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Bucs faithful relishing double-dip in NCAA tournament

JOHNSON CITY — As East Tennessee State’s athletic director, Dave Mullins couldn’t have dreamed up a better scenario than the one that played out last Saturday in Nashville.

Not once, but twice, Mullins was able to stand on the floor with a bunch of happy fans at Lipscomb’s Allen Arena and watch players and coaches cut down the nets. It was the final act of championship runs in the Atlantic Sun Conference, both women’s and men’s, hours apart. Two tickets to the NCAA basketball tournaments.

“That was a special day for us,” Mullins said Monday. “I’m so happy for our players and coaches, first of all. When you start out the year, the first thing you talk about is what your goals are, and that’s winning championships and getting to the tournament. I know how hard the teams work, all the hours and effort and sweat and tears they put into it. Our staff does an awful lot of planning behind the scenes, working with donors, corporate sponsors, the ticket-holders, the Buc Wild student group. So much time and energy goes into it.

“When it all culminates like it did Saturday, that’s the payoff. It was a pretty historic day.”

It’s even better if basketball is your flagship sport. For the Lady Bucs, this will be back-to-back years in the big tournament after never having advanced that far previously. The Bucs will make their eighth NCAA appearance overall but the first in five years.

Having both teams involved in March Madness will net the university some money back through the conference. The amount grows the longer your team can stick around, and in the power conferences it can add up quick.

For a mid-major like ETSU, in a one- bid league, the experience is always priceless.

“It’s hard to quantify the dollars,” Mullins said, “but just the institutional pride, from that standpoint we’ve gotten so many messages and congratulatory notes from alums around the country. Getting to play on ESPN2 was big because the game was accessible almost everywhere. We’ve gotten e-mails from a lot of former players. I got a phone call from Mike Kretzer just before the Jacksonville game, saying he and a bunch of buddies were in a sports bar on the New Jersey coast and wanted to wish us luck. I heard from Ed DeChellis soon after we won.

“You just don’t realize how many people are tuned into it. I remember last year with our women’s team out in Des Moines, Iowa, we ended up with probably 20 alums who lived around there and came to the game wearing old ETSU sweatshirts they had as students. We didn’t even know they were out there. It’s just a neat experience all around.”

And it passes all too quickly.

The Bucs have won a tournament game only twice — when they beat Arizona in 1992, and Florida State back in 1968. They’ve had a bunch of close calls, losing to Oklahoma by a point as a 16 seed in ’89, and later to Iowa, Wake Forest and Cincinnati, each by three points.

Whether that history will be helpful in the seeding process this time remains to be seen.

“I’ve tried to get a feel from the (A-Sun) commissioner (Ted Gumbart); he’ll be on the phones today and we’ll share any information we might get,” Mullins said. “It’s always a speculating game. Belmont was a 15 last year, and we know we’re going to be somewhere from 16 to 13 probably. We just hope for the best.”

The CBS Sports Web site projects the Bucs as a No. 16, matched against Connecticut in Philadelphia. Sports Illustrated/ CNN has them as a 15, opening against Oklahoma in Kansas City.

Without question, they’ll be playing one of the country’s best teams.

Of course, as coach Murry Bartow is quick to point out, it’s all about matchups this time of year. Belmont was a 15 seed last March and could easily have knocked off Duke, which was more finesse than power. Any of the prospective top seeds will be plenty powerful in a first-round game; they’ve never lost one.

“Coaches always have a feel for who they’d like to play,” Mullins said. “I guess it’s kind of a pick-your-poison thing. But we’ve seen from this team that it’s capable of playing a high level of basketball, especially lately.”

The preferred first-round site for ETSU fans would certainly be Greensboro; they can be there in three hours. Dayton and Philly are less attractive but perhaps doable. Then there’s Miami, Minneapolis, Boise and Portland, along with Kansas City.

“With all the financial issues — and the NCAA faces some that the rest of us have; it has laid some people off — I think they’ll be pretty judicious in how they assign sites,” Mullins said. “I met this morning with our staff to look at sites and the travel possibilities. We’d love to stay close, but we always say that we’ll go where they send us. We just want the best matchup and go play.”

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