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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

If the shoe fits, Cinderella season on horizon

This is Cinderella season.

The end of another basketball season always spawns talk of Cinderella teams, teams that had no business finishing where they did. Overachievers, they say.

Of course, the flip side of being an overachiever is the fact that people who should know better wrote off those teams too early.

We’re no strangers here to Cinderella stories. Most of us can still remember when Gonzaga was considered a Cinderella – that 1999 run to the Elite Eight changed it all.

But that team, led by Richie Frahm, Matt Santangelo, Casey Calvary and Quentin Hall, got the magic started and the area is still under its spell all these years later.

There were many Cinderella stories before that 1999 Zags team, and there have been a good many since.

A personal favorite was the 1965-66 team from Texas Western College coached by Hall of Famer Don Haskins. Now called the University of Texas-El Paso, that team was the first to start five black players in an NCAA final, where they beat an all-white Kentucky squad led by future NBA coach Pat Riley.

The 1985 NCAA champions from Villanova was another great Cinderella story, as was Jim Valvano’s 1983 North Carolina State squad.

The 1990 Loyola Marymount team is a favorite of many. That team survived the tragic death of its best player, Hank Gathers, and went on to reach the Elite Eight, where the Cinderella ride finally ended in a loss to eventual champion UNLV.

Were all of those teams true Cinderellas?

Each one of them found its way into the NCAA tournament, so they were pretty darned good to begin with, and none of them found their way to the Big Dance in a pumpkin coach.

In the case of Gonzaga and Loyola Marymount, they were from lightly regarded conferences that traditionally carried no weight beyond the first round of the tournament.

Texas Western wasn’t from a power conference either, and there was a specter of racism in regard to what that team could be expected to achieve. Adolph Rupp, who coached Kentucky in that championship game, did not recruit a black player onto his squad until 1969.

Villanova and NC State were both very good teams, but neither was a pick to win its respective tournament.

But what each school had was an outstanding coach. Rollie Massimino at Villanova and Jim Valvano at NC State each had a unique way of inspiring his players to achieve feats together that were impossible to achieve individually.

And in the end, that’s what truly is the hallmark of a great champion, be they Cinderella or not. And the high school game is a rich ground from which to mine these kinds of stories.

For one thing, the biggest factor in these games is desire. How much does a team want it – how much will it sacrifice to achieve its dreams? You can’t always coach what some like to call “want to.” But I have learned over the years that great coaches have a way of exercising that biggest of muscles: the heart.

And when that heart catches fire, watch out.

These next few weeks are primed with potential Cinderella stories.

A District tournament upset sent the Greater Spokane League regular season boys basketball champions into a loser-out game in the District 4A tournament. Central Valley survived, but that meant traveling to the Tri-Cities to face Chiawana in a loser-out game.

That’s what I mean about being overlooked.

You don’t expect to face a league champion when you start out a regional tournament as a low seed. If CV were to put together a run and qualify for the state Class 4A tournament, it would surprise no one.

If not CV, then some other team will catch lightning in a bottle and make the kind of run that make you want to believe in miracles.

And it will make for one heck of a good story.

Correspondent Steve Christilaw can be reached at steve.christilaw@gmail.com.