First for everything
Madness at A&M-Corpus Christi: 2 players, 1 tux
Posted: Wednesday October 21, 1998 01:46 PM
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) -- Wearing his best black tuxedo and his dressiest pair of shiny black footwear, Ronnie Arrow pushed up his sleeve and looked at his watch.
The time was midnight. Saturday morning, October 17, 1998. Time for madness. Sheer madness.
Two players, two coaches, four fans and a basketball court.
"There's barely a soul in here, maybe four or five people watching us," said Arrow, the new Division I basketball coach at Texas A&M-University Corpus Christi. "I wanted to do this because I wanted everybody to take a look around and remember what it's like. I wanted them to picture what it's like next year at this time. One year from now, this place will be packed."
One year from now, Arrow will have at least 11 more players on scholarship. On this day, he only has two: Pate Diene, a 6-foot-10 transfer from Texas-El Paso, and Vladimir Ryzhov, a 6-7 transfer from Atlanta Metropolitan College.
Both started the practice season Saturday at 12 a.m. sharp, joining hundreds of college basketball players around the country with their own downsized version of Midnight Madness -- the first official time to start practice for players and coaches in NCAA Division I.
Consider it the craziest display of Madness in the country. Though the Islanders won't begin play until November 1999, Arrow simply couldn't wait to break ground as the first Division I men's basketball coach to start a program from scratch since Alabama-Birmingham in 1978.
He brought his tux. He brought a recruiting prospect. He brought two basketballs, a walk-on freshman and assistant coach Johnny Brown. Everybody else arrived on their own: four fans, a reporter, a photographer and the sophomore roommate of Diene and Ryzhov.
"We waited all day to come out and see this," said Michael Florence, a part-time student who watched the practice with brother Tom Florence and fellow Corpus Christi residents Kenneth Harris and Ruben Benavides. "We're glad he did it. Now we're just waiting for Dick Vitale to show up."
He never did. Neither did anybody else. The practice lasted just 45 minutes, and by the time they locked the school fieldhouse at 12:55 a.m., Arrow had accomplished what he wanted to. He made a point.
This wasn't Duke, North Carolina or Kansas. He didn't need Dick Vitale, ESPN or 20,000 students showing up with face paint, pajamas and noisemakers. All he needed was a start. A humble beginning. The perfect way to ignite a program starting from nothing but scratch after the school dumped its last intercollegiate athletics department in 1972.
"This is why I took this job," said Arrow, the former San Jacinto College coach who also led South Alabama to two NCAA tournament berths from 1988-95. "That's why we're all here. To see it grow from its inception. It's a gold mine waiting to happen."
Hired in June, Arrow spent most his four months of work hacking his way down the recruiting trail. He lured the two transfers, hired Brown and laid the groundwork for November's early signing period. He expects to add at least four more players to his roster on November 11, gradually working the count to his 13-scholarship maximum -- not including the recent addition of walk-on Benji Matthews, a forward from Carroll High School. His other big mission: getting people talking.
"We had a lot of people talking to us about this practice," said Brown, a former player at New Mexico and a former assistant coach at Fresno State. "We got people talking about Midnight Madness. We know we only have two players right now, so maybe people can't get super excited about it yet. But they're still real excited about it."
The fans didn't come out in droves like they did at Duke and Kansas, for example, but it isn't like any of them expected any turnout whatsoever. They only have two players. Their season doesn't start for another 13 months, and the team -- if that's what you want to call it right now -- hasn't even received its practice jerseys. Diene, Ryzhov and Matthews wore T-shirts, shorts and sneakers while Arrow walked around barking orders in his tux.
"Go full speed," Arrow yelled at one of his players. "Don't jack around."
He might have forgiven them for being a little sluggish, however. The players started their workouts at 8:30 a.m. Friday, and it wasn't until noon that Ryzhov knew he was supposed to report back to the fieldhouse at midnight. As it happened, Arrow didn't decide to hold the practice until Thursday after convincing Dan Viola, the athletics director, that it didn't matter if hardly anyone was aware that they were going to have it.
"I found out about it after my workout," said Ryzhov, a native Ukrainian, who, like Diene, an African, just recently moved to the United States. "In Atlanta, we had 2,000 people come and watch us practice. Here we only have two players. It's fun."
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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