Rice Allows Skinner to Control Game, as BC Eliminates Maryland
by Jay Pearlman
CHARLOTTE – What would they call this in medieval Europe, an unholy alliance? One of these two is the second-best offensive player in the Atlantic Coast Conference, behind Tyler Hansbrough of Carolina, and a first round pick in this year’s draft if he chooses; the other is a veteran coach new to this revered conference, not quite mentioned with Coach Williams and Coach K.
For three years, and particularly this year with Jared Dudley gone, Coach Al Skinner has endeavored to mold a winning player out of the incredibly talented clay that is Tyrese Rice. And heretofore with mixed success. Well, it all came together Thursday night in Charlotte, and on the grand stage that is the ACC Tournament: tonight Rice was both the obedient pupil and the biggest star, and allowed Skinner to completely control the first round 6-11 game, and out-coach and eliminate Gary Williams of the No. 6 Maryland Terrapins. Maryland is now awaiting an NIT game at home in Comcast Arena, as No. 11 BC prepares for No. 3 Clemson Friday night.
A junior First-Team All-ACC guard, Rice averages 21 points and 5 assists, has blazing speed, creates his shot and penetrates to the goal better than anyone, and has rarely seen a shot he didn’t like. The score-first point guard can play at breakneck speed, and clearly wants to. But playing for BC rather than Carolina, Rice is the only one. Tyrelle Blair, Shamari Spears, John Oates and Josh Southern (what a game he played last night), even all of his fellow guards (ok, except Biko Paris) want to play – no, need to play – at a controlled half-court moderate pace. And to do what Coach Skinner has come to be known for: protect the ball, play tough defense for 35 seconds, and “flex you to death.” It has indeed been an “unholy alliance.” But not last night.
Losers of their last five, the Terrapins came out of the blocks fast. Their full-court press aided by unforced BC turnovers (a number of silly soft passes in the half-court), leading to run-outs and an early fifteen point lead. Maryland’s star forward James Gist (19 points, 8-15 shooting, 6 rebounds) was great at both ends, ran like the wind, scored inside and out, and dominated the early portion of the game. Losers of 12 of 13, BC was sluggish and out-rebounded early on both boards; after Rakim Sanders (13 points on 5-11 shooting) was forced to the sideline with his second foul 3:25 into the game, and then Rice went to halftime with just 4 points, at various times during the first half it was just this side of a blow-out.
But almost imperceptibly, after falling behind by fifteen, and in the face of Rice’s and others’ instinct to speed up to get back into the game, Skinner gently got his arms around pace, and even with the gap still in double digits, I whispered to the gentleman sitting next to me that Skinner was reigning things in. And even with Greivis Vasquez holding Rice to those four at intermission, they survived the onslaught and saved the game in those last ten minutes of the first half, pulling to within 6 at intermission, 31-25.
When a trey and a mid-range jumper by Gist opened the second half, widening the lead to 1l, it looked once again like Maryland would dominate. But even more quickly than in the first half, Skinner reasserted his control of pace. And even with Maryland in the lead for most of that half, it was a game played the way Skinner and BC like to play, and before BC ever took the lead on the scoreboard, an air of inevitability filled Bobcats Arena. Both early in the second half and late, Maryland was always in a hurry, while BC took its time.
With the help of teammates like Spears, Rice was able to beat Maryland’s press, then break down the defense in the half court. And while Vasquez seemed capable of defending Rice in the half court in the first half, the press in the second half resulted in lots of folks finding themselves guarding Rice; often it was Adrian Bowie, and when Bowie was on him, Rice’s eyes lit up and he walked around Bowie to the goal on multiple occasions. Couple that with terrific 3-point defense on Vasquez and Eric Hayes (two of Hayes’ three treys were after the outcome had been decided), a characteristically high number of Maryland turnovers, 21 (4 in a row during a crucial stretch 13 to 16 minutes into the second half), 6 by Vazquez alone, and ultimately a 10-rebound BC advantage (41-31), and BC was able to overcome Maryland’s 52 percent shooting, and come away with 71-68 win. Don’t be deceived by the medium score, as this game was on pace for the middle 50’s until fouls and quick baskets late increased the scoreboard. And again don’t let the score fool you; this game was in BC’s hands at the final media timeout, with a 10-point lead.
But the beauty is the dance between coach and star player. It has taken nearly three years, but Rice now knows when to pull it out, when to speed it up. His incredible change of speed is now a weapon turned on and off at the behest of the coach (though without the coach uttering a single word), and terribly confounding to opponents. Rice ended last night’s game with 19 points on 7-18 shooting, 4 assists and 6 rebounds. But more than anything else, Rice was the instrument through which Skinner controlled the game. And with the Skinner-Rice team this tight, I’m not completely certain I’d enjoy being No. 3 Clemson in tomorrow night’s 9 pm ACC Quarterfinal.
ACC News and Notes
- The rest of Day 1 in the ACC Tournament was less surprising. No. 8 Wake Forest couldn’t beat No. 9 Florida State for a third time, and FSU prevailed in a mild upset 70-60. The Seminoles face No. 1 North Carolina at noon on Friday. No. 5 Miami can defend, and No. 12 North Carolina State can’t score, so Miami’s 63-50 win wasn’t nearly that close. The Hurricanes face No. 4 Virginia Tech and Coach of the Year Seth Greenberg on Friday about 20 minutes after FSU/North Carolina. No. 7 Georgia Tech outscored No. 10 Virginia 94-76. If the Yellow Jackets expend as little effort on defense Friday night against No. 2 Duke as they did in Thursday night’s win, the game will be over long before halftime.
- By game 4 of Day 1, Billy Packer was gone for Raycom, Brad Nessler and Jimmy Dykes were gone for ESPN, and everyone who needed to be there was in the arena. The joy was palpable on the faces of Ted Sarandis and Bill Ebben, calling the game for ISP Sports on radio in Boston, and no one in New England will dispute that Ted is the heart and soul of college basketball in Boston.
- With wall-to-wall tournament coverage on radio and television, and Coach Bob Knight now an ESPN analyst, this old New Yorker has a thought I haven’t heard anyone whisper. Most of the tradition in NYC college basketball is at St. John’s, yet the Redmen (ok, the Red Storm) are nowhere to be found this post-season. All that success under Coaches Lapchick and Carnesseca, even under Fran Fraschilla, is no more of late, with Hofstra arguably the NY metropolitan area’s best program the last 4 years. Well, to be fair, especially to Mike Jarvis and Norm Roberts – I remember watching Norm play for Ken Fiedler at Springfield Gardens High School – the reason St. John’s is no longer winning has little to do with X’s and O’s. It has to do with recruiting; more to the point, it has to do with dormitories.
Carnesecca never had dorms (nor did successor Brian Mahoney, nor Fraschilla), and therefore at that time the university was permitted by NCAA rules to give players “rent-equivalents” (money) calculated as average rentals within a certain radius of campus. Not coincidentally, that advantage was removed when the university opened up dormitories, right around the time Jarvis became head coach. Now on an equal playing field, would you prefer to spend your college years in, oh, Chapel Hill or Lexington, or on the corner of Union Turnpike and the Grand Central Parkway?
That said, and with all due respect to Coach Roberts, there is only one thing that can save St. John’s from basketball oblivion, fill Madison Square Garden, qualify for the Big East Tournament (even for the NCAA tournament, hardly even remembered in Queens). But to restore the program, what is needed is a monster coach, one bigger than the program, one large numbers of folks still want to send their sons to play for, no matter where he coaches. If the late Al McGuire were still alive, there would be two such people, but now there is just one. You know him as the coach of Indiana, more recently of Texas Tech, but he’s really an east coast guy who, like Bill Parcells and Coach K, started his college coaching at Army: Bob Knight.
I believe that of all the coaches in the country, the only one who could bring big-time players back to St. John’s, and bring big-time basketball back to the Garden, is Bob Knight. So now that Pat Knight is firmly entrenched at Texas Tech, and post-season on ESPN just 3 1/2 weeks to conclusion, there’s a program in New York to be saved, and a perfect coach to save it. Jim Calhoun and John Thompson III may not be pleased at the prospect (nor ex-Hoosier Isiah Thomas), but NYC needs a big-time college basketball coach. And even though a year remains on Roberts’ contract (and the current state of affairs is not his fault), now is the time to bring in the only coach on earth who can save my late father’s alma mater.
