I will remember these Titans
Cal State Fullerton could not follow the Saint Peter's blueprint and upset Duke, but plenty did happen on an NCAA Tournament trip that demanded a March Madness travelogue
GREENVILLE, S.C. — The last few days haven’t been pretty for a certain Substack scribe in his Twitter drafts.
Deleted Friday night: A college basketball dynasty, just like that, is over. The Cal State @FullertonMBB Titans have ended the storied coaching career of Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski.
Deleted Sunday evening: The Cal State @FullertonMBB Titans will go down in basketball history as the last team Duke's Mike Krzyzewski managed to beat.
On this Newsletter Tuesday, with Duke still alive in the tournament and both my Titans and yours truly back home, I am forced to concede that such scribbles prepared in advance were fantasies and that Fullerton is likely to be reduced to mere footnote status on the Coach K farewell tour. Dedrique Taylor’s team scrapped as hard as it could after falling into an early 17-4 deficit in Friday's eventual 78-61 loss, but Duke just had too much length, athleticism and firepower for the fairy-tale hopefuls from the Big West Conference who play their home games some eight miles away from Disneyland.
Turns out all the 15 vs. 2 magic dust was apparently gathered up and sprinkled by Saint Peter's in its Thursday night stunner over Kentucky.
I realize that I've probably overdone my Fullerton fandom lately — definitely so over the past week-plus on social media — but it was a momentous (and unique) trip for an NBA lifer who had never been to South Carolina and might never have another occasion to visit. Five trip takeaways, then, struck me as a must for this week's free-for-all newsletter extravaganza because, again, it’s not too often that I get to rhapsodize about our school playing Duke anywhere.
The crowd situation before tipoff was truly shambolic.
I had to chuckle Tuesday morning when an email popped into my inbox offering me the chance to fill out a survey regarding the fan experience.
Are you serious, NCAA?
Fullerton/Duke was the third of four games scheduled for Friday in Greenville with an announced tipoff time of 7:10 PM ET. Miami's victory over USC was scheduled to begin at 3:10 PM ET, with fans for the evening session warned in advance that they would not be admitted inside the Bon Secours Wellness Arena until the building was cleared and cleaned following Hurricanes/Trojans.
The First World Problem: Prepping the venue for the evening session after the day session took far longer than the 90-ish minutes tournament officials allotted. I've enclosed a couple pictures of the L-O-N-G lines of people that, with 7 PM fast approaching Friday night, were nowhere near the door.
I fired off a couple angry tweets during my nervy wait before finally getting to my seat at 7:02 PM. And trust me: I was one of the lucky ones. Empty seats were everywhere during pregame warmups and even when the game actually started, which amounted to a travesty in customer service. I can admit now that I didn't make the trip with bonafide expectations that we were going to shock the world and send Coach K into retirement ... but I did show up expecting to see all 40 minutes of the school's first-ever meeting with the Blue Devils without such a stress-inducing process to get in the building.
Kudos to Coach K for calling out the organizers for such poor organization.
"There was no crowd when guys were warming up," Krzyzewski said. "And that damn floor was slippery on both ends.
"If there's some way in the future they can change that … these kids from both teams need to go out on the court and have band, crowd and whatever. They shouldn't have empty seats."
I didn’t practice what I normally preach.
Even though I am prone to advise various NBA fanbases to simply tune out what the national media says about their favorite teams rather than worrying about "credit" from any given sport’s punditry, I totally inhaled every word of praise Krzyzewski uttered about the Titans and equated the mere fact that Coach K was talking about us with true validation.
What can I say?
When it comes to the Sabres, or Manchester City, or the Yankees, or Israel's Davis Cup team, or individual tennis players and doubles teams I root for, or especially the Titans ... I don't have to be rational, unemotional and nuanced like I have to do in everyday life as an NBA chronicler.
So, yes, I naturally tracked down the video of Krzyzewski's pre-tournament press conference last Thursday because I had no media access in Greenville and was desperate to tally up how many times he mentioned Titan Tech. I was an everyman and, like every other Titan in town, yearning for any glimpse or sound that proved we were on the big stage right beside the mighty Blue Devils.
"I've watched seven games of theirs," Krzyzewski said. "So I have a lot of respect [for them].
"They're a really good team. Coach Taylor's done a really great job in developing a program there."
Downtown Greenville had more to offer than I expected.
I wasn't there long, but the coffee and food options on and adjacent to Main Street were tremendous.
Perhaps you saw my tweet celebrating the two wonderful cups of soup I enjoyed at Halls Chophouse (She-Crab and Seafood Chowder). Before that lunch I found a memorable cortadito at Coffee Underground alongside the trustiest of Titans (Jennifer McGhen) and, yes, Tuffy Titan that (don't tell my doctor) featured four espresso shots, four raw sugars and half & half. After lunch: Methodical Coffee delivered a top-shelf cappuccino.
Then the big surprise: I wound up at a postgame dinner with a pretty passionate Fullerton fan himself — school president Fram Virjee — and a table full of Titan luminaries at a Belgian restaurant called Trappe Door. An underground old-world bar serving late-night steak frites and more adventurous Belgian cuisine? They definitely get me in Greenville.
My lone quibble: The Vault on Main sells sports memorabilia and was forced to admit that Fullerton was the only school of the eight in town (Jacksonville State, Auburn, Miami, USC, Cal State Fullerton, Duke, Davidson and Michigan State) whose hat wasn't available for purchase. But the shopkeepers were upfront about the omission, attributed the inability to bring any Titan merchandise in on short notice to shipping obstacles and convinced me that they did try. They also won me over by stocking some Sabres stuff in a robust hockey section and a good amount of Mitchell & Ness retro NBA gear, including the Dražen Petrović-era Nets T-shirt you can see in my picture and a satin Washington Bullets jacket that I was tempted to buy for Tony Kornheiser in honor of the Les Boulez nickname he famously bestowed on the franchise years ago.
Don’t try to mix scouting with fandom.
I approached Friday’s game thinking that, as a bonus, I would get a chance to assemble a decent first-hand scouting report on Paolo Banchero and maybe some of Duke’s other NBA Draft aspirants, since I otherwise never would have had the chance to see them play in person until they got to the pros.
Wrong.
I was way too emotionally invested in the Fullerton side of the game, as well as frantic and edgy after the tremendous hassle getting into the building, to take detailed notes on Banchero, who I later learned slipped during warmups on that less-than-welcoming floor Krzyzewski mentioned before I had reached my seat.
Formulating a binding opinion off on one viewing wouldn’t be the smartest anyway, but I can at least share my first impressions.
Banchero dropped two 3-pointers early with a good-looking stroke, but the Titans’ game plan was designed to live with whatever damage he could do outside. Although Banchero later added a nice baseline drive for an emphatic dunk, this was a subdued performance from the 6-foot-10, 250-pound forward. I frankly expected him to overwhelm the smaller Titans, but playing with that sort of sustained aggression is not what Banchero is known for at this stage of his development. I’d have to say Mark Williams (15 points, 5 blocked shots and a silky touch when he got to the free-throw line) hurt us more.
Yet it was repeatedly clear that numerous Titans were simply not accustomed to being confronted by the length and heft of both Banchero and Williams when they tried to attack. You just don’t see that sort of size and skill in the Big West.
Banchero, 19, played a stronger and more forceful all-around game in Duke’s second-round win Sunday over Michigan State to emphasize the folly of making too much of what felt like him cruising to 17 points and 10 rebounds against the Titans.
Coach K has rarely entered a tournament with such an inexperienced group and he acknowledged that potential concern when he noted at his Thursday presser that “a Duke team has not had this newness” on the March Madness stage. Some solace for Taylor’s Titans: Tom Izzo’s Spartans couldn’t take advantage of that, either.
Travel right after the NBA trade deadline is so invigorating.
NBA devotees (and many writers) are understandably down when the deadline passes and the transactions stop, but I have to confess that I absolutely love the ensuing two-month run to the playoffs. Things calm down just enough in #thisleague to leave the house occasionally.
The month before the deadline is a terrible time to travel, even when the job demands it, because you are liable to miss a major transaction without warning. Untethered from the desk since mid-February once the trade buzzer sounded, I've been on an incredible travel run that took me to All-Star Weekend in Cleveland, one Fullerton home game and a Lakers/Mavericks game in L.A. right after that, one glorious week of tennis in the desert in Tennis Paradise in Indian Wells, followed by another Lakers home date against Toronto and then the trip to South Carolina.
As I mentioned last week, I had to bolt from a family trip early to get to Greenville, which was brutal in one sense because it required leaving my 18-year-old on his own for a few days when I was loving being even a nominal part of his Spring Break world. But missing Friday's game simply wasn't an option. Cal State Fullerton has played six NCAA Tournament games in school history and the only three I've missed were in 1978 — two months before my family moved from Western New York to Southern California.
As soon as the Titans were drawn to play Duke on Selection Sunday, one of my best friends on Earth, David Casarez, told his wife Janet that he instantly knew I would have to rip up my schedule to find a way to get there.
"You're their biggest fan," Dave said. "You are to Fullerton basketball what the Gallagher brothers are to City."
That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.
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Open Forum
Perhaps I should leave this invite here every Tuesday.
Consider this section our virtual suggestion box to discuss content ideas … NBA and otherwise.
What would you like to read more of in 2022? Or less of? What do you really think of my (largely pretend) idea to launch a complementary coffee Substack? Or a Substack about BlackBerrys?
I've got a lot of things planned already in terms of stories I hope to tackle in coming months, but I would love to hear your ideas either in the comments below or via marcstein@substack.com.
Numbers Game
🏀 25
The NBA playoffs start in 25 days. The playoff play-in games begin in 21 days on April 12.
🏀 15
Twitter celebrated its 15th birthday Monday. I started using it in June 2009 when the platform was just 2 years old and change. Can you remember life without it? Nothing in my lifetime has changed journalism and especially NBA journalism more than this “microblogging” platform that provides everyone on Planet Hoop with the ability to self-publish and, for all its downsides and the extreme (and sometimes damaging) negativity it can disseminate, does allow players, fans, coaches, writers, team executives and league officials to coexist in a way that was never possible before. I really want to believe it's still more good than bad. Agree? Disagree?
🏀 60
Karl-Anthony Towns’ recent 60-point game for Minnesota has been bettered by only three centers in league history: Wilt Chamberlain (100), David Robinson (71) and Shaquille O’Neal (61). As we’ve discussed before, I had the good fortune of covering Robinson’s 71-point game in person at the old Memorial Sports Arena in Los Angeles on the final day of my first season on the NBA beat as Clippers writer for The Los Angeles Daily News.
🏀 17.9
Good one from my pal Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe: Isaiah Thomas has the fifth-highest career scoring average (17.9 PPG) among players drafted in 2011, behind only No. 1 pick Kyrie Irving (23.0 PPG), No. 9 Kemba Walker (19.5), No. 11 Klay Thompson (19.4) and No. 15 Kawhi Leonard (19.2). Thomas, who on Tuesday signed a rest-of-the-season contract with Charlotte, was selected by Sacramento with the 60th and final pick in 2011.
🏀 11
The Hornets are Thomas' third team this season along with the Lakers and Mavericks and the 11th of his career — one shy of the NBA record shared by Chucky Brown, Jim Jackson, Tony Massenburg, Joe Smith and current Wizards guard Ish Smith.
🏀 29
Draymond Green’s recent injury absence spanned 29 games for the Warriors, who had slipped to third in the West entering Tuesday’s play after holding a top-two seed for much of the season. The Warriors are 29-8 this season with Green and 18-16 without him. He had never missed more than 11 consecutive games in a 10-year career.
🏀 12
The NBA recently announced that Golden State and Washington will play two exhibition games in Japan next season. The league, don’t forget, held 12 regular-season games in Saitama, Tokyo and Yokohama from 1990 through 2003, starting with a Phoenix/Utah matchup on Nov. 2, 1990, that was the first regular-season game held out of North America by one of the four commonly recognized major sports leagues.
🏀 6
Do you agree with StatMuse’s suggestion below that Dallas’ Luka Dončić, Boston’s Jayson Tatum and Memphis’ Ja Morant are the three names most likely to battle for the two spots on MVP voters’ ballots beneath the trio of Denver’s Nikola Jokic, Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid and Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo? Are Golden State’s Stephen Curry, Chicago’s DeMar DeRozan and the Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James indeed out of contention? Shouldn’t Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns get a top-five sniff? Who else?
🏀 32-0
I wrote last week about Mike Krzyzewski's unblemished record when coaching USA Basketball in my presence. That includes a 25-0 mark from two Olympic summers (London in 2012 and Rio in 2016) and the 2014 FIBA World Cup in Spain. Coach K's national teams also went 14-0 in exhibition games before those three gold-medal runs, but I did not cover every single one of the warm-up games. In the latest illustration of a memory I no longer trust — as detailed Monday when I tried (and failed) to manufacture a precise count of how many states I've visited — my internal computer is playing tricks on me. So I consulted with two former ESPN editors to try to nail down an accurate count and determined that I (most likely) covered seven of the 14 exhibitions because I routinely shared coverage responsibilities while the team was still on U.S. soil with various former ESPN colleagues. That would have taken Coach K’s record to 32-0 in my presence before Friday’s Duke/Fullerton showdown.
🏀 0161
I’ve included the area code for Manchester, England, because that was the site for the first USA Basketball exhibition in which I covered Krzyzewski. The United States routed Chris Finch-coached Great Britain in July 2012, 118-78, and played two more warm-up games in Spain before the London Olympics. That trip to what ranks as my co-favorite city in the world (alongside Tel Aviv) will remain forever memorable because of the sight of Kobe Bryant, in USAB gear, walking up and down Deansgate, which is Manchester’s main shopping thoroughfare. A friend who used to work at The Manchester Evening News shared this glorious picture with me … otherwise I still never would have believed it happened even after watching it from the other side of the street.
Sorry about your Titans, Marc! My Longhorns bowed out in the 2nd round, but I still loved the fight the program has shown under first year head coach, Chris Beard. Glad to see the Titans journey through the eyes of a “super fan” like you! 🙌🏽
Marc, not related but could I talk with you about a story you may be interested? Sorry but I couldn’t find another way to contact you. Mark Donaldson gave me your name. I look forward to chatting with you.