By Mark Simon
D3hoops.com
You wonder sometimes how a player will respond to certain things you say. So we approached gingerly when we told Bowdoin’s sophomore center Justine Pouravelis that she was an intimidating presence on the basketball court.
“I don’t think of myself as an intimidator,” Pouravelis said by phone earlier this week. “No one has ever said that to me before … but I like it.”
We got the chance to see Pouravelis in person last weekend when No. 1 Bowdoin edged Bates in overtime in the NESCAC title game and came away very impressed. If Bowdoin (26-0 heading into Saturday’s second-round game with the Emmanuel-Salve Regina winner) makes a run at the national championship, like we expect them to, hers will definitely be a name to remember. She ranks fourth on the team in scoring at 7.4 points per game, but her value to the team is as significant as that of top scorer and All-America senior guard Lora Trenkle.
The 5-11 Pouravelis has a wingspan that makes her seem 6-4. Her long arms fly up to the ceiling to block shots (68 in 26 games) or outwards into the passing lanes (she nabbed a team high 63 steals). She is Bowdoin’s last line of defense in a defense that is often high-risk, high-reward. One onlooker who has seen her all season compared her to a hockey goalie guarding the net and said other coaches are going seeing Pouravelis in their sleep all off-season. In her bio on the team’s Web site, she lists her dream 5-on-5 basketball game, and it’s one that has her matched up inside against NBA legends Kareem Abdul-Jabaar and Bill Russell.
“I don’t want the ball to even get close to the rim,” Pouravelis said.
The Polar Bears' defense is more heavily reliant on pressing than it was in previous seasons. Head coach Stefanie Pemper came up with a scheme involving traps and double teams that make it extraordinarily difficult to set up a halfcourt offense with more than 15 seconds left on the shot clock. Once, you do get set, Pouravelis is poised in the paint, waiting for the top scorer to come at her.
“We had a press last year, but no one felt comfortable with it,” Pouravelis said. “A press doesn’t work unless it’s intense. This year we take more risks. When we move on the court, it feels like we’re all moving together. The five of us on the court know exactly what the other is thinking. I feel like I’ve been able to thrive in that.”
If there was ever a stat that illustrated Pouravelis’ value, it is this: Pouravelis played 27 minutes in the NESCAC title game. In that time, Bowdoin allowed only 12 points. In the 18 minutes she was on the bench, Bates racked up 35 points. The key is making sure that she’s on the floor. On Sunday she fouled out with less than four minutes remaining in regulation, the first time all season that happened, and Bates was able to rally to force overtime.
That made for some nerve-wracking moments at game’s end when Bowdoin fell behind, before rallying to win when Pouravelis’ replacement, Erika Nickerson, hit the go-ahead shot with less than a minute remaining. Bowdoin has met every gut-check moment this season (Emmanuel and Williams also took the Polar Bears to overtime, but couldn’t finish them off) with poise and confidence. Someone has stepped up, whether it be someone inside like Pouravelis, Nickerson or Eileen Flaherty, guards like Trenkle, Alison Smith, and Vanessa Russell, or super-subs like forward Lindsay Bramwell, Lauren Withey and Kristina Fugate
“We wouldn’t want it any other way,” Pouravelis said. “If we didn’t have those games, I think something would be missing. It really feels like now that there’s something driving us not to lose. It’s getting to the point where that would be just horrible and we can’t let that happen.”
Zip over 3,000 miles to the other side of the country, and the name to remember is that of Puget Sound senior guard Matt Glynn, the Northwest Conference Player of the Year. The Loggers will make their first Division III tournament appearance on Saturday against the winner of Pomona-Pitzer and Colorado College and the team’s first postseason appearance of any kind since making the Division II tournament in 1984. Like Pouravelis, Glynn’s contribution goes beyond scoring, though he did average better than 20 points per game this season.
As we mentioned earlier this season, when we described their approach, the Loggers play a high-frenzy press defense, one in which the 6-2 Glynn is the last line of defense. Glynn’s specialty is reading the ballhandlers’ eyes and getting the steal, but he’s also the one entrusted with knowing what to do when opponents are coming downcourt in a 2-on-1.
“We try to make teams dribble through our pressure,” Glynn said. “The key is to get the ballhandler going out of control, and then we jump on him. We pride ourselves on playing harder. We’re in a system where if we play harder (than the opposition), we’ll win.”
The primary reason that Puget Sound has had so much success this season (a 23-2 record, including 17-1 in league play, is because Glynn is usually good for one run a game. It goes something like this over a two-minute span. Steal, 3-pointer, steal, 3-pointer, steal, basket-and-foul, steal layup.
“That’s what separates us,” said head coach Eric Bridgeland, who estimates his squad has gotten a spurt like that in every game this season but one. “In five possessions, we can get the lead from two to 15.”
There’s no such thing as an in-between shot in this system. Everything is either drive and kick out, or drive and shoot the layup, as three teammates come soaring in for an offensive rebound opportunity. That’s how the Loggers have averaged nearly 105 points per game. They have scorers like Glynn, Jeremy Cross and Aubrey Shelton, shooters like Curtis Medved, who likes to hoist from 30 feet out, and hustle players like Mario Mendoza, Chris O’Donnell, Zach McVey, and Chase Curtiss.
“We’ve had games where we’ve shot 47 3-pointers,” Bridgeland said. “We’ve had games where we’ve shot 57 free throws.”
Glynn, who makes better than 50% of his two-point attempts and better than 40% from 3-point range, was skinny and scrawny when he went to UC Santa Cruz as a freshman, then transferred the next year when Bridgeland switched coaching jobs from that school to Puget Sound. Now he’s a solid 6-3, 180 pounds and the program’s fifth leading scorer with 1,506 career points. He talks with confidence, but not overt cockiness, when asked if he can foresee a trip to Salem in his future.
“If you don’t believe you’re the best team in the tournament, you’re wasting your time making it this far,” Glynn said. “Now, it’s up to us to do what we do.”
JUST BEING A PART: Entering his first season as head coach of the Lakeland men, Gary Grzesk could take comfort in knowing that his team had four starters returning this season. Grzesk quickly learned he couldn’t take anything for granted
“It’s never as easy as you think it’s going to be” said Grzesk (pronounced “GRESH”), whose team visits Lawrence in an NCAA tournament first-round game on Thursday. “I thought it was going to be easy, but it’s been anything but easy.”
It didn’t take long for things to unravel. Top scorer Ricky Davis became academically ineligible and two other players were removed from the team for disciplinary reasons. The Muskies, picked first in the Lake Michigan Conference, were 5-9 before their fortunes started to turn around with a come-from-behind road triumph over Wisconsin Lutheran. Senior guard Cory Nickel (20.0 points per game) and junior center Nick Zeck (10.8 points per game, 7.4 rebounds) became an effective combination and that got the team going in the right direction. With 1,476 career points, Nickel ranks ninth on the school’s all-time list, and is the first player to break into the top 10 in 20 years.
“If you were going to recap the year in a sentence, it would be about fighting through adversity and change,” Grzesk said.
Grzesk is good at handling such situations, considering his past. In the first round of the 1994 Division I NCAA Tournament, Grzesk was the UW-Green Bay point guard who forced his opponent into a 4-for-17, six-turnover night, helping UW-GB pull off the upset. The man he was guarding was a young point guard at Cal named Jason Kidd.
“I was someone who just wanted to be a part of the team, even if that just meant playing defense and setting screens,” Gresh said. “That’s a great memory. It’s something special to look back on and I’ll always remember.”
THEY’RE BACK: The banners that stretch across Jerry Welsh Gym represent a piece of the past for the Potsdam State men, which won two championships in the ’80s and went 60-1 over a two-season stretch from 1985-87.
“When you walk in there, it’s a little intimidating,” said Bears first-year coach Sherry Dobbs, who took his SUNYAC third-seeded squad into an NCAA Tournament first-round game with Penn State-Behrend, after it won the SUNYAC title as the No. 3 seed.
It’s been a while since Potsdam State was in the national picture and this didn’t figure to be the season they would return, since the Bears were picked seventh in the league’s preseason poll.
“Our kids felt disrespected by that,” Dobbs said. “They set out to have a better year than they were chosen for.”
Dobbs switched the team’s offense from patterned sets to motion oriented, and the team fed off its strength on the defensive end. Junior guard Evril Clayton, a transfer from Division I Manhattan, led the team in scoring at 15.6 points per game. Backcourt mate Edane Barton, a transfer from Division I Colgate, has picked up his play the last 10 games, and was the team’s leading scorer in the SUNYAC semis and title game upset of Brockport.
“The last five or six games, we’ve figured it out,” said Dobbs, whose team’s style of play is patterned after that used by Dave Paulsen at Williams. “Our only senior, (starting guard) Jim Connelly, tore his knee in January. We really rallied around that and came together the last 15 games.”
OH, BABY: Aurora women’s coach Jennifer Buckley wasn’t kidding when she told us at the beginning of our conversation that her team had quite a story to tell. As one follower said, Cinderella, thy name is Spartans.
The unlikeliest entrant in the NCAA Tournament started the season 0-10 and was 1-13 after a loss to Rockford on January 10. We would have laughed then if you had told us that they would be getting ready for a first-round matchup with DePauw on Wednesday. Buckley coached the team up until the ninth month of her pregnancy, when the doctor told her that her blood pressure was too high (due partly to the team being 0-5) and she needed bed rest. On Dec. 21, Jennifer give birth to her and her husband’s first child, a baby girl named Madison. Six weeks later she was back on the sidelines (though coincidentally, the assistant who replaced her, Darlene Guyett, is now nine months pregnant), and suddenly her team was in the thick of the Northern Illinois-Iowa Conference race.
The Spartans finished 8-18 in the regular season, but 7-5 in the NIIC, sweeping Eureka, first-place Rockford and Benedictine in the playoffs. A non-league win over fellow NCAA participant Franklin the day before Buckley’s daughter was born was the spark to the season.
“I don’t advise other coaches to have a baby in the middle of basketball season,” Buckley said with a laugh. “But this makes it alright. We did a great job of coming together. We lost 80% of the scoring from last year’s team, which was undefeated in the conference. We have blue-collar kids who work hard. Teams have to work to score against us. We said last week that (the league tournament) was anybody’s game. It worked out well for us.”
Aurora is heavily reliant on its young talent. Two of the top three scorers — point guard Beth Plucinski (12.6 points per game) and center Courtney Lillard, are freshmen. The Spartans do have the luxury of having a big front line, starting three players who are six-feet or taller.
“We’re excited that our freshmen will be setting the tone for our program,” Buckley said. “They’re young freshmen who don’t know anything else other than playing hard.
Madison will be on hand to watch her mom coach against DePauw. Considering what she and the group have gone through, Buckley is feeling pretty good about her team’s fate.
“We’ll take our chances with anybody right now,” said Buckley, who is hopeful her squad gained something from blowout losses against the likes of Hope and Baldwin-Wallace in a non-league schedule that was the toughest of any NIIC team. “We’re a team you can’t overlook.”
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? In March, thoughts turn to the best that Division III has to offer, and if you’re going to do that, we felt we had to talk to former NYU star Marsha Harris.
Harris hit one of the sport’s most memorable shots (listen), winning the 1997 championship for the Violets on a driving layup with a second remaining that pushed the team to a come-from-behind two-point win against UW-Eau Claire.
“Minute to minute of that game, I don’t remember much,” Harris said. “I remember the beginning and I remember the ending. It was a great moment for Division III.”
Basketball stardom was predicted for Harris, then a junior guard, who would play for the Jamaica national team, but she passed on attending WNBA tryout camp a year later to interview for the Walter Byars scholarship (a prestigious award worth $25,000). She won the award and went on to NYU medical school, graduating in 2002. She is in her second year as a resident at NYU Medical Center, training in the general surgery unit.
“It’s tough but rewarding,” Harris said. “It’s a constant challenge to keep up the fight against diseases. There are downfalls when you lose battles, but usually patients win them, and that’s very rewarding.”
Harris works 80-hour weeks, so there isn’t time to think much about missing the sport, though she admits there are days when she does. She was glad to hear that NYU is prominently on the map again. When Harris played, NYU was the team that everyone was gunning for.
“I miss the camaraderie and the travel,” said Harris. “Wherever we went, it was like the Yankees were coming to town.”
