ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 19, 1996 TAG: 9602200012
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: MALCOLM MORAN THE NEW YORK TIMES
THE NO.1 TEAM IN THE NATION is doing everything right, but most people keep expecting a collapse.
Boy, is UMass in trouble now. With every passing game that the Minutemen refuse to lose, 25 and counting, the only major undefeated team in America moves one step closer to oblivion. That is what you hear these days.
If the Minutemen should become the third NCAA Tournament team in 20 seasons to enter without a loss, joining UNLV in 1991 and Indiana State in 1979, their perfection will lead to their undoing.
Please. UMass has risen to that strangest of places, where a loss in a regional championship game is considered a failure, yet a perfect record after 25 games is considered imperfect. The Minutemen understand, more than the rest of us, that they are as susceptible as any high-seeded team to the dangers of NCAA play, the fateful whistle, the turned ankle, the 50-foot buzzer-beating heartbreaker. But that reality has nothing to do with what has happened so far in a wondrous season. The lack of acceptance for the UMass achievement has more to do with the people watching than the ones who are playing.
The Minutemen have defeated Kentucky, a team still considered a favorite to win the national championship. They have defeated Wake Forest, Georgia Tech and Maryland, three of the four leaders in the Atlantic Coast Conference standings. They walked into a hostile environment Saturday and took on 10th-ranked Virginia Tech, which had pointed to the Atlantic 10 game for weeks, and in the final nine minutes, UMass never had its lead drop under eight points as it went on to a 74-58 victory.
A Big East team with identical credentials, or one from the Big Ten or ACC, already would have been asked to pose for busts to be mounted in the Basketball Hall of Fame. UMass just inspires more doubt.
There is a theory at every turn. UMass needs to lose to relieve the pressure. UMass needs to win more convincingly more frequently. Just look at what happened to UNLV five years ago, when a perfect record went poof in the national semifinals.
The more accurate measure would be to place the conference biases aside and concentrate on the looks in the eyes of the players and the feelings they reveal after each game. The Minutemen have adopted a businesslike approach altered only when they responded to Marcus Camby's frightening collapse and hospitalization last month with fear and greeted his return with relief. They occasionally recite their us-against-the-world lines - who doesn't? - but most of the time, their work seems more important than acceptance.
``I've played five or six No.1's over the last 25 years,'' said Bill Foster, the Virginia Tech coach. ``And all those people that sit out there in those other leagues keep saying, `Because they're in the A-10 and the games are close, they're not No.1,' but they don't remember back to those Kentucky and Wake Forest games. They're an awfully good basketball team. They don't beat themselves.''
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB