ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 29, 1997 TAG: 9703310136
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: JACK BOGAZCYK
DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
The basketball world, appropriately, is round. The road to the Final Four is long, but it always seems to have its intersections.
So it is this weekend at the RCA Dome, where Arizona guard Miles Simon plays against a program he's loved and a coach whose signature he checks regularly.
So it is for Minnesota assistant coach Larry Davis. This is his 19th year of visiting the Final Four as a coach, but the first time he will coach in it.
Down the hall Friday, in a different locker room, was a player Davis once successfully helped recruit to Wake Forest, center Makhtar Ndiaye. Neither is at Wake Forest now.
"This is what every assistant coach or head coach dreams of,'' said Davis, who was going to Final Fours even before he built the prep program at Oak Hill Academy that made Mouth of Wilson, Va., a stopping-off place in college hoops. "I've always loved the Final Four.
"I've been here for meetings and to have fun for 18 years. But to actually coach in it, all the sacrifices you make, it makes it all worthwhile.''
Davis' road to the Final Four doesn't seem much longer than that of North Carolina's Ndiaye. They were linked before, when Davis was an assistant coach at Wake Forest and Ndiaye signed - but never played - there.
Davis and Ndiaye, from Senegal, have common roots at Oak Hill. Davis went to Asbury College in Wilmore, Ky., with his Oak Hill successor and current Warriors' coach Steve Smith. Ndiaye played for Smith on the same Warriors team as former UNC stars Jerry Stackhouse and Jeff McInnis.
Ndiaye left Wake Forest, where the NCAA ruled he couldn't play because of a foreign emissary who was considered an illegal recruiting contact. Davis departed Wake just before Ndiaye enrolled, going from a part-time job to full-time one at Ball State.
Then, they coincidentally ended up in the Big Ten at the same time, Davis at Minnesota, Ndiaye at Michigan. Then Ndiaye made a second transfer, to North Carolina.
"I'm glad to see Makhtar here,'' Davis said. "He's been through a lot. I'm just glad he's gone from Michigan so we don't have to play him twice a year in the Big Ten.''
Davis still has solid contacts at Oak Hill. He estimates that he and Smith talk on the phone at least once every other week. Now the Gophers' top assistant, Davis said those two years at the Grayson County boarding school - where he coached Rod Strickland, among others - prepared him for the big time.
"Those things, crossing paths with players like Makhtar, that happens when you're at a high level,'' Davis said. "Going through what we did at Oak Hill, I got to deal with a lot of talented players.
"You learn to coach a talented player, and it's different. A talented player is a thoroughbred, and usually high-strung. You walk the line.
"You give them discipline - and every kid wants discipline, whether he says it or not - and sometimes you learn to shut up and listen to what they have to say. There are a lot of egos involved at this level.''
Sometimes, wishes are dashed. Arizona's Simon is a junior who played in the great Mater Dei High School program in Southern California. Growing up, Simon wanted to play for only one school.
"North Carolina always has been my favorite,'' Simon said Friday. He will face that team today, a team his teammates beat in November when he was academically ineligible. "It was always Carolina blue. If there was a shirt or a hat, I was going to get it.''
Smith recalled the Tar Heels considered Simon, "but we thought his best position was big guard.''
So, Smith wrote to Simon explaining that at the time, the Tar Heels had Donald Williams and Dante Calabria playing the position. This wasn't like other recruiting letters, however.
"I kept it,'' Simon said. "It came in the spring of my junior year. Coach Smith wrote that he wished me the best in my career and that he was sure I was going to be successful, but at that point, they weren't recruiting any more two-guards.
"I still have the letter up on the bulletin board in my bedroom right now. get a lot of letters from coaches and their signatures are stamped. He wrote a little note on the bottom to me, and it was something I've always treasured.''
Just as Larry Davis will never forget the unselfish Big Ten championship team that got him to a place that he and Ndiaye never could have dreamed would be their next connecting point.
"It's a tremendous privilege just to get to coach in the Final Four,'' Davis said. "Having been here before and seen it, and now to be part of it, it's just an awesome feeling.''
These are big games. But it still is a small world.
LENGTH: Medium: 90 linesby CNB