matter if we lost by 40 or by one.”

What a week it was with Winthrop:

SUNDAY, MARCH 7 / Biggest Thing to Happen Since. . . .

6 p.m.: Five-hundred fans have packed a campus gym to celebrate the biggest night at Winthrop since . . . ?

Ever.

“Bob Hope was once here at the Coliseum,” Zeta Sistare, Winthrop, class of 1955, says. “That was the fullest it’s been except for [pro] wrestling.”

Actress Andie MacDowell went to Winthrop, might have attended four weddings and a funeral here, but did not graduate. Will Rogers passed through in the 1930s; Hurricane Hugo in the late ‘80s.

But nothing tops this.

Tonight, Winthrop worshipers blush garnet and gold as they await CBS’ tournament pairings telecast.

Winthrop has come a long way, baby. Founded in 1886 as a teacher’s college, it was a women’s school, with one glaring exception, for 88 years. In a stupendous naming-rights deal, Boston philanthropist Robert C. Winthrop handed D.B. Johnson $50 of his own money toward a $1,500 Peabody Foundation grant.

Bingo, the school’s name was his.

Eat your heart out, 3Com.

What was all-woman Winthrop like?

“They locked us in at 10:30 at night,” Sistare says. “Us sweet, innocent, Southern belles had to be protected. We had to go in groups of three to leave campus.”

Girls, attired in uniforms, once formed “the Blue Line” marching to church each week. Walter Schrader forced the school’s co-ed hand when, after suing to get in, he enrolled as a graduate student in the late 1960s.

“Fairest Flower of the Southland,” the school’s alma mater, had to be rewritten when the boys hit campus.

Winthrop, a public school of 5,500 students located 20 miles south of Charlotte, did not have men’s basketball until 1978, did not move to Division I until the 1986-87 season.

6:43: The crowd erupts when the Auburn-Winthrop first-round matchup flashes on the big screen. Winthrop had already clinched an NCAA bid by virtue of winning the Big South tournament, but sometimes seeing is believing.

8:20: Winthrop coaches convene in Marshall’s office.

“Anyone seen Auburn this year?” Marshall asks.

At Duke, an office wonk would pop a floppy disk into a computer and report the average barometric temperature of the opponent’s town.

Winthrop?

Lynn, the coach’s wife, had set the VCR at home and taped some of Auburn against Alabama in the Southeastern Conference tournament.

Thirsting for insight, Marshall asks administrative aide John Jones to read about Auburn from the “Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook.”

The pizza arrives, the video rolls, and Marshall fast-forwards through the commercials. Assistant coach Damon Stephenson chugs from a 64-ounce container of orange juice.

Marshall has his first look of Auburn on tape.

Reaction: “Oh, geez.”

MONDAY, MARCH 8 / Welcome to Fantasy Island

9:55 a.m.: Marshall is on the phone, chatting with USA Today, one of a slew of interviews he’ll conduct before Thursday. You can’t blame the 36-year-old coach for pumping the Winthrop well. In his first season, the Eagles had their first winning season in the 1990s.

And to think he almost gave up basketball to become entertainment coordinator on “Fantasy Island.”

That was 1987. After getting a master’s degree in sports management at the University of Richmond, Marshall quit as assistant coach at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and took a job at a resort on Amelia Island near Jacksonville, Fla.

Marshall thought it was a management position.

“It was a job catering to rich people on vacation,” he says. “I was ‘Pool Boy.’ ” Marshall remembers having to put on a gorilla suit and frighten a patron as part of a dinner-club theater jungle skit.

“That,” Marshall says, “was my last act.”

Marshall quit after two months and hooked on with Kevin Eastman’s basketball staff at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina.

Then he spent eight seasons, 1988-96, soaking up knowledge under John Kresse at the College of Charleston.

Kresse, though, kept turning down big-time offers that might have swept Marshall along toward his first head-coaching job.

With Lynn pregnant with Kellen, now 2, Marshall left Charleston in 1996 for a higher-paying assistant’s position at Marshall University.

And in 1998, Marshall got his break when Dan Kenny resigned at Winthrop. With Kresse’s help, Marshall got the job.

Before the news conference to introduce him as coach last April, Marshall told returning players not to follow him out if they didn’t think they could make it to the NCAA tournament.

“I thought he was bananas,” guard Tyson Waterman recalls.

Marshall was shocked to find plaques commemorating sixth-place finishes in the Winthrop trophy case.

Defying logic, Winthrop won the Big South title with three walk-ons playing significant minutes. Marshall plucked center Eric Fisher out of a campus pickup game and welcomed back the talented Waterman, who had fled to Winston-Salem after academic failings and a falling out with Kenny.

Lynn Marshall tutored Waterman all last summer to get him eligible. Marshall discovered that John Kresse had rubbed off.

“You spend eight years around a guy, you’ve got to learn something.”

10:45: Marshall hangs up after a radio bit with “The Fabulous Sports Babe.” Sports information director Jack Frost reminds Marshall of an interview that night with a South Carolina sports-talk host.

“He called us bird poop on the windshield earlier this year,” Marshall says.

12:30 p.m.: Marshall gathers his players at center court and mildly understates the case when he says of Auburn, “This is not Radford, OK?”

Lynn arrives with a chocolate cake to celebrate Roger “Bip” Toxey’s birthday. “Gregg calls me ‘the den mother,’ ” she says.

Kellen, the 2-year-old, roams the practice floor as if he owns it.

Lynn Munday met Marshall at the 1989 NAIA basketball tournament. She was a player at Western Washington University; he was a young Charleston assistant. They married in 1994.

Lynn is excited that Winthrop is headed to Indianapolis for the NCAAs. Gregg says it’s because Lynn has a crush on UCLA Coach Steve Lavin, whose Bruins are in Winthrop’s bracket.

2: Lunch at the Varsity in Rock Hill. Bubbles Effiong has pushed away his barbecue pork plate. In three days, his name will be announced in the NCAA tournament.

“Sometimes I think it’s a dream,” he says. “But I guess it’s real now.”

Effiong grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, idolizing Hakeem Olajuwon. Ten years ago, Effiong’s father, a surveyor, was killed in a car crash. When his mother died of breast cancer in 1997, Effiong moved to Lebanon to live with his uncle, a traveling evangelical minister. Bubbles earned his keep by videotaping his uncle’s church services.

Former Liberty coach Jeff Meyer, now a Winthrop assistant, recruited Effiong by e-mail. Because of delays in paperwork, Effiong did not arrive at Winthrop--”Win-what?” he said--until Dec. 16.

He played 17 minutes the next night against North Carolina State.

The nickname “Bubbles?” Bubbling means dancing back home.

Effiong likes to dance.

6:45: Marshall gathers his team after practice. “Not one guy in an Auburn uniform has ever played in the Big Dance. [True] They’ve got no advantage over us. [False].”

The ultimate optimist, Marshall tells his players to bring clothes for five days. Winthrop will depart for Indianapolis tomorrow. Players let out a yelp when informed they’re staying at the Hyatt Regency.

“I told you, this isn’t chopped liver,” Marshall says.

7:50: Team dinner at O’Charley’s. As the team is seated, Marshall conducts a cell phone interview with the “bird poop” guy.

“Only way you eat an elephant is one bite at a time,” Marshall says of his team’s chances against Auburn.

Lynn Marshall rolls her eyes.

After the radio gig, Gregg sits down to continue a print interview. He reminds a reporter that there are two Gs in Gregg. He tried to drop the extra G as a kid when classmates called him “Gregg the Egg,” but his mother wouldn’t stand for it.

9:20: A haggard Marshall stands in the parking lot of O’Charley’s.

“I’m exhausted,” he says. “Tonight we rest. Tomorrow we ride.”

TUESDAY, MARCH 9 / Taking First Step Toward History

10:30 a.m.: Coaches meet. Meyer outlines the strategy. On the chalkboard he has written, “Preparation, Execution, Belief.”

11:30: Practice. Marshall screams at center Eric Fisher, but the session ends pleasantly when forward Jacques Vandescure sinks two free throws to cut the number of post-practice wind sprints from eight to four.

Noon: Marshall tells his players to wear coats and ties for the plane trip--and to “be ready to make history.”

1:30 p.m.: There is supposed to be a send-off party for the team outside Winthrop Coliseum, but a cold rain has nixed those plans. Hey, what’s CBS analyst Billy Packer doing here?

Packer lives in Charlotte, you learn, and uses Winthrop offices to do pretournament research.

A lone fan, Andrew Hendrix, wearing a Winthrop cap, shows up to bid the team farewell.

As the bus heads for Charlotte International Airport, a few players chat about pro wrestling, Ric Flair in particular.

US Air’s Flight 982 is scheduled to leave at 3:35, but poor weather has delayed departure until 5:30.

Marshall kills time by doing more interviews. Waterman, the point guard, tells a reporter how he almost blew this chance because of his academic failures.

Waterman says he would not be going to Indianapolis if not for Lynn Marshall’s tutoring.

“One day, if I ever make the pros, I’ll do anything for her,” Waterman says. “I owe her that much.”

4:45 p.m: Oh my God, is that wrestling star Ric Flair? Walking through the terminal? A half-dozen Winthrop players give chase, stop Flair and have their picture taken with him.

Flair is nice enough, but later admits he didn’t know Winthrop had made the NCAA tournament.

“That’s great,” he says. “But I’m a Tar Heel fan. It’s been hard to stomach that this year.”

5:40: Winthrop boards Flight 982. The first step toward the impossible dream? Maybe. Meyer’s 1994 Liberty team led North Carolina, 46-45, with eight minutes left before losing by 20. As players and staff move down the boarding ramp, Meyer says he wishes he had handled his timeouts better in that game.

Does Winthrop have a prayer?

“If we can keep it close, the fans will turn against Auburn,” he says.

7:55 p.m: Winthrop is greeted in Indianapolis by local news crews, then it’s off to the bus. The driver drops the team outside the Hyatt in an ankle-deep pond of sleet. Two hours later, the UCLA basketball caravan arrives with a police escort.

9:50 p.m: Fat-cat Auburn players are spotted leaving St. Elmo’s, a famous Indy eatery where the filet mignon costs $39. Winthrop eats at the hotel restaurant, with a $14 limit. Fisher has chicken wings and cheesecake.

11:10: Freshman Dan Tollens has set up PlayStation’s “NCAA Final Four” video game on his hotel room television. The matchup is Auburn-Winthrop, of course, and Tollens goes 28 for 41 in an 81-37 rout of the Tigers. If only it would be this easy Thursday.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10 / Short Trip Has Big Consequences

10 a.m.: “We almost had a Lavin sighting,” Marshall jokes as he and Lynn exit the hotel restaurant.

Lynn: “Hey, if it was Michelle Pfeiffer in there, you wouldn’t move all day.”

12:34 p.m.: Bus departs for practice at RCA Dome.

12:37: Bus arrives at RCA Dome. OK, it’s about a 50-yard walk from the hotel to the arena, but the NCAA mandates that players take the bus. Could have shaved two minutes off the trip if there hadn’t been a red light.

12:45: Meyer instructs players to warm up. “Give me 10 Jerry Wests,” he says of a jumping exercise named after the former Laker star.

“Who’s Jerry West,” junior guard Adrian “Scratch” Stockman jokes.

The silhouette on the NBA logo, he’s told.

“Jerry West didn’t even want Dennis Rodman,” Scratch says.

Meyer: “OK, give me 10 Dennis Rodmans.”

1: Winthrop is welcomed to the RCA Dome floor with a sign, “Winthrop, We Believe.” One of the guys holding it is wearing a Syracuse sweatshirt.

1:15: Lynn Marshall, watching practice while trying to keep Kellen contained, insists she does not have a crush on Steve Lavin though admitting, “He is a nice-looking guy.”

Lynn wonders what this season will do to advance her husband’s career. Gregg and Lavin are about the same age, yet Lavin landed one of the plum posts in college when UCLA fired Jim Harrick.

For Gregg, it’s been a long road just to get to Winthrop.

“That’s the way it is in this business,” Lynn says.

Timing and connections?

“Look at Tommy Amaker. Boom, he’s at Seton Hall.”

1:30: Winthrop’s mandatory NCAA news conference. Dan Tollens tells reporters, “This is the time of my life, I’m going to live it up for what it is.”

Marshall says, “I did not come here to roll over.”

When three Auburn players are asked at their news conference if they had ever heard of Winthrop before this season, their answers are “No,” “No” and “No.”

Auburn played Winthrop two years ago.

8: Team dinner at the Milano Inn. The choices are spaghetti or lasagna, soda or iced tea. Wonder where Auburn is dining tonight?

10:15: Marshall gathers the team in the hotel restaurant for a final film session. After scrounging for a VCR,--anyone check UCLA’s suite?--the Eagles catch the second half of their Big South title game victory over Radford.

“Tomorrow, you go out and make history,” Marshall says. “Quite frankly, I’d say it’s 50-50. Every year it happens. This year it could be you.”

THURSDAY, MARCH 11: GAME DAY / Make Auburn Remember Us

9:40 a.m: UCLA Coach Steve Lavin is standing in the lobby. Lynn Marshall is nowhere in sight.

10:30: Team brunch at the hotel--pancakes, eggs, juice.

12:55 p.m.: Players and coaches board bus for 750-foot trip to arena.

1:50: An hour before tipoff, Jeff Meyer goes over assignments in the Winthrop locker room. Fisher will start on Auburn star forward Chris Porter--”Put a body on him.”

The locker room is silent.

2: The players begin pregame stretches. Rob Wallace steps over Juontonio Pinckney on his way to the restroom. Pinckney demands Wallace retrace his steps and walk around him.

Wallace: “You superstitious?”

JP: “You’re damn right.”

Marshall explains to Effiong how important the NCAA tournament is in the United States. “Bubbles, four months ago, what would you have been doing on a random Thursday afternoon?”

Bubbles smiles.

2:15: The team leaves the locker room for warmups, but Marshall stays behind, wringing his hands and pacing before sitting down in front of a chalkboard.

2:20: “Hello?” A maintenance worker interrupts Marshall’s trance to ask the coach if he needs the trash cans emptied. Marshall watches the Syracuse-Oklahoma State postgame interviews and is miffed when CBS reporter Michele Tafoya asks Oklahoma State Coach Eddie Sutton how he’s going to prepare for Auburn on Saturday.

“Listen to that!” Marshall barks. “What’s it going to take to play against Auburn?”

2:22: Mike Elder, an Indianapolis police officer, pokes his head in to wish Marshall luck. Elder will be Winthrop’s escort to the court. He says he’s 15-1 as an escort. He’s the cop who walked Princeton to its 1996 upset of UCLA.

2:24: Marshall picks up a piece of chalk and writes:

* “Five guys building a wall.

* “O, strength, smarts, composure.

* “Toughness.

* “Team of firsts.”

2:30: “I’m cold,” Marshall says. “It’s cold in here. Maybe I’m coming down with something. Is there a good crowd out there?

2:35: Marshall visits the restroom for the second time in an hour.

“Worst thing that can happen is that you get out there and you have to go to the bathroom,” he says.

2:40: The team has returned, and Marshall is ready for his final pep talk.

“On TV, they’re talking to the Oklahoma State coach and asking him how he’s going to do against Auburn,” Marshall says. “. . . Players that played against you two years ago don’t even remember you. Today’s the day you make everyone remember what you’re wearing on your chest.”

Pinckney leads a short prayer and Winthrop breaks with “One, two, three, winners!”

THE GAME / Team Finally Gets the Big Point

It’s 13-13 with 9:58 left in the first half. Porter, Auburn’s star, has not scored. For a moment, you think this might be the day David slays Goliath. But all hell soon breaks loose as Auburn goes on a 24-5 tear.

Waterman’s new sneakers are hurting his feet. Toxey appears nervous. Auburn is flat-out awesome, and it’s 37-18 at the half.

Marshall is calm in the locker room, despite Winthrop’s 15 first-half turnovers.

“You can bow your heads, come back and fight, chip away and get back in the game, minute by minute,” he says. “Or toss it in and get beat by 40. The choice is yours.”

But the choice, it turns out, is Auburn’s, and the Tigers toy with Winthrop.

Afterward, Winthrop players are shellshocked.

Scratch Stockman says, “That was an ass-kicking, and you can put that in the paper.”

Winthrop President Anthony J. DiGiorgio stops by to thank the team for a great season.

Marshall says no lopsided defeat could erase the good memories of the season: “They’re yours to keep forever.”

What was the point?

Reggie Coles, a seldom-used senior reserve from Richmond, Va., got into the game with three minutes left and sank a three-pointer. It’s in the record book.

“I know guys in high school that aren’t even on this Earth anymore,” he says. “I knew guys that would give their left arm to play in college, let alone the NCAAs. I’m proud to say I was affiliated with this.”

Tollens did a lot better against Auburn in his video game. In the real game, he scored two points in eight minutes.

Oh, Tollens did get his watch.

What was the point?

“I don’t think people know how much this means to a tiny school, a 16th seed,” Tollens says. “This means the world. We were here, we had our time.”

What was the point?

“You take the Winthrops out of this tournament, and the UT Chattanoogas, and it doesn’t have near the allure or the attraction,” Marshall says. “Because so many people were intrigued by this particular team, at this particular time. And there will be another team next year.”

Marshall leaves the Winthrop locker room and heads for the bus. Lynn and Kellen join him for the long walk back.

“Kellen insists that Winthrop won,” Lynn says.

In the big picture, who could argue?

*

NCAA Tournament Coverage: Pages 8-9