Basketball Teams Ready for Postseason Challenges
3/14/2001 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 14, 2001
Editor's Note: Dave Campbell's column appears in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here. For an archive of his other columns, click here.
Hey, somebody get on the phone and stop the presses. Baylor's basketball season is not over yet.
Make that basketball seasons, plural. Because both the Bears and Lady Bears still have to some playing -- and hopefully some winning -- to do.
Anybody who thinks that prospect doesn't meet with the full approval of the Baylor masses should have been present this past Sunday night at the Baylor Student Life Center when the 64-team field for the women's NCAA Tournament was announced on national television. Several hundred Baylor partisans, many of them conspicuous in their bright yellow (gold) T-shirts, overflowed the large viewing area that had been set aside for the special "watch party."
Indeed, quite a few went to the second floor of the building and leaned over the railing there, the better to see the ESPN telecast. It would not be an exaggeration to say they literally were hanging from the rafters. I've seen smaller crowds at quite a few Lady Bear games in seasons past.
And when the 16-team field for the West Regional was announced, the third and fourth names to go on the board were those of Baylor and Arkansas, and when those names hit the screen, suddenly, you couldn't hear yourself think.
Pandemonium erupted. You would have thought Baylor profs had just voted to give every student in school an A-plus in every subject. Or to add another week to spring break.
People yelled and waved and then yelled some more. And grins stretched from wall to wall.
BAYLOR WILL BE PLAYING the Lady Razorbacks of Arkansas, the bracket for the West Regional said. They will play at Duke (the No. 1 seed for the West Regional) at Duke's famed Cameron Indoor Arena in Durham, N.C., at 10 a.m. this Saturday, and if they beat Arkansas they will play the winner of the Duke/Wisconsin-Milwaukee game the following Monday at 6:37 p.m.
The Lady Bear-Arkansas game will be televised nationally on ESPN2. The Lady Bears are the No. 8 seed in the West Regional, the Lady Razorbacks are the No. 9 seed.
Much of that information had yet to reach the screen when cries of "Kick those Lady Hogs" had broken out at the Student Life Center. And then the throng paused and burst out with a "Sic 'em Bears" yell. Excitement reigned. And there in the middle of it, keeping her head while all about her were losing theirs, was Lady Bears coach Kim Mulkey-Robertson. All smiles, yes. Relieved and gratified that her Lady Bears have become the first Baylor women's team ever to be chosen for a coveted place in the NCAA Tournament, yes. "Happy for this university and happy for these players," yes.
But Kim had to keep her wits about her because ESPN's Control Center, headed up by Robin Roberts, twice had her on their national hookup, asking her about her Lady Bears, asking about women's basketball in the Big 12 Conference, asking about her first season as a head coach.
"This program was hungry for a winner (when she arrived)," she said. Baylor had just gotten tired of losing, she added. She praised the support she has received from the administration, she praised the contributions made by several recruits, she praised the play of her superstars Sheila Lambert and Danielle Crockrom, she praised the way "the others have accepted their roles -- the work ethic has been unbelievable."
This was national attention for Baylor athletics that could be neither begged for nor bought. It had to be earned, and that is what Mulkey and the Lady Bears have done. Nearby, athletic director Tom Stanton listened and beamed.
AND THEN, ABOUT THREE HOURS later came the long-awaited dropping of the other shoe. The National Invitation Tournament (NIT) announced the makeup of its 32-team field. And there was coach Dave Bliss' Baylor Bears, ticketed to play the University of New Mexico in a first-round game Wednesday night at 11 p.m. (Waco time) at "The Pit," the Lobos' famed arena in Albuquerque which has a capacity of 18,018.
The Baylor-New Mexico game will be the third game of an ESPN tripleheader that afternoon and evening.
New Mexico won its way to the finals of the Mountain West Conference Tournament last weekend before losing to Brigham Young, a loss that presumably cost the Lobos their chance to win a place in the NCAA field.
As irony would have it, Bliss will be taking his Bears to face the team he formerly coached before taking up the challenge at Baylor. And he will be directing his Bears in a huge arena which is all too familiar to him.
More irony: When Mulkey's Lady Bears take on the Lady Razorbacks, she will be facing a coach, Gary Blair, who was an assistant coach at Louisiana Tech when she was an All-America point guard there.
So, old home week to some extent for the coaches of both Bears and Lady Bears.
But while Bliss will need no guide to show him around Albuquerque, Mulkey said she has never been to Duke. "This is going to be quite a challenge for us," she said. "I'm just so happy right now that it doesn't matter who we play, or where."
SO YES, IT'S TRUE: for the first time in your favorite university's basketball history, the regular season has ended, the conference tournaments have been all wrapped up, the post-season tournament invitations have gone out, and Mulkey's Lady Bears and Bliss' Bears are tournament bound.
Never before have both Bears and Lady Bears won post-season tournament invitations in the same season.
And that just adds another exclamation point to this 2000-2001 season, which already has been underlined with significant achievements by both teams: victories over teams ranked in the nation's Top 10 by both teams, new total attendance records for both teams, first-ever recognition on Big 12 All-Conference first teams for both Bears and Lady Bears (Sheila Lambert and Danielle Crockrom for the Lady Bears, Terry Black for the Bears), a first-ever place on the men's Big 12 All-Tournament team for a member of Bliss' team (DeMarcus Minor).
And that's just the start of it.
But at the moment the tournament selections are the big news.
AS NOTED, THIS is the first time the Lady Bears have won an invitation to the NCAA women's "Big Dance." The first time ever. And they have done it in Mulkey's first year as their head coach. Talk about your great coaching jobs. . . And, guys, she's just a rookie coach who in large part did it with the inheritance from a team that the year before won 7 games and lost 20. This year they are 21-8 and ranked 24th in the nation.
"We may have done too much too early," Mulkey was saying rather ruefully Sunday, maybe wondering what she now must do for an encore.
This will be the Baylor men's team's third experience with NIT competition. The Bears' 1986-87 team, which put together an 18-13 season (10-6 in the SWC) and was coached by Gene Iba, lost in the first round of the NIT to Arkansas-Little Rock, 42-41, in a wild and rather controversial game played in Little Rock.
That Baylor team featured two All-Southwest Conference players, Michael Williams and Darryl Middleton.
And the Bears' 1989-90 team, also coached by Iba, lost in the NIT's first round to Mississippi State, 84-75, in a game played at Mississippi State. That Baylor team won an NIT invitation after a 16-14 season (7-9 in the SWC). That team was sparked by David Wesley and Kelvin Chalmers.
What all that means is that the Bears will be looking for their first victory ever in NIT play when they take on New Mexico.
Incidentally, Baylor women have had more success in the NIT's counterpart, the WNIT. They received an invitation to that tournament in 1998 after posting a 17-10 record and then won three straight WNIT games -- beating Mississippi State, Oklahoma State and LSU, all in games played at the Ferrell Center -- before losing to Penn State in the championship game at the Ferrell Center, 59-56. The next season they also received a WNIT invitation but lost in overtime to Rice in a first-round game, 62-60.
Editor's Note: Dave Campbell's column appears in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here. For an archive of his other columns, click here.
