PAN AMERICAN GAMES : Basketball : U.S Team Gets Painful Lessons; Agony of Defeat Felt by Panama

The most memorable thing about the opening-round victory by the U.S. men’s basketball team in the Pan Am Games here Sunday was that it was not the least bit memorable.

Except for, perhaps, the fact that the other team wore the wrong uniforms.

The Americans won, 91-63, over a team that was listed in the program as being from Panama and had the word Panama lettered on its bright red uniforms. Actually, most of the players learned the bulk of their basketball at a school in Sioux City, Iowa, named Briar Cliff. Two current players and six former players from Briar Cliff made up Panama’s 12-man Pan Am team.

It used to be a joke in Iowa among college teams not having great years that they’d be just fine if they could get Briar Cliff on their schedule. Then the school went co-ed and quickly became a power in the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics, making frequent appearances in the NAIA tournament in Kansas City.

So much for that joke.

Panama/Briar Cliff is coached by Jim Baron, coach at St. Francis (Pa.) College and a former assistant to Digger Phelps at Notre Dame, who said after the game that his team had been together only nine days in Panama prior to these Games. He probably just forgot to count all those years at Briar Cliff.

Panama/Briar Cliff kept the game close until the latter stages of the first half. It did so partly by introducing the American team to the realities of international basketball: Rough play.

The United States lost Jeff Lebo of North Carolina and Fennis Dembo of Wyoming, both of whom had the bad taste to hit Panama/Briar Cliff players in the elbow with their faces.

Lebo left with a bloody nose and Dembo with a cut over his eye. Neither returned, although Coach Denny Crum said they probably could have, had he needed them. The injuries did raise the speculation, however, that Panama’s game plan included taking out the American players whose last names ended with an “o.”

Later in the game, U.S. center David Robinson inadvertently applied an elbow to the face of Panama/Briar Cliff veteran Mario Butler, 30. Three stitches were required, none of them in Robinson’s elbow.

“This was a pretty good starting game as far as the physical stuff goes,” Crum said. “But you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Which brought the comment from Jerome Lane of Pitt, who looks more like Lawrence Taylor than he does a basketball player: “I’m not really a physical person, but if these guys want to play that way, well, I can do it.”

Three feet to Lane’s right, Crum smiled and rolled his eyes.

Panama/Briar Cliff’s last lead was 28-27 with 5:59 to play in the half. But with Ricky Berry scoring seven points and adding a nice assist to Rex Chapman down the stretch, the halftime lead was 44-33, and the Central American boys from Iowa had run out of both ideas and elbows.

Danny Manning, the 6-11 forward from Kansas, scored 8 points in a 10-4 spurt that opened the second half and closed the book on Panama/Briar Cliff. Berry, the 6-8 forward/guard from San Jose State who surprised college basketball experts by (a) making the team and (b) making the starting lineup, kept up a high level of play in the second half and finished with 16 points, 2 fewer than team leader Manning.

Robinson, the 7-1 star from Navy, who was the college player of the year, had 11 points and 11 rebounds.

“I don’t think David is in quite as good shape as some of the other players right now, because of his Navy duty,” Crum said. “But he showed a lot in the second half and a few more games could have him right back in the flow.”

The Americans have been placed in Pool A for this competition, meaning their competition in the preliminary round, after Panama/Briar Cliff, is Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina. The top team in the other men’s pool, Brazil, beat another U.S. team in the last World Games, so Crum is taking nothing for granted.

“We’re a good team, but we still have things to work on, to improve,” he said. “One of our strengths is that we see the floor well, and we pass the ball real well, too.

“The thing is, sometimes we don’t catch it.”