By Mark Simon

There is a Peanuts comic strip in which Linus describes an exciting moment in a ball game to Charlie Brown. He describes the joy and the celebration of victory, to which Charlie Brown has one response.

“How did the other team feel?”

Last weekend in Terre Haute three of the four teams found themselves on the short end of late-game heroics. The end result was one champion in name, three others in spirit.

A comment was made in the postgame press conference that if any team deserved to be a champion that it was Trinity. The Tigers proved themselves worthy of the title of the best team in the nation with their unselfish play. They will get their due over the course of the next year and beyond for sure, and it is well earned based on the amount of work that went into their season.

However, in fairness to the other three teams that were there, any of them could certainly argue that they were worthy of a championship just as much. With that in mind, we’ll wrap up 2002-03 by looking at the best stories that came without the ultimate triumph as the end result.

“We always feel we have a chance to win. That’s what I loved about this team.”
— Eastern Connecticut State women’s basketball coach Denise Bierly.

They believed.

And that’s really all you can ask for, right? Coaches always say that they seek 100% from their players. Effort doesn’t come without belief though. ECSU believed right up until the very last moment that it was going to find a way to win the national championship.

Allison Coleman believed it when she drove home 15 hours from Terre Haute last year, where she watched as a spectator and came away thinking that the Warriors could compete with any team in the country. She would show it in the way she played through a third All-American season and her teammates raised their effort level to match hers.

They believed even when there was uncertainty as to whether ECSU would make the NCAA Tournament, after losing to Plymouth State on a buzzer-beater in the Little East semifinals. A bid brought not only relief but a renewed commitment to the team from everyone.

They believed when they trailed No. 1-ranked UW-Eau Claire 33-19 with 15 minutes to play in the semifinals, even shortly thereafter when Coleman picked up her fourth foul. The Warriors scored the next 10 points and 22 of the next 30 to tie the score at 41, then sweated out the final 30 seconds of regulation in which Eau Claire missed four attempts at the winning basket. At one point during the comeback, Coleman came over to the bench and told her teammates that they were going to win the game. Nothing would stop them.

They believed in an overtime in which the momentum clearly belonged to them, even when Coleman fouled out on Emilee Planert’s 3-pointer with 27 seconds remaining and the Warriors hanging on to a sliver of a lead. Somehow they found the way to get one last defensive stop to pull off the stunning upset.

They believed the next night in the championship against a bigger, stronger, and more balanced Trinity team. They believed even when trailing 40-23 with 16:50 remaining, prompting this writer to IM a colleague stating “This game is over.”

They believed, as did the several dozen ECSU fans, who made their presence felt, and reminded us (their seats were directly behind our radio booth) that this game was anything but over. Another remarkable rally followed, thanks to a Michael Jordan-like effort from Coleman and inspirational performances from the likes of Deanne Prior, Morgan Perry, Kathleen Burdelski and Meghan Phelps.

If this was a storybook or a movie, Coleman’s last-second game-tying shot attempt would have swished the nets and Eastern Connecticut State would have found a way to pull off its second-end-of game miracle in as many nights.

Real life doesn’t always work like that though. Sometimes you try your hardest, do your best, believe with everything you’ve got, and still come up a little bit short. Give ECSU and their fans credit for what happened following the game. They clapped for the Trinity players when the first-place honors were handed out and showed class in the postgame press conference. They were shaken from their belief, but still stood tall at the end of the night. That’s why the Warriors are still a great story, even in defeat.

GOOD VIBRATIONS

There may still be some indentations left in the floor at Hulbert Arena with the footprints of Rochester coach Jim Scheible.

The most interesting thing to watch at the Final Four was the way in which Scheible communicated with his team as the game was going on. Not to take anything away from the play of his players, but the coaching was fascinating to watch.

When he wanted to get their attention, he stamped his feet.

“My players make fun of the fact that I can’t whistle,” Scheible said with a laugh. “I don’t yell that much. (Stomping) is a way of releasing energy. They feel it in the floor. The players tell me that they recognize my stomps. ”

When he wanted to call a play, after stomping, he used hand signals. In addition to the traditional thumb-up and thumb-down, but there was also zip-the-lip and tug-the-ear, in which Scheible pantomimed to get his message across. At first we thought Scheible was telling his team to quiet down, but then a member of our broadcast crew picked up on it.

“We do run a play called ‘Zipper’ and that’s the only way to let them know that it’s coming,” Scheible said. “When we decided how we were going to call the plays, I told the players we would use whatever they wanted. They liked that.”

It’s part of the combination of aspects that make Scheible a unique coach.

Scheible grew up in Rochester, played basketball at Clarkson, then decided he didn’t really want to be an engineer shortly before getting his engineering degree. So he stayed at Clarkson to get his MBA, and while he did, he was asked to help with the women’s basketball team, which went to the Final Four that 1988-89 season. The next season, the head coach left for another job and Scheible took over as head coach on an interim basis and went 22-4.

When that season ended, he went to work in California as an engineering consultant, realized again that wasn’t what he wanted to do, and pursued coaching opportunities. The first stop was at Elmira, where the team averaged 17 wins over seven seasons, and he also served as SID and assistant athletic director. When the opportunity to return home came up prior to the 1999 season, it was to good to pass up.

The approach he brings to the game has worked and that’s because the starters, such as sophomore forwards Kelly Wescott and Megan Fish, junior guards Erika Smith and Tara Carrozza, and senior forward Anne Gotstein, bought into the system immediately. Rochester went from 6-19 in his first season, after which he told incoming students that they would be playing for a national championship within four years, to reaching that goal this season. Defense has been the key, as the Yellowjackets have dramatically improved in almost every defensive category in the last three seasons.

“There is a certain discipline and structure to the game,” Scheible said. “We take a very logical approach to it. We picked out things we could do statistically speaking so that we could be a very good team. Then we apply logic to our plays -- if someone tries to take away this, we’re going to do that. Lots of our players have backgrounds in science here, so they understand. We can talk about concepts of spacing and angles and paths to the ball too, though that stuff is just sound basketball.”

Scheible’s brother, also an engineer, came all the way from France to attend the Final Four. Though the Yellowjackets didn’t win either the semifinal against Trinity, or the double-overtime thriller against Wisconsin Eau Claire, they proved that their style of basketball is a good one, and is one that others will have to match down the road.

“I think you could run the Final Four again and again and get a different champion each time,” Scheible said. “We left Terre Haute with a really good feeling about our team.”

NO. 1 FANS

UW-Eau Claire had a little more weight on its shoulders than the other three participants.

That’s what happens when 900 or so fans from the city make the eight-hour trip to Terre Haute.

The team wanted to live up to the cheers of its supporters. “Good pressure,” as senior captain Kristi Channing described it.

There would probably have been enough Eau Claire fans to fill the gym had the school not been out on spring break. So those that came were residents of the city, those who identified with the team.

Among them was 53-year-old Tim Coburn, an Eau Claire resident and graduate of the college, who has been following basketball for 35 years and camped out overnight on campus the night before tickets went on sale for the Final Four.

“My wife thought I was kidding when I said I was going to do this,” said Coburn, an auditor for the Wisconsin Department of Revenue who barely misses the Blugolds men or women play. “I told her I was only going to go if I had the tickets in my hand. Someone asked me what I did when I was there all night. I told them I counted the deer- there were 24 going across the parking lot.”

It brought back memories of Coburn’s days as a student at the school when he used to do that for the big games, like those against nearby neighbor Wisconsin-Stout. There’s a loyalty that Wisconsin fans have for their teams that make people do things like that. This was a team to which the city of 63,000 was particularly loyal. Ten of the 17 players hailed from within an hour of campus, so the players were well known in the community.

Coburn got his tickets, for himself, his wife and two family friends and he was there well before tip off. Even 30 minutes after the semifinal ended with the loss to ECSU, he was still sitting there stunned, but he and most of his fellow fans were there the next night for the third-place game. They were glad they stuck around.

“This team was so much fun to watch,” said Coburn, who plans to follow his annual tradition of attending first practice next fall. “They were such a nice group of kids. I’m going through withdrawal now because the season is over.”

Among the others in the stands were 17 students from the UWEC pep band. Originally they were unsure whether they could afford to make the trip, since the athletic department didn’t have the budget to support this deep a postseason run. But at the sectional finals, devoted fans forked over the necessary dollars. One business owner gave $200. A group of firefighters kicked in $175.

Normally, we’re so engrossed in the basketball game, especially ones of this magnitude, that we don’t even notice the pep band. This group, comprised partly of emergency last minute fill-ins, did a tremendous job, mixing songs such as Barbara Ann, Soul Man, and Respect with the Eau Claire fight song. They did a tremendous job adding to the championship atmosphere, both for the semifinals and the third-place game.

“The overall experience made us fiercely proud to be from our school,” said band leader Melissa Weis, who painted her face and bounced around the bleachers for a group that doubled as the team’s cheerleaders. “We tried to give back to the players what they were giving to the school. It was fun, but exhausting. We didn’t take the championship, but we gained something more special than a championship that night. It was one of those experiences that I’ll tell my grandchildren about.”

It was sad to watch the Eau Claire players and head coach Tonja Englund walk into the postgame press conference biting their lips and with tears in their eyes after losing in stunning fashion to Eastern Connecticut. It was a sharp contrast to the enthusiasm shown not long before.

“It should be a great time,” Englund said to us as she walked back to the bus following her team’s shootaround that morning.

It was. And we hope everyone can say that. Not just the team that cut the net down.