People Expecting Too Much From Toreros

SAN DIEGO —  I have come to learn something about miracles.

They only happen once.

Usually associated with loaves, fishes and the parting of waters, the word miracle has found a home in the world of sports. And it has also found itself tossed around like a beach ball.

However, the folks at the University of San Diego were not inclined to debunk the wonderment of the Toreros’ stretch run to the 1983-84 West Coast Athletic Conference basketball championship. Six straight wins--four of them by four points or less--were . . .

Downright miraculous.

It was especially tasty for USD because the basketball team had been expected to finish where it always finished. No one knew exactly where that was because no one really paid any attention.

Mind you, USD crowds--if they could have been called that--never hit such decibel levels that they disturbed the dozen or so priests who live in apartments above the gymnasium.

But all of that changed one glorious evening last March. The USD Sports Center and its parking lot were jammed so early that the players, arriving 90 minutes before game time, had to drive back to their apartments and walk. A couple of them heard all the noise inside and feared the game had started without them.

It was a madhouse, but that was to be expected. All miracles in sports happen in front of frenzied fans.

USD was a 68-59 winner over St. Mary’s and went on to the NCAA tournament. The season ended in the first round, but miraculous memories would endure.

St. Mary’s was in town to play USD again Thursday night, so I wandered out to the asylum to experience the electricity again. The Toreros were a modest 1-2 in the WCAC, but it was early in the season and surely the faithful would be fired up.

I was disappointed when I arrived and found only a few cars in the parking lot. And the gymnasium was virtually empty. I thought maybe I had the wrong night.

“We’ll have a nice crowd,” said Father Patrick Cahill, USD’s athletic director. “If a game starts at 7:30, our students will get here at 7:35.”

As Cahill stood outside the gym on the pool deck, fans arrived in a trickle at first and finally in a steady stream. However, I didn’t see any fanatics with their faces painted USD’s Columbia blue or any with banners tucked under their arms. They could have been going to a movie.

That crowd of a year ago attacked like a full-court press, asserting its presence long before the players slipped into their sneakers. This crowd would sit back and react to what it saw.

Miracles, it would seem, have ugly children. They cause increased expectations.

“If we had the same record last year,” Cahill said, “nobody would be asking what was wrong. You hear some of that this year.”

He was right.

No one would be asking him, for example, about some of those powder puffs USD played before the WCAC season started. It has been suggested that Concordia, Southwest Texas State and Southwest Baptist did little to prepare the Toreros for their title defense. Maybe that was what was wrong?

“When you’re building a program,” he said, “it’s helpful, record-wise, to play some of those smaller schools. I think now we might be better off playing a rougher nonconference schedule. We’re not a sleeper anymore. We’ve got to be ready.”

USD will gear up next year with tournament appearances at the University of New Mexico and University of Texas. Cahill said it is possible DePaul will visit USD the year after.

On this evening, of course, the task at hand was St. Mary’s. A win would give the Toreros a 2-2 record going into tonight’s visit by Santa Clara.

As usual, USD has a collection of wide-eyed young men who look more like altar boys than basketball players--except for their height. That was part of what made last year’s championship so miraculous. The Toreros didn’t even look like they could win.

It would be just as it was a year ago--USD’s size and discipline and St. Mary’s quickness and discipline.

The crowd, which would total 1,844, was still filing into the gym as the Toreros took an early six-point lead. Momentum surged back and forth, and the Toreros were ahead by five in the second half.

The fans were into it, and getting louder. However, St. Mary’s was not exactly out of it.

John Madden would describe the three decisive plays in the one decisive minute in his own inimitable fashion: “Cooke, alone, slam . . . Jones, fast break, bam . . . Cooks, steals, wham . . . “

St. Mary’s would win, 75-65.

Hank Egan, in his first year as the Toreros’ coach, was standing in the training room in the aftermath, his coat and tie in a rumpled pile on a table. The media was asking him what had gone wrong.

“It was easy to read their press,” he patiently repeated. “We were handling their press, and then we turned it over those three times in a row.”

A youngster, maybe 5 or 6, poked his head into the room. He wanted to borrow a basketball.

“I don’t know,” Egan shrugged. “I’m new here.”

He turned back to the media. Sure, three losses in the first four conference games would make it difficult--but not impossible.

What they need is a miracle. Maybe it can happen twice.