THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 27, 1995 TAG: 9503270117
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JIM DUCIBELLA, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
The uglier the basketball Sunday afternoon, the prettier the picture got for Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton.
By the time the Cowboys had finished drilling Massachusetts, 68-54, to win the NCAA East Regional, Sutton's mind was on Oklahoma State's next stop, the bucolic Pacific Northwest and the Final Four in Seattle. UCLA awaits on Saturday.
``It's been a long time since 1978,'' Sutton said, referring to his first Final Four trip, with Arkansas in St. Louis. ``I wasn't sure the opportunity would ever come again.''
It has also been a long wait for Oklahoma State, which last made the Final Four in 1951 under the legendary Henry Iba.
Sutton knew that his only chance to make a return trip was for his Cowboys to do two things: Pound Massachusetts on defense and pound the ball down low to Bryant ``Big Country'' Reeves on offense.
It took some time for the Cowboys to get the hang of both.
Oklahoma State (27-9) held the Minutemen to 28-percent shooting in the first half, but trailed by five mainly because Reeves, the 7-foot-1, 290-pound man-mountain, didn't touch the ball nearly enough to suit Sutton.
``I got on them pretty good at halftime,'' the coach admitted. ``We made some adjustments to get Bryant the ball and we played sound defense without putting them on the line. We were much better defensively in the second half.''
The stats don't overwhelmingly prove that. Massachusetts was just marginally worse - 27 percent - following intermission. But whereas the Minutemen outlasted West Virginia in overtime despite shooting a season's-worst 24 percent, they were no match for the Cowboys and their Double-R attack of Reeves and (Randy) Rutherford.
Reeves, who finished with a game-high 24 points, went to work moments after UMass center Marcus Camby picked up his third foul with 11:39 to play. He scored six of Oklahoma State's next nine points on a follow and two short turnaround baseline jumpers.
``He's overpowering,'' UMass forward Lou Roe said of Reeves, who was named the regional's most outstanding player. ``He has five inches on me. He's so big they were able to lob the ball over the top to him and he felt comfortable with the spots where he got the ball.''
``I hit some shots early, and then maybe I wasn't working as hard as I should have been,'' said Reeves. ``I was kind of sluggish. In the second half, I got the ball in the right places.''
Rutherford interrupted Reeves' run with a 3-point jumper. What had been a six-point Oklahoma State lead ballooned to 15 with 6:22 to play.
``That's where Oklahoma State took control,'' said UMass coach John Calipari, whose team finished 29-5. ``A couple of times, we didn't put enough pressure on the ball and they moved him up higher to get it. The other thing he did was make good decisions on kicking the ball out to other guys.''
Most often, Rutherford was the beneficiary of Reeves' passes. The senior sharpshooter finished with 19 points, 15 in the second half.
Meanwhile, Roe, a 17-point scorer for UMass, was held to nine and was part of a statistical quirk that illustrated how dominating the OSU defense was.
Four UMass starters took 10 shots. Roe fired up 11. The only Minuteman to hit more than three baskets was guard Carmelo Travieso, who was pressed into that role because of an injury to Edgar Padilla - and Traviso converted just four.
``They banged, they bumped,'' Calipari explained. ``The officials let them do it, which is fine. We couldn't get a good clean shot without them bumping us.''
UMass isn't the only team so manhandled by the Cowboys this postseason. Since the Big Eight tournament, only Wake Forest has hit better than 40 percent of its shots against Oklahoma State.
When Sutton says this team has improved more in one season than any he has ever had, that defense and what it can do to the opposition is his primary reason.
``This is a good basketball team,'' he said. ``They make other teams play ugly sometimes because of their defense.''
At the moment, ugly is the nicest four-letter word in Sutton's vocabulary. For him, it's a Final Four-letter word. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Massachusetts' Lou Roe reaches over Oklahoma State's Bryant Reeves,
but can't keep him from getting the ball.
by CNB