He Took Manhattan; It Wasn’t Even a Stretch

During the seventh inning of exhibition baseball games played on fields all over Florida and Arizona on Thursday, thousands of fans rose to their feet to pay tribute to tiny Manhattan College’s 75-60 victory over Florida in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament.

Yes, these tournament bracket pools have gotten totally out of hand.

Those fans may have been singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” but they were celebrating the tradition of Manhattan College athletics, whether they realized it or not. Manhattan’s sports teams are nicknamed the Jaspers, so christened because of the Catholic school’s first baseball coach, Brother Jasper of Mary, who in the late 19th century invented the seventh-inning stretch.

According to the legend, Brother Jasper also served as the school’s Prefect of Discipline, which sounds like a job Bob Knight might have held in a previous life. During one especially hot afternoon, with Manhattan baseball fans sweating out a game against a semipro team, Brother Jasper interrupted the seventh inning when he noticed the crowd growing restless.

After calling timeout, Brother Jasper advised Manhattan fans to stand up, stretch awhile and basically chill out in an 1880s kind of way.

With that, the seventh-inning stretch was born.

Thursday, the Jaspers were playing a different sport, and Billy Donovan’s players were the ones fading down the stretch, but the message to the 2004 Gators was the same: stop everything, stay where you are, take a timeout.

See you in November.

Technically, the Jaspers were underdogs. Manhattan was seeded 12th and Florida fifth in the East Rutherford Regional. But this year, NCAA tournament underdogs aren’t what they used to be. Saint Joseph’s is top-seeded in the East Rutherford Regional and a hopeless underdog, if you choose to buy into Billy Packer’s pump-up-the-ratings bluster.

Manhattan over Florida was the thinking fan’s pick, the best-bet bracket-buster -- perhaps the most fancied No. 12 seed since the first NCAA bracket sheet was belched out of an office copier.

Manhattan came in 24-5, 11-1 in its last dozen games. Florida was 20-10 but 7-6 in its last 13.

Manhattan plays an up-tempo style with a physical inside game. Florida is soft inside and not defensively tough anywhere.

Manhattan is coached by Bobby Gonzalez, this year’s mid-major-name-on-the-rise, eager to make a mark this March with jobs now open at St. John’s, Georgetown and Miami. Donovan reached the final in 2000, but hasn’t lasted beyond the second round since.

By game time, the Jaspers’ bandwagon was already SRO -- with Rudy Giuliani, a Manhattan alum, sending the team a go-get-’em fax that Gonzalez read aloud to his players as motivational fodder.

The Jaspers advanced, getting 26 points from their best player, two-time Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference player of the year Luis Flores. The biggest surprise was the margin of victory: 15 points, the second-largest ever by a No. 12 seed over a No. 5.

Next, Manhattan plays Wake Forest, a No. 4 seed that looked very vulnerable in a 79-78 victory over 13th-seeded Virginia Commonwealth. VCU, making its first NCAA appearance in eight years, had a chance to tie in the final minute, but handled the waning seconds like a tournament sapling. After throwing the ball away, VCU wasted 14 seconds -- from 26 to 11.9 -- before deciding to commit the obvious foul.

Rookie mistake? Or just one more round of the same old story?

VCU is coached by 29-year-old Jeff Capel, youngest Division I coach in the country ... and a former Duke player who went 1-8 against Wake Forest during the Tim Duncan era.

Thursday’s results produced a second-round matchup that sounds torn from an old Final Four -- Syracuse versus Maryland -- and a coaching confrontation that sounds like a morality play -- Phil Martelli versus Bob Knight.

It’s not every year you get the last two NCAA champions facing off in the second round. Syracuse won the tournament in 2003, Maryland took the title in 2002, and one of them will be done this weekend when the Orangemen and Terrapins meet Saturday in Denver.

Who goes out first?

Syracuse, which needed 43 points and nine three-pointers from sophomore Gerry McNamara to turn back Brigham Young, 80-75?

Or Maryland, which needed four pressure free throws in the final minute to hold off Texas-El Paso, 86-83?

Those close calls, along with Michigan State’s 72-66 loss to Nevada, showed the value of seedings and reputation once the gates open on the final 64. Michigan State is another recent champion, winning the tournament in 2000. Nevada, seeded 10th in the St. Louis Regional, was making its first NCAA appearance in 19 years and was previously winless in the tournament.

It’s good that they play the games. Packer’s hot air will keep a tournament afloat only so long. And how about this bit of counterpoint in the Packer-Martelli skirmish? Saint Joseph’s 82, Liberty 63 -- sending Martelli and the Hawks into the second round against Knight’s Texas Tech squad, a 76-73 winner over Charlotte.

CBS, moving swiftly, is planning a split-screen remote showdown -- Packer in Denver, Martelli in Buffalo -- before Saturday’s game.

In the meantime, Packer can be seen in a heavy-rotation pizza commercial, looking amazingly restrained. Not once does Packer poke his finger in the chest of the guy sitting next to him and bellow, “You need to learn your takeout pizzeria history, Papa John! Let me tell you about a slice of pepperoni and mushroom I had at Shakey’s in 1962!”

Fortunately, they kept him to a script.