Just catching up on posting the two Washington Post articles from this week, the first on Seattle University basketball and the second on Darryl Webster.
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It was a blip on the college basketball holiday landscape, one of those scores that might cause people to squint their eyes in surprise for a moment before moving on:
Seattle 59, Virginia 53.
For the Cavaliers, the Dec. 22 loss was certainly a surprise but, given that it came two days after a narrow escape against Norfolk State, probably not a shock. It did end a five-game winning streak and it came at home against a school most of the 8,679 fans at John Paul Jones Arena might not know from the gone-but-not-forgotten Seattle SuperSonics.
"We took one on the chin," was the way Virginia Coach Tony Bennett described it.
For Seattle, a school that played under the name Chieftains in its glory days back in the 1950s but now calls itself the Redhawks in its new incarnation, it was far more than that. It was evidence that the often-Sisyphean feat of moving back into Division I is not impossible. The rock may not be up the hill, but it is closer to the top than people may think or know.
"If you looked at the budget we have and the planning that's been done you would stop and go, 'Wow, these guys are serious,' " Seattle Coach Cameron Dollar said after the biggest win in his two seasons as the Redhawks' coach. "We know we've got a ways to go, but a win like this shows all of us the potential that is there."
In the past 30 years, more and more schools have tried to make the jump to Division I, tempted by the huge dollars that can be made by reaching the NCAA tournament. Of course, what most presidents and athletic directors miss when they line up to collect that money is that there are now 346 teams in Division I and 68 NCAA tournament bids. Do the math.
Seattle, however, is not your typical Division I newbie. It has, to say the least, a rich basketball history. In the early 1950s, Seattle became the first and only team to beat the Harlem Globetrotters, back when the Globetrotters played real games. In 1958, led by a pretty decent player out of the District named Elgin Baylor, the Chieftains made the Final Four, upset top-ranked Kansas State and then lost the championship game to Kentucky when Baylor was forced to play with an injured rib. From then until 1980, Seattle had 27 players drafted by the NBA, the greatest of them being Baylor, who went on to a Hall of Fame career with the Lakers.
Click here for the rest of the column: Seattle basketball is on a long journey back to full Division I status
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For all the stories about what can go wrong in college athletics, there are still occasionally stories about what can go right.
One of those stories unfolded Saturday afternoon at Smith Center, when Harvard came to town to play George Washington. The Crimson pulled out a 67-62 victory to up their record to 12-3, rallying with its two leading scorers on the bench with injuries that occurred during the game.
Christian Webster, Landon Class of 2009, started at shooting guard for Harvard. He came into the game averaging 14.1 points per game, making him the second-leading scorer for the Crimson, and had eight points in 14 minutes when he felt a sharp pain in his hip during a scramble for the ball inside.
Even with treatment, he could barely walk back up the steps from the locker room at halftime, so he sat on the bench, eyes rimmed in red from the pain and from frustration at not being able to play in his homecoming game.
But as Harvard rallied from a seven-point halftime deficit, no one cheered harder for the Crimson than Darryl Webster, Coolidge High School Class of 1982 and GW Class of 1986, proud father of the injured Harvard sophomore with the sweet shot and the calm demeanor. A few rows up from the Webster family sat Gerry Gimelstob, who Darryl Webster would tell you was largely responsible for his son being on the floor in a Harvard uniform.
"I was raised by my grandparents," Darryl Webster said as people began to file into the gym. "My grandfather never got beyond the fourth grade. I was lucky to graduate from high school. I had a 2.0 grade-point average and bad SATs. But Gerry took a chance on me. I came here and got into the remedial education program before my freshman year.
"Even then, it was a struggle at first. Gerry had a rule we had to go to study hall every day or come here and run around the building at 5 o'clock in the morning. I went to study hall. Sometime my sophomore year, the light went on. I had never really like to read. All of a sudden, I loved to read. It changed my life."
Gimelstob was in his first year as George Washington's coach when he recruited Webster. "The school hadn't really been recruited the inner city in D.C.," he said Saturday. "I thought to be successful we had to recruit there. There was too much talent right on our doorstep to not give it a shot."
Click here for the rest of the story: Darryl Webster goes from Coolidge to GW to proud father of a Harvard man
Showing posts with label Harvard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harvard. Show all posts
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Harvard beating BC -- one reason I love college basketball; Stories of Tommy Amaker
If you want to know why I love college basketball, consider the following: In the calendar year 2009, Harvard University has a record of 2-0 against crosstown rival Boston College. In that same calendar year, North Carolina coached by hard-working Hall of Famer Roy Williams was 0-1 against Boston College. Duke, coached by two-time Olympic coach and Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski was 1-1 against the Eagles.
Think about that: Harvard, which last played in the NCAA Tournament in 1946 (its only appearance) has beaten BC twice—once last January a few days after the Eagles had won AT North Carolina—and once last night, 73-67. Both Harvard victories took place (surprise) at BC.
Now you may say I have a bias here—and I do—because I’ve known Harvard Coach Tommy Amaker since he was a high school junior. In this case though my bias has very little to do with it, especially since Frank Sullivan, the man Amaker succeeded at Harvard, is a good friend whose firing three years ago was grossly unfair.
In fact, I would say this: if any Ivy League team beat an ACC team two seasons in a row I would get a big kick out of it. It just isn’t supposed to happen. And yet, in college basketball, results like that DO happen. Already this season Cornell has won at Alabama and in seasons past my friends in The Patriot League have pulled off some decent sized upsets as in Bucknell over Kansas and Arkansas in back-to-back NCAA Tournaments and Holy Cross going into Notre Dame and beating the Irish in the NIT.
Let’s go back to Amaker for a moment. I remember the first time I saw him play because it’s a funny story. I was doing a magazine piece on Mike Krzyzewski, who had just finished his first season at Duke and had more or less washed out in recruiting—finishing second for players like Chris Mullin, Bill Wennington, Uwe Blab and Jim Miller. In recruiting, finishing second and $4 will get you a latte at Starbucks.
Krzyzewski was in Washington to see Johnny Dawkins play in the old Jelleff League, which was up Wisconsin Avenue in northwest DC. The league was a Washington tradition, with games played indoors and outdoors and was most famous for a game in the early 1970s when DeMatha was supposed to play St. Anthony’s for the championship. Because DeMatha Coach Morgan Wootten had refused to schedule St. Anthony’s during the regular season, St. Anthony’s Coach John Thompson played his cheerleaders in the game.
“If he won’t play me in the winter, I’m not playing him in the summer,” Thompson said at the time.
When Thompson was the coach at Georgetown he refused to recruit any of Wootten’s great players. I asked him about that once and he said to me, “there are some people on this earth who you can live away from.” Of course now that Wootten and Thompson are both retired and in the Hall of Fame they joke when Wootten appears on Thompson’s radio show about how the media created their alleged feud.
Sure. And Thompson and Lefty Driesell were buddies back then too.
Anyway, on this particular night, Krzyzewski was sitting in the stands watching Dawkins play when Red Jenkins, then the coach at W.T. Woodson High School in northern Virginia stopped to say hello to him. “You need to stay for the next game,” Jenkins said. “You need to see my point guard. He’s only going to be a junior and he’s little but watch him play.”
Krzyzewski figured he didn’t have much else to do so he decided to stick around at least for a few minutes to see what Jenkins was talking about. “Red’s a good coach,” he said. “I don’t think he’d tell me to watch this kid unless he was pretty good.”
By halftime, Krzyzewski was like a teen-age kid in love for the first time. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Amaker, who probably weighed about 140 pounds at the time. Someone had pointed Amaker’s mother out to Krzyzewski and at halftime he walked over and said (probably breaking about 14 NCAA rules) to her: “Your son is going to look great in Duke blue.”
The funny thing is Amaker really wanted to go to Maryland because John Lucas had been his boyhood hero. But Lefty had recruited a kid named Keith Gatlin so he didn’t pursue Amaker, who was only 6-feet-tall, that hard. A few years later when Amaker was a junior at Duke and Gatlin was a sophomore at Maryland, Gatlin sat out a game at Duke with a bad back.
That was the year I was in Indiana doing ‘Season on the Brink.’ Two days after the game at Duke, Maryland played at Notre Dame. I drove up to South Bend to see the game and my friend Sally Jenkins, who was covering the Terrapins at the time. When I walked into the arena the first person I saw was Driesell.
“Hey Lefty, how’s Gatlin feeling?” I asked.
Lefty looked at me quizzically. “Gatlin?” he said. “He’s fine.”
“Really? I saw where he didn’t play at Duke because something was wrong with his back.”
“Oh that was nothing,” Lefty said waving his hand. “He just had a case of Amaker-back.”
Any guard knowing he was going to be guarded by Amaker for 40 minutes began to feel back pain. Gatlin was no exception.
Amaker seemed destined for stardom when he became a college coach. In his third year at Seton Hall he took the Pirates to the Sweet Sixteen and he had a big time recruiting class on the way including Eddie Griffin, who was supposed to be a superstar. But Griffin proved to be a troubled kid and at the end of the ’01 season he left for the NBA and Amaker left for Michigan. There, he constantly seemed on the verge of turning the program around after taking over in the wake of the revelations about The Fab Five, but never made the NCAA Tournament in six seasons. He was fired after the ’07 season—a stunning turnaround for someone who had appeared to be a lock for coaching stardom.
He landed at Harvard but not without controversy, although it wasn’t his doing. Frank Sullivan had done remarkable work keeping Harvard competitive for 16 years working with one hand tied behind his back in recruiting because Harvard’s admissions standards were far more difficult than any other school in the Ivy League—not to mention the entire country.
When Amaker got the job, Harvard agreed to loosen the admissions standards to bring them in line with the rest of The Ivy League. Naturally, other Ivy League coaches instantly noticed that Amaker was recruiting kids that Sullivan couldn’t have touched and they talked about it to Pete Thamel of The New York Times. Harvard’s response should have been simple: “Yes, we decided to give our new coach a level playing field to recruit just as we do in football and hockey.” Instead, some blowhard in admissions insisted the standards hadn’t changed and Bob Scalise, the athletic director, tried to claim Amaker was just a better recruiter than Sullivan.
Whether that’s true no one will ever know because the two men were working under completely different sets of rules. Regardless, Amaker’s done a good recruiting job with a more level playing field and his third Harvard team appears to be behind only Cornell right now in The Ivy League. The Crimson play at Cornell on January 30th and host the Big Red on February 20th. Both those games will probably be worth seeing.
Maybe next year there can be an ACC-Ivy League Challenge Series. As of right now, The Ivies appear to have the edge. Come on, even if that’s not close to true, you have to love it. I wonder when the BC folks will let Harvard know that they won’t be playing anymore. My over-under is sometime this morning.
Think about that: Harvard, which last played in the NCAA Tournament in 1946 (its only appearance) has beaten BC twice—once last January a few days after the Eagles had won AT North Carolina—and once last night, 73-67. Both Harvard victories took place (surprise) at BC.
Now you may say I have a bias here—and I do—because I’ve known Harvard Coach Tommy Amaker since he was a high school junior. In this case though my bias has very little to do with it, especially since Frank Sullivan, the man Amaker succeeded at Harvard, is a good friend whose firing three years ago was grossly unfair.
In fact, I would say this: if any Ivy League team beat an ACC team two seasons in a row I would get a big kick out of it. It just isn’t supposed to happen. And yet, in college basketball, results like that DO happen. Already this season Cornell has won at Alabama and in seasons past my friends in The Patriot League have pulled off some decent sized upsets as in Bucknell over Kansas and Arkansas in back-to-back NCAA Tournaments and Holy Cross going into Notre Dame and beating the Irish in the NIT.
Let’s go back to Amaker for a moment. I remember the first time I saw him play because it’s a funny story. I was doing a magazine piece on Mike Krzyzewski, who had just finished his first season at Duke and had more or less washed out in recruiting—finishing second for players like Chris Mullin, Bill Wennington, Uwe Blab and Jim Miller. In recruiting, finishing second and $4 will get you a latte at Starbucks.
Krzyzewski was in Washington to see Johnny Dawkins play in the old Jelleff League, which was up Wisconsin Avenue in northwest DC. The league was a Washington tradition, with games played indoors and outdoors and was most famous for a game in the early 1970s when DeMatha was supposed to play St. Anthony’s for the championship. Because DeMatha Coach Morgan Wootten had refused to schedule St. Anthony’s during the regular season, St. Anthony’s Coach John Thompson played his cheerleaders in the game.
“If he won’t play me in the winter, I’m not playing him in the summer,” Thompson said at the time.
When Thompson was the coach at Georgetown he refused to recruit any of Wootten’s great players. I asked him about that once and he said to me, “there are some people on this earth who you can live away from.” Of course now that Wootten and Thompson are both retired and in the Hall of Fame they joke when Wootten appears on Thompson’s radio show about how the media created their alleged feud.
Sure. And Thompson and Lefty Driesell were buddies back then too.
Anyway, on this particular night, Krzyzewski was sitting in the stands watching Dawkins play when Red Jenkins, then the coach at W.T. Woodson High School in northern Virginia stopped to say hello to him. “You need to stay for the next game,” Jenkins said. “You need to see my point guard. He’s only going to be a junior and he’s little but watch him play.”
Krzyzewski figured he didn’t have much else to do so he decided to stick around at least for a few minutes to see what Jenkins was talking about. “Red’s a good coach,” he said. “I don’t think he’d tell me to watch this kid unless he was pretty good.”
By halftime, Krzyzewski was like a teen-age kid in love for the first time. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Amaker, who probably weighed about 140 pounds at the time. Someone had pointed Amaker’s mother out to Krzyzewski and at halftime he walked over and said (probably breaking about 14 NCAA rules) to her: “Your son is going to look great in Duke blue.”
The funny thing is Amaker really wanted to go to Maryland because John Lucas had been his boyhood hero. But Lefty had recruited a kid named Keith Gatlin so he didn’t pursue Amaker, who was only 6-feet-tall, that hard. A few years later when Amaker was a junior at Duke and Gatlin was a sophomore at Maryland, Gatlin sat out a game at Duke with a bad back.
That was the year I was in Indiana doing ‘Season on the Brink.’ Two days after the game at Duke, Maryland played at Notre Dame. I drove up to South Bend to see the game and my friend Sally Jenkins, who was covering the Terrapins at the time. When I walked into the arena the first person I saw was Driesell.
“Hey Lefty, how’s Gatlin feeling?” I asked.
Lefty looked at me quizzically. “Gatlin?” he said. “He’s fine.”
“Really? I saw where he didn’t play at Duke because something was wrong with his back.”
“Oh that was nothing,” Lefty said waving his hand. “He just had a case of Amaker-back.”
Any guard knowing he was going to be guarded by Amaker for 40 minutes began to feel back pain. Gatlin was no exception.
Amaker seemed destined for stardom when he became a college coach. In his third year at Seton Hall he took the Pirates to the Sweet Sixteen and he had a big time recruiting class on the way including Eddie Griffin, who was supposed to be a superstar. But Griffin proved to be a troubled kid and at the end of the ’01 season he left for the NBA and Amaker left for Michigan. There, he constantly seemed on the verge of turning the program around after taking over in the wake of the revelations about The Fab Five, but never made the NCAA Tournament in six seasons. He was fired after the ’07 season—a stunning turnaround for someone who had appeared to be a lock for coaching stardom.
He landed at Harvard but not without controversy, although it wasn’t his doing. Frank Sullivan had done remarkable work keeping Harvard competitive for 16 years working with one hand tied behind his back in recruiting because Harvard’s admissions standards were far more difficult than any other school in the Ivy League—not to mention the entire country.
When Amaker got the job, Harvard agreed to loosen the admissions standards to bring them in line with the rest of The Ivy League. Naturally, other Ivy League coaches instantly noticed that Amaker was recruiting kids that Sullivan couldn’t have touched and they talked about it to Pete Thamel of The New York Times. Harvard’s response should have been simple: “Yes, we decided to give our new coach a level playing field to recruit just as we do in football and hockey.” Instead, some blowhard in admissions insisted the standards hadn’t changed and Bob Scalise, the athletic director, tried to claim Amaker was just a better recruiter than Sullivan.
Whether that’s true no one will ever know because the two men were working under completely different sets of rules. Regardless, Amaker’s done a good recruiting job with a more level playing field and his third Harvard team appears to be behind only Cornell right now in The Ivy League. The Crimson play at Cornell on January 30th and host the Big Red on February 20th. Both those games will probably be worth seeing.
Maybe next year there can be an ACC-Ivy League Challenge Series. As of right now, The Ivies appear to have the edge. Come on, even if that’s not close to true, you have to love it. I wonder when the BC folks will let Harvard know that they won’t be playing anymore. My over-under is sometime this morning.
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