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No NCAA or NIT, So Kanaskie and Drake Fans Have a Right to Be Disappointed |
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RON MALY Vol 2, No. 14, The date: Oct. 17, 2001 The occasion: Drake’s preseason basketball press day, featuring Coach Kurt Kanaskie, standout sophomore Luke McDonald and the other Bulldogs. Before reporters had a chance to interview McDonald and the other players, Kanaskie startled some people when he made this comment: "If we end the Missouri Valley tournament and aren’t in position for postseason play—whether it’s the NIT or the NCAA—we’ve had a disappointing year. These guys have worked hard enough, and that’s what they’re expecting.’’ That’s quite a comment from a coach at a school that hasn’t been in an NCAA tournament since 1971 or to an NIT since 1986. There was another short-lived postseason tournament—the long-forgotten National Commissioners Invitational—which Drake won in 1975. So it’s been an agonizingly-long postseason dry spell for Drake, which still proudly displays a large banner inside the Knapp Center that says the 1969 Bulldogs finished third in the NCAA Final Four under the marvelous direction of Coach Maury John. John took his 1970 and 1971 Drake teams to the NCAA tournament, too (those banners are also in the Knapp Center) before going to what he regarded as greener pastures at Iowa State.
We all know by now that Kanaskie and his players won’t have to anxiously sit around a big-screen TV set Sunday at the Knapp Center, waiting to hear if they made the NCAA’s 65-team field. And they won’t need to bother asking if there’s any hope of getting into the NIT. For the 14th consecutive season, a Drake team has failed to win more games than it lost. Not since Gary Garner’s 1986-87 squad went 17-14 have the Bulldogs finished above .500. The closest they’ve come were when Garner’s 1987-88 team went 14-14 and when Rudy Washington’s 1992-93 team also went 14-14. Kanaskie came close to his first break-even or better season in 2001-02 by going 14-15. It continued the steady improvement he’s made since succeeding Washington prior to the 1996-97 season. Kanaskie’s records have been 2-26, 3-24, 10-17, 11-18, 12-16 and 14-15. Drake has certainly been more patient with him than other schools have been with their coaches. Take Jim Molinari at Bradley, for instance. Molinari, the dean of Valley coaches, was fired earlier this week after having a 174-152 record since being hired in April, 1991. He was the conference’s coach of the year in 1996, when Bradley played in the NCAA tournament. Molinari’s teams had three consecutive 20-win seasons and went to the NIT five times, most recently last season. But that wasn’t good enough for David Broski, Bradley’s president. Broski said Bradley should regularly challenge for conference titles and NCAA tournament bids.
So was Kanaskie wrong to say he’d be disappointed if the Bulldogs didn’t make it to either the NCAA or NIT this season? No. What’s wrong with going public with your goals? What’s wrong with telling the world how badly you want to win? You just can’t say it too many times without finally doing it. Kanaskie and his players aren’t the only guys who are disappointed that Drake’s season again ended without an invitation to the postseason. The Bulldogs’ fans are disappointed, too. The guy who wears a Drake jersey and sits behind the press table at the Knapp Center for all of the team’s games, and gets hoarse trying to give the team encouragement, is disappointed. The people who still recall Maury John’s unbelievable Drake teams beat such opponents as Iowa, Iowa State, Louisville, Cincinnati, Memphis State and St. Louis at Veterans Memorial Auditorium, and who are still buying season tickets for the team’s games at the much-smaller (and less-attended) Knapp Center, are disappointed.
I’m disappointed, too. There are plenty of people in Greater Des Moines who want Kanaskie and his team to succeed, and I’m one of them. In my previous writing life, I covered Drake teams coached by Maury John, Howard Stacey, Bob Ortegel, Gary Garner, Tom Abatemarco, Rudy Washington and Kanaskie, and I know the excitement a successful Drake team can bring to this city during a cold, hard winter. Unfortunately, since John, the successes have been too few and far between. Some people are likely frustrated at Kanaskie’s lack of success, but he faces challenging, well-chronicled academic regulations at Drake. Still, next year could be the year he finally turns the program around. McDonald, who led the Valley with a 17.9-point scoring average as a sophomore, may be a candidate to be the Missouri Valley Conference’s player of the year. He was fifth in the voting this season after becoming the first Drake player since Curt Smith in 1992-93 to lead the Valley in scoring. The 2002-03 season certainly should be Kanaskie’s best at Drake. And, when he holds his opening press conference next October, I hope he again says he’ll be disappointed if the Bulldogs don’t make it to the NCAA or the NIT. Who knows, maybe Kanaskie and his players won’t have to be disappointed on Selection Sunday in March, 2003. 2 Guards Say They’ll Play for Drake Still on the subject of Drake basketball, two players said this week that they’ll be enrolling at the school next year. One is Jermaine Anderson, a 6-2, 180-pound guard from Eastern Commerce High School in Toronto, Ontario. The other is Sean Tracy, a 6-4, 170-pound guard from Bullis Prep in Potomac, Md. Anderson has averaged 20 points, six rebounds and eight assists this season against U.S. and Canadian competition. He was ranked the No. 1 high school guard in Canada, and Dayton, Marquette and New Mexico State were among the schools that tried to recruit him. Tracy has a 3.5 grade-point average. Central Connecticut, Princeton, Hartford, New Hampshire, Wichita State and Robert Morris were other schools interested in him. Both Anderson and Tracy are expected to sign national letters of intent with Drake in the April-May signing period. Here & There I owa basketball coach Steve Alford continues to get bombarded in e-mail messages to me….A longtime Hawkeye observer noticed that I wrote a column earlier this week that quoted Southwest Missouri State athletic director Bill Rowe, Alford’s former boss, as saying he had confidence Alford will eventually be a winner at Iowa.…''Have you noticed the Big Ten coaches are also defending Alford?’’ the writer asks. "When that happens, they want the guy to stay in the league so they can continue to beat him. Alford’s three-year Big Ten record is a horrendous 18-30 (37.5 percent). Tom Davis was 36-18 in his first three seasons, and had only two second-division finishes in the league in his 13 years at Iowa. Those I-Club outings this spring might be a little tough for Steve. It will be interesting to see how the fans react next season, when ticket prices are up and his image is a little tarnished’’….Alive in Clive, not his real name, is also in a lather…"I am willing to give Alford this season as a learner,’’ Alive in Clive writes. "However, what is he going to do next year? Even if he is fortunate to recruit some big talent, they will be inexperienced. If he thinks the heat from the Iowa faithful is bad this year, wait until next year! I can already hear the boos coming’’…Alive in Clive also has this to say about the recent benching of Reggie Evans: "Maybe my rumor of late arrivals and missed practices was not from left field. They say he was not attending classes"….People around town keep telling me there’s not room for three sports talk radio stations here. That remains to be seen. All I know is that the stations must be concerned about low ratings, judging by the hirings and firings that have been taking place. While on the subject of sports talk, I was listening to the radio while driving to the gas station earlier this week. I heard the announcer say that Drake women’s basketball coach Lisa Stone would soon be interviewed on KXTK. It was a good interview, with Stone making some strong points. She handles herself as well on the radio as she does on the basketball court. Unfortunately, the situation went downhill quickly. One of the announcers said newspaper columnist Rob Borsellino would be on the same show soon. My immediate thought: Why would Borsellino be appearing on a sports radio station? After listening to him for a few minutes, his appearance made even less sense. Managers at the other two stations were no doubt licking their chops, knowing interviews like that were part of what they’d be competing against. It was very bad radio.[Ron Maly’s e-mail address is malyr@juno.com]
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