Inside College Basketball
Posted: Tuesday January 26, 1999 03:08 PM
This week's topics:
Forward March | Notre Dame's Future
Boise State's Bomber | A Real Coaches' Poll
The Buzzer | Weekly Seed Report
Forward March As Heshimu Evans returned to his old position, Kentucky showed
who's boss in the SEC
By Grant Wahl
Who says there's parity in college basketball? Kentucky has won
two of the last three national titles and just missed a sweep by
losing to Arizona in overtime in the 1997 title game. Through
Sunday the Wildcats had gone 17-4 against what is regarded as the
toughest schedule in the country and had beaten more opponents
ranked in the Top 25 (five) than any other team. Yet going into
last week's meeting with then 17-0 Auburn, there was no denying
that the Tigers posed a threat to Kentucky's reign over the SEC.
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Back at his more comfortable forward spot, Evans went for 20 as Kentucky beat Auburn. Bob Rosato |
So much for threats. With an easy 72-62 defeat of Auburn,
followed by a 76-49 rout of Mississippi State last Saturday, the
Wildcats shook off the funk they'd been in since losing 47-46 to
Tennessee at home on Jan. 12. More important for Kentucky's
postseason hopes, the back-to-back wins seemed to answer a
question that had been vexing the Wildcats for a month: What in
the world happened to 6'6" senior forward Heshimu Evans?
During Kentucky's 9-1 start Evans had played like an All-America,
averaging 15.5 points and shooting 37.2% from three-point range.
But after scoring 31 points against Maryland in a 103-91 victory
on Dec. 12, the Strong Warrior (which is what Heshimu means in
Swahili) mysteriously turned feeble, averaging 8.2 points and
shooting 15.0% from beyond the arc as Kentucky lost three of its
next nine games. After scoring a team-high 20 points against
Auburn and 13 against Mississippi State, however, Evans's
troubles may be behind him. "I finally started having fun again,"
he says. "This week I was able to come off screens and make some
things happen. I'd shied away from that for a while."
There were a couple of reasons for Evans's drop-off. For
starters, coach Tubby Smith tried to compensate for the
Wildcats' outside shooting troubles by switching to a bigger
lineup on Jan. 2 against Florida. As part of the shake-up, Smith
inserted Michael Bradley at power forward, shifted Scott Padgett
to small forward and benched freshman guard Tayshaun Prince
while moving Evans from small forward to shooting guard. "That
was a hard adjustment for me," says Evans, a lefthander who's
not an especially adept ball handler and thus not entirely
comfortable at two guard. At that position he spends more time
on the right side of the floor, where he must often dribble with
his right hand.
It's no coincidence that Evans's rebirth coincided with his
return to forward last week, but the move might not have come
about had Smith not suspended center Jamaal Magloire for missing
a curfew. (It was Magloire's third suspension in the last 10
months.) Evans, however, says that the main source of his
troubles was in his head. Last week he got some advice from Fran
Fraschilla, his coach at Manhattan for two years before
Fraschilla left for St. John's and Evans transferred to
Kentucky. "I didn't think he was playing as hard as he had when
he was trying to prove he could play at Kentucky," says
Fraschilla. "His game has always been making hustle plays, but
the last couple of weeks he was tentative, and that's not him."
"He hit it right on the nose," says Evans. "It was good that my
shot was going in this week, but I was also on the ground,
rebounding, playing defense with energy." Evans knows, of
course, that if the Wildcats are to challenge for another
national title, he'll need to play that way all the time.
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Notre Dame's Future: Will the Irish Bolt The Big East?
At meetings scheduled for Feb. 4-5 (in London, of all places),
Notre Dame's board of trustees will decide whether the Fighting
Irish will leave the Big East and become a member of the Big Ten,
as the school's academic faculty senate recommended in December.
If the trustees do vote to switch, will they go the whole 10
yards and join the Big Ten in all sports, which some campus
factions see as a plus for a football program that has not
finished in the Top 10 in five years? Or will the board stand pat
as a member of the Big East in most sports, the largest exception
being football, in which Notre Dame is an independent?
Early indications are that the trustees will stay put. That was
the underlying message in a face-saving statement issued by the
Big Ten last Thursday, which in a multisyllabic, lawyerlike way
said that the Irish can't say no to joining the conference
because they were never asked. Example: "To date, the
preliminary meetings...have not produced a sufficient mutuality
of interests or intentions to determine whether the parties
desire to enter into a more formal phase of membership
discussions."
That leaves the Irish to continue to toil in the Big East, a
prospect that isn't entirely pleasing to all the members of the
league. Certainly to some of them, notably the conference's six
other Catholic schools, Notre Dame's four years in the league
have meant increased ticket sales and the chance to rub
shoulders -- if not shoulder pads -- with the nation's most celebrated
Catholic institution. But other Big East members have learned
that just because you buy a blue-chip stock doesn't mean you'll
reap large dividends. The conference has had to pay out a share
of its NCAA tournament earnings every year, while the Irish have
brought almost nothing to the table in the key revenue sport of
men's basketball. "Most people from the outside would say we got
a bad deal," one top league executive says.
The Notre Dame men continue to flounder under coach John
MacLeod, whose record in seven seasons at South Bend is 89-104,
through last Saturday's 72-70 loss to Rutgers. The Irish were
23-43 in four seasons of Big East play and 0-3 in the conference
tournament. The future, despite the rise of freshman forward
Troy Murphy (18.2 points and 8.9 rebounds per game, until he
sprained his left ankle on Jan. 14), isn't bright. Six players
have transferred in the last three seasons, and last week two
sophomores became academically ineligible. "In basketball, they
haven't helped the league as many people thought they would,"
Boston College athletic director Gene DeFilippo says, "but the
potential is there."
-- Ivan Maisel
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Boise State's Bomber: Have Shot, Will Travel
A year after Pacific center Michael Olowokandi made the jump
from obscurity to the top pick in the NBA draft, another
well-traveled Big West player is beckoning pro scouts westward.
Having found a home at his fifth college in five years, Boise
State's Roberto Bergersen, a 6'6" senior swingman, was the
nation's fourth-leading scorer (24.5 points a game) through
Sunday and the main reason the 12-4 Broncos were in second place
in the Big West's Eastern division with a 5-1 conference record.
"He can really shoot, and he has good size for a guard," says
Nets director of player personnel Dave Pendergraft of Bergersen,
whom scouts have compared to Dale Ellis and Jeff Hornacek.
Three years ago, however, Bergersen was out of basketball. A
McDonald's All-America in 1994 at Decatur High in Federal Way,
Wash., he began his hoops odyssey by signing with Washington. But
he left the Huskies after a freshman season in which he averaged
only six minutes and 2.2 points a game and chose hanging out with
his high school buddies as his main course of study. "Roberto was
just too immature to say no," says Ed Boyce, Bergersen's high
school coach and now an assistant at Boise State. "Instead of
focusing on basketball and academics, he let a lot of other
things get in the way."
The following school year Bergersen migrated from one outpost to
another: Midland (Texas) College, a JC he stayed at for a month,
to the College of Southern Idaho, where he played one game and
dropped out, to Highline Community College near Seattle, where he
didn't play but began piecing his life together, earning an
associate's degree in the summer of 1996. The following fall he
arrived at Boise State and was reunited with Boyce.
Boyce and Boise have turned Bergersen, 23, into a virtual Boy
Scout. He has sworn off alcohol, married his girlfriend (Rhonda
Klein, a former member of the Washington soccer team) and now
has a 15-month-old son, Rylan. Roberto's big break came last
May, when the NCAA granted him another year of eligibility,
noting that he had played only one game in 1995-96. This season
Bergersen has drawn the notice of scouts with big games against
top teams, scoring 32 points in a 69-61 upset of Washington on
Dec. 5 and 30 in a 90-66 loss to Indiana on Dec. 11. Yet he
demurs when asked about winning the tight NCAA scoring race
(currently led by Delaware junior forward Mike Pegues, who was
averaging 24.9 points a game). "I'd almost rather not win it,"
he says. "We lost a couple of games at the beginning of the
season when I was scoring too many points."
Too many points? Such talk might be heresy among prolific
scorers, but as Bergersen has learned, a little maturity goes a
long way.
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A Real Coaches' Poll: Who's the Coaches' Coach?
We polled more than 100 coaches -- 115 to be exact, both head guys
and assistants -- and asked the question, If you could go to only
one coaching clinic, whose would it be and why?
Duke's Mike Krzyzewski led the way with 16 votes because other
coaches are eager to learn the secrets of his success (two
national titles and seven Final Fours in the past 14 seasons).
Utah's Rick Majerus was next with 14 votes, and Bob Knight was
third, with 12. A large number of assistants cited Wisconsin's
Dick Bennett, who also finished with 12 votes, for a practical
reason: They figure if they get a head coaching job, they won't
have talent to burn, and they like the way Bennett gets the most
out of his players. (Fresno State's Jerry Tarkanian, who got no
votes, passed on this advice: "I told all my assistants that they
should go spend a week with Dick Bennett and learn about the
game. His Wisconsin team executes better than any I've seen.")
Rounding out the top five was a surprise choice, Bill Carmody of
Princeton, who got nine votes. "I'd love to find out what makes
Princeton tick," says Brigham Young coach Steve Cleveland.
"They're so predictable, yet so unpredictable."
The biggest surprise? That would be the two ballots that named
Don Meyer, coach of the NAIA's Lipscomb University in Nashville.
With 695 career wins he certainly is doing something right.
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The Buzzer
Eight weeks ago Pitt was one of the hottest teams in the
country, after a 6-0 start that included wins over Kentucky and
Xavier. But since suffering a heartbreaking loss to top-ranked
Connecticut on a last-second shot on Dec. 12, the Panthers had
dropped five of their last seven games through Sunday. Their
woes haven't been confined to the court, either. A few hours
before a Pitt loss last week at Villanova, freshman guard Fred
Primus was arrested on charges of grand theft and receiving
stolen property. He was kicked off the team....
George Mason, a surprising second in the Colonial Athletic
Association after going 9-18 a year ago, can thank sophomore
forward George Evans , who turns 28 on Saturday, for its
improvement. Before joining the Patriots, Evans spent more than
seven years in the Army, serving on a U.S. peacekeeping mission
in Haiti, and in the Gulf War, during which he helped take eight
armed Iraqis prisoner while he was on foot patrol. Through
Sunday he led the conference in scoring (18.4 points a game),
was tied for the lead in steals (2.2) and ranked second in
blocks (2.8) and field goal percentage (55.4), and third in
rebounding (8.6)....
While the Big Ten is clearly the best league top to bottom, the
Pac-10 is the most competitive. It's the only major conference
in which each team has won at least two league games, and in the
past three weeks 13 games have been decided in the final seconds.
-- B.J. Schecter
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Issue date: February 1, 1999
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