Broncos a menace in March

March 4, 2001

Published Saturday, March 3, 2001, in the San Jose Mercury News

The calendar has turned. The fun is just beginning. Hey, look. It's March. The month of Krzyzewski and Kentucky, of Bearcats and buzzer beaters, of Vitale and . . . well, more Vitale. That's what you see. That's what I see. Over at Santa Clara University, the folks have other visions of March. They see Lute Olson melting down until he's a puddle of goo with white hair. They see Maryland's starting five being bamboozled by a Canadian kid with spiky hair. They see Pepperdine turning into Pepper-don't.

For Santa Clara, this is the month of all things possible. It stands to reason, doesn't it? There can be no March Madness without a team to make people mad. Over the years, the basketball Broncos have happily filled that role.

The pattern is a familiar one. From December through February, the cuddly and hard-working Broncos fly under the Bay Area's sports radar, slogging along and getting their game in shape. Then, come March, they jump out from behind the Mission church and start scaring people. Usually, those people are players with bigger reputations and coaches with richer shoe contracts.

No, it doesn't happen every March. But it happens every few years or so, often enough for teams to take notice. And this time, you are starting to get that feeling again. After a shaky 4-6 start, Santa Clara has found its groove. This weekend, the Broncos enter the WCC tournament with an 18-11 record and a four-game winning streak.

Not only that, but one of those victories was a 13-point romp over Gonzaga, the tournament favorite. True, Santa Clara is seeded third, behind the Bulldogs and Pepperdine. Means nothing. True, the Broncos must win the WCC title game Monday night to receive an NCAA invitation. To which they reply: So?

``I think we're playing our best basketball right now,'' said Brian Jones, the Broncos' senior point guard and co-captain. ``If we keep playing the way we've been, particularly defensively, we can beat anybody.''

Anybody? Yes. Anybody. That's what the man said. And his coach is right on board.

``Talk's cheap, I know,'' Dick Davey said this week. ``But we're on the positive sign of the coin right now. Last year's team did kind of a similar thing at the end of the season, really getting it together, especially on defense, and we made it to the WCC semifinals. We're starting to do that again. Of course, that could all change in our opening tournament game against Loyola.''

Yes, it could. But if Santa Clara goes in the tank tonight, that would be a huge surprise. The Broncos have March mayhem in their genes. No other Bay Area school can match their upset record. The tradition began in 1952 under Bob Feerick. His team had a 9-9 record in early February. But the Broncos caught the proverbial lightning on the backboard, won six straight, then upset UCLA in the NCAA tournament and stormed onward to Santa Clara's only Final Four appearance.

Carroll Williams pulled off lesser but still-stunning stunts during his tenure. In 1984, Santa Clara closed hard and upset Oregon in the National Invitation Tournament. Three years later, Williams took a 15-13 team into the WCC tournament and upended Pepperdine to win an NCAA trip.

Davey was next. Promoted from his assistant-coaching job in 1992, he carefully brought along freshman point guard Steve Nash -- now with the Dallas Mavericks -- and the Broncos were ready to rock in March. In the WCC title game, the Broncos made nine straight three-point shots (and 13 total) to again beat poor Pepperdine.

That turned out to be a mere warm-up. A week later, Santa Clara was seeded 15th in the NCAA West bracket but shocked Olson and second-seeded Arizona. It's often cited as one of the tournament's greatest upsets. Three years later, Nash scored 28 points and had the game of his life in an NCAA first-round victory over Maryland.

Davey said he never pulls out the videotapes to watch those memorable encounters, with the possible exception of that three-pointer-crazy victory over Pepperdine. He'd rather look ahead. He'd rather hunker down with the scouting reports prepared by longtime assistant Steve Seandel, the man Davey credits for assembling the information on the weaknesses of superior opponents.

As for his players, Davey said, they're the usual band of fundamentally sound, dogged lovers of hoop. ``It's similar to a lot of our teams,'' Davey said. ``Really, we're always the same face.''

And that face, as we know, is the face of a grinding player who may not be the prettiest mug in the house but will keep annoying you until you either beat him back or give up. The more physical nature of March basketball, during which referees call a looser game, helps the Broncos' cause. So does their annually rugged non-conference schedule, which this season was rated the nation's 15th most difficult. That's paying off now, though Davey is surprised how much.

``Back in December, if you'd told me this is where we'd be, I would have had a lot of doubts,'' he said. ``We were having trouble getting good team chemistry. We were sloppy, our timing was off, and the consistency of effort was as bad as it's been here. We were averaging 16 turnovers a game. We were scratching our heads and saying, `God dang, what's wrong?' ''

Plenty was wrong, to tell the truth. Jones and the team's three other seniors were being passive instead of taking charge. And the Broncos had to play their first seven games away from home because the remodeled Leavey Center was not ready to open.

``We couldn't put the pieces together,'' Davey said. ``We had some guys hurting, we had to practice over at our other gym where the court is a little shorter, so it threw us off when we got back here on the bigger floor. . . . There were all kinds of excuses we could have made, and we were making them.''

The turnaround began, oddly enough, in a 15-point loss to Stanford.

``That's when I saw the competitive spirit start to come out,'' Davey said. ``We lost the game, but we were down 10 points with six minutes to go and if we make a long one there, we're down just seven. I think the seniors just got frustrated and tired of losing.''

Jones confirmed that analysis.

``We lost some close ones early because we weren't playing as a team, we were playing as individuals,'' he said.

Now, like Nash before him, Jones would like to be the point guard who steps up and surprises the country in the month of all things possible. Even if the Broncos reach Monday's title game and lose, they still could receive an NIT bid and cause havoc there.

``I don't care where we go,'' Davey said. ``We'd just like to play some more games.''

The first is tonight.