Meyer on Morris Link
Moon Township, Pa. – Nov. 7, 2013 – I promise this will get around to
Robert Morris.
Bear with me.
We'll get there.
Here's how I did.
It's all about basketball.
I grew up in central Ohio -- Delaware, to be exact. And that's where this began.
My father took me and my younger brother, John, to an Ohio Wesleyan basketball game at old Edwards Gymnasium, starting in the mid-1950s. That's when I started getting hooked on basketball. The Battling Bishops, as OWU's teams are known, were OK, but it wasn't about wins and losses then for me. It was just the basketball game.
The players -- Dick Faul, who I watched score 47 points against Hiram one evening, Jerry Vaughn, who could drive the lane, and Ray Slabaugh, a little guard from (I think) Lexington, Ky., and who was a
personal favorite of my father's.
Maybe it wasn't really about the basketball. More likely it was just getting to spend an evening with my dad and my brother.
But getting hooked on basketball happened very soon after that, because Jerry Lucas happened soon after that.
Lucas was a high school phenom from Middletown, Ohio. His teams were and are legendary in Ohio prep basketball lore. And when he committed to attend Ohio State, I was way hooked. He was my idol. I even got to meet him once because my dad knew a friend of his. I still have the picture from that day -- Lucas standing way taller than me, John and my little brother Tim in the friend's driveway.
In Lucas' sophomore year, when I was almost 12 years old, I followed the Buckeyes drive to the national championship avidly. They played California in the title game in the Cow Palace near San Francisco. Tipoff wasn't until about 10 p.m. Delaware time, but I was allowed to stay up to watch it. The rest of the family went to bed. I sat in our living room and watched on our small black-and-white television until the final second, thrilled beyond belief that Ohio State won, 75-55. I went to the bedroom I shared with John, who was sound asleep. I woke him up and said, "John, they won!'' He didn't even open his eyes. I think he said something like, "Good. See you in the morning.''
That John didn't seem to share my enthusiasm didn't bother me in the slightest. I had the memory, and the thrill.
And I was hooked -- on basketball and the NCAA Tournament.
I was crushed when Ohio State lost in the championship game the next two years, but that didn't stop me from getting excited about March Madness, although I don't think that term was in common usage back then. That UCLA team began its amazing run. There was Texas Western's incredible watershed victory over Kentucky. There were more UCLA titles with Lew Alcindor and later Bill Walton.
By then, I had my first job in Dayton, Ohio at
The Journal Herald. The University of Dayton Flyers were a big deal in that city. I was assigned to cover Miami (Ohio) in nearby Oxford. Miami was second fiddle to UD, but I didn't mind. I liked covering the "underdog.'' That would become a thread in my career story.
Meanwhile, the NCAA tourney rolled along and became bigger and bigger. David Thompson. Kentucky's "Twin Towers.'' Duke began to be a factor in March. Bob Knight and the Hoosiers (more about that word soon). North Carolina. Jim Valvano's unheralded Wolfpack winning in 1983. Michael Jordan's shot. Keith Smart's shot. The Big East becoming huge. Remember that 1985 season when three Big East teams were in the Final Four -- and Villanova won it all? Unbelievable. Villanova barely survived Dayton in the first game, 51-49. Pretty neat.
Along about then, two other dynamics entered play in my personal basketball saga.
I was assigned to cover Wright State, then a Division II team in Dayton. Wright State was decidedly second fiddle to UD, but I really liked covering the Raiders. Again, the "underdog'' thing. I had the privilege of being courtside in 1983 in Springfield, Mass. When Wright State beat District of Columbia, 92-73, to win the Division II national championship. Another memorable experience was being invited to Wright State two or three years ago to watch that team be inducted into the Wright State Hall of Fame. Almost every member of that team was there.
That same March, while I was covering the Cincinnati Reds in spring training in Tampa, Fla., the Dayton paper had me cover an NCAA Tournament first-round doubleheader at South Florida. That was the first time I saw Robert Morris play, although I didn't pay much attention to the Colonials that evening. But I did see them lose to Purdue, 55-53. It was a harbinger.
Not long after that, "Hoosiers'' was released. It's only the best movie ever made. Well, "Field of Dreams'' is right up there, but "Hoosiers'' is "Hoosiers.'' I think the career record of the Hickory Huskers when I watch the film is about 70-0.
My family knows how much I like that movie. One day, I had it on television and my oldest daughter, Shannon, called me. "Dad?'' she said. I said, "I'm watching it.'' She laughed. "I just wanted to make sure you knew it was on,'' she said and hung up – still laughing.
In 1987, I moved to Pittsburgh to cover the Pirates for the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. As interesting as that was -- especially in the early 1990s -- so was this: Going into the clubhouse at McKechnie Field to watch snippets of the early-round NCAA Tournament games on television during the spring training games. There were always at least four or five of the players in there watching, too.
One evening in spring training -- it might have been the year Duke played UConn in the championship game -- Pirate announcers Greg Brown, Steve Blass and Bob Walk came to my place to watch the game. Jason Kendall, who lived nearby, showed up, too. Kind of tough to follow the game with that crowd there, but it was an eventful evening. Mostly because of the basketball game.
Spring training and the NCAA Tournament became synonymous. I covered the spring training games, then rushed back to my place to watch the evening tourney games. I dutifully filled out my brackets taken from the local newspaper (still have them, too). I carefully studied the spring training schedule to see when the Pirates were on the road -- or, ugh, played night games in spring training -- to see which NCAA games I might miss. Or sort of miss.
One year, I guess it was 1997, the Pirates opened the season in San Francisco. I flew to San Francisco from Sarasota (via Charlotte) the day of the semifinals of the NCAA Tournament. I missed almost everything that day. When I walked into my hotel room in San Francisco and turned on the TV, the final score of the second game flashed on the screen. What a bummer.
A few years afterward, I began covering Robert Morris for the Post-Gazette.
See? I told you we'd get to Robert Morris.
It was Mark Schmidt's first season as the head coach.
Again, I was covering a basketball team that wasn't the biggest deal in the city in which I worked. No problem for me. I liked that.
While watching the Colonials go through some growing pains on their way to becoming a power in the Northeast Conference again, I had the opportunity to watch more of the NCAA Tournament. I wasn't that heavily involved with Pirate coverage by then, but I was becoming more involved with the fun of following and writing about the Colonials.
Finally, in December, 2008, I took a buyout from the Post-Gazette. I thought I was finished writing. But I was offered a chance to continue writing about the Colonials on this website.
That year, the Colonials were IN the NCAA tournament with Mike Rice at the helm. What a thing! Yes, they lost to Michigan State, but they were in my favorite sporting event. It makes a difference when "your'' team is in The Dance.
The next year, same thing. Back in the NCAA Tournament. Heartbreaking loss to Villanova, to be sure. But the Colonials received a ton of good publicity from that.
Then it was
Andrew Toole's time to coach the Colonials. The success has continued. It's fun for me -- and no evening was more fun than last March 19 when the Colonials knocked off Kentucky at the Charles L. Sewall Center in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament.
Know something interesting? The Colonials beat Kentucky 53 years ago to the day that Ohio State beat California in that long ago national championship game with a little guy in Delaware, Ohio watching on television by himself.
So here we are again on the eve of another college basketball season to be capped off with another round of March Madness.
I can't wait.
So toss the ball up, ref.
It's time to tip off.
Again.
