LEGENDS REFLECT ON HISTORIC DAY
SWAC.org
March 18, 2010
By Roscoe Nance
Special to SWAC.org
March 19, 1993 is a red letter day in SWAC basketball history. It was a day when the unthinkable happened as Southern University and Jackson State pulled off a pair of stunning postseason upsets.
Southern, the SWAC Tournament champion ran circles around Georgia Tech as they defeated the Yellow Jackets 93-78 in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Later that night, Jackson State, the regular season champion, ambushed the University of Connecticut 90-88 in overtime on the Huskies' home floor in Storrs, Conn., in the first round of the NIT.
"That was a good night for SWAC,'' says Ben Jobe, who coached Southern to its landmark victory over Georgia Tech. "Two teams went further than they had ever gone.''
The victories were the first in the postseason for a SWAC school - or a Division I HBCU for that matter - since 1984 when Alcorn State beat Houston Baptist in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
"When you beat two stable and winning teams over the years, that has to be a big deal,'' says SWAC and NABC Hall of Famer Davey Whitney, coach at Alcorn State when the Braves in 1979 became the second HBCU to win a game in the NIT and the following year became the first to win an NCAA tournament contest.
However, Whitney says Southern and Jackson State have been slighted over the years in terms of being recognized for they were able to accomplish.
"Everybody was happy that they won, but the media didn't do it justice,'' he says. "I really don't know why. It was a tremendous upset."
Whitney says Jackson State and Southern were "opportunistic'' and "solid'' teams, and he wasn't surprised that were able to break through.
Whitney was undoubtedly in an underwhelming minority, considering the reputations and track records of UConn and Georgia Tech. UConn boasted a roster that included five future NBA draft picks - Donyell Marshall, Donny Marshall, Scott Burrell, Kevin Ollie and Tate George.
Georgia Tech was fresh off beating North Carolina and Duke to win the ACC Tournament championship and featured point guard Travis Best and forwards Ivano Newbill and Malcolm Mackey, who went on to play in the NBA.
On that night, neither the Huskies nor the Yellow Jackets were a match for their unheralded opponents.
"I felt the NIT gave us to UConn as a present,'' Stoglin says, hinting that NIT organizers, because of UConn's proximity to New York, wanted the Huskies to have an easy path to the semifinals at Madison Square. "They knew they could bring a lot of people to New York.''
If that was the plan, someone should have told Lindsey Hunter. That year's SWAC Player of the Year caught fire in the second half and burned UConn for 34 points after scoring just five in the first half. The Tigers, who sailed through their conference schedule with a 13-1 record before losing to Southern 101-80 in the SWAC Tournament final, built a 10-point lead in the second half against UConn. Donyell Marshall made three three-pointers down the stretch to send the game into overtime, but Hunter scored eight of the Tigers' 10 points in the extra period to seal the win for Jackson State, which ended the year 25-9.
"That's the thing about Lindsey,'' says Andy Stoglin, Jackson State's coach at the time. "At winning time, he steps up. The bigger the game, the better he played. When the game was on the line, that's when he played his best. Put Lindsey in a setting with pro scouts, he's going to raise up.''
Hunter's performance against UConn helped convince the Detroit Pistons to pick him No. 10 overall in the 1993 NBA draft.
Hunter, who recently retired from the Chicago Bulls after playing 17 seasons in the NBA and is a player development assistant with the team, says beating UConn was something of a consolation prize for he Tigers.
"We were so disappointed that we didn't make it to the NCAA,'' Hunter says. "We felt we were the best team in the conference and one of the best in the country. Playing in the NIT was a let down for us.''
Hunter says Jackson State got word that Southern had upset Georgia Tech during halftime, and that motivated the Tigers to take out UConn.
"That inspired us,'' Hunter says. "We felt we were better than (Southern). We said `If they can win, we can win.'''
Donny Marshall, who played five seasons in the NBA as a defensive specialist, held Hunter in check in the first half. Hunter recalls Marshall doing a lot of talking in the process. Hunter, however, had the last say.
"I said if we're going to lose I'm going to throw everything I got at them,'' he says. "I got on a roll. It kind of shocked them a little bit.''
The Huskies should have known that Hunter was capable of going off them. He scored 48 points against Kansas - which was No. 2 in the country at the time - in the Rainbow Classic earlier in the season.
Hunter's offensive explosion grabbed all the headlines, but Stoglin says it was the Tigers' defense and the play of point guard John Taylor that spelled the difference in the game.
"In this game, it was our defense that helped us,'' Stoglin says. "They had a hard time scoring against us, and we got a lot of easy baskets because of John Taylor. He would push the ball and guys would run for him.''
Running was Southern's forte when Jobe coached the Jaguars, who came into the tournament with a 20-9 record. They twice led the NCAA in scoring during the 1990s, including 1992-93 when they averaged 97.9 points, and they set the NCAA record for largest margin of victory - which has since been broken - when they beat Patten of Oakland, Calf., by 97-points, 154-57.
The Jaguars, whose style was to press 94 feet on defense and to take the first open shot they got on offense, were at their best against Georgia Tech in the first round of the West Regional. The Yellow Jackets, the No. 4 seed, simply ran out of gas in the second half as they tried to keep pace.
"They did run a lot,'' Newbill said. "Their goal was to run, run, run and run.''
Georgia Tech took advantage of its superior height to build a 15-point lead in the first half by pounding the ball inside. However, Southern trimmed its deficit to five points at the half as the Jaguars' relentless pressure on both ends gradually took its toll. "They were killing us,'' Jobe says. "The kids had courage. They felt like we could win. We pressed them, ran and ran. They started getting tired. We saw that, and we kept running them. We prided ourselves on being in condition.''
Jobe says all of the Jaguars' drills in practice involved running, and their pre-season conditioning regimen including running outside on a track.
One school of thought was that Southern was able to upset Georgia Tech because the Yellow Jackets were tired after their grueling run in the ACC Tournament. Jobe didn't buy it then, and he still doesn't.
"We were in better condition,'' he says. "They tried to say Tech was tired because they beat Carolina and Duke in the ACC Tournament. We should have been tired. We played Jackson State Sunday and had to be in Tucson Wednesday.''
Newbill agrees that fatigue wasn't a factor.
"They played hard,'' he says. "They played extremely hard. They played at 100%; we played 85%. They deserve the credit. They followed their game plan and kicked our butts. If they were running at 10, we were at 6 or 7. We were focusing on executing and going inside. We weren't able to execute. They were.''
Southern scored the first six points of the second half, and went ahead for the first time, 45-44, with 18:50 remaining. Darius Mimms' three-pointer with 12:33 left gave the Jaguars the lead for good, 64-61. Georgia Tech contributed to its own demise with 16 second-half turnovers in the face of Southern's pressure defense after committing just six in the first half.
Southern forward Jevaughn Scales, 6-7, destroyed Georgia Tech's taller frontline with 27 points and 18 rebounds.
Ironically, Jobe says the biggest victory in Southern's history brought him little personal joy. He is friends with then Georgia Tech coach Bobby Cremins. Two were assistants on Frank McGuire's staff at the University of South Carolina in the 1970s, and Jobe was an assistant under Cremins at Georgia Tech.
"I was happy for Southern,'' Jobe says. "They had never done that. I have friendships that I treasure. My friendship with Bobby Cremins is one of them. I didn't want to play him. I don't mind playing Dean Smith or Adolph Rupp .They're not my friends. That's the only time I won a game and cried.''
Jackson State and Southern both lost their next games. Southern, the crowd favorite after downing Georgia Tech, was unable to catch lightning in a bottle again and lost to George Washington, 90-80.
Hunter came down on the flight home, and Jackson State lost to Southeast Missouri 70-52 on the Tigers' home court. But their subsequent losses don't diminish the magnitude of their victories.
"That possibly was biggest night in black college basketball history,'' Stoglin says.