Sunday, March 24, 2002
Just like driveway for IU
LEXINGTON — In the Indiana countryside, long driveways end at basketball hoops with a makeshift wooden ramp angled from the bottom of the pole. Make the shot, get the good bounce off the ramp. Miss it, wipe the mud off the ball.
The Indiana Hoosiers seemed to be playing at one of those hoops Saturday. They shot like kids not wanting to see mud. The Hoosiers made their first eight 3-pointers and 14 of their first 17. Kent State, the last Mission: Impossible team standing in the NCAA field, couldn't do much but duck.
Drive, kick-out pass, 3-pointer. Ramp-job after ramp-job. Indiana was three-mendous.
“You let us shoot, it's Russian Roulette,” said guard, A.J. Moye. “You're at the craps table.” Kent State, Moye said, “crapped out.”
The Hoosiers hit four 3-pointers in the first three minutes, five in the first 4:30. Kent State tried to cope with IU's height advantage by playing a sagging man-to-man. That left the 3-pointers available. The Hoosiers went to the driveway game.
With 8:01 left in the half, Moye hit the Hoosiers' eighth consecutive 3-pointer to make it 34-14. Kent State coach Stan Heath called timeout then, to break out the umbrellas his players needed for protection from the 3-pointers raining on their heads.
When Dane Fife bottomed another one as the shot clock expired, it was 59-39 with 10:30 left. Indiana had made 14 of 17 3s. Kent State was canceled because of rain.
Indiana will go to the Final Four for the first time in 10 years, and this is a very good story for lots of reasons, the best being the coach, Mike Davis, a good and noble man. Davis replaced Bob Knight, who some thought — many thought — couldn't be replaced. In two years as IU's coach, Davis has battled his fans and his faith in himself. He is now allowed a little distance from the epicenter of The General's shadow.
The Hoosiers retained one elemental part of the Bob Knight game plan: Cutting and screening and making open jump shots. There is nary an alley or an oop in IU's game. Not a lotta levitating. Just pick, roll and make like you're shooting in the driveway.
Indiana's other good story spent the last 9:35 of the game at the end of the Indiana bench. Tom Coverdale's ankle failed him again. He went down in a heap beneath the basket.
When the 81-69 win was done, Davis climbed into the stands to fetch his young son, Antoine. Coverdale was in a wheelchair, ice bag on his left ankle. Jeffries pushed him around the floor. “The Jeff Gordon victory lap,” Jeffries called it.
“(Coverdale) hurts every week,” Jeffries said. “His back, his eyelid, something. Tom's got an old man's body.”
Coverdale couldn't jump over the Bloomington Yellow Pages. And that's with two good ankles. He doesn't levitate. He rarely imagine-ates. But he had 14 points in 19 first-half minutes last night. Also, seven assists and one turnover. Coverdale is a former Mr. Basketball from Noblesville, Ind. He's apple-cheeked and red-haired. A real ramp man.
We'd have asked him about that, but he wasn't around. The old man was nauseated from the pain medicine he'd just taken for the ankle. The X-rays were negative, but his foot felt like California fell on it.
“Tom's playing,” said Moye. “I could go cut off his foot and he'd play.”
Coverdale had one last move before he left, though. He got up from the wheelchair, stood on his right leg and cut down a piece of net.
Contact Paul Daugherty at 768-8454; e-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com.
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DAUGHERTY: Just like driveway for IU
