Experience overrated

Gregg Marshall led his Winthrop University men’s basketball team to the NCAA Tournament four years in a row, starting in 1999.

And on each occasion, it was one and out for his Eagles, who even suffered the indignity of losing a play-in game to Northwestern State in 2001.

That’s why Winthrop’s seventh-year head coach thinks the experienced gained from having previously danced at the NCAA’s annual ball is vastly overrated. And why he is not shy about sending his 14th-seeded Eagles (27-5) up against third-seeded Gonzaga (25-4) in Thursday’s opening round of this year’s tournament in Tucson, Ariz., even though there is no one on his current roster with even a scrap of NCAA experience.

“It didn’t really help those first four years, having guys who had been there before,” Marshall said when asked about the importance of having players on your roster with NCAA experience. “We were 0-4. Maybe now, with a fresh group of guys coming in, we’ll feel like we can go out and compete a little better.

“I think (experience) can work both ways – especially when you’re losing like we were. Gonzaga, they’ve been there and they’ve won, so that would probably be a positive from their end.”

The 10h-ranked Bulldogs, who are making their seventh consecutive NCAA appearance, definitely have some good memories to draw from, even though they were upset by Nevada in the second round of last year’s tournament.

Marshall would like to see his young team, which has only one senior – seldom-used walk-on Brandon Key – on its roster, finally start to create some positive memories of its own. But he knows it won’t come easy against a GU team that rolled such national powers as Pacific-10 Conference champion and top-seeded Washington, Big 12 Conference champion Oklahoma State and Atlantic Coast Conference runner-p Georgia Tech during the regular season.

“We’re going to be hard-pressed to play with these guys,” Marshall admitted, “but then, we’ve got some good players, too.”

And those “good players” have managed to string together 18 straight victories heading into Thursday’s showdown against the Bulldogs, which tips off at 4:25 p.m. PST in the University of Arizona’s McKale Center.

“It’s a pretty good win streak when it’s No. 1 in the country,” said Marshall, whose Eagles haven’t lost since Jan. 5, when they dropped their Big South Conference opener at Coastal Carolina. “Because of that, and because of the youth and inexperience of this group, we’re (coming into the tournament) very, very confident.

“You have to be confident to be successful in this business, and these guys are supremely confident. They feel good about themselves, and they feel good about our program.”

During the regular season, the Eagles were able use their defensive quickness and deliberate offensive style to keep most of their games at a pace they were comfortable with, holding their last 17 opponents to 66 points or less.

“We defend, that’s our bread and butter,” Marshall said. “We defend on a nightly basis. Now, I’m not sure we can hold Gonzaga to the type of numbers we’ve been holding other teams to, but, certainly, that would be to our advantage.”

And Marshall said he feels this team is as disciplined and versatile on offense as any he’s had at Winthrop.

“We’ve got guys who are very unselfish and share the basketball,” he said. “We’re trying to make sure we turn down a pretty good shot to get a very good shot, and that’s what we’ll continue to do, hopefully, in this tournament.

“I think we’re a very balanced team, too. We’ve got guys that can shoot it from the perimeter; we’ve got guys that can drive it, and we’ve got guys that can go get it off the glass. We’re a tremendously multi-functional team.”

Marshall almost makes it sound like the selection committee got it wrong, but he insists that’s not the case.

“We’re going to have to compete against some guys we’re not used to competing against on a daily basis,” Marshall said of Gonzaga, which will have a decided size advantage inside with 6-foot-10 senior Ronny Turiaf and 6-9 junior J.P. Batista. “They’re in a mid-major league, but they’re high-major players. That’s why they’re able to do what they’re able to do every year.

“And I’d say we’re in low-major league, but we’ve got mid-major players. So I think that’s why we’re able to do what we do most years.”

Marshall added he is convinced GU is the best team his Eagles have faced all year.

“And we’re going to have to step it up to another level,” he explained. “But we have that level. We’ve still not played our best basketball.

“We need to play the best game we’ve played all year and see where that takes us.”