Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 28, 1994 TAG: 9402280020
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LYNCHBURG LENGTH: Medium
Last Monday morning, with six days left in the regular season, Radford was a half-game behind first-place Towson State in the Big South Conference. That night, the Highlanders overcame a 21-point deficit with the biggest comeback in their Division I history to beat Charleston Southern.
Then, the league changed the standings, forfeiting games in which NCAA probation-bound Coastal Carolina had played forward Mohammed Acha. Radford lost its best guard, Anthony Walker, to an ankle sprain on Thursday. The Highlanders had to visit their biggest rival, Liberty, 48 hours later.
Walker couldn't play. The Flames burned Radford 75-73 before a noisy, record crowd Saturday night as the Highlanders wasted a pair of nine-point leads.
Instead of pressing Towson State for the title, Radford finished without its 20th victory. The Highlanders dropped three games behind the Tigers into a tie with Liberty for third place, behind Campbell, too, heading into the league tournament this weekend.
"Only in the Big South Conference," Bradley said with a shrug after the loss at Liberty.
The crowd of 8,014 at the Vines Center on Saturday night wasn't the only record changing in the Big South last week. Nine Coastal Carolina victories became losses - but only in the league standings, not the overall records - in a deepening probe that could stretch to 1992, when former Roanoke College coach Ed Green was the school's athletic director.
The Big South ruled 14 of Coastal Carolina's conference games were affected. Four games last week weren't. Radford lost in the situation, because the Highlanders had swept two games from the Chanticleers anyway.
"I don't know how they can make the decision they made," Bradley said. "Fourteen games this counts [as losses], four games that counts. If they're going to do that, maybe we should replay last year's conference tournament after this year's. Coastal won. If Acha is ineligible now, he was ineligible then, right?"
Despite a week he'd like to forget, Bradley has to like the Highlanders' third-seeded situation for the Big South tournament at the North Charleston (S.C.) Coliseum.
Getting a tie-breaking edge over the Flames because it was the only team with a victory over Towson State, Radford not only is in the opposite bracket from the Tigers, but also from dangerous Charleston Southern, which will play the tournament on its home floor starting Friday afternoon against Liberty.
Radford opens in the Friday nightcap against sixth-seeded Maryland-Baltimore County. Walker will be healthy. The Highlanders (19-7) have played better than the fifth-place preseason forecast and in losing to the Flames, Bradley said his team learned that even without part of its perimeter game and foul trouble, it can compete.
"The thing I like about this team is the way they defend," said the third-year coach of a team with a school-record 286 steals. "Anytime you can defend you have a chance, and defense is what wins in tournaments."
Radford isn't a deep or physical team, either, and Bradley believes the Big South tournament format - Friday-Saturday, then a day off for Campbell's church tenets before a 5 p.m. championship game March 7 - "can really help us, if we can get to Monday."
And that is a huge if. The Highlanders have lost in the Big South semifinals four consecutive years, two of those as the first and second seeds. A Big South title would bring Radford its first NCAA bid.
"It doesn't matter where you're seeded," said senior forward Don Burgess, who ranks second in scoring, third in blocks and fourth in rebounding and steals in Highlanders history. "Last year, the eighth seed [Winthrop] beat the first [Towson State]. The top teams are all pretty even."
The Highlanders are one of only nine Division I teams shooting 50 percent or better (.507). They're a solid passing team. They show patience without playing patiently and know something about transition defense.
And their tradition should tell them that the Big South semifinals are one mountain that has nothing to do with Mohammed.
by CNB