A Pair of Almosts
Mar 13, 2007 1:41:36 GMT -5
Post by Admin on Mar 13, 2007 1:41:36 GMT -5
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A Pair of Almosts — Pitt Coach to WSU and Flyers to NIT
By Tom Archdeacon | Monday, March 12, 2007, 01:45 AM
So for Wright State, the past now becomes the future.
Four years ago, WSU athletics director Mike Cusack narrowed his coaching search down to two guys — Paul Biancardi and Jamie Dixon — as the replacement for fired Raiders’ coach Ed Schilling.
He chose Biancardi and you know how that worked out thanks to an NCAA violations mess that eventually followed the former Ohio State assistant from his days in Columbus.
Had Cusack hired Dixon — who now will coach his No. 3 seeded Pitt Panthers against the 14th seeded Raiders in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Thursday in Buffalo — there wouldn’t have been the headaches of the past couple of seasons. But then there almost certainly would be no Brad Brownell now either.
And to be far, I think at the last minute, Dixon, then a Pitt assistant to Ben Howland, pulled his name from consideration at WSU. Maybe because he knew Cusack was leaning toward Biancardi — who came with solid credentials and no hint of trouble — or maybe because he knew Howland was leaving and he’d be a candidate to replace him. And when Skip Prosser decided to stay at Wake Forest rather than take over the Panthers, Dixon wasn’t just a contender, he was the new Pitt coach.
At the time, Cusack spoke glowingly about Dixon and what kind of head coach he knew he’d be. He was right. Just as he was right on Brownell, whom he hired during last year’s Final Four to replace Biancardi.
You can tell that Brownell — even though he’s been a head coach just five seasons, four at UNC Wilmington and now this 23-9 campaign with the Raiders — has been around the block.
As soon as he learned his team would play Pitt, Brownell said: “We’ve certainly got some game tapes on them from this season and we’ll try to get some more.”
I wondered how he already had game film on Pitt. I mean they wouldn’t have been on the WSU radar this season. That’s when Brownell showed you what he’s privately thought about his team for some time:
“We’ve been taping games the last month knowing there was a good opportunity for us to make the post season. We don’t have extensive video editing stuff like the higher level schools have, but I’m sure we have a couple of tapes up there. And we’ll get more.”
One tape should be hand delivered by the Dayton coaches. The Flyers lost by 30 to Pitt on Dec. 23. While the guys at UD probably don’t like circulating that horror film, they owe WSU big time.
When Wisconsin transfer Mickey Perry came to WSU on a visit in January, he got a call from Flyers coach Brian Gregory, who was interested in him.
Perry decided to visit Dayton and WSU assistant Billy Donlon drove him across town to the UD campus, then even faxed his transcript to Gregory so the visit would go by all NCAA guidelines. Perry chose UD, but the thing no one should forget is the class act the WSU staff showed itself to be in the situation.
So now it’s the Flyers turn, especially since they were snubbed by the NIT.
While I thought there was a slight chance they’d get in, they beat five teams in the NCAA Tournament — Creighton, Louisville, Holy Cross, Miami and George Washington — they don’t have as much of a case for being snubbed as does Akron for sure and probably St. Louis, too.
The Flyers were hurt this season by two bad losses — to SMU and Duquesne, both with RPIs over 200 — and an A-10 conference that wasn’t as strong as times in the past.
So now the March Madness in town here belongs to Wright State and, as Brownell has learned, it’s heartfelt by many:
“The genuine excitement of people , you really see it on the faces. I’ve even been with a couple of people who stopped me and I just let them talk and they started crying, it meant so much.”
While some 1,000 people came to the Nutter Center for the Selection Sunday proceedings and a chance to salute the Raiders, three of the most interesting people who showed up were Lilly Gan Rose Chen and their friend, Cindy.
They’re all Chinese women — exchange students — attending the Wright State MBA program.
From Beijing, they received Americanized names from teachers or made them up themselves. Lilly — whose Chinese name is Zong Xun — said she knows a little about basketball and mentioned Yao Ming, the towering Houston Rockets center from China.
In the States just two months, it was her first time at the Nutter enter. She and her friends came to meet the guys everyone was talking about and they did. They got the WSU players to pose for photos with them and autograph the team posters they carried.
“The last week has been pretty amazing,” said Raiders’ freshman guard Vaughn Duggins. “We’ve been treated kind of like celebrities on campus.”
A Pair of Almosts — Pitt Coach to WSU and Flyers to NIT
By Tom Archdeacon | Monday, March 12, 2007, 01:45 AM
So for Wright State, the past now becomes the future.
Four years ago, WSU athletics director Mike Cusack narrowed his coaching search down to two guys — Paul Biancardi and Jamie Dixon — as the replacement for fired Raiders’ coach Ed Schilling.
He chose Biancardi and you know how that worked out thanks to an NCAA violations mess that eventually followed the former Ohio State assistant from his days in Columbus.
Had Cusack hired Dixon — who now will coach his No. 3 seeded Pitt Panthers against the 14th seeded Raiders in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Thursday in Buffalo — there wouldn’t have been the headaches of the past couple of seasons. But then there almost certainly would be no Brad Brownell now either.
And to be far, I think at the last minute, Dixon, then a Pitt assistant to Ben Howland, pulled his name from consideration at WSU. Maybe because he knew Cusack was leaning toward Biancardi — who came with solid credentials and no hint of trouble — or maybe because he knew Howland was leaving and he’d be a candidate to replace him. And when Skip Prosser decided to stay at Wake Forest rather than take over the Panthers, Dixon wasn’t just a contender, he was the new Pitt coach.
At the time, Cusack spoke glowingly about Dixon and what kind of head coach he knew he’d be. He was right. Just as he was right on Brownell, whom he hired during last year’s Final Four to replace Biancardi.
You can tell that Brownell — even though he’s been a head coach just five seasons, four at UNC Wilmington and now this 23-9 campaign with the Raiders — has been around the block.
As soon as he learned his team would play Pitt, Brownell said: “We’ve certainly got some game tapes on them from this season and we’ll try to get some more.”
I wondered how he already had game film on Pitt. I mean they wouldn’t have been on the WSU radar this season. That’s when Brownell showed you what he’s privately thought about his team for some time:
“We’ve been taping games the last month knowing there was a good opportunity for us to make the post season. We don’t have extensive video editing stuff like the higher level schools have, but I’m sure we have a couple of tapes up there. And we’ll get more.”
One tape should be hand delivered by the Dayton coaches. The Flyers lost by 30 to Pitt on Dec. 23. While the guys at UD probably don’t like circulating that horror film, they owe WSU big time.
When Wisconsin transfer Mickey Perry came to WSU on a visit in January, he got a call from Flyers coach Brian Gregory, who was interested in him.
Perry decided to visit Dayton and WSU assistant Billy Donlon drove him across town to the UD campus, then even faxed his transcript to Gregory so the visit would go by all NCAA guidelines. Perry chose UD, but the thing no one should forget is the class act the WSU staff showed itself to be in the situation.
So now it’s the Flyers turn, especially since they were snubbed by the NIT.
While I thought there was a slight chance they’d get in, they beat five teams in the NCAA Tournament — Creighton, Louisville, Holy Cross, Miami and George Washington — they don’t have as much of a case for being snubbed as does Akron for sure and probably St. Louis, too.
The Flyers were hurt this season by two bad losses — to SMU and Duquesne, both with RPIs over 200 — and an A-10 conference that wasn’t as strong as times in the past.
So now the March Madness in town here belongs to Wright State and, as Brownell has learned, it’s heartfelt by many:
“The genuine excitement of people , you really see it on the faces. I’ve even been with a couple of people who stopped me and I just let them talk and they started crying, it meant so much.”
While some 1,000 people came to the Nutter Center for the Selection Sunday proceedings and a chance to salute the Raiders, three of the most interesting people who showed up were Lilly Gan Rose Chen and their friend, Cindy.
They’re all Chinese women — exchange students — attending the Wright State MBA program.
From Beijing, they received Americanized names from teachers or made them up themselves. Lilly — whose Chinese name is Zong Xun — said she knows a little about basketball and mentioned Yao Ming, the towering Houston Rockets center from China.
In the States just two months, it was her first time at the Nutter enter. She and her friends came to meet the guys everyone was talking about and they did. They got the WSU players to pose for photos with them and autograph the team posters they carried.
“The last week has been pretty amazing,” said Raiders’ freshman guard Vaughn Duggins. “We’ve been treated kind of like celebrities on campus.”