Am I Asking Too Much?

  It was a tantalizing sports week for me. Plenty of college hoops, some hockey and, oh yeah, some NBA basketball, too. I’m not into exhibition baseball, so that was a no no. And in the end, I came away satisfied on Sunday with Rutgers, Golden State and UCLA, my favorite in the NCAA Tournament, all winning. 

In the past week, the college basketball landscape became more defined. The Who’s Who of the collegiate ranks asserted themselves, narrowing the pool of wannabes for an NCAA Tournament invite. There were buzzer beaters galore. Enormous comebacks by Iowa and Rutgers to win seemingly unwinnable games. Kentucky is on a roll as March approaches. North Carolina won a critical game over #6 Virginia at home, but can they sustain this sudden momentum? 

The UConn Women are tumbling. St.John’s actually defeated the Huskies in Hartford. Geno Auriemma’s team has fallen back to the pack. After all these years of unparalleled success. 

Damien Lillard turned the NBA upside down with a scintillating 71 point outburst against the lowly Houston Rockets. The Lakers in desperate need of wins to make the post-season, came from 25 down to top Dallas. 

Most impressive was the 176-175 2OT win by the Sacramento Kings in Los Angeles versus the Clippers. Sacramento is third in the West and nobody has taken much interest in them. Maybe it’s time to look at the Kings for real. 

The New Jersey Devils won in a 7-0 rout of Philadelphia on a night the team honored the 2003 Stanley Cup champs. Then, possibly overpaying, the Devils acquired free agent Swiss sniper Timo Meier from San Jose. 

It makes the team better with this trade. It does not get them any closer to Boston, which keeps on winning at a record pace. The Bruins have an astounding 95 points in 58 games, with only Carolina being near enough to them—and that’s 9 points behind Boston.

My week began with Franklin and Marshall, my alma mater, and the sixth seed in the Centennial Conference Men’s Basketball Championships, traveling down U.S. 30 to take on the #3 seeded Gettysburg Bullets. The Bullets shot out to a double digit lead, padding it to 20 points at the half. The Diplomats could not make a three pointer, going 1-11 in the first stanza. The final was 71-51. 

Gettysburg would be dismantled by Swarthmore, the #2 seed, while #4 seed Muhlenberg, an easy winner over #5 Ursinus, last to top-seeded Johns Hopkins. In the final, Swarthmore overcame a 16 point deficit to win over Hopkins on the Blue Jays floor. The Garnet get the automatic bid; JHU will almost surely have an at-large bid to the DIII Tournament. 

I have to rant a bit. Perhaps I am a bit spoiled, too. F&M has had an almost unparalleled history in DIII men’s basketball, well, since right after I graduated in 1972. That’s because Glenn Robinson, a West Chester grad who played both baseball and basketball for the Rams, graduated from freshman coach and phys ed instructor to become the head coach for the Diplomats basketball team. 

Robinson compiled a career that most coaches would want, except for one thing—he never won a National Championship. Two trips to the finals and his teams came away with loss. 

That does not diminish what he achieved while leading the Diplomats. How about a 967-360 overall record? 45-28 in the NCAA’s. A 19-9 mark in the Centennial Conference tournament, with a record 12 titles. Plus. 22-7 record while F&M competed in the Middle Atlantic Conference, with 9 titles. 

Twenty-three appearances in the NCAA Tournament. Sixteen times in the Sweet 16. Ten appearances in the Elite Eight, including five Final Fours. He has been named Coach of the Year so many times. And his graduation record is astounding—all but three of his players failed to graduate. Plus one of his best players is presently the Head Coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves in the NBA. Why the all-time winningest coach in NCAA DIII history is not enshrined in the Naismith Hall of Fame boggles my mind. 

Robinson assistant Nick Nichay took over the reins when Robinson retired. His record this season was 12-14, with a career total of 32-43. Swarthmore and Hopkins have taken over dominating the conference. F&M is almost an afterthought, eking its way into the tournament because the team had defeated Haverford twice, which was the tie-breaker. 

In his third season, Robinson finally had the moribund Diplomats playing over .500 ball. From there, he built a dynasty. 

I am a die hard F&M fan. I root hard for the teams to succeed. It rankles me when NESCAC schools, very academic and revered colleges like Amherst, Williams and Middlebury regularly do better than F&M. More so, like my good friend and college roommate in Maryland, we cannot fathom the seemingly unending success by Johns Hopkins—even knowing that the highly successful Men’s and Women’s lacrosse programs at the DI level help fund the remaining sports at a level that no other Centennial Conference school can. F&M, once a pretty good wrestling school, no longer wrestles with, let alone competes comparably with the elite teams in the East.

Entering the 2022-23 campaign, the F&M Athletics website boasts of 4 National Championships, 147 conference titles and 534 All-Americans in 145 years of intercollegiate athletics. Fairly good statistics if you take those numbers at face value. 

Yet football, basketball and baseball have never won National championships. Women’s lacrosse has two titles (2007 & 2009)—which of course is fine. The others went to women’s cross country (1985) and men’s soccer (1952).

The facilities have undergone some distinct upgrades. Every outdoor sport plays in a newer facility except baseball and softball. The teams which use the Alumni Sports and Fitness Center thrive in a great, modern environment. However, Mayser Center is old, home to the basketball, wrestling and volleyball teams, and the look of newer bleachers doesn’t give the air of a thriving new athletic building. 

I get it that gifts make things different. My baseball teammate, Larry Shadek, also a quarterback during his days in Lancaster, gave so generously that there is a great new football stadium, with lights, also used by the lacrosse teams, too. I ask, to no one particular—when will F&M build a more modern indoor facility which will obviously help with recruiting? Ditto with baseball and softball—it was eye-opening to see the facilities at Kean University, part of the New Jersey college system. You wonder where that tuition, the second highest among U.S colleges, according to U.S. News and World Report, is going?

Right now, the football program is rebuilding under a new coach hired from the top tier program at Williams. Baseball was projected to be the Centennial Conference champs for 2023, and it is early, so one can discount the 1-4 record against better competition which played outside before the Diplomats practiced in the Lancaster air. 

After wrestling, football was always tops at F&M. It wasn’t too good during my middle two years there—Coach Dave Pooley was tough but his teams weren’t as tough—but won the MAC Southern Division in 1968 and 1971.  

However, with the legacy of Coach Robinson and his aura still fresh, Nachay and his teams have struggled mightily. The trouncing by Gettysburg must be a low water mark for this new era of F&M  basketball. The teams aren’t on the level that I watched while on campus—two 4-16 years and one 3-17 season under Chuck Taylor, who became the Head Trainer when Robinson took over. And Robinson’s first season was an improvement—7-14—but left my four years at F&M with a combined 18-63. Which is why my tolerance for this backwards movement of F&M hoops is wearing thin. 

In no way am I calling for Nachay to be fired. But this centerpiece of men’s programs for years—from 1971 to 2019—needs to show improvement or the Nachay tenure might not be anywhere as long as the Robinson era. 

I want to see F&M winning again. Downing the Blue Jays and Garnet repeatedly. Having enough successes that will get them back to the NCAA’s besides in lacrosse, golf and soccer. 

Am I asking too much?