Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 19, 1992 TAG: 9203190079
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL BRILL SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: GREENSBORO, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
Billy Lee is as homespun as you can get and he hasn't slept a lick, good buddy, and he is just so excited.
1,000,000,000,000 to one.
Those are the odds that Campbell won't win the NCAA, a trillion to one, which makes Billy Lee laugh.
"Howard is the No. 64 team and they're only a billion to one," he said.
Then, said Campbell's coach, "I'm just tickled pink he gave us one."
Campbell plays No. 1 Duke at 7:30 tonight in the Greensboro Coliseum, where the audience will be 16,000. In 13 home games this year, at Carter Gym ("Billy's Barn") and the Cumberland County Civic Center in Fayetteville, the Fighting Camels played before 6,896 people.
That's an average of 530. The big crowd was 709, on campus, for Liberty. Winthrop attracted just 253 in Fayetteville.
Ever since Campbell won the Big South Tournament in an upset - the Camels were 7-7 in the league and lost twice to Radford - life has changed in Buies Creek.
By now, if you've watched TV or read USA Today, you know that there are no stoplights in Buies Creek, and the nearest McDonald's is 10 miles away in Dunn, and Billy Lee has a million stories.
This is the biggest thing that's ever happened at Campbell, which is just over an hour away from Duke, and where the student enrollment of 5,777 is just a few short of the Devils.
At first, Lee wanted to go West, to Boise, Idaho, the only other place Campbell could play because of its Baptist affiliation. On Sunday, good buddy, the Camels go to church, not to basketball games.
But a lowly seed playing in Idaho isn't anything unusual. Playing No. 1, and a neighbor, now that's different.
Lee smiles a happy smile and if he's weary, well, heck, he may only do this once.
"I never signed an autograph until I got here," he said. "This is different for me."
It's not that Billy doesn't know Coach K. Or Dean. He does. He's a friend and a hero worshiper. He's studied the way Duke and North Carolina play for years.
"I've got so many Duke tapes," he said, "my wife thinks I'm crazy."
But, good buddy, "It's one thing to watch them and study their system, and it's another to have to watch Duke on tape for a scouting report."
Billy Lee is "shaking like a wet dog in the wind" at the idea of playing Duke, but he doesn't know if he'd want to change places with Mike Krzyzewski.
"The one thing I like about the Creek is I can be myself," he said. "I can go home and get some peaches in the backyard and play golf when I feel like it.
"I can't imagine what it's like for Dean Smith or Coach K, not to be able to go to the store for some ice cream and not be stopped by somebody."
But now the Camels are playing the Devils, and, for a couple of weeks, life in Buies Creek has been faster-paced than a duck on a junebug, good buddy.
Ask Mark Moncik, MVP of the Big South Tournament, what the most unusual thing that's happened to him lately, and he replies, "Well, Dick Schaap and an ABC crew went to class with me."
Or ask Stan Cole, the sports information director, who has been working 18-hour days. Cole was in Radford for the Big South women's tournament and, courtside, he did an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Cole has kept a log, and since the Camels made the field, there have been 850 telephone calls to his office.
At some home basketball games in Billy's Barn - it is just three years younger than Lee, who is 42, and the smallest facility in Division I - there were no media present. Cole phoned in the results.
But now there have been stories on Campbell in papers all over the nation.
On Tuesday, besides Schaap, people from the Boston Globe and New York Times were on campus. "Maybe a dozen, all told," Cole said.
They find Lee engaging and full of one-liners, and so, so happy to be here. "That was my dream," he said in a rare serious moment, "to be able to go to the NCAA."
So now Joe Spinks, who is 6 feet 6 and a wiggler, will have to guard Christian Laettner. A wiggler is a guy who can score with or without the ball, good buddy.
Lee knows he can tell his stories and the media will grasp every phrase, but when it's game-time, "We'll be as nervous as a cricket in a henhouse.
"I just hope we can hang in there, like a loose tooth, for the first five minutes."
One other thing. There is no story as to why Campbell is named the Camels. Back in the 1930s, school officials just decided to change the name from Hornets.
If that hadn't happened, why maybe the NBA would have the Charlotte Camels, instead, good buddy.
by CNB