SWC75
Bored Historian
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The Darkness
The next season, most of the way, was not much better and perhaps a little worse. Hackett was a senior. Saunders was gone and was replaced by a 6-5 jumping jack named Chris Sease, from Nottingham High here in the city. Bob Dooms was gone, replaced by Earnie “The Whale” Seibert, who was bigger than Dooms and also bigger than he should have been, politely listed at 6-9, 250lbs. It was said, not entirely in jest, that he had 4.6 speed- in the 20 yard dash. Sweet “D” was gone, to be replaced by Jim Williams, a 5-9 watersprite who did not like being called “Bug”. I recall that he was one of three guys we had recruited who had been point guards on state championship teams, (the others being Larry Kelley and Larry Arrington). I remember thinking that that recruiting class would pay off with a lot of leadership for SU in the future and it did. The other guard was Jimmy Lee, who would join Hackett in a ”Mr Inside/Mr. Outside” combination. There was perhaps more depth than usual, with Ross Kindel, Kevin King, Marty Byrnes, Kevin James, Bob Parker, Mark Meadors and Steve Shaw, along with Kelley and Arrington.
As I have said, Providence was the big power in the east at the time, led by their stars Ernie DeGregorio and Marvin Barnes. SU never seemed to get a game with them, but now we did, in the storied Providence Civic Center. It was the biggest regular season game we’d played in years- probably sin ce that St. John’s game I first attended. Playing the best program in the East kind of announced our ambition to, (someday), rival them. Ernie and Marvin were gone but they still had a lot of top players, including Joe Hassett and Bob Misevicius. SU had a good first half and went to the locker room with a 45-41 lead. I remember thinking, “We’ve made it! We can look a team like Providence right in the eye and compete with them!” All I remember about the second half is that we scored 12 points and they scored 39. We were still not ready for prime-time. But we would return to the Providence Civic Center before the season was over.
Two games later, SU played in something called the “Rochester Classic”. Their first opponent was an upcoming school from DC called Georgetown. SU had played them before but they had never amounted to much. But now they had hired John Thompson, an ex-Providence star who had backed up Bill Russell for several years at the Celtics, then become a successful DC High school coach. A short term trend that was repeated several times in this season evidenced itself in this first real SU- Hoya confrontation. SU had a 16 point lead and let it slip away, losing 70-71. This was huge disappointment at the time as Georgetown, which would become what Providence once was and then some, had been a 3-23 team when the big guy took over and a .500 team in the subsequent two seasons. The next night they lost to Dartmouth by a point in the final. We had thought that this was almost a set-up to get SU its first tournament win in over a decade. It was not a good loss.
SU beat Rochester in the consy and began a six game winning streak to push the record to 11-2. Then the wheels fell off. We lost to BC and Penn State, then came back to beat nationally ranked LaSalle, with their star, Joe, (Kobe’s Dad) Bryant and St. Bonaventure in overtime. But the Orange blew a 13 point lead at home and lost to Rutgers, 75-76. The SU offense broke down so badly that we got only 19 shots off in the entire second half, and none in two possessions in the last 42 seconds, both of which ended in turnovers. Danforth thought maybe the team had tried to force it into Hackett too much. Jimmy Lee said it was “one of the toughest losses since I’ve been here.” The fact that this was largely the same Rutgers team that went unbeaten until the Final Four the next year puts a little perspective on a one point loss to them but was no comfort at the time.
Then, in a televised game, (still rare in those days), absolutely everything seemed to go SU’s way in the first half against West Virginia. SU made no mistakes, did everything with intensity and the shots were falling. The crowd was into it and SU seemed to have built an insurmountable lead - even for this team that didn’t know what to do with alead. It got up to 21 points just before halftime and was 19 at the break. Blow-out city. The only question seemed to be when to send in the reserves.
Jim Boeheim: “We played very well in the first half. The second half we just stopped. Everybody stopped playing their game and just started looking for Jimmy and Rudy to do it and carry the load…Plus the fact that we were tired, physically tired- it was our fourth game in eight days.”(Basketball players get tired? Who knew?) Whatever, that lead started slipping away as soon as the second half started. 21 had become 19 which became 15 then 12, then 8 then…it wound up 81-84. Bob Snyder’s article the next day called SU’s performance in the second half was “a classic display of how not to play basketball”. The Orange attempted 29 second half shots, 10 more than against Rutgers, but made only 10 of them, one every two minutes. It ended with Hackett being called for offensive goaltending on a jumper by Kevin King and then fouling out trying vainly to get the ball back.
The headline in the next days’ paper was “WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE ORANGE?”. I don’t know when I’ve ever felt so down on the team. What are we to think of a team that keeps blowing big leads? What were our heroes made of? It was one of those moments that made you wonder if it’s worth it to get emotionally invested in a team that disappoints you so much and causes you such pain. Maybe Mom was right when she said it made no sense to root for a team when it doesn’t make you happy. (I ahte it when Mom’s right!) We were not exactly a second half team. What made it worse is that both the Rutgers and West Virginia losses occurred at Manley, where we had won 51 of the previous 52 games.
Perhaps the problem was a lack of balance. Hackett was having an All-American year with 22 points and 13 rebounds a game. He was a dominant inside player who often played center while Seibert rode the pines. Lee was scoring 17 from the backcourt. He could get his shot off quicker than anybody we’ve had until maybe GMAC. He could not only hit the stationary jump shot but also was a master of the “stop and pop”. When SU had a fast break, (and we did that whenever we could), the team didn’t necessarily have to go to the basket to score every time. Lee could put the breaks on and go up from 15 feet and score so easily it was like a lay-up. But SU had no other reliable scorers. If they got no support, even Hackett and Lee could not carry the team by themselves.
A win vs. Colgate was followed by a loss to Canisius and the Orange was really reeling with five losses in 8 games. The record was 14-7 at that point. Wins over George Washington, Niagara, Fordham and Manhattan brought it to a respectable 18-7 by the end of the regular season. Still, SU probably would have been headed to New York to play in the NIT except that the NCAA tournament had expanded to 32 teams, with regional tournament to determine who among the independents would get in. In these parts, the regional tourney was called the ECAC Playoffs. The Orange went to Buffalo to take on Niagara, Fairfield and St, Bonaventure. We’d been through the darkness but the dawn was coming.
The next season, most of the way, was not much better and perhaps a little worse. Hackett was a senior. Saunders was gone and was replaced by a 6-5 jumping jack named Chris Sease, from Nottingham High here in the city. Bob Dooms was gone, replaced by Earnie “The Whale” Seibert, who was bigger than Dooms and also bigger than he should have been, politely listed at 6-9, 250lbs. It was said, not entirely in jest, that he had 4.6 speed- in the 20 yard dash. Sweet “D” was gone, to be replaced by Jim Williams, a 5-9 watersprite who did not like being called “Bug”. I recall that he was one of three guys we had recruited who had been point guards on state championship teams, (the others being Larry Kelley and Larry Arrington). I remember thinking that that recruiting class would pay off with a lot of leadership for SU in the future and it did. The other guard was Jimmy Lee, who would join Hackett in a ”Mr Inside/Mr. Outside” combination. There was perhaps more depth than usual, with Ross Kindel, Kevin King, Marty Byrnes, Kevin James, Bob Parker, Mark Meadors and Steve Shaw, along with Kelley and Arrington.
As I have said, Providence was the big power in the east at the time, led by their stars Ernie DeGregorio and Marvin Barnes. SU never seemed to get a game with them, but now we did, in the storied Providence Civic Center. It was the biggest regular season game we’d played in years- probably sin ce that St. John’s game I first attended. Playing the best program in the East kind of announced our ambition to, (someday), rival them. Ernie and Marvin were gone but they still had a lot of top players, including Joe Hassett and Bob Misevicius. SU had a good first half and went to the locker room with a 45-41 lead. I remember thinking, “We’ve made it! We can look a team like Providence right in the eye and compete with them!” All I remember about the second half is that we scored 12 points and they scored 39. We were still not ready for prime-time. But we would return to the Providence Civic Center before the season was over.
Two games later, SU played in something called the “Rochester Classic”. Their first opponent was an upcoming school from DC called Georgetown. SU had played them before but they had never amounted to much. But now they had hired John Thompson, an ex-Providence star who had backed up Bill Russell for several years at the Celtics, then become a successful DC High school coach. A short term trend that was repeated several times in this season evidenced itself in this first real SU- Hoya confrontation. SU had a 16 point lead and let it slip away, losing 70-71. This was huge disappointment at the time as Georgetown, which would become what Providence once was and then some, had been a 3-23 team when the big guy took over and a .500 team in the subsequent two seasons. The next night they lost to Dartmouth by a point in the final. We had thought that this was almost a set-up to get SU its first tournament win in over a decade. It was not a good loss.
SU beat Rochester in the consy and began a six game winning streak to push the record to 11-2. Then the wheels fell off. We lost to BC and Penn State, then came back to beat nationally ranked LaSalle, with their star, Joe, (Kobe’s Dad) Bryant and St. Bonaventure in overtime. But the Orange blew a 13 point lead at home and lost to Rutgers, 75-76. The SU offense broke down so badly that we got only 19 shots off in the entire second half, and none in two possessions in the last 42 seconds, both of which ended in turnovers. Danforth thought maybe the team had tried to force it into Hackett too much. Jimmy Lee said it was “one of the toughest losses since I’ve been here.” The fact that this was largely the same Rutgers team that went unbeaten until the Final Four the next year puts a little perspective on a one point loss to them but was no comfort at the time.
Then, in a televised game, (still rare in those days), absolutely everything seemed to go SU’s way in the first half against West Virginia. SU made no mistakes, did everything with intensity and the shots were falling. The crowd was into it and SU seemed to have built an insurmountable lead - even for this team that didn’t know what to do with alead. It got up to 21 points just before halftime and was 19 at the break. Blow-out city. The only question seemed to be when to send in the reserves.
Jim Boeheim: “We played very well in the first half. The second half we just stopped. Everybody stopped playing their game and just started looking for Jimmy and Rudy to do it and carry the load…Plus the fact that we were tired, physically tired- it was our fourth game in eight days.”(Basketball players get tired? Who knew?) Whatever, that lead started slipping away as soon as the second half started. 21 had become 19 which became 15 then 12, then 8 then…it wound up 81-84. Bob Snyder’s article the next day called SU’s performance in the second half was “a classic display of how not to play basketball”. The Orange attempted 29 second half shots, 10 more than against Rutgers, but made only 10 of them, one every two minutes. It ended with Hackett being called for offensive goaltending on a jumper by Kevin King and then fouling out trying vainly to get the ball back.
The headline in the next days’ paper was “WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE ORANGE?”. I don’t know when I’ve ever felt so down on the team. What are we to think of a team that keeps blowing big leads? What were our heroes made of? It was one of those moments that made you wonder if it’s worth it to get emotionally invested in a team that disappoints you so much and causes you such pain. Maybe Mom was right when she said it made no sense to root for a team when it doesn’t make you happy. (I ahte it when Mom’s right!) We were not exactly a second half team. What made it worse is that both the Rutgers and West Virginia losses occurred at Manley, where we had won 51 of the previous 52 games.
Perhaps the problem was a lack of balance. Hackett was having an All-American year with 22 points and 13 rebounds a game. He was a dominant inside player who often played center while Seibert rode the pines. Lee was scoring 17 from the backcourt. He could get his shot off quicker than anybody we’ve had until maybe GMAC. He could not only hit the stationary jump shot but also was a master of the “stop and pop”. When SU had a fast break, (and we did that whenever we could), the team didn’t necessarily have to go to the basket to score every time. Lee could put the breaks on and go up from 15 feet and score so easily it was like a lay-up. But SU had no other reliable scorers. If they got no support, even Hackett and Lee could not carry the team by themselves.
A win vs. Colgate was followed by a loss to Canisius and the Orange was really reeling with five losses in 8 games. The record was 14-7 at that point. Wins over George Washington, Niagara, Fordham and Manhattan brought it to a respectable 18-7 by the end of the regular season. Still, SU probably would have been headed to New York to play in the NIT except that the NCAA tournament had expanded to 32 teams, with regional tournament to determine who among the independents would get in. In these parts, the regional tourney was called the ECAC Playoffs. The Orange went to Buffalo to take on Niagara, Fairfield and St, Bonaventure. We’d been through the darkness but the dawn was coming.
