This ‘House Not A Friendly Place To Visit

Personally, I liked the name of the other joint on campus better. Graves Gym.

Graves.

The Graveyard. The Boneyard. Necropolis. Any of a hundred cryptal nicknames could suffice, each implying dark shadows and ghoulish inhabitants and impending doom for visiting basketball teams. Even now, you can envision the marketing plan, the billboards, the radio spots.

Nobody gets out of Graves alive.

Problem is, the Pirates of Whitworth College moved out of Graves more than 20 years ago and into the clean, well-lit confines of their generically named fieldhouse - which Pirates forward Ben Heimerman says opposing players occasionally tell him “is just a big airplane hanger.

“I start looking around,” mused Heimerman, “and think, ‘Yeah, it is.”’

If so, then only the Pirates seem to be cleared for takeoff.

The home-court advantage has reached big-time proportions at the small-time Shangri-La of Whitworth, where the Pirates have won 41 consecutive games at home.

Let’s do the ‘house keeping: Not since Dec. 10, 1994, have the Bucs been runners-up at home - falling 73-71 to Western Baptist that night in the championship game of the Whitworth Invitational. The conference winning streak dates back yet another year, beginning after a loss to Pacific Lutheran.

Possibly it doesn’t auger well that PLU gets the next shot at ending the streak, tonight at 8 p.m. - though the coincidence is less worrisome than the fact that the Lutes trail Whitworth by just two games in the Northwest Conference standings. If the streak survives tonight, then Lewis & Clark - a game back of Whitworth in second - takes its best shot on Saturday.

Practically, the streak is important in only one sense: Protect it and the Pirates protect themselves. Winning the regular-season title earns Whitworth the home court for any playoff game leading up to the NAIA Division II national tournament.

But streaks take life from the emotional more than the practical.

“By now, it’s just a pride thing,” said Jeff Mix, a senior who can’t remember losing at the fieldhouse. “It drives us. It pushes us harder.”

This may have been what Whitman College coach Skip Molitor was getting at earlier this week, after the Missionaries became victim No. 41 and he was asked his take on Whitworth’s big mo’ on campus.

“I just think they’re awfully damn good,” he said.

In other words, buildings don’t win. Fans don’t win.

They can only make it harder for the other team to win.

“They probably have the best atmosphere in our league to play in,” Molitor admitted. “They’ve done a nice job with that.

“You’re going to have to come in here and play really well, but a lot of nights that isn’t going to be enough. The way we played tonight, we beat most of the teams in our league. Not Whitworth.”

And the Missionaries got only a nibble of the Whitworth experience, it being a Tuesday night and there being, well, priorities.

“Buckle up,” the public address announcer advised the students headed for the exits. “Drive safely. And do your homework.”

And he didn’t mean bone up on PLU’s personnel for heckling purposes. This isn’t Duke. It’s not even The Kennel - and given the declining state of clever invective from Gonzaga’s student body, that’s not all bad.

“There were a couple of guys last year who got into imitating the coach of the other team,” noted Heimerman, “but Whitworth deemed that as too rude. I don’t know. You go some other places - PLU and some of the state schools - and they’re calling you by your first name, your last name and a whole bunch of other names.”

Warren Friedrichs wasn’t a big fan of the coach-alikes, but he loves the rest of the fieldhouse act.

“It’s the kind of atmosphere you want for small-college basketball,” said Friedrichs. “We go a lot of places that don’t have near the crowd we do. You come out for warmups and the students are already there and it’s hard not to get ready.”

Friedrichs can even recruit to it. Freshman Ryan Nelson of Waterville - the best 3-point marksman in town - paid a recruiting visit on one of Whitworth’s wilder nights and the experience closed the deal.

But as much as being an incentive to come, the fieldhouse frenzy is an enticement to stay. Whitworth’s other four starters - Mix, Heimerman, Greg Jones and Tyler Jordan - all played their high school ball in Spokane County.

“You’re going to work that much harder,” noted Mix, “in front of people you want to please.”

It isn’t an intimidating joint - not with the high arched ceiling and airplane-hanger dimensions and colorless name. Then again, the longest home streak in the college ranks belongs to Life University of Marietta, Ga., where the Blue Eagles have won 83 in a row in a building called the Sport Health Science Center.

Obviously, the name isn’t the grave matter I thought it was.

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.

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