Watching History One Missed Shot at a Time
Tee Kane
January 17, 2008
George Washington 49, St. Louis 20. Final. That’s the actual score from this past week in the Atlantic-10 opener at the Smith Center in Foggy Bottom. St. Louis scored the fewest points in modern-day NCAA history. On the other hand, they did outscore several Wilmington, DE, CYO women’s basketball teams.
I went to the game mainly to see how one of my favorite coaches, Rick Majerus, was doing with his new team. There was excitement among A-10 fans when Majerus came out of retirement to revitalize a slipping St. Louis program. The conference’s RPI has suffered in recent years from cellar-dwellers St. Louis, Duquesne, and St. Bonaventure.
The downside of Majerus signing up with the Billikens was that he was no longer going to be on TV every week as ESPN’s best analyst. My respect for Majerus is so great that I openly fumed to friends that I hadn’t wagered the house on St. Louis (they were getting one point) as we walked in.
With students on break, there was a smaller and more sober crowd than normal. We were able to get some prime seats in the first few rows on the student side not far from where we used to sit when we were actually enrolled in college. As Majerus walked onto the court before the game, I offered him a friendly reminder that Keith Van Horn was not walking through that door.
I really feared Majerus would methodically break down GW's defense and force the undisciplined Colonials into bad shots. As the game started, I kept one eye on Majerus to see how much he was into the game. I wondered whether he really had his "heart" in this reclamation project at age 59 (mostly because it’s been only a few years since his
near-fatal heart attack).
When St. Louis had the ball on its first few possessions, he kept his hands on his knees, watching every play with anticipation. You could tell the same legendary dedication and drive were there. St. Louis then missed its first six shots and failed to score until center Bryce Husak made the back end of a pair of free throws almost six minutes into the game (the Billikens didn't make their first field goal until 11:32 left in the first half).
To his credit, Majerus didn't flip out on his players or look exasperated. GW doesn't have many good basketball players, but what they do have is plenty of long, athletic big men who can disrupt shots. GW stayed in a 2-3 zone the whole game and did an excellent job of challenging shots (nine blocks).
Eventually the game took on a bit of the theater of the absurd. I can remember thinking at the under four-minute TV timeout that St. Louis might not actually score 10 points in the first half. From that point on it was like watching a NASCAR race and cheering for more and more cars to pile up in a crash.
St. Louis plays at one of the slowest paces of any team in the country, so it actually was like watching a train crash in slow motion. I wasn't so much rooting for GW as wondering perversely how few points St. Louis could score.
The loudest cheer that night came when Luke Meyer followed up an air ball with a layup to give St. Louis 10 points with only 10:39 left to go in the game. The mock applause has to be one of the most devastating things a crowd can do to another team. Fans are conditioned in a hierarchy of action: the first obligation is to cheer for the success of their team; the second is to boo or refrain from cheering for the accomplishments of the opposing team (Mets and Eagles fans might argue that they are first conditioned to boo their own team, but this is the exception). For a crowd to reverse that behavior and ironically cheer for the pitiful success of another team is a real rarity and evidence of a remarkable event.
St. Louis eventually doubled their scoring by the end of the night, but it wasn't enough to keep them off the record book of shame. After the game they announced that it was the lowest score by an opponent in Smith Center history. It wasn't until later that I got a phone call from a fellow Colonial watching from Long Island that it was the lowest score ever in the modern shot clock era.
As Majerus walked off the court I wondered if he regretted coming out of retirement to be embarrassed like this. My guess is that people with drive like Majerus are only further motivated by such a poor result. Don't be surprised if St. Louis eventually knocks off one of the ranked teams in the A-10. You can't keep a man like Majerus down for long.