Power of Caring
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Inside College Basketball

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Posted: Sunday February 07, 1999 08:27 PM

Rising Arizona 

A trying year is turning out happily for Wildcats coach Lute Olson

By Grant Wahl

Arizona coach Lute Olson is still the Cary Grant of college basketball, preternaturally unruffled, not a hair out of place, though the past year has been hard on him. Last March his defending national champs, with all their top players back, lost to Utah in the West Regional final. This season, having lost three players to the NBA, Olson has had to rebuild the Wildcats by mixing two seniors, point guard Jason Terry and center A.J. Bramlett, with five talented but error-prone freshmen. Yet those trying experiences have been trifles compared to the ordeal that began last June for Lute's wife of 45 years, Bobbi, during a visit to Europe.

Lute had just given a clinic in Vienna when he and Bobbi drove to Budapest for some sightseeing. Once they arrived there, the stomach pains she had begun feeling in Austria became excruciating. She assumed the cause was food poisoning, but when a doctor was summoned to examine her, he immediately called for an ambulance. What ensued was "a nightmare," Lute says. As the Soviet-era ambulance lurched through Budapest's cobblestoned streets, Lute crouched over Bobbi, his white-knuckled hands pressing down on the sides of her gurney to keep it still. "Bobbi was conscious," he says, "but she was in enormous pain."

Semmelweis Hospital, touted as Hungary's finest, was little comfort. Medics wheeled Bobbi through a construction site to the emergency room, where they pounded on the door for 10 minutes before a doctor finally answered. He did a quick exam and then, through a translator, offered his diagnosis: Bobbi's small intestine was blocked, and she needed emergency surgery. "There was no other option," says Lute. "The doctor said if we didn't get her in the operating room right away, she wasn't going to make it." Two hours later the surgeon returned to report that he had removed the blockage but that it was only part of a larger tumor -- the size of a baby's head -- which tests in Tucson later revealed to be stage-three ovarian cancer, an advanced form.

After fighting postoperative infections for nine days in Budapest and Vienna hospitals, Bobbi was taken by Medivac plane with Lute, their daughter Jodi and two doctors from Arizona's University Medical Center back to Tucson, where she began undergoing twice-monthly chemotherapy treatments. Lute, for the first time in his 25-year coaching career, stayed home during the July recruiting period, sending associate head coach Jim Rosborough in his place. After some soul-searching he decided not to take a leave of absence. "If this had happened during the school year instead of the summer, I never would have coached this year," he says.

The prognosis for Miz O, as the Arizona players call her, is good. A second operation in September showed that chemotherapy had dissolved the tumor, and her last set of scheduled treatments were to take place early this week. "Everything is going well," says Bobbi, who advises women to get tested for ovarian cancer. "I think I'm on every prayer list in Tucson."

Remarkably, Bobbi has attended most of Arizona's games, home and away, where she has witnessed the rise of a surprisingly dangerous team. With a 78-76 upset of No. 3 Stanford and a 91-74 rout of Cal last week, the No. 10 Wildcats improved to 15-3, thanks primarily to Terry, last year's sixth man, who is now one of the nation's top point guards and a serious contender for national player of the year honors. Through Sunday he led the Pac-10 in scoring (21.4 points a game) and assists (5.4) and was second in steals (2.6). He has been helped by three of the freshmen -- 6'8" guard Rick Anderson, 6'6" forward Richard Jefferson and 6'7" forward Michael Wright -- who have cracked the starting lineup and begun making fewer silly mistakes. "I think this team can be as good as last year's, I really do," Olson said last week, and who could question his optimism?

Missouri Valley Conference: Joining the Big Leagues 

Quick: Name three teams from the Missouri Valley Conference. Can't do it? You're not alone. But if the NCAA tournament selection committee has the same problem come March 7 -- Selection Sunday -- it will have absolutely no excuse. The Missouri Valley has undergone an RPI renaissance, rising from 21st in the 1991-92 conference rankings to an alltime high of No. 7 through Sunday. That's better than several so-called power conferences, including the Big 12 (8th), the Atlantic 10 (9th) and the WAC (10th).

The Missouri Valley's secret is simple: Schedule tough nonconference games -- at home when possible -- and win a few of them. Take 14-5 Creighton (30 in the team RPI rankings). Led by 6'5" senior forward Rodney Buford, the league's probable MVP, the Bluejays have beaten Iowa on the road and Oklahoma State at home. Then there's 16-5 Southwest Missouri State (RPI 26), which has defeated Missouri on the Tigers' home court and lost to Stanford and TCU. Still in the hunt for an at-large bid is 12-7 Bradley (RPI 68), which has beaten Penn State, while 16-6 Evansville (RPI 83), the coleader in the conference and second-best shooting team in the country, could easily win the league tournament.

Since roughly 50% of the RPI is based on strength of schedule, teams in most mid-major conferences usually start to drop once they begin playing in their own league. That's not the case in the Missouri Valley. "Our strength," says Creighton coach Dana Altman, "is that all the teams are fairly strong." The conference had seven teams in the RPI's top 100 through Sunday, while its worst team in the RPI standings, 9-11 Wichita State, at 154, was still barely in the top half of the 310 Division I teams. Moreover, the league had a 56-29 nonconference record this season and was better than .500 against the Big 12 (4-3) and the No. 6-ranked Conference USA (3-2).

The Missouri Valley's smartest move came in 1997, when its Presidents Council passed a resolution pledging that each school would seek "the strongest attainable schedule" for its basketball team. "Out of eight nonconference games, each of our schools tries to get three power teams on its schedule," says league commissioner Doug Elgin, who urges coaches to refuse the big paydays offered for playing road games against major powers and instead take less money to arrange home-and-home series. "They have to use every relationship they have in the business to get good teams to come play them."

For all the RPI improvement the Missouri Valley has shown, however, one question lingers: How many bids will the conference get for the NCAA tournament? If the league's top teams don't falter in the next few weeks, Elgin (a member of the selection committee who will have to leave the room when a conference school comes up for discussion) says the Missouri Valley should be treated just as the Midwestern Collegiate Conference was last year, when it got two at-large teams (Detroit and Illinois-Chicago) and its tournament champion (Butler) into the field.

Elgin may be shortchanging himself. In the past five years the No. 7-ranked conference has received no fewer than four bids and as many as six. Of course, the leagues in question were the Pac-10 (1994), the Big Ten ('95) and the Atlantic 10 ('96, '97 and '98). "I would hate to be penalized because our league isn't called the Big 12 or the Atlantic 10," says Southwest Missouri coach Steve Alford, whose 24-8 Bears were hosed by the committee in '97 despite having an RPI of 44. "If the season ended today, a minimum of three teams would deserve to come out of our league."

Northwestern's Center: The Big Man In the Big Ten 

The litany of infirmities and calamities that have plagued 6'11" center Evan Eschmeyer during his six seasons at Northwestern has grown to almost Biblical proportions. The list includes a recurring stress fracture in his right foot, three operations (two on the foot and one on his right knee), two medical redshirt seasons, two coaching changes, one bout with pneumonia, an inner ear infection, a broken nose and a point-shaving scandal involving some of his former teammates. What, no locusts or boils? "It has certainly made life interesting," Eschmeyer says. "I have enough material to write a whole series of books."

If the early installments of that series would read like the Book of Job, the later volumes could very well be called The NBA Years. Eschmeyer's game may lack grace, but there's no better post player in college. Through Sunday he was third in the Big Ten in scoring, averaging 19.8 points per game, was making 60.2% of his shots from the field and led the league in rebounding (10.9 per game). Thanks largely to Eschmeyer, the Wildcats had a 12-6 record and were tied for fifth place in the conference with a 4-4 mark. In a year in which the Big Ten might send seven teams to the NCAA tournament, Northwestern could earn a berth for the first time in its history.

With his pale complexion, closely cropped blond hair and penchant for flannel shirts, Eschmeyer looks and acts like the farm boy he is. A native of New Knoxville, Ohio (pop. 838), Eschmeyer saw his career almost come a cropper shortly after he arrived at Northwestern, when he suffered a stress fracture in his right foot in November 1993. The injury was so severe and difficult to treat that three doctors told him he might never play again.

Eschmeyer underwent surgery twice in 1994, rushed through rehabilitation and then reinjured the foot in the fall of that year. After the Wildcats' trainer told him he would have to miss a second season, Eschmeyer spent the afternoon brooding alone in the back of a movie theater that was showing Natural Born Killers. "I had just come off the longest year of my life," Eschmeyer says. "I remember thinking, What am I going to do now?"

The answer was work even harder. He started 25 games during the 1995-96 season and for each of the next two years was a first-team All-Big Ten selection. Last season he averaged 21.7 points and a conference-leading 10.7 rebounds per game and then successfully petitioned the NCAA for a sixth year of eligibility. Over the summer he spent a week at Pete Newell's Big Man Camp in Honolulu, where he blossomed. After working out the first day with other college players, Eschmeyer was granted the rare opportunity to play the rest of the time with the pros, and he more than held his own against the likes of Sean Elliott, Chris Dudley, Gary Trent and Michael Olowokandi. "I think he's the top prospect in the country among centers," Newell says. "He's not what I would call a quick jumper, but his technique is good, and he's tougher than hell to keep off the boards."

Eschmeyer proved that on Jan. 13, when, during an 81-78 loss at Indiana, he had the first triple double (27 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists) in Assembly Hall history. Last week he had 17 points, 14 rebounds and seven blocked shots in a 54-50 defeat of then No. 14 Purdue.

As befits a 23-year-old senior who already has a degree in secondary education and is working toward a second, in economics, Eschmeyer is philosophical enough to see some benefits in having missed so many games early in his college career. "The experience taught me a lot about patience and hard work," he says. "You never know. If all these things hadn't happened to me, maybe I wouldn't be the player I am today."

-- Seth Davis

William Jewell College: A Gem of a Player 

Four years ago Larry Hall averaged 41.6 points for North DeSoto High near his hometown of Keatchie, La., and was his state's Class 2A player of the year. He had several Division I scholarship offers and was planning to sign with either Louisiana Tech or New Orleans until a freak accident nearly shattered his basketball dreams.

In April 1995, while Hall was gathering shopping carts in the parking lot of the Kmart where he worked, a bungee cord that held the carts together snapped and hit his right eye, causing him to lose all but some peripheral vision in it. "After that the schools stopped calling me," says Hall. "I thought my career was over."

With hours of practice, Hall learned to compensate for the lack of depth perception that resulted from the injury. He enrolled at LSU-Shreveport, an NAIA Division II school, for the 1995-96 season. Playing primarily center despite standing a mere 6'3", Hall averaged 27.5 points and 11.2 rebounds in his first season. The following year he scored 29.2 points a game and led the NAIA Division I, to which LSU-Shreveport had moved. Then Hall suffered another blow: After his sophomore season LSU-Shreveport discontinued almost all its sports programs, including basketball.

Hall landed at another NAIA school, Division II William Jewell College, in Liberty, Mo., where he was an All-America last season. Through Sunday he was second in both scoring (23.2 points per game) and rebounding (10.2) in the Heart of America Athletic Conference for the 18-7 Cardinals. "People constantly marvel at what he's been able to accomplish, but Larry has a huge heart," says William Jewell coach Larry Holley. "Nothing he does surprises me."

Says Hall, who hopes to play professionally overseas next season, "My life has been full of ups and downs, but I've learned that when you come across a few barriers, you can't sit around and mope. I once thought my life would be a lot different because I'm blind in one eye, but there's nothing I can't do."

-- B.J. Schecter

The Buzzer 

Things are getting weird in some quarters of women's basketball. At Rhode Island, coach Linda Ziemke was temporarily relieved of her duties on Jan. 21 after several players complained about what they described as her grating motivational methods. The Rams are 10-36 over the last two seasons and have seen eight players quit or transfer during that span. And last week at UNLV, Runnin' Rebels assistant Lisa Rathbun was "reassigned" after senior forward Amy Wunderlich accused Rathbun of kicking her and tearing her jersey at practice on Jan. 20. The incident occurred during a scrimmage that Rathbun and Wunderlich both played in....

Manhattan, which looked like it was up and coming after it defeated Oklahoma in Round 1 of the 1995 NCAA tournament under then coach Fran Fraschilla, is reeling under Fraschilla's successor, John Leonard, who took over three years ago. Not only were the Jaspers 4-15 through Sunday and headed for their third straight losing season, but also two assistant coaches quit on the same day in early December....

Matchup of the Week: On Feb. 12, Virginia-bound point guard Majestic Mapp (whose older brother, Scientific, played at Florida A&M) will lead St. Raymond's High against New York City rival LaSalle, whose sophomore point guard is Famous Brown. Our only wish is that Don King could do the play-by-play.

-- B.J. Schecter

Issue date: February 8, 1999