The craziness began in earnest on Sunday afternoon, way out of town, in a sweaty gymnasium in northwest Vermont, hard by Lake Champlain. This is where the great New York basketball renaissance, simmering for weeks, really started to gather a full head of steam.
The Stony Brook Seawolves were fighting dueling skirmishes: one on the floor at Patrick Gymnasium, where at one point they were down 16 points to Vermont, the other in their own minds, a roster of past postseason disappointments. Stony Brook held on, the Seawolves play on Saturday at Albany for the America East title and a berth in the Big Bracket.
A few hours later, Hofstra took William & Mary to double overtime, had a two-point lead in the dying seconds of the 50th minute … and had their knees buckled by a killer 3-pointer. Even that’s OK, though: Heartache, we know, is part of the equation this time of the year.
If we didn’t know that, we could see it in the faces of the Iona Gaels 24 hours later, the flip side of the gleeful celebration Manhattan enjoyed after defeating their ancient rival in the finals of the MAAC. That game was in Albany. The Hofstra game was in Baltimore. Like any good Broadway play, the final chapter of this New York basketball tale started with successful out-of-town tryouts.
And now, Broadway beckons. Well, Broadway in Manhattan, and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, and Remsen Street, too, where on Tuesday night, the St. Francis Terriers thrilled a thousand devoted fans by fighting — alas, fruitlessly — to earn the first NCAA Tournament bid in the school’s history. Their season continues in the NIT.
St. Francis has had a hand in this great New York renaissance, and so has Stony Brook, and Joe Mihalich’s day is coming at Hofstra, just wait, after a splendid season on Hempstead Turnpike. If you want to expand our borders a little, there was the wonderful story composed in Newark, at NJIT, which beat Michigan in December and next week will host the first postseason game in its history, the CIT rewarding the Highlanders for its efforts.
And today, we open the doors of our biggest and brightest basketball basilicas, Barclays Center to the right of the East River, Madison Square Garden to the left, the Atlantic 10 taking over Brooklyn and the Big East resuming its annual takeover of Manhattan.
This is nothing new to us, of course. Back in the day, from 1943 through 1950, the old Garden on 50th Street and Eighth Avenue hosted seven out of eight Final Fours and eight out of eight NITs. CCNY capped that run with its fabled double-title run in 1950, and St. John’s won two NITs (with NYU earning one runner-up trophy) in that same period.
College hoops ruled the city in those days: the Johnnies and the Violets, along with LIU and Manhattan and Fordham. But even at its zenith, this was a pro town, and when the Knicks finally emerged in the 1970s, the college game submerged itself, became something of an opening act, a forgotten passion.
Sometimes a team would come along and remind us of the way it used to be: Fordham’s remarkable 1971 run under Digger Phelps, Iona’s emergence in 1980 fueled by Jimmy Valvano and Jeff Ruland, St. John’s taking the city on a short but splendid joyride driven by Chris Mullin and Walter Berry.
It is still a pro town, and as loud as the locals might make the Garden or Barclays this week, it will be nothing compared to what will happen when — if — the Knicks and the Nets start sniffing around the NBA’s first division again. Still, in this winter when those teams took turns trying to drive their fans to drink (or to hockey), college hoops did fill a critical void.
And now we have this: We have the Johnnies, Madness-bound, trying to make noise on the Garden’s big stage for the first time in forever. The A-10’s best team, Davidson, is coached by a son of New York, Bob McKillop, who played at Chaminade and Hofstra, who coached at Holy Trinity and Long Island Lutheran, whose Wildcats are as entertaining to watch as any team in America.
The pros will be back, and when that happens, this will all return to the shadows. For now, college is king, same as it was back in the day. School is back in session.
Enjoy it while you can.
