A Season Inside (34 page)

“Okay, see these numbers,” he said, pointing to the 9–0 and 0–9. “You know the 9–0 is us against AU. But I guarantee you that right now Eddie Tapscott has this number [0–9] written on his blackboard and he’s circling it. Your job tonight is to get a good start and make them think they’ll never be able to beat you. Do that and we’ll be all right.”

As the players headed for the floor, Barnes shook his head. “I’ve got
absolutely no feel for this game. I just wish it was ten o’clock right now and we had won.”

It would not be that easy. It was American that got the good start, jumping to a 17–9 lead during the first seven minutes. Barnes had been right about the crowd—the attendance was only 2,561—and the building was both cold and quiet. Everyone in the place could hear every sneaker squeak, and the coaches felt as if they had to lower their voices in the huddle to keep from being overheard.

The Patriots came back after the poor start and pushed to a 26–22 lead, thanks to two pretty baskets by Steve Smith, the lanky 6–3 sophomore who was the team’s most improved player. But AU came right back and, helped by an awful last ninety seconds during which GMU committed three straight turnovers, the Eagles led 37–33 at halftime.

Barnes was almost out of control at halftime. “How the fuck can you have fourteen turnovers in the first half?” he demanded. “How? Have you guys got any pride at all? How can you come to a game like this and not be ready to play? I don’t fucking understand it! I really don’t! You go out there and play like a bunch of damn pussies! You do that in the second half and you’ll get beat, I promise you.”

He walked out. In the hallway, he turned to his coaches with a half-smile on his face, feeling sheepish. “I swore I wasn’t going to curse anymore,” he said. “For thirty-two years I never used that kind of language, now I can’t make myself stop.” Then he went back in and, calmly, talked about what had to be done in the second half.

The second half was just plain old good basketball on both sides. AU built the lead to 53–45 and then to 59–49 with eleven minutes to go. Barnes abandoned his zone for man-to-man, feeling he had to do something to get his team to play more aggressively. It worked. The Patriots came back, cutting the lead to 63–60. From there, every possession mattered, the lead seesawing. AU had the lead, 77–75, and the ball with ninety seconds left, but Daryl Holmes missed the front end of a one-and-one and Kenny Sanders tied it at 77–77 with two free throws. Both teams had chances to win in the last minutes but couldn’t convert.

It was ten o’clock and Barnes still didn’t have his win. The overtime started poorly for the Patriots. AU grabbed an 84–80 lead on two baskets. But the Patriots tied it at 84–84 before Mike Sumner put AU back up, 85–84, hitting one of two free throws.

The Patriots ran the clock down, looking for a shot. Finally, with time running out, Davis drove into the middle and went up. Holmes blocked the shot. The whistle blew. Foul on Holmes. “I’ve only got one eye so I couldn’t see it,” Tapscott said later. “But from what they tell me …”

He had a complaint. The call was close, the kind that many officials will let go at the end of the game. But Davis got two free throws with seven seconds left. He made both. George Mason led, 86–85. American called time.

Both coaches were thinking the same thing. Tapscott wanted his best player, point guard Mike Sampson, to penetrate and look either for a shot or a pass as the defense came to meet him. Barnes wanted to cut Sampson off and force someone else to take the last shot. But in denying penetration, he wanted to be sure his defense didn’t get lazy and allow Sampson to surprise them by pulling up for a jumper.

The ball came in to Sampson. Sure enough, he drove the middle. The defense came to him. Sampson coolly kicked the ball to Dale Spears on the left wing. He was open from seventeen feet. The ball went up and, as everyone held their breath, it hit the front of the rim, rolled around and off as the buzzer finally sounded.

Both coaches had gotten what they wanted. Tapscott had put the ball in the hands of his creator and told him to create a good shot. He had done that. Barnes didn’t want Sampson to shoot the ball. His defense had done that. The only difference was in execution. Spears had been unable to make a makeable shot. That was basketball, though. If Spears had made the shot, Tapscott would have been no smarter, Barnes no dumber. It was a perfect example of the limits of coaching. In the end, all you can do is hope the players can play.

Barnes knew he had been lucky, but he wasn’t complaining. “I called you guys pussies and you proved me wrong,” he told the players. “Coaching didn’t win that game at all. You guys did. It wasn’t pretty, but you guys got the job done. That’s what matters.”

Back with the coaches, Barnes sighed. “I almost cost us that game,” he said. “I got them uptight because I was uptight. I made American into a monster instead of a good team. I’ve got to back off.”

He shook his head and smiled. “Live and learn, I guess. I guess I’m lucky. Tonight, I didn’t have to learn the hard way.”

A winter Friday night in the state of Indiana means one thing to most people here: high school basketball. In most of the small towns in the state, the fate of the local high school team ranks in importance just ahead of the fate of Indiana University’s basketball team. The Hoosiers’ fate ranks in importance only slightly ahead of the fate of the free world.

For two years now, one high school basketball player in Indiana has received more attention than most college players will receive in a lifetime. His name is Damon Bailey, and his notoriety is best summed up by the simple fact that at age sixteen he is already in that rare category of athlete who, at least in this state, needs no last name for identification.

Here, he is just “Damon,” the same way Dr. J. is Dr. J. and Magic is Magic. For a high school sophomore this is quite an honor—or burden.

Damon first began to become “Damon” as an eighth grader at Shawswicke High School when Indiana Coach Bob Knight made a couple of trips to see him play. Bob Knight going to see an eighth grader is an event that, in this state, is treated about the way Moses’ return with the stone tablets might have been handled if there had been advance publicity.

Anointed by Knight, Damon somehow lived up to his clippings as a freshman, leading Bedford–North Lawrence High School to the state Final Four. Now, as a sophomore, he is averaging 29.3 points, 9.5 rebounds, and 4 assists a game. BNL is 14–1.

The opponent tonight is formidable, though. Jeffersonville is also ranked in the state’s top ten. A town of twenty-two thousand, Jeffersonville is located at the state’s southern tip. It is actually a suburb of Louisville, just across the bridge into Indiana. Both schools are members of the Hoosier Hills Conference, which consists of schools in the southern part of the state.

There are very few high school gyms in Indiana that are merely gyms. Jeffersonville is no exception. The William S. Johnson Arena seats 5,300 people—about a thousand less than BNL’s gym seats—and almost five thousand less than the gym Steve Alford played in when he went to high school in New Castle.

The place is packed, partly because this is a big game, partly because
a sizable contingent of fans has made the drive down from Bedford. And partly because Damon is in town.

Damon hardly looks the part of an icon. He is listed at 6–3, but standing next to him it is impossible to believe he is much more than 6–1.
Maybe
6–2—standing very straight. He wears a brace on his left knee, has freckles and light brown hair, and doesn’t look a day older than sixteen years, three months, and eight days—which is exactly what he is. In a pinch, he could easily pass for Beaver Cleaver. He even has a teammate who looks like Lumpy Rutherford.

Damon is not a bombs-away shooter like so many high school phenoms are. Damon’s forte is the head fake and pull-up jumper, a move that has become something of a lost art in college basketball, especially since the invention of the wretched three-point rule. Most of his shots come from twelve to seventeen feet, and he rarely takes a bad shot. Knight, in a romantic moment, once said that Damon was ready for college basketball. But if he is to be a great college player, he will have to improve his range during the next two years.

On this level, though, his athletic ability and court sense make him dominant. Damon is one of those special players who is gifted with a feel for the game. It is not something that can be coached. The great players—Magic, Bird, Erving, Jordan—all have it. They have much, much more than just that, of course, so Damon’s gift doesn’t guarantee greatness. But still, it is a rare gift, and it is a pleasure to watch in a player so young.

He also has a remarkable maturity. For a youngster to have received so much adulation and attention yet kept a level head is almost miraculous. Friends credit his parents, who have refused to be swept up in all this and have continued to treat Damon like a teenager.

“I just like to play basketball and have fun playing basketball,” Damon says. “If we lose a game and both teams have played well, I don’t mind losing.”

This is not an attitude that will serve Damon very well should he end up playing college basketball in Bloomington. But for now, he can still be a sixteen-year-old kid enjoying his gift for the game. And this is the kind of game Damon enjoys. From the start, it is apparent that Jeffersonville is going to make life difficult for BNL. The score is tied at 20–20 after one quarter. At halftime, the Jeffs lead 43–37.

The arena/gym is rocking. Damon has 16 points on 6-of-12 shooting. For a mere mortal, a very good half. But for Damon …

Jeffersonville takes command in the third quarter, building the lead to 50–39 on a basket created by a (gasp!) Damon turnover. The lead is still 10 in the final seconds of the third quarter when Jeffersonville starts a three-on-one break. This is where Damon becomes “Damon.” He steals the ball with four seconds left, turns and heaves it upcourt to a teammate. As the buzzer sounds, the youngster flings a twenty-seven-foot shot at the basket.
Swish
—for three. Instead of leading 68–56 after three, Jeffersonville leads by only 66–59.

The fourth quarter belongs to Damon. He scores 14 of his 38 points, makes a backdoor cut with forty-five seconds left that puts BNL up 78–77, and sinks two free throws with seventeen seconds to go that makes it 80–77. The final is 81–77. In the second half, Damon is nine-for-eleven from the field. That’s pretty good even for an icon.

“That was just a good time,” Damon says when it is over, surrounded by reporters. “The Jeffersonville kids are really good guys, I enjoyed playing against them. I like an atmosphere like this even when the crowd is against you. It makes you feel like you’re really into the game.”

Someone asks if all the attention bothers him. He smiles the smile of someone who has heard all the questions before. And even at his age, he has. “No, it doesn’t bother me. When I was in eighth grade, Steve Alford took my parents and me to dinner and told us what to expect. He told me to just play basketball and let the rest take care of itself. He knows what he’s talking about.”

The dinner with Alford was arranged by one Robert M. Knight. Damon is certainly aware of Knight’s interest in him. “A lot of people want me to go to Indiana,” he says. “But they’re not going to be mad at me or get upset if I go someplace else. They’ll still back me.”

Damon may be a little naïve on that one. If he chooses a school other than Indiana he may acquire a new first name: Benedict. But that is a ways off. For now, Damon is just Damon, a hero in his hometown. Now that isn’t such a bad thing to be, is it? Especially in Indiana.

The oldest cliche in sports is the one that says, “When these two teams get together you can throw the record book away.”

Most of the time, the record book tells you a lot. But when Purdue and Indiana meet in basketball it is definitely fair to say this: Regardless
of record, a victory can salve a lot of wounds, a defeat can make a string of victories seem meaningless.

Purdue is a basketball team with a mission: Win the national championship. Indiana achieved that last year, and when the Boilermakers walked onto the floor of Assembly Hall they could see the national championship banner hanging there—along with four others. Purdue has many, many banners in Mackey Arena, but not one of them says “National Champions” on it.

What makes it worse are the strange air currents in Assembly Hall. On some days, the place actually has a breeze blowing through it. When that happens, the banners billow back and forth. This is one of those days. The banners just keep swaying in the wind, a reminder to the Boilermakers that they are in Bloomington, and that they have never achieved the status of Bob Knight’s team.

For the three Purdue seniors, Troy Lewis, Todd Mitchell, and Everette Stephens, playing here has never been anything less than strange. As freshmen, they were innocent bystanders in the infamous chair-throwing game, an easy Purdue victory that was completely overshadowed by Knight’s chair toss and subsequent ejection.

As sophomores, they had the Hoosiers beaten, leading by five points in possession of the ball, less than three minutes to go. But they managed to score just one point in the last four minutes of regulation and overtime and somehow lost the game, 71–70. Then, a year ago, they played perhaps their worst game of the regular season—until the finale at Michigan—and Indiana won easily.

The game today then, is a chance for the seniors to finish 2–2 in Bloomington. It is also an opportunity to inflict a loss on the Hoosiers they know will be painful.

The Boilermakers are a team riding very high. Having survived the crises of the early season and the controversies surrounding Dave Stack and Jeff Arnold, they are rolling. They have not lost since the November 24 NIT loss to Iowa State—two months and sixteen games ago. They are 17–1 overall and 6–0 in the Big Ten, giving them firm control of the race.

Indiana’s situation could hardly be more different. Throughout the Hoosiers’ season, everyone has been holding their breath, wondering what will happen next. Six days ago, a decisive loss at home to Michigan dropped their Big Ten record to 1–4, their overall mark to 9–6.