Hoop dream: A real thrill ride

Sporting News, The, March 15, 1999 by Dave Kindred

Any happier, Mike Brey would have floated away. The coach kissed his wife, lifted high his daughter, tousled his son's hair and hugged maybe every third person in Delaware.

The state's two U.S. senators and governor had come to see his work this day. And such a day for the University of Delaware basketball team. An 86-67 victory over Drexel put the Fightin' Blue Hens into the NCAA Tournament, one of only 64 teams still dancin'.

"Got all the players in here?" Brey asked someone. They had been given trophies, they'd cut down the nets, they'd ridden on the shoulders of fans, they'd been engulfed in a delightfully mad swirl of students who painted their faces blue and gold for the SportsCenter moment.

Now Brey's players sat in their locker room, a little place big enough for a dream. The only sound was the coach's voice. "There are two great feelings in sports," Brey said, looking at each player. "One is when you win when you're not supposed to. The other is when you win when you are supposed to. That's what you've done this year. You were a buzzsaw."

Maybe America's big dogs at Duke and Kentucky need to win it all to justify a smile. Happiness happens more often at wonderful places like Delaware, where, while winning 25 of 30 games, the coaches share working space with the school mascot, a humongous chicken in size 28FF sneakers.

So, as Mike Brey spoke, his guys were giddy. On their home floor, before a full house of 5,600, they won the America East Conference Tournament championship. Five days later, they will dance with a big dog.

A year ago, alas, Delaware made it to the NCAA only to see Purdue score the first 18 points en route to a 95-56 hammering. Now Brey told his players it would be different this time because they're a better team, more experienced, with more good shooters from anywhere.

The idea is to reach for the stars, the way Valparaiso did a year ago. That team from an Indiana cornfield won twice to get to the NCAA's Sweet 16. Brey to his guys: "I can see us doing what Valpo did. I can see us going out there loose, shooting it up. I can see us burning the clock, up seven points, on Indiana, North Carolina, UCLA, and them getting tight."

Such a mighty thing, this hoop dream. It's why the NCAA Tournament is a thrill ride. It's why, in Delaware's championship game, a little guard named John Gordon (just 5-10) was the perfect hero. He won the championship he most wanted where he most wanted to win it.

You could see it coming on Delaware's first possession of the second half. Purposefully, Gordon moved around a screen to his left, took a pass and, without so much as a dribble, put up a 3-pointer for a 40-32 lead.

Soon enough, he had three more long ones, each delivered quickly and with a shooter's conscience, which is to say each was delivered mercilessly and so readily that Mike Brey had to reach back to his days as a Duke assistant to name another shooter with Gordon's assassin cool.

"John's as fearless a shooter as Christian Laettner was," Brey said. "He's a big-time crunch guy."

Gordon's last 3-pointer came with just under eight minutes to play and accomplished two things. It moved Delaware to a 68-56 lead that essentially ended the game. It also caused a Delaware student named Samantha Struble to raise her sign again.

She's a junior from New Jersey who might have gone unnoticed among those gold-and-blue faces except that she painted up a cardboard sign to hold overhead at propitious moments asking ... GORDON, WILL U MARRY ME?

Strange thing for a gym rat from Wilmington, the state capital 20 minutes from Delaware's campus in Newark, but John Gordon first enrolled at the University of Maine. He had been Delaware's 1995 high school player of the year, his team winning the state championship in the Fightin' Blue Hens' arena. But Delaware hadn't recruited Gordon much. In fact, Mike Brey was a week from taking the job when Gordon signed with Maine.

"Great," Brey said. "I'm thinking, `How did I get to this point? I'm the Delaware coach and the player of the year is not playing for me?' And the first time we play Maine, John beats us with a 3-pointer at the buzzer."

But two melancholy years at Maine were enough for Gordon. "We lost all the time," he says, "and Maine's in the middle of nowhere."

So he transferred to DelaWare and sat out last season. Scoring 15.7 points a game this season, he may have been his league's best guard. Gordon smiled when explaining why he came home: "I wanted `Delaware' across my chest."

Now that Delaware is in the NCAA Tournament, he wants one more victory, maybe two. Even as he stayed on the court to savor the celebration, hugging people, kissing a baby, signing autographs, drifting dreamily through the joy, John Gordon said, "For us, if we could get to the Sweet 16, that would be our national championship."

Then, somehow, Samantha Struble wound up next to John Gordon. She didn't know him, had never met him, just thought he could flat play.

"I saw your sign during warmups," he said.