ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 22, 1996 TAG: 9603220055
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: SOUTHEAST REGIONAL
DATELINE: LEXINGTON, KY.
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
Georgia Tech figured out how to cure a different kind of March Madness.
After missing the NCAA Tournament two straight years, Tech coach Bobby Cremins gambled with a young team.
He came up with a brutal pre-ACC schedule, hoping the Yellow Jackets would play well enough to use that schedule as impetus for an NCAA berth.
Well, Tech barely survived a 6-7 start, then won the ACC regular-season title - and still got a No.3 seed in the Southeast Region with 11 losses.
``I have no idea whether the early schedule made us tougher or prepared us more for now,'' said Cremins, whose team makes its sixth Sweet Sixteen appearance tonight against Cincinnati at Rupp Arena. ``At first, I really thought we had overscheduled.
``We had so many tough games over a short period of days, but maybe it made us tougher. I was assured by people who supposedly know it would work out. I do know we were beat up going into ACC play. We had gotten knocked around.''
Tech (24-11) began the season 6-7, then went 13-3 in the ACC regular season and lost the ACC tournament title game to Wake Forest. The Jackets' schedule was ranked toughest in the country by the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI).
Six of their 11 losses were to teams that also made the Sweet Sixteen - Georgetown, Kentucky, Georgia, Massachusetts and twice to Wake. Tech also lost to four other NCAA entrants, Bradley, Santa Clara, Clemson and Maryland. Mount St. Mary's, the other Tech conqueror, reached the NIT.
Tech also beat NCAA entrants Louisville, Oklahoma, Michigan and Western Carolina besides league foes North Carolina (twice), Duke (twice), Maryland (twice) and Wake (once).
The dropoff in the ACC's strength at the top did help Tech, however. Last year, the Yellow Jackets played 14 games against teams with a No.4 or higher NCAA seed. This year, with only Wake Forest as the other ACC top four seed, Tech played six games against such foes.
``It didn't look like it for a while, but it all worked out,'' Cremins said.
CLANG: Georgia Tech's Friday night date with Cincinnati will be the Yellow Jackets' second game in Rupp Arena this season. They must shoot better than the first time.
In an 83-60 loss at Kentucky on Dec. 9, the Jackets made only 35.2 percent of their field goals. Tech's only worse percentage was 35.1, in a loss at the Meadowlands, site of next weekend's Final Four.
One reason Tech has been so successful is its late-season accuracy. Starting with the Jackets' Feb. 21 win at Virginia, they have shot 50 percent or better in eight of nine games and are 8-1. The exception was a 42.9 percentage for the ACC tournament championship game loss to Wake Forest. ``We haven't done anything new or different, we're just hot,'' said Tech sophomore Matt Harpring. ``One advantage we have is we, or our opponent, never knows who will be hot. One night it's one guy, another isn't someone else on fire.''
RECALL: Last year, Georgia Tech snubbed an NIT bid when it went 18-12, including 8-8 in the ACC season, and didn't get an NCAA invitation.
``I remember exactly where I was last year,'' Cremins said. ``I was upset, so I went up to New York [his hometown] to do some recruiting. I went into a restaurant-bar to have a drink ... Dakotas, 86th and 3rd, and the [NCAA] games were on TV.
``I just couldn't watch the first round,'' he said.
But he did.
``I sat there the next three hours - I didn't drink the whole time - and watched those games,'' he said. ``That Villanova-Old Dominion game [three overtimes], I really got into it. If you love basketball, that's what happens. But it still hurt.''
SHRINKING: Cincinnati guard Darnell Burton has shrunk in returning to his hometown for his second Sweet Sixteen at Rupp Arena.
Burton, a one-time MVP at the Five-Star camp at Radford University, is the Bearcats' 6-foot-2 sixth man. However, when he starred at Lexington's Dunbar High School a few years back, he was listed at 6-4, and played with force inside.
``I knew at my size I couldn't play under the basket in college,'' said Burton, who three years ago this weekend led Dunbar to the state high school's Sweet Sixteen tournament title game at Rupp. ``I worked hard on improving my jumper, and my 3s are falling now.''
STATE OF MIND: Another NCAA first - the first Sweet Sixteen trips for Georgia and Georgia Tech in the same year - have some Peach Staters thinking ahead.
Cremins was asked about the rivals possibly both making the Final Four, where the brackets would have them meeting in the semifinals.
``I don't know if that can happen,'' Cremins said. ``We both have a long way to go. But it would be great. It's great for basketball in Georgia.
`I'm a big football fan, and I think maybe it can be as good a rivalry in basketball as we are in football. Tubby [Smith, Georgia's coach] has done a great job.
``That we're both where we are, I think that's fabulous.''
ON THE ACC: Appearances by Wake Forest and Georgia Tech give the ACC 22 Sweet Sixteen trips in the '90s, but one streak the league may not be able to sustain is extending its seven-year streak of winning at least 10 NCAA games. Despite having a tournament-high six entrants, the ACC is 5-4 entering regional play... Since the NCAA Tournament field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, the ACC has 38 Sweet Sixteen trips. The SEC, with a 1996 high of four, is second with 27... From 1985-95, 20 of the ACC's 36 Sweet Sixteen teams advanced to the regional finals. Of those 20, 11 reached the Final Four, six the title game and three won the championship.
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP Connecticut's Eric Hayward practices his slamby CNBThursday in Lexington, Ky. The Huskies face Mississippi State today
in a Southeast Regional semifinal. KEYWORDS: BASKETBALL