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Posted: Wednesday February 17, 1999 03:37 PM

Boston Buckeyes  

Thanks to a new coach and point guard from BC, Ohio State is enjoying a dramatic revival

By Grant Wahl

Redd has teamed with Penn to form the fiery backcourt that has led the Buckeyes' breakout. John Biever

Before James (Scoonie) Penn could help put Ohio State back on the basketball map, he had to learn how to find it on a map. "Ohio? Where's Ohio?" he asked Jim O'Brien, his coach at Boston College, when O'Brien announced two years ago that he was leaving for Columbus. "The perception in the Northeast is that there's only one stoplight out here," says O'Brien.

Most folks had forgotten that basketball was played there too. But as of Sunday, less than a year after O'Brien's first Ohio State team went 8-22 and finished last in the Big Ten with a 1-15 conference record, the Buckeyes were 19-6 and ranked No. 11. They were also in second place in the conference with a 9-3 mark after last Saturday's 73-69 win at then No. 19 Iowa. As a result O'Brien has become, along with Auburn's Cliff Ellis, one of the two leading contenders for national coach of the year honors.

The other reason for the Buckeyes' revival is Penn, a 5'10", 185-pound junior point guard who was averaging 16.3 points and 4.4 assists a game through Sunday. Penn led BC to the second round of the NCAA tournament in his freshman and sophomore years but then headed to Ohio State after O'Brien split with BC over what he felt were admissions policies that unfairly thwarted his recruiting. While sitting out last year, Penn fought through a "state of depression," as he puts it, by treating practices as if they were games. Says O'Brien, "Most of the time Scoonie would play on a team with three walk-ons and another player and beat our first team."

Now that he's on the first team, Penn is one half of one of the nation's top backcourts, along with Michael Redd, a 6'6" sophomore whose 19.4-point scoring average leads the Buckeyes. "Last year I needed to have the ball more to be just as productive," says Redd. "Now that Scoonie's around, I've become a lot more patient."

With Penn and his pals heading to the NCAA tournament (Ohio State's first trip in seven seasons), it's as if Columbus has discovered a new world. Just months after only 600 students bought season passes, scalpers are charging as much as $100 for a ticket at the Buckeyes' new $105 million, 19,500-seat Schottenstein Center, commonly known as the Schott, which is as warm and classy as the state's other famed Schott isn't.

Only a year ago, all O'Brien needed was a slobbering Saint Bernard by his side and he would have been just as unpopular as Marge. When his hiring was announced, "the fans' first reaction was 'Jim who?'" says O'Brien. "All they knew was that they didn't get Tubby Smith or Rick Barnes or Bob Huggins." Nor did it help when O'Brien, who at first considered himself an outsider at Ohio State, dismissed three players (two of them Ohio-born) from the team for bad conduct before he had even coached a game. "That was the toughest part of the year, not losing all the games," he says.

As for his bitterness at BC, which is his alma mater as well as his former employer, O'Brien says that's behind him. (A lawsuit he filed against the school alleging breach of contract and slander was settled out of court last year, but not before O'Brien made enemies in Massachusetts by claiming BC's admissions office operated "with an apparent bias against African-Americans.") "For me it's not about Boston College anymore," he says. "It's all about Ohio State. I'm happy here."

So is Penn, who in two years has developed an uncanny mastery of Ohio geography. Asking him for directions to any Columbus destination is, in fact, like asking him to take your team to the NCAA tournament: He'll get you there.

The Ivy League: A Bid for Two NCAA Bids  

On Feb. 10, just 15 hours after Princeton beat Penn in what might have been the best regular-season game of the year, seniors Gabe Lewullis, a forward, and Brian Earl, a guard, sat on their Princeton dorm-room sofa, pondering the imponderable. "To be down 27 points at the Palestra...." marveled Lewullis, shaking his head. Said Earl, who was just as bewildered, "I've never been down by more than 10 with that much time left and still won the game!"

Against the Quakers the previous night, the Tigers had staged the fourth-biggest comeback in NCAA history. Trailing 29-3 in the first half (after a 29-0 Penn run) and 40-13 with just over 15 minutes to play, Princeton pressed, treyed and prayed its way to a 50-49 miracle win. As Earl tearfully clutched the rebound of Quakers guard Matt Langel's last-second miss, the same Palestra rowdies who had gleefully chanted, "You have three points!" at Princeton near the end of the first half were slumped silently in their seats.

It was high theater, except for one problem: Only the 8,722 spectators at the Palestra and a regional cable audience saw it. That's strange because, year in and year out, Penn-Princeton is the nation's most meaningful regular-season matchup.

The Ivy League and Pac-10 are the only conferences that don't have a postseason tournament and thus award their automatic NCAA bids to their regular-season champs. But while the Pac-10 usually grabs three or four at-large berths a year, the Ivy League has never had even one. Hence the importance of Penn-Princeton games, which pit the two teams that have won 32 of the last 35 Ivy titles.

To spice things up after its sweet victory, the Tigers turned around and lost 60-58 in double overtime to 4-17 Yale last Friday. That was their first Ivy defeat in three years. If Penn and Princeton each win their next four league games, the Quakers and the Tigers will meet in their season finale on March 2, with the winner receiving the league's lone NCAA bid.

Or will it be the only bid? Say Princeton wins the rest of its games but falls to Penn in the last game. The Tigers would finish 21-6 and would have beaten Florida State, Texas, UAB, UNC Charlotte and Penn, which could all end up in the NCAAs. Wouldn't Princeton deserve a bid, considering not only those wins but also how well it has acquitted itself in previous NCAA tournaments? Similarly, Penn could be a 21-5 bridesmaid even though it has beaten Temple this season. If the Quakers can win at Villanova on Feb. 23, they would rate an NCAA berth even if they don't win the Ivy League.

Princeton coach Bill Carmody hopes the Selection Committee will keep an open mind. "Over the years they've always said the Ivy League gets one bid and that's it, but things have changed pretty drastically," he says. "We've shown we can play with anybody, and so has Penn."

Foreign Players: Who's Eligible And Who Isn't?  

The names have been popping up in the sports pages with increasing regularity: A foreign player who has been competing in the U.S. suddenly has to miss games because of questions surrounding his relationship with a pro team overseas. Last fall San Diego State's Julien Sormonte and North Carolina's Vasco Evtimov received 23-game and 18-game suspensions, respectively, for having played with the pros in France. Also this season, European players at Boise State, Creighton, Delaware and Marist have had to miss a number of games while their schools answered questions about their eligibility posed by an NCAA official. Another European player, at East Carolina, might have had to miss games last month if he hadn't been sitting out with an injury.

The trend is the result of an NCAA effort, launched last summer, to look into the way pro leagues overseas operate. The NCAA has a lot of catching up to do. There are 291 foreign players in Division I basketball -- up from 135 six years ago -- and both the NCAA and its schools are having a tough time figuring out how their antiquated guidelines on amateurism apply to the new world order. "Ten years ago there was hardly any professional basketball in Europe," says Rob Meurs, who scouts European players for the NBA and colleges. "It's changed tremendously. The rules [the NCAA] made on professional basketball weren't made for foreign kids. They were made for kids in the U.S."

David Price, NCAA vice president for enforcement and student-athlete reinstatement, says that foreigners who compete for U.S. schools must follow the same guidelines as their domestic counterparts: They may not sign a contract with a pro team, receive money for playing or play on a team with pros. But Price says that money for expenses is permitted as long as it's "reasonable" (whatever that means), and he admits that it's not always easy to determine what qualifies as a contract. Almost all European clubs require their players to sign an agreement that gives the clubs the players' rights -- even if they don't get paid. "When I came to college, I signed a letter of intent," says Sormonte, who is from Montpellier, France, and was ultimately suspended for 23 games (three of which will be on next year's schedule) because he played in three of the Aztecs' first six games this season before the NCAA learned that he had signed a contract and received nearly $4,000 in per diem money while playing for a Montpellier club. "A scholarship pays for my schooling and room and board here. In France it's exactly the same thing. But the name of the contract is different."

The situation is so muddled that even Dean Smith made a mistake. Two years ago he told Evtimov that it was safe for him under NCAA rules to play for Pau-Orthez in France while fulfilling his French military obligation. The NCAA disagreed and suspended Evtimov for 18 games this season. Sormonte and Meurs say they know of other foreign players competing in Division I who would be suspended if the NCAA knew more about those players' backgrounds. Price concedes that the process hasn't been "evenhanded," but he sees no other choice but to plow ahead on a case-by-case basis. "The only alternative is not to do it at all, which is unacceptable," he says.

-- Seth Davis

The Greatest Comeback Ever?  

When Princeton fought back from a 40-13 deficit with 15:11 remaining to defeat archrival Penn at the Palestra last week, the Tigers may not have pulled off the biggest comeback victory of all time, but they may well have achieved the best. The 27 points Princeton made up in the second half represented 54% of its scoring in the game, easily the highest percentage among the greatest comebacks in NCAA history. Here's how the top five rank by points and by percentage.

FINAL DATE DEFICIT TIME REMAINING PCT. Duke 74, Tulane 72 Dec. 30, 1950 32 22:00 43.2 Kentucky 99, LSU 95 Feb. 15, 1994 31 15:34 31.3 N. Mexico St. 117, Bradley 109 Jan. 27, 1977 28 33:49 23.9 Princeton 50, Penn 49 Feb. 9, 1999 27 15:11 54.0 UNC Charlotte 79, Tennessee 76 Nov. 29, 1995 26 15:00 32.9

SOURCE: NCAA

The Buzzer  

It was quite a week for Rhode Island. On Feb. 8 John Bennett, a reserve forward on the Rams team that made the Elite Eight last year and a friend of many current Rhode Island players, died of injuries he sustained in a car accident 11 days earlier. The Atlantic 10 offered to let the Rams reschedule their Feb. 10 game at Virginia Tech, but Rhode Island decided to play and, after what turned out to be an eight-hour trip to Blacksburg, pulled out a 76-67 win. Last Saturday the Rams (15-10) overcame a 15-point halftime deficit to knock off UMass 59-56 and keep their NCAA tournament chances alive.... Keep an eye on Nebraska in the Big 12. The Huskers scratched out a 59-57 victory over Iowa State last Saturday for the ninth win in their last 10 games and improved to 17-8 (9-3 in the league). They may also have the conference player of the year in unsung 6' 10" senior center Venson Hamilton, who on Saturday became only the fourth player in league history to get 1,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 200 blocks during his career. The others were Danny Manning of Kansas, Wayman Tisdale of Oklahoma and Byron Houston of Oklahoma State.... Syracuse's Etan Thomas, second in the nation in blocks with 4.2 per game, had 104 rejections through Sunday, a higher total than that of six teams in the Big East.

-- B.J. Schecter

Issue date: February 22, 1999

 

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