NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Contrasting Styles in the East : Loyola’s Happy Shooters Try to Crack Immovable Georgetown Defense

PROVIDENCE, R.I. —  The coach thinks coaching is overrated and suggests it be left to “the guys who wear flowers” on their lapels. He also thinks layups are overrated. During pregame warmups, his basketball players shoot only jump shots. During the game, same thing.

The star player, who certainly agrees with his coach about what constitutes a good shot, says of his team, “We’re city kids . . . and we don’t take no slack.”

The playmaker, acknowledging that his team is very much an underdog here at the NCAA East Regional, says he has no fear. “I’ve been in a situation where I’ve been standing next to a person who’s been shot,” he said. “So fear doesn’t get to me at all.”

Introducing Loyola of Chicago, your would-be Cinderella team of this year’s college basketball tournament. Actually, these guys don’t figure as Cinderella, but they could ride shotgun on the coach.

They’re a bunch of cocky, fearless, refreshingly honest kids from the streets of Chicago with a 27-5 record and a 19-game winning streak who tonight will get to play Georgetown (32-2), a team that definitely does not believe in fairy tales, in the NCAA’s round of 16.

Is Carl (Go Go) Golston worried?

“We’re going to take their (tails) to the rim,” Loyola’s 5-foot 9-inch playmaking guard said the other day. “We’re no (sissies).”

The gauntlet has been thrown down. Georgetown, you can bet, will pick it up and with the accustomed ferocity. The teams will play in the second game of a doubleheader that opens with Georgia Tech (26-7) playing Illinois (26-8). The winners will play Saturday afternoon for the right to advance to the Final Four in Lexington, Ky.

The East is probably the toughest of the four regionals. Georgetown, of course, is the No. 1 team in the country. Georgia Tech is the ACC champion, and Illinois is the lone Big Ten survivor. And then there are the Loyola Ramblers, champions of the Midwestern City Conference--a self-styled Big East of the Midwest.

No one knows what to think of the Ramblers. Their star player is Alfredrick (The Great) Hughes, a 6-5 forward built along the lines of Adrian Dantley and the fifth-leading scorer in NCAA history. They say his range is best measured in light years. He averages 27 points and just under 10 rebounds a game.

“If he’s hot, we’ll make sure he gets 30 or 40 shots,” Golston said.

The shots do get passed around, sometimes more often than the basketball. Andre Battle, a 6-3 forward, averages 21 points, 6-9 center Andre Moore averages 11, and Golston gets 15 himself.

But it’s a different kind of offense.

“I’ve always been an offensive-minded coach,” said Gene Sullivan, the coach and a story in his own right. “I think the individual player in modern basketball has a tremendous advantage in a one-on-one situation because of the jump shot. We think it’s easier to get a 12- to 15-foot jump shot than it is to get a layup and we think we can probably shoot a better percentage that way with Pat Ewing around.”

That’s one description of the offense. Golston’s is a little more colorful.

“We just go out and shoot the basketball,” he said. “We try to get the first open jump shot we can find, whether it (takes) 5 seconds or 10 seconds.”

They’re different and maybe their style will serve to neutralize Ewing’s impact as the best defensive center in recent college basketball history. If a team doesn’t try to get inside, why should Ewing be a problem?

Another thing. The Ramblers don’t figure to be intimidated by Georgetown. As they like to say, they’re city kids and they take no slack.

“I stay in a type of neighborhood where there’s nothing but gangs and a lot of stickups and drugs and that type of thing,” Golston said. “People approach you every day as far as wanting to take your money or take off your clothes or your jewelry. Coming up in that type of environment, adjusting to it, not being afraid of it, you really don’t have no reason to be afraid on a basketball court.”

The Ramblers beat Iona by one and SMU by 13 to get this far in the tournament. So maybe it is possible. Isn’t it?

Probably not.

First of all, Georgetown is certainly the better team. The Hoyas play better defense and they probably have at least as many offensive weapons in David Wingate, Reggie Williams and Billy Martin.

Second, Loyola is very small--the front line is 6-9, 6-5 and 6-3. Maybe Ewing won’t be as great a factor defensively, but how are the Ramblers going going to stop the 7-foot center from scoring?

Third, there is the Georgetown press. Even Loyola has to get the ball past midcourt to score.

And last, well, do you believe in fairy tales?

Gene Sullivan, of course, does. He’s a pug-nosed Irishman with a constant twinkle in his eye. No, not the glass eye.

He had an eye knocked out by a hockey stick when he was 10 years old and replaced it with a glass eye. Once, last season, a player had some stitches over an eye and didn’t want to practice. Sullivan pulled out his glass eye and showed it to the player, telling him that if he could coach with one eye that the player could play with one eye.

Sullivan plays it for laughs. It took him 48 years to get to be a head coach, and he has few enough pretensions. He was an assistant under Johnny Dee at Notre Dame during the Austin Carr years but got passed over in favor of Digger Phelps when Dee retired. He missed out on several chances to be Georgetown’s coach, once losing the job to John Thompson.

Eventually, Sullivan became the athletic director at DePaul, where he had trouble getting along with Ray Meyer. He moved over to become athletic director at Loyola and, five years ago, hired himself as coach.

He picked up some unusual ideas along the way. As an example, Sullivan actually believes that the game belongs to the players.

“It’s very overrated,” Sullivan said of coaching during a game. “Coaching for Gene Sullivan, 99% of it is during the week. When the game starts, we turn it over to the kids. I don’t worry abut what shots Alfredrick Hughes takes. I never told a kid that in my life.

“This isn’t football, where the play stops and you tell them what to to offensively and defensively. This is a transition game. The major failing of the college coach is they overcoach and they try to control their team on this play. “

Sullivan has no bed-checks, no curfews, almost no rules. He loves the media and so do his players. Earlier in the week, he stopped practice to spend time with a few out-of-town reporters who had come to Chicago. Loyola is different.

Of course, this is a team that needs some publicity. Once upon a time, in an earlier fairy tale, Loyola won this basketball tournament. The year was 1963, the coach was George Ireland and some of the players were Jerry Harkness, Vic Rouse and Les (Big Game) Hunter.

The Ramblers were a regional power for a few more years and then they sort of disappeared. In Ireland’s last four seasons, beginning in 1970-71, the Ramblers were 32-64.

DePaul became the city school in Chicago, and Loyola, the second school in the Second City, passed from view. Even when the Ramblers got better, no one much noticed. They won 20 last season, and even the NIT didn’t want them.

So Sullivan set about organizing what he called a “Cinderella tournament,” made up of teams that had won 20 games but were invited nowhere for postseason play. The trophy was going to be a glass slipper, but a couple of the invited teams backed out and Sullivan had to wait for someone to invite him.

Now, Loyola is invited and doesn’t want to go home.

“It’s fun talking to reporters and telling ‘em what we’re going to do against Georgetown,” Golston says.

“We’re having a great time,” adds Hughes.

The Ramblers have nothing to lose. They don’t even have a gym to play in, and maybe all the publicity will help them get one built. Maybe more of Chicago’s top players will stay in Chicago and go to Loyola.

There’s a tradition being built. As for the old one, Hughes didn’t even know Loyola had ever won a championship until the day he walked on campus and saw the banner.

“We’re hearing a lot about the ’63 team now,” Golston said. “There are a lot of signs around campus. We’re ready to take those signs down--put up the ’85 championship signs.”

The talk is big, bigger than the team. But Loyola doesn’t get here that often. Why not enjoy it while you can?