Even better with an odd couple: scrappy Tom Coverdale and smooth Bracey Wright have the Hoosiers believing they can win one more game than last season

Sporting News, The, Jan 6, 2003 by Bob Kravitz

One looks like he was born to master the Dewey Decimal System, or maybe accounting--anything that doesn't require a whole lot of jump-out-of-the-gym athleticism. Tom Coverdale? He might have been Indiana's Mr. Basketball in 1998, but he wasn't even a White Castle All-American, much less a McDonald's.

The other one, well, he looks like he emerged from the womb wearing a pair of Air Jordans (poor mom). Bracey Wright? He's the guy everybody wanted from the beginning, the kid who generated a national buzz as a schoolboy.

Two players. Two very different pedigrees. Two guys who now are combining to be what might be the best, most intriguing backcourt tandem in college basketball.

Coverdale, a senior from Noblesville, not far from Indianapolis, is averaging 12.9 points and 4.9 assists. Wright, who is from the Dallas suburb The Colony, is putting up some of the best numbers (18.2 points and 5.6 rebounds) in the country for a freshman. Thanks in large part to them, Indiana got off to an 8-2 start and appears to have a ceiling that is even higher than last year's team, which surprisingly advanced to the national title game before losing to Maryland.

When Hoosiers coach Mike Davis is asked about Coverdale being his point guard and team leader, Davis says, "Coverdale? If he wasn't already here when I came in (as the then-interim coach in 2000), I wouldn't have recruited him. Let's be honest; I didn't exactly take him in with open arms. I needed a point guard; he was all I had."

But Davis was touting Wright and fellow incoming recruit Marshall Strickland even before they hit campus. After a dispiriting early-season loss to Kentucky last year, Davis surprised some by saying, "Help is on the way."

"A lot of Indiana people got tired of me talking about Bracey, saying, `He can't be that good,'" Davis says. "But I watched him play every AAU game from the front row. Sometimes you go out and recruit a kid, and the more you watch, the less you like him. This kid, the more I watched, the more I fell in love with him. He can take over a game, but he can do it without taking a lot of shots, or by being selfish."

Coverdale and Wright are an odd couple, these two. Hoosiers guard A.J. Moye often jokes that Coverdale looks like a bowler. Coverdale has a hard-charging, in-your-sternum game that is more about passion than poetry. Wright, meanwhile, has moves that are so fluid that his manner and style have been compared to Kobe Bryant's.

It would be overstatement to suggest that Coverdale came out of high school completely unwanted by major-college programs. Let's just say, though, that if Ed Martin were an Indiana booster, he wouldn't have even come up with pocket change to try to lure Coverdale. What do people see when they watch Coverdale play for the first time? Wright says with a smile, "They see a slow, white dude with red hair."

Coverdale looks like a stereotypical Indiana gym rat, a grunt with limited skills who wouldn't get noticed in an afternoon run at the YMCA. His foot speed is ordinary. He needs picks set for him. He has no one-on-one moves, no ankle-breaking crossover dribble. He can't create his own shot. His jumping ability is nonexistent.

It's what opponents don't see, though, that gets them beat. Coverdale's passion is unmatched. He was the MVP of the NCAA South Regional last March despite hurting his left ankle in the first round against Utah, a game in which Coverdale scored 19 points. Coverdale then badly sprained the same ankle in the regional final against Kent State, only to play--in obvious pain--in the Final Four a week later in Indiana's win over Oklahoma and against Maryland two days after that. Indiana fans still wonder if the outcome would have been different if Coverdale had been healthy.

Coverdale is a dangerous long-range shooter, but he also has the uncanny ability to back down defenders or plow his way to the basket and make driving shots with defenders draped on him. After Coverdale scored 30 points in a rematch against against Maryland in early December, Terrapins forward Tahj Holden said of Coverdale: "All he does is make big shots. He gives his team confidence, and he's as confident a player as I've seen. He's one of the best in the country."

One of the best in the country? That's funny because this Mr. Basketball once was Mr. Afterthought at Indiana. After Coverdale's high school graduation, then-coach Bob Knight suggested Coverdale spend a year refining his game at a New Hampshire prep school. The next year in Bloomington, Coverdale played 41 minutes all season--in part because of his own deficiencies, in part because players such as A.J. Guyton were getting most of the backcourt minutes.

"I had no confidence, none at all," Coverdale says. "There were a lot of times I wondered if I could ever play at this level."

Then, Knight was fired. Davis was installed, and he needed a point guard, any point guard. Coverdale was about his only option.

Davis eventually saw all the things that are not visible upon primary inspection. He saw the toughness. He saw the things Coverdale's two older brothers helped build in their Noblesville driveway/mosh pit, a place where games got so heated that Coverdale's dad finally bought the boys boxing gloves. When Tom was just 10, Coverdale's father took him from the safe haven of Noblesville to a league in downtown Indianapolis, where Coverdale played against a different level of competition.