OMAHA, Neb. — As Kyle O'Quinn was still digesting the
greatest moment in his basketball life, all he could think about was dinner the
night before. The Norfolk State hoops team had found itself settling in at the
Granite City Food & Brewery in suburban Omaha when an older woman with two
giant Kansas Jayhawk logos for earrings — O'Quinn figured she was in her 70s —
came up to the group and asked where they were from.
"What school is that?" she said.
"Norfolk State," O'Quinn replied.
"I'm not too familiar with that. Where is that?"
"Norfolk, Virginia."
She admitted she hadn't heard of them. Then she realized that she HAD heard of
their first dance partner in the NCAA tournament.
"You guys have Missouri (Friday)," she said. Suddenly, her voice took
on a more serious tone. "Whatever you do, beat Missouri."
Cinderella 86, Tigers 84. On a day that saw giant after giant booted from
Bracketville, it was O'Quinn and his running mates who dealt the first major
blow.
"We were just happy to mess with people's brackets," said the
Spartans' senior center, whose 26 points helped Norfolk State — Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament champs, a historically black college
in eastern Virginia with an enrollment of 7,000 — become just the fifth 15 seed
since 1986, and the first since 2001, to ever take out a No. 2. "We
might've messed up some people's brackets at (our) school. I mean, they show
support, but you also gotta think (about) reality."
The reality is this: The Spartans (26-9) are moving on to take on
seventh-seeded Florida next, a matchup few in the country — let alone
Norfolk — expected to see on Sunday. Even President Barack Obama was riding
shotgun on the Mizzou bandwagon, having tabbed the Big 12 tourney champs as one
of his Final Four.
"We broke Obama's bracket!" guard Jamel Fuentes shouted in the
Norfolk State locker room at CenturyLink Center Omaha, a postgame party now
crammed with television cameras and portable tape recorders. "We broke
Obama's bracket!"
Leaning against a stall on the opposite wall, forward Marcos Tamares grinned
knowingly at Fuentes, his roommate. "We've been talking about busting
Barack's little bracket," said Tamares, a 6-foot-7 forward from Queens who
dropped 11 points on the Tigers. "He's been on (television) the whole
week.
"I'm not going to say it's all of our motivation, but it was a little bit
of it. Just seeing Barack — or Mr. Obama — having them going all the way to the
Final Four, there was a little added motivation."
Coach Anthony Evans provided the rest. The Spartans had studied the Tigers so
thoroughly in the days leading up to the game, O'Quinn said, that he felt they
knew Mizzou's plays better than the Tigers did.
Evans reminded his kids that they'd hung with the big boys before — at the
Paradise Jam on the US Virgin Islands in November, Norfolk State stunned Drexel
61-56, then TCU 66-53, before being edged by Marquette, 59-57. He'd
stressed that the average height of their backcourt was 6-6, with the kind of
reach that could give smallish Missouri fits, especially at a neutral site. And
in the 6-10 O'Quinn, they would have the best pure big man on the floor. On a
dry-erase board, written in green, the coach had also written his keys to the
game, the anatomy of an upset:
"1. Transition D." (The uber-quick Tigers scored just six fast-break
points.)
"2. Offensive rebounds." (The Spartans grabbed 14 offensive
boards to Mizzou's seven, while outscoring them in second-chance points,
16-10.)
"3. Wear them down." ("You could see it when they were
coming down the court. They started blowing a little bit harder and looking
toward the bench," guard Jordan Weathers noted.)
"4. Rebound — 1 shot." (As a team, Norfolk State outrebounded the
Tigers 37-25.)
"5. Limit (Marcus) Denmon and (Kim) English." (Denmon netted 20
points, but English had just 2, and was 1 of 7 from the floor.)
"6. Pick and Roll Defense." (The Tigers had 24 points in the paint;
The Spartans collected 26.)
For every Mizzou punch, Norfolk State would counter; the game featured 22 lead
changes, 14 in the second half alone. The longer the Spartans hung around, the
more the crowd — a good chunk of whom were Kansas fans who enjoyed watching the
Southeastern Conference-bound Tigers suffer — began to get behind them.
"Toughness," senior Rodney McCauley called it. "Me and
(guard) Chris McEeachin actually got into a little tussle on the bus. That's
what won the game for us."
That and fate, maybe. McCauley had transferred into Norfolk State from Southern
Mississippi, where he played for Larry Eustachy. The same Larry Eustachy who
happened to be the coach on the losing end the last time a 2 seed had been
ambushed by a 15, when his Iowa State team fell to Hampton, also of the MEAC.
Cyclone fans still have nightmares about then-Pirates coach Steve Merfeld, legs
flailing in the air with pure joy, a decade after the fact. Merfeld didn't last
much longer at Hampton — that was his One Shining Moment as a head coach — and,
ironically, he calls Omaha home now, as an assistant coach at Creighton.
The Bluejays edged Alabama, 58-57, earlier in the day out in Greensboro, N.C.
When a Jays staffer texted Merfeld after Norfolk State's shocker and told him
jokingly that he was off the hook, Merfeld texted back: "It's been a good
day."
A crazy day, too. Think about it: A squad that lost to a Division II
school — Elizabeth City State, 69-57, on Nov. 30 — is now one win away from the
Sweet 16. Only in March, the time where perfectly good brackets go to die; only
in the tournament, the place where you'll find at least one very happy Jayhawk,
who, like the rest of us, knows where the heck Norfolk State is now.
"I'm glad I could make it happen," O'Quinn said, beaming. "I'm
glad I could make it happen."
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler
or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com
