Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 8, 1991 TAG: 9103080061
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bill Brill
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
There is this memory of Louisville's 83-76 upset - I still have difficulty associating the Cardinals with a Metro Conference upset - of regular-season champion Southern Mississippi in the tournament opener Thursday at the Roanoke Civic Center:
The Golden Eagles stole the ball and Russell Johnson, their 6-foot-2, 215-pound (I want to use his scales) point man, threw the ball to a fast-breaking Darrin Chancellor. Only Chancellor wasn't looking and the ball bounced off his back out of bounds.
Just one of 24 turnovers by Southern Miss, most of them similar.
The Eagles would attempt to give-and-go, only it usually turned out gone-and-went.
Louisville fans carried the banner, "Doctors of Dunk, three away from the NCAA." Now it's just two for the first bunch of Cardinals ever to finish last in this league.
The Cardinals have won four straight and tournament sponsors were smiling. They figure about the time the final horn sounded Thursday, 1,000 or so Louisville fans jumped in their cars and headed up I-64 for the 400-mile trip to Roanoke.
Southern Miss, meanwhile, will fly home to Hattiesburg, wondering about a season suddenly gone sour.
The Sports Illustrated jinx has made the Golden Eagles an endangered species for the NCAA Tournament.
Once implanted among the elite, Southern Miss faces a difficult regrouping job or its second NCAA appearance will turn out just like last year's debut, a first-round loss.
Louisville coach Denny Crum spoke of the importance of momentum at tournament time. "We feel really good about ourselves, and we've blocked out adversity," he said.
Obviously, just the opposite has happened to Southern Miss. M.K. Turk's team has lost five of eight and its last four against Metro opponents.
They have abandoned any thoughts of a good seeding in the NCAA, where just a couple of weeks ago they figured to be one of the top 16.
"This has been some of the most difficult time we've ever experienced," Turk said of the late-season collapse. "We've got to get zeroed in, and get out of this slump. We've talked about turning it around, but we just simply couldn't get it turned."
One problem was apparent. The Metro's two-time player of the year, Clarence Weatherspoon, saw the ball only when he obtained it himself off the glass.
The Eagles definitely weren't dishing it out with the Spoon.
In previous victories over Louisville, including on the road without scoring leader Chancellor, the 6-foot-7, 240-pound Weatherspoon and 6-11 Daron Jenkins dominated inside.
Jenkins played just 18 minutes, got three shots and no offensive rebounds, and he made an incredibly dumb intentional foul in the middle of a Southern Miss rally.
Johnson, who was 2-of-8 shooting with just three assists, couldn't get the ball inside to his main man. In fact, the first time Weatherspoon touched the ball on offense came seconds after backup Dallas Dale replaced Johnson at the point.
It was an easy layup for Spoon. "We sure can't stop him when he gets the ball," Crum said. But Johnson and friends couldn't find him.
So Southern Miss was relegated to outside shooting, something it did reasonably well on those relatively rare occasions when it didn't make an out-of-sync turnover.
"We didn't get the ball inside," Johnson said. "We just played around with it outside."
Turk remains mystified, and Southern Miss remains without a title in the to-be-revised Metro.
"Just how do you get [momentum] back?" he asked. "We've got to put these last two weeks out of our minds. It's a psychological thing. We've been playing mind games."
A friendly piece of advice for those of you who will participate in an office NCAA pool: Don't pick the Eagles to fly far.
Keywords:
BASKETBALL
by CNB