A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  February 22 … East Rutherford, New Jersey

  This was Bobby Martin’s chance to be a star. He was just a freshman on a team of big-name veterans, but now all eyes in the Meadowlands Arena were on him. He lined up, eyed the basket and, from forty-seven feet, he fired. For a moment, everyone held their breath. When the ball swished through, the place exploded.

  Twenty people were clapping and cheering and Martin, with a huge grin on his face, was picking ten dollars off the floor and stuffing it into his warmups. “I called it,” he said. “All the way.”

  It was noon on a freezing Monday morning and Pittsburgh was wrapping up its game-day shootaround the way it always did. Assistant Sports Information Director Kimball Smith put up ten dollars and each Panther took a shot from halfcourt for the money. The seniors went first, then the juniors and so on down the line. As soon as someone made a shot, the contest was over. Martin was the last shooter of the day.

  “That’s an omen,” Coach Paul Evans said, heading for the team bus. “The only problem is, I don’t know what kind.”

  Most of the omens had been good ones for the Panthers of late. They had just survived round two with Georgetown two days earlier and were here to play Seton Hall, a game that worried the hell out of Evans. “We haven’t had time to relax and come down from the Georgetown game,” he said. “We could use a rest tonight, not a game against a team that has to win to get into the NCAAs.”

  This had been a season without much rest for Evans. Even with a 19–3 record, it had been full of controversy and turbulence. After the victory over Providence in the Jerome Lane backboard-shattering game, Pitt had gone on the road to beat Boston College and rout St. John’s. The latter victory, by an 88–71 margin, was especially pleasing to Evans because his two starting seniors, Charles Smith and Demetrius Gore, had never beaten St. John’s before this season. Now they had done it twice. Putting bugaboos behind the older players was crucial, Evans thought.

  The high of St. John’s was followed by a low, a loss at home to Syracuse. When the Orangemen were on, they were as good as anyone in the country. They were on against Pitt, outrebounding them 44–23, a figure that astounded and mystified Evans.

  Still, his team bounced back and played very well to beat Villanova at Villanova three days later, 87–75. But that victory was obscured by yet another outbreak of the Evans—Rollie Massimino feud. Once again, the postgame handshake caused problems. Massimino had vowed not to shake Evans’s hand after the no-handshake incident in Pittsburgh the month before. But late in the game, with Pitt in command, he turned to his assistants on the bench and said, “I can’t not shake his hand after we get beat. That wouldn’t look right, especially at our place. I’ll shake his hand.”

  When the game was over, Massimino went to shake hands. Evans wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen when the two of them crossed paths, so when Massimino put his hand out, Evans, at the last moment, pulled his back. That was it for Massimino. “How dare you!” he screamed. “How dare you embarrass me that way in my house!”

  Evans responded with several profanities and for a moment it looked as if the two men might square off. Fortunately, their assistants guided them away from each other and the incident ended there. But the aftermath did not. Lane’s 24 points and 13 rebounds were forgotten and everyone focused on the Evans–Massimino war. Even Big East Commissioner Dave Gavitt, who would have denied that the Titanic was in trouble, took a few minutes out from his TV career to try to convince the two men to cool it. Gavitt does not like seeing his league’s dirty laundry washed in public, and this had become a very public no-rinse cycle.

  Still distracted by the publicity, Pitt went to Providence and played horribly. Only two three-point shots by Jason Matthews in the last seventy-six seconds saved the Panthers from a defeat. They finally escaped, 87–86.

  That brought them to Georgetown II. Georgetown I six weeks earlier had produced a major brawl, two Evans technicals, and a loss. Now, Evans’s whole family was in town for the sequel: his parents, his brother, and his sister with their families. For Evans, it got the weekend off to a hectic start.

  It was a hectic game, too, and an excellent one, with 16,721 jammed into the Pittsburgh Civic Arena. Down the stretch, Charles Smith, who finished with 25 points, made every big free throw and Pitt hung on for a 70–65 victory (Evans’s first in four tries against Georgetown). But just when it seemed the game would end as a hard-fought, clean game, all hell broke loose.

  With four seconds left, Sam Jefferson went to the foul line for Georgetown. He missed. In the ensuing scramble, Perry McDonald turned around and put an elbow into the back of Jerome Lane’s head. Lane went after McDonald and, before it was over, police had to help break up the fight and the officials declared the game over with those four seconds still left.

  John Thompson closed his locker room to the press and acted as if this fight was terribly upsetting. Why this fight was any more upsetting than any of the others Georgetown had been in over the years was anybody’s guess. On CBS-TV, former Seton Hall Coach Bill Raftery, now an analyst, watched the replay carefully. After seeing clearly that McDonald had started the fight, Raftery commented that this happened all too often in Georgetown games. He said it was Thompson’s responsibility to put a stop to it.

  These comments were not only correct, they were extremely reasonable. Others might have been much harsher. Coach Thompson, however, does not take criticism well. The next night on his local TV show in Washington—a show he is paid handsomely to do—Thompson ripped Raftery, saying that Raftery had no right to make such comments since he had been a failure as a coach himself.

  This was classic Thompson: Deflect the issue. To begin with, Raftery was a good coach, one who had a winning record at a school where winning was very difficult. But even if he had been a terrible coach the point was moot. One did not have to be a good coach—or a coach at all—to be appalled by Georgetown’s oncourt behavior over the years.

  Only one person could stop the fighting: Thompson. He was the only person who had enough sway with his players to say, “Don’t fight or else,” and know they wouldn’t fight. The shame of the whole thing was that all the fighting obscured what a superb coaching job Thompson was again doing.

  Evans wasn’t happy about the brawl. But he was delighted that, for once, the onus was on the other team and the other coach. The tape was all the defense Pitt needed. But the emotion that had been poured into the game—and the battle—worried Evans as he relaxed in his hotel suite waiting for the Seton Hall game.

  “I’m still not sure about the maturity of the older guys on this team,” he said. “I’m still not sure if they’re as serious about winning as they should be. I know they were all out partying on Saturday night. I told them to take it easy because we had this game coming up so fast, but I know they didn’t. I don’t think they ever will.

  “But the other side of it is they’ve played really well and consistently almost all year. It’s taken Charlie Smith until the last two weeks to really get over all the negatives of his first three years. Saturday he makes all his free throws. That’s progress.

  “This has really been a strange team to coach. I look at the four freshmen and they don’t need any fire-and-brimstone speeches. I don’t need to go bullshit with them. They know what has to be done to win and they just assume that we’ll go out and do it.

  “But the older guys I’ve always got to be on. There’s something about this program left over. I call it the Pittsburgh mentality. The other night I was on a radio show and a guy called in and said we never won any big games. We’ve beaten Florida, St. John’s twice, Villanova twice, Georgetown. I call those big games. But he says Syracuse was a big game.

  “To him it was—because we lost. Those are the only big games in Pittsburgh. Last year we beat Syracuse twice, so those weren’t big games. The older kids have heard that for a long time and it affects them. They wonder about it too. That’s why it’s important that we win the regular season t
itle because then I can say to them, ‘You won big games. You won a title. Now, let’s keep going.’

  “This is a good team. And yet, in the back of my mind, I still think we’re going to be better when these freshmen are juniors and seniors and it’s their program and their team. Tonight will be interesting because the older guys think we can just show up and win. If I can’t convince them otherwise, we’ll get beat.”

  Evans’s pregame talk focuses on exactly that theme. “There’s a label on this basketball program,” he tells the whole team, his eyes moving from Gore to Lane to Smith. “The label is ‘fat cat’. The bookies out there, the experts, everyone will tell you that when Pitt wins a big game they become fat cats and play lousy their next game. That’s what everyone is expecting tonight. That’s why you’re only one-point favorites—because you’re fat cats.

  “Seton Hall [which is 16–10] has to have this game. They figure they win tonight, they’ll make the tournament and that’s what their whole season is built around. Play like fat cats and you’ll get beat. Play the way you can and you’ll shut a lot of people up.”

  Evans also reminds the players about fighting. On the floor, before the game, he had talked to Seton Hall Coach P. J. Carlesimo about the Georgetown fight. Finally, the Big East had been roused into action and would issue an edict declaring that any player involved in a fight would receive an automatic suspension. Why it had taken so long for the Big East to act no one but Gavitt knew. But Carlesimo was afraid the referees would overreact.

  “If they start calling every contact and not letting it be a basketball game, I’ll tell them they’re full of it,” he told Evans. “My team doesn’t get in fights. I hope they understand that.”

  Evans wanted his team to understand that he wouldn’t tolerate fighting. “Just to remind you,” he said. “I don’t care about anybody else’s rules. If you get into a fight, you’re suspended, regardless of what the league does. Don’t do it.”

  Lane, who is never one to let anything get by, said, “What if the other guy starts it, are you suspended then?”

  “Jerome,” Evans answered, “you’re playing tonight, aren’t you?”

  Before Lane could answer, Gore, sitting next to Lane, just looked at him and said, “Damn, Jerome.”

  The whole room cracked up. “I just wanted to be sure,” Lane said, “because …”

  “Jerome,” Evans interjected, “shut up.” That broke everyone up again.

  The game, however, was no laughing matter. Evans had not been talking hyperbole when he said this game was a season-maker for Seton Hall. It was more than that. Carlesimo’s job was on the line. After the encouraging start in the NIT, the Pirates had gone through preseason 11–3. But when Big East play began, their problems began again. A loss on January 30 to St. John’s dropped them to 13–9. They were now 16–10 but the boos that Carlesimo was hearing from the 7,471 on hand for this game had become as much a part of a Seton Hall game as the national anthem.

  “I’m so used to it,” Carlesimo said, “that I don’t even hear it anymore.”

  Pitt started well, bolting to a 32–24 lead. But careless play, most notably by Gore, got Seton Hall going. By halftime the margin was down to 44–42. All of Evans’s concerns were coming into play. Smith was being outplayed inside by Seton Hall’s Mark Bryant. Gore was way off his game. The offense was stagnant.

  “You get up six points and you get fat-headed and lazy,” Evans told them at halftime. “This time when you build the lead, don’t look back. Keep on going. Finish them off.”

  They never got the chance. Seton Hall had been close against good teams before: a two-point loss to Florida, a two-point loss to Syracuse; one- and three-point losses to St. John’s. With another top team in their sights, they weren’t going to lose another one. Down 56–50 with fourteen minutes to go, Bryant took over the game. He dunked once, then twice. Smith fouled him. He hit a jump shot and a drive. With the score tied at 66–66, Seton Hall went on a 16–2 run and the score was never even close again.

  For Carlesimo, this was a breakthrough victory. His team had been close before but this was a win, an overwhelming one, over a team ranked sixth in the nation. Did he think he had saved his job?

  “Who knows?” he said. “But if I don’t get a new contract I can walk away feeling we did everything we could, feeling like the kids went out and dealt with it all and played up to their potential. I wanted this team to make the tournament. We should make it now. After that, what happens, happens.”

  What happened is that Seton Hall would make the tournament and Carlesimo would get a new contract. That it took the school as long as it did to renew him was more a reflection of the administration not understanding how much had gone into turning the program around than anything else.

  Even Evans, upset as he was with his team’s play, would concede later, “If we had to lose a game like that, I’m glad it was to P.J. If anybody deserves good things to happen to him, it’s him.”

  Evans had watched those last few minutes, listening to the cheers of the suddenly enthused Seton Hall fans, feeling helpless. His hope had been that his team would assert its superiority early before Seton Hall began to feel it could win. That hadn’t happened and as Bryant pounded away—32 points and 16 rebounds—Evans knew that all his worries had been justified.

  In the locker room, his voice was menacingly low as he prowled around the room. He walked over to Smith, who had shaved a small star into the side of his head. “Why don’t you shave a star into the other side of your head, Charlie? Do you realize you shot an air ball from the foul line? An air ball? And you let Bryant just kick your ass all night long.”

  He reached down as if to touch Smith’s head. “Another star right there, huh, Charlie?” Smith was so frustrated that when Evans reached his hand out, he slapped it away.

  Evans turned to Lane, “How many rebounds did you get, Jerome? Five? How many, fat cat?

  “I told you guys Saturday: Take it easy. We have another game in forty-eight hours. But you had to have beer blasts and strippers and just party all night. And the worst thing of all is that except for [Sean] Miller, every one of you quit at the end. That’s just terrible.

  “Okay fat cats. Curfew tonight is ten-thirty. We’ll be up to leave the hotel at six-forty-five. I would advise you to get all the sleep you can tonight because you’re going to need it.”

  The next afternoon, Evans gave his team the day off. He didn’t need to kill them in practice. He had already made his point.

  February 24 … Norman, Oklahoma

  For once, Larry Brown was relaxed, comfortable—even happy. If there was an afternoon when he should have been nervous, this was it. Kansas was about to play at Oklahoma, taking on what Brown thought was probably the most talented team in the country.

  Brown wasn’t worried. “We’ll probably get beat,” he said. “But I can’t be upset about it. The way these kids have played the last couple of weeks, there’s no way I can be mad with them. To tell you the truth, I’ve enjoyed these last three weeks as much as any time I’ve ever had in coaching. It’s been an amazing experience.”

  The experience had started with a four-game losing streak, a string that had capped a month of sheer frustration for everyone connected with the team. After the loss of Archie Marshall and Marvin Branch and after the loss at Iowa State, the Jayhawks had won a walkover nonconference game against Hampton University to raise their record to 12–4. Then came the losses.

  First at Notre Dame, 80–76, the kind of game Brown hates to lose. Then a real killer, 70–68 at Nebraska. The Jayhawks blew a 16-point lead in the last twelve minutes and, holding for the last shot with the score tied, Danny Manning dribbled the ball off his leg. Beau Reid then hit at the buzzer for Nebraska.

  “That was the low point for me,” Manning would say later, looking back at that night. “Losing was awful, but feeling as if I had lost the game was worse. It wasn’t like there was any doubt about it, either. I lost the game for us. I shot terr
ibly [five-for-thirteen] and dribbled the ball off my leg. It was a nightmare.”

  On the trip home that night, the coaches huddled at the front of the plane, looking through the schedule, trying to see if they still had a realistic chance to get into the NCAA Tournament. “We kept saying, ‘If we can get to eighteen wins, the committee will take us because of Danny,’ ” assistant coach R. C. Buford remembered. “But looking at the schedule, eighteen wins weren’t a lock by any means.”

  It got worse before it got better. Kansas State came into Allen Field House and, playing a textbook second half, ended KU’s fifty-five-game, four-year home winning streak, 72–61. It was the first time Manning had ever lost a home game. And yet, it was in that game that Brown first saw a glimmer of hope. “K-State just played great that night,” Brown said. “Mitch Richmond [35 points] was unbelievable. I told our kids after the game that if they played as hard every night as they had that night that we’d be okay. I’m not sure they believed me right then, but I really believed that.”

  Brown had become a salesman during this time. With the team depleted physically and struggling emotionally, he felt it was his job to convince his players that they could compete. He wanted help from Manning, but he wasn’t really getting it. Manning was playing well, very well in fact, but he had to do even more. That fact was never more apparent than during the fourth loss in the streak. Manning scored 28 points and had 16 rebounds, but Kansas still lost to Oklahoma, 73–65. The rest of the team was 15-for-40 that night and that just wasn’t good enough.

  Now, the Jayhawks were 12–8 and the school began making phone calls to NIT officials to find out what their chances would be of hosting a first-round game. A victory over Colorado—even that game was a struggle—finally broke the losing streak but did little to pick up anyone’s spirits.

  Then, during a ten-day period, everything turned around. Two things happened that turned a season spinning hopelessly out of control into what would become a memorable one.