Sweet Dreams

With a band of five scholarship players, eight walk-ons and a frenetic coach who had to walk away for 3 1/2 games this season to get his bearings, Bucknell upset mighty Kansas on Friday night, then went back to the Holiday Inn.

“The Holiday Inn in, I don’t know, wherever 14 seeds go. We’re out there,” Coach Pat Flannery said.

In the lobby, the Northern Iowa pep band played the Bucknell fight song for the team that pulled off the kind of upset theirs couldn’t, sending home third-seeded Kansas -- a team that had begun the season ranked No. 1.

“Nobody wanted to go to their room,” guard Michael Lee said after sleeping in until lunch the next day. “We all wanted to see what they would say about us on TV.”

Chris McNaughton, the 6-foot-11 center from Germany, banked in the little jump hook that gave Bucknell a one-point lead.

Then he watched Wayne Simien’s desperate shot clang off the rim at the buzzer.

“It was crazy. My shot banked in off the glass,” McNaughton said. “His could have gone in too.

“I was just upset Vermont beat Syracuse,” he deadpanned. “That kind of took away a little of our air time.”

After pulling the biggest upset of the first two days of the NCAA tournament, Bucknell (23-9) plays sixth-seeded Wisconsin (23-8) today for a berth in the Sweet 16.

Guard Kevin Bettencourt said there was no need for the players to send out their laundry.

“All of us on the team, we packed for the whole weekend. It sounds crazy,” he said. “But our goal is to win two games, not one.”

Flannery played at Bucknell, returning to his alma mater after winning the NCAA Division III national championship at Lebanon Valley College in 1994.

When he told school officials during an 11-game winning streak that included an upset of a top 25-ranked Pittsburgh that he needed a break, they gave him one.

“I got sick, mentally and physically. I kind of hit a wall. I wasn’t enjoying things,” Flannery said. “I was headed to a place nobody should be.”

He said he is better now, so don’t make too much of his sideline antics.

“I don’t know if that will ever change. That’s who I am,” Flannery said.

“I took a step back. Bucknell was so supportive. They were calm. They didn’t let me come back too soon. They were right. I got some help.”

Though another notably excitable coach, the late Jim Valvano, once coached there, Bucknell is sort of a Duke of the Susquehanna, an elite academic institution with only 3,350 undergraduates, 25 minutes south of Williamsport, Pa., home of the Little League World Series.

The average SAT score of the students admitted last year was 1,351, and the basketball team’s graduation rate of 100% tied with Utah State for No. 1 among teams in this NCAA tournament for the most recent period studied by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.

Until recently, the Bison didn’t give out basketball scholarships, competing in the Patriot League, which sponsored Division I basketball on a non-scholarship level, more like the Ivy League or Division III.

Flannery gave out three scholarships last season, and two more this season -- and no, those aren’t the five players who do all the scoring. (Those who aren’t on scholarship typically get need-based financial aid to help with the $38,000 cost of tuition plus room and board.)

“I bet half the kids on our team don’t know who’s on scholarship and who’s not,” said guard Bettencourt, who made five three-pointers against Kansas.

McNaughton, who grew up in Germany after his father married his mother while stationed there in the Army and decided the family should stay, is an engineering major who chose Bucknell partly because of academics.

“I like being the Bucknell, the college who can come here and beat one of those guys,” McNaughton said. “I would rather be playing for the underdog.

“Bucknell had never won a game. I think what happened to us is more exciting than seeing your name in the paper in the top 25.”