Remember me?
Gonzaga's Santangelo comes back to bite Stanford
Posted: Tuesday March 16, 1999 06:35 PM
When Matt Santangelo was a high school senior, Stanford coach Mike Montgomery offered him a scholarship -- but only if he would commit right away.
Santangelo wasn't ready to do that, and he instead wound up at Gonzaga. Montgomery's ultimatum came back to haunt him in Seattle last weekend, when Santangelo scored 22 points in the 10th-seeded Zags' 82-74 second-round upset of Stanford.
Santangelo has cultivated a relationship with Gonzaga's most famous basketball alum, John Stockton, but he has now done twice what Stockton couldn't even do once: win an NCAA Tournament game.
Off his chest
Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson had also never won an NCAA Tournament game before last week, and now he's won two. The wins over Arizona and UNC-Charlotte capped off a rough week for Sampson, who had spent three nights in the hospital with an upper respiratory virus brought on by an asthmatic condition.
Sampson broke down film of Arizona in his hospital room, and he left the hospital each day for three hours to conduct practice. The coach sucked on an inhaler during the games in Milwaukee, but by the time the weekend was over, the Sooners were still breathing.
After beating Arizona, Sampson said, "It's good to know I'll no longer be known as Kelvin Sampson, the coach who never won an NCAA Tournament game."
General's rival?
Southwest Missouri State coach Steve Alford is the clear front-runner for the head coaching job at Iowa after assuring the school that he would not use the position as a way station on a journey to replace Bob Knight at Indiana.
Alford was the hero of Indiana's 1987 NCAA championship team, but his relationship with Knight is almost non-existent. Knight was irked by Alford's immense popularity when Alford was a player, and the coach is said to be bothered by the constant speculation that Alford will someday replace him at IU.
Alford told me last week that he hasn't spoken to Knight in about eight months, though he remains in close contact with members of Knight's staff.
As for whether Knight feels threatened by Alford's success, Alford said, "That's something only he can answer. I would hope he would be pleased about it because I'm a byproduct of his system."
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