A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  “I still think we’re going to play our best basketball in this program when I get all my own players here,” Evans said. “That’s why no matter what happens this year, the experience the freshmen are getting is bound to help us.”

  Evans is working on the future throughout the day. That and his basement. At lunch, he and his assistant coaches are joined by Darren Morningstar, a recent Naval Academy dropout. Like Nathan Bailey, who is currently a sophomore on the Pitt team, Morningstar ran afoul of the Academy’s honor code. He is 6–9 with potential and Vanderbilt is also interested in him. He will eventually enroll at Pitt.

  Back in his office, Evans gets a call from Don McLean, the 6–10 blue chipper from California. It was McLean that Evans and Calipari were visiting when they got caught in the earthquake and were on the plane that lost the engine. They have put in a lot of effort trying to get him already.

  Evans is not one of those coaches who gets on the phone with a recruit as if hearing the kid’s voice has transformed his life. He isn’t capable of that kind of false enthusiasm.

  “You doing all right?” he asks, picking up the phone. “I hear you’re playing pretty well.”

  They talk for a while. Calipari, who has been out of the office, comes back and Evans turns McLean over to him. Calipari is the enthusiastic one in the group. While Calipari is talking to McLean, Evans slips out so he can go home and check on his basement.

  It is just starting to snow when Evans gets in his car to drive back to campus. Once, basketball was little more than a sideshow at Pitt. And, ironically, football is making the headlines today because running back Craig (Ironhead) Heyward has decided to turn pro with one year of eligibility left. Evans has been through all that once with Charles Smith and will go through it again in the spring with Jerome Lane.

  Now, though, his mind is focused only on Providence. “If you guys don’t play with the kind of intensity you had during the second half against Oklahoma, you’ll be right back where you were at halftime of that game,” Evans tells his players. “This team can beat you if you don’t realize it can beat you.”

  Even on an ugly, snowy night, Fitzgerald Field House is packed. Basketball was meant to be played in gyms like this one. The crowd is on top of the court and into the game, the ceiling is low and the noise-level high.

  The start is routine. Two Lane free throws give Pitt a 6–5 lead with 15:45 left. Providence comes down and Carlton Screen misses a jumper. The rebound comes long to Miller, who feeds it quickly to Lane, racing down the right side.

  Lane has a step on Screen as he goes to the hoop. He goes up, the ball tucked in his right hand and slams the ball through. As soon as Lane’s arm makes contact with the rim, it collapses and the backboard shatters, shockingly and stunningly, into thousands of pieces. The effect is similar to that of a supernova exploding. The glass goes flying in all directions. It is amazing that no one is hurt.

  For a second, Lane stands stunned, looking at what he has done. Then, as his teammates come to greet him, he goes wild—and so do they. Everyone is hugging and high-fiving and generally losing it. The crowd is doing the same thing. No one is quite sure what to do next. Lane has just become the first player in college basketball history to shatter a backboard during a game.

  The coaches and the officials consult. It will take at least thirty minutes to bring in a new backboard and get it in place. The teams are sent to the locker room.

  “What happens if you do that in the NBA?” Lane asks Gore.

  “You get ejected.”

  “Coach,” Lane asks Evans, “you ever see that before?”

  “Not live,” Evans says. “Anyway, at least now I know where you’ll be the next forty-eight hours. You’ll be home replaying the damn thing on television a thousand times and getting turned on every time you see it.”

  The players have already decided on a new nickname for Lane: Conan, as in “the Barbarian.” Evans leaves them to relax.

  “I hate this,” he says. “Once the game starts you get over the nervousness and the butterflies. Now, I’ve got them all over again. Plus, I don’t know how the players will react to this.”

  Evans reminds his team that the score is only 8–5; he says they should forget about the dunk and think about the game. But, heading back for the court, he says to Smith, ‘Why don’t you let Jerome lead you guys out.”

  The delay is thirty minutes. As soon as they start playing again, Evans’s worst fears are realized. The first two times Lane touches the ball, he throws it into about the fourth row. Evans takes him out. “Wake up,” Evans yells. “Forget the damn dunk!”

  Slowly, the Panthers get their act together. They build a 37–24 lead—including another Lane dunk—but a careless flurry in the last minute allows Providence to creep within 39–28.

  Evans isn’t happy at halftime. “Eleven turnovers!” he yells. “Eleven! How many times have I told you not to dribble against the zone press?”

  Lane starts to argue. Evans cuts him off. “You see, you guys still don’t have the fucking mentality to be great. You make one dunk, Jerome, and then the next two times you touch the ball, you throw it into the stands! That’s ridiculous. If you don’t learn to put teams away, it will do you in, I promise you it will.”

  Evans has no idea how prescient his words will turn out to be. On this night, he gets what he wants, though. The Panthers score the first nine points of the second half, building the lead to 48–28. From there, it is a joyride to a 90–56 victory.

  Lane is the center of attention afterwards. “This is like a dream,” he says. “I keep thinking I’m going to wake up.” He smiles. “Oh well, another fantasy gone.”

  In the meantime, Evans heads for Hemingway’s, the hangout at the bottom of the hill where he and his friends go to eat and drink. His team is 14–2 and he is upbeat. But not overwhelmed.

  “This is still an immature team,” he says. “I’m still not sure how we’re going to react when it matters most. It’s still only January.”

  And there is still water on Evans’s bathroom floor.

  January 27 … Fairfax, Virginia

  Rick Barnes walked into his basketball team’s empty locker room, walked to the blackboard and wrote in large red letters: 9–0. Just below that he wrote: 0–9. It was forty-five minutes before George Mason would play American and Barnes’s players were on the floor loosening up. He wanted these numbers waiting for them when they returned.

  “They’ve never beaten us,” Barnes said, talking about American. “We’ve won nine straight and I know it’s got to end sooner or later. I just don’t want it to be tonight.”

  Even as a rookie coach, Barnes had already developed one characteristic of a veteran: He lost sleep over every game. George Mason, after struggling through December with a 5–4 record, had played well in January and was coming into this game with a three-game winning streak.

  Nonetheless, it had not been an easy month for Barnes. He had started to wonder if his hard-line regime might not be too hard-line. The team wasn’t playing badly, but he wondered if anyone connected with the team was having any fun.

  “We went on the road trip at the end of December to St. Bonaventure and West Virginia and when I got back I was just so depressed I thought the season was never going to end,” he said. No doubt, part of it was losing both games and the fact that Olean, New York, and Morgantown, West Virginia, are not the most wonderful places to be in December.

  “But it was more than that. I didn’t let Earl [Moore] play at St. Bonaventure because he was late for practice. We might have won if I’d let him play but I couldn’t go changing the rules just because we needed him. I just wasn’t enjoying myself, even after wins. If we won, I started worrying about the next game. If we lost, I brooded about it. Either way, I wasn’t happy.”

  Part of Barnes’s anxiety related to his wife, Candy, who was expecting their second child at any minute. He hated going on the road knowing he might miss the birth of his child. Finally, on the morning of Janu
ary 9th, Candy woke him at 4:30 A.M. saying she thought she was going into labor. George Mason was opening conference play that night against East Carolina at home, and Barnes had been lying in bed awake worrying about the game most of the night.

  He took Candy to the hospital and stayed with her until the baby was born, shortly after 1 P.M. He was excited and thrilled watching the birth. Within an hour, though, he had left the hospital to drive back to Fairfax for his team’s pregame meal. The Patriots won that night, making Barnes two-for-two on the day. But two nights later, they lost at home to North Carolina—Wilmington, then went to Richmond and lost, dropping their record to 7–6.

  Barnes knew he needed to back off, for his sake and the team’s. He decided to stop going to pregame meal, hoping that would take some pressure off the players. He decided to drop the Pride Sheet. Instead, he and the academic counselors met individually with each player once a week to talk about class work. “This way, if a kid is having trouble it’s a private thing, not something everyone on the team knows about,” Barnes said.

  He began trying to work the younger players into the games more to make them feel more a part of the team; that also let the older ones know that if they didn’t produce or work hard he wasn’t afraid to take them out. None of these changes happened overnight. Barnes was learning on the job and he told the players that. “I can make mistakes too,” he said. “As long as all the mistakes we make are because we’re trying like hell to do the best we can, we’ll be okay.”

  The team responded. They beat Liberty—as they were supposed to—William and Mary, and Navy. That made them 10–6, 3–2 in the league, and brought American to the Patriot Center on this cold January night. It seemed as if everyone at the game was secretly wishing to be home, curled up in front of a fire.

  American was a team that after a slow start, was just beginning to find itself. The Eagles were also 3–2 in league play and were as healthy as they had been all year, except for Coach Ed Tapscott, who had been sideswiped by a falling tree branch while taking out the garbage. He had scratched the cornea in his right eye and was wearing a Captain Hook eye patch.

  Barnes had a lot of respect for Tapscott as a coach and a person. “I can’t figure Eddie out though,” he said. “How can anyone smart enough to be a lawyer [Tapscott has a law degree] be stupid enough to be a coach?” Tapscott often wondered the same thing.

  In spite of all the talks he had given himself about loosening up, Barnes was tight. “This game could make or break us,” he said to the assistants, probably marking the seventeenth time in seventeen games he had made that statement. “What kind of crowd we got out there? Nothing, I’ll bet. This weather on a Wednesday night, we won’t have any kind of crowd.”

  Frank Novakoski, the trainer, walked in. He had started a pregame ritual in which he handed Barnes a safety pin for good luck just before he went in for his last pregame talk to the team. “This one is number four,” Novakoski said.

  Barnes looked at the pin like a scientist studying a specimen. “Looks lucky to me,” he said, and stuck it in his pocket as he walked across the hall from the coaches’ dressing room to the players’.

  “Okay, see these numbers,” he said, pointing to the 9–0 and 0–9. “You know the 9–0 is us against AU. But I guarantee you that right now Eddie Tapscott has this number [0–9] written on his blackboard and he’s circling it. Your job tonight is to get a good start and make them think they’ll never be able to beat you. Do that and we’ll be all right.”

  As the players headed for the floor, Barnes shook his head. “I’ve got absolutely no feel for this game. I just wish it was ten o’clock right now and we had won.”

  It would not be that easy. It was American that got the good start, jumping to a 17–9 lead during the first seven minutes. Barnes had been right about the crowd—the attendance was only 2,561—and the building was both cold and quiet. Everyone in the place could hear every sneaker squeak, and the coaches felt as if they had to lower their voices in the huddle to keep from being overheard.

  The Patriots came back after the poor start and pushed to a 26–22 lead, thanks to two pretty baskets by Steve Smith, the lanky 6–3 sophomore who was the team’s most improved player. But AU came right back and, helped by an awful last ninety seconds during which GMU committed three straight turnovers, the Eagles led 37–33 at halftime.

  Barnes was almost out of control at halftime. “How the fuck can you have fourteen turnovers in the first half?” he demanded. “How? Have you guys got any pride at all? How can you come to a game like this and not be ready to play? I don’t fucking understand it! I really don’t! You go out there and play like a bunch of damn pussies! You do that in the second half and you’ll get beat, I promise you.”

  He walked out. In the hallway, he turned to his coaches with a half-smile on his face, feeling sheepish. “I swore I wasn’t going to curse anymore,” he said. “For thirty-two years I never used that kind of language, now I can’t make myself stop.” Then he went back in and, calmly, talked about what had to be done in the second half.

  The second half was just plain old good basketball on both sides. AU built the lead to 53–45 and then to 59–49 with eleven minutes to go. Barnes abandoned his zone for man-to-man, feeling he had to do something to get his team to play more aggressively. It worked. The Patriots came back, cutting the lead to 63–60. From there, every possession mattered, the lead seesawing. AU had the lead, 77–75, and the ball with ninety seconds left, but Daryl Holmes missed the front end of a one-and-one and Kenny Sanders tied it at 77–77 with two free throws. Both teams had chances to win in the last minutes but couldn’t convert.

  It was ten o’clock and Barnes still didn’t have his win. The overtime started poorly for the Patriots. AU grabbed an 84–80 lead on two baskets. But the Patriots tied it at 84–84 before Mike Sumner put AU back up, 85–84, hitting one of two free throws.

  The Patriots ran the clock down, looking for a shot. Finally, with time running out, Davis drove into the middle and went up. Holmes blocked the shot. The whistle blew. Foul on Holmes. “I’ve only got one eye so I couldn’t see it,” Tapscott said later. “But from what they tell me …”

  He had a complaint. The call was close, the kind that many officials will let go at the end of the game. But Davis got two free throws with seven seconds left. He made both. George Mason led, 86–85. American called time.

  Both coaches were thinking the same thing. Tapscott wanted his best player, point guard Mike Sampson, to penetrate and look either for a shot or a pass as the defense came to meet him. Barnes wanted to cut Sampson off and force someone else to take the last shot. But in denying penetration, he wanted to be sure his defense didn’t get lazy and allow Sampson to surprise them by pulling up for a jumper.

  The ball came in to Sampson. Sure enough, he drove the middle. The defense came to him. Sampson coolly kicked the ball to Dale Spears on the left wing. He was open from seventeen feet. The ball went up and, as everyone held their breath, it hit the front of the rim, rolled around and off as the buzzer finally sounded.

  Both coaches had gotten what they wanted. Tapscott had put the ball in the hands of his creator and told him to create a good shot. He had done that. Barnes didn’t want Sampson to shoot the ball. His defense had done that. The only difference was in execution. Spears had been unable to make a makeable shot. That was basketball, though. If Spears had made the shot, Tapscott would have been no smarter, Barnes no dumber. It was a perfect example of the limits of coaching. In the end, all you can do is hope the players can play.

  Barnes knew he had been lucky, but he wasn’t complaining. “I called you guys pussies and you proved me wrong,” he told the players. “Coaching didn’t win that game at all. You guys did. It wasn’t pretty, but you guys got the job done. That’s what matters.”

  Back with the coaches, Barnes sighed. “I almost cost us that game,” he said. “I got them uptight because I was uptight. I made American into a monster instead of a good team. I�
�ve got to back off.”

  He shook his head and smiled. “Live and learn, I guess. I guess I’m lucky. Tonight, I didn’t have to learn the hard way.”

  January 29 … Jeffersonville, Indiana

  A winter Friday night in the state of Indiana means one thing to most people here: high school basketball. In most of the small towns in the state, the fate of the local high school team ranks in importance just ahead of the fate of Indiana University’s basketball team. The Hoosiers’ fate ranks in importance only slightly ahead of the fate of the free world.

  For two years now, one high school basketball player in Indiana has received more attention than most college players will receive in a lifetime. His name is Damon Bailey, and his notoriety is best summed up by the simple fact that at age sixteen he is already in that rare category of athlete who, at least in this state, needs no last name for identification.

  Here, he is just “Damon,” the same way Dr. J. is Dr. J. and Magic is Magic. For a high school sophomore this is quite an honor—or burden.

  Damon first began to become “Damon” as an eighth grader at Shawswicke High School when Indiana Coach Bob Knight made a couple of trips to see him play. Bob Knight going to see an eighth grader is an event that, in this state, is treated about the way Moses’ return with the stone tablets might have been handled if there had been advance publicity.

  Anointed by Knight, Damon somehow lived up to his clippings as a freshman, leading Bedford–North Lawrence High School to the state Final Four. Now, as a sophomore, he is averaging 29.3 points, 9.5 rebounds, and 4 assists a game. BNL is 14–1.

  The opponent tonight is formidable, though. Jeffersonville is also ranked in the state’s top ten. A town of twenty-two thousand, Jeffersonville is located at the state’s southern tip. It is actually a suburb of Louisville, just across the bridge into Indiana. Both schools are members of the Hoosier Hills Conference, which consists of schools in the southern part of the state.