News Scrapbook 1986-1988

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Evening Tribune (Cir. D. 123,092)

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t,1 Young Toreros' latest exam arrives tomorrow against Aztecs Y Don orcro s ,,,.,ast Surely it's big to ike Haupt, the cited, isn't he? body? Isn't there bad blood any- ing for." g1ous. I think with so much new, that Tr,bu $p,ir/. w k, haking hts h d mg in h" car, turning on the game Point guard Danny Means, who "He acted like he didn't want to Montana and Puget Sound, were only h-!eded was direction,'' Egan said. Th la ·, and feelm good when he heard the has never lot to the Aztecs, says, give me the time of day, so I don't by five point! But Egan expected t~,e Now they're getting pretty explicit "R1om d1cal eth Torero w re up by 15. USD wound "It's definitely not Just another have much respect for this certain team to play with enthusiasm, an• direction of what's arl'eplable and And th t, ri ht th re, tells you all up winning by 17, Its first win over game." But then he oftens his person," said Munn ''He was playing thus far he doesn't feel it has. what's not." y u n d to know ,1b ut D ket- th Azle mcc 1976 stance, noting that the Toreros are with shades on. He thought he was Egan blames him elf. _ But will the Toreros respond with b II, where th t rm tud nt-athletc Th Tor ros won last year by 16, coming off a 16-point lo to Boise real cool." "I think I made the assumption an emollonal effort? 1Sn t m1 nomer but Haup sat on the USD bench 1n State and adds, "But no matter who Upon hearing Munn, USD's players that we had built a tradillon of effort "If we don't,' Means said, "coach th I , th1 i a big game for street clothe while recovermg from it is, we just need a win. It just so broke out laughing. here that would carry over," he said. will kill us." th Torcros, isn't 1t' Depend upon a back inJury. ow he finally gets to happens this is our cross-town rival." "You can cut all my stuff out," said "And I thought that would be conta- If not the Aztecs. /i who you I k play again In thi rivalry, so he's ex- But isn't this game big for an - Haupt. "You've got what you're look- ore evates co ty judges upe · or Court San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Evening Tribune (Cir. D. 123,092) DEC 1 8 1 ..All~,,•· P. C 8 , ,, 1888 I 131

S,111 Diego , CA (S,m Diego Co.) S,111 Di qo Union (Cir . D. 21 1,08'1) (Cir. S. 341 ,840)

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. ere are_ a ton of krds who can play, but the first thrng we do rs get their high school transcripts' - Hank Egan (right) Egan's juggling act at .USD: grades, ability and charact~r A those who were paying attention will recall, the USD men's ba ketball morning for a seminar on recruit- mg - USD style. Having served at the Air Force Academy for 18 sea- sons, Egan long has been c:onver- sant with schools that have the au-

•Cushman.,..,---..:.._____ <'<1nlmued From E-1

quirements are considerably above NCAA standards, and any- one we recruit has to perform aca- demically during the time he's on campus. "There are a ton of kids who can play, b~t the first thing we do is get their high school transcripts. That way, we can eliminate a large number right m our office. "'There are factors other than intelligence involved. Not every- body who is bright is a good per- son. Some bright people make bombs and blow up thmgs. There h~ to be a sense of morality along with everything else." From those eventually contact- ed, Egan hears the same questions that might be a.ked at say Au- burn. "All of them kn~w ~e ve been to the NCAA playoffs,'' he says. '·Beyond that, they want to Please see CUSHMAN: E-f, Col. J

coaching. Ym've been accustomed to operat!ng a: a certain level of effi- ciency and suddenly it's not there anymore. Trat's hard to swallow. On the other ha'Jd, these kids are being bombarded ty comparisons, which is not fair to th~m." The problt\n is complicated by the fact that su ss tends to breed am- bition, a con ming trait that quickly spreads to thfl counting house. Asked what defeatir Auburn would have meant to his program, Egan says "We'd be a hecl: of a lot ncher." ' A second-round game, in fact, would have deposited another $200,000 in the USD treasury. More- over, the Toreros' next opponent would have been eventual national champion, lridiana, meaning a coast- to-coast appearance on TV. The value of that in down-the-line name recognition is beyond simple calcula- tion. "With last year's ballclub, we could have played the Auburns every night," Ega_n says. "The question is, can we do 1t year after year. That's what we have to find out. "Once you win, the expectation level changes considerably, and I sense that around here. That's OK. When you get down to it, a coach's job is to win bas 11 games and if you can't do it, you can have a rea- sonable expectation of doing some- thing else. "It seems like I spent a lifetime at the Academy making excuses for not winning, and' I find that hard. There may be reasons why you can't win, but that has to be your goal or you shouldn't be into it in the first place." There often are reasons beyond the control of the coach. Egan recalled a trip when his Air Force team was required to play ill Hawaii on Thurs- day night and then at noontime Sat- urday in El Paso against league power UTEP. "We're down 40-11 at halftime" he says, "and everybody wanted to know what the problem was. I guess I didn't explain it well, because I soon had a new job. "My problem now is I don't know where we sit. We have some good young talent, but I have no way of knowing what it will look like in four years."

know the size of your gym, how often you're on TV, what tournaments you·11 be playing in and do we go to Hawaii. "We sometimes get eliminated be- cause of those factors. But we have w ;id,lress the issues before we spend ct lot of money. The budget here is not endless." Hank smiled. The budget probably wouldn't pay for the paper clips at, say, Auburn. His talent pool has been further reduced by a new restriction. Where- by junior college students once quali- fied for enrollment with 48 hours of

team last year won 24 games, its :-onfer~nce chamP,ionship and an mv1tahon to the NCAA Tourna- ment where the Toreros came within a single field goal of unseating mighty Auburn. That was last year. In the inter- im, six of the eight top players from that varsity have vanished into the world of commerce leav- ing a hole approximately the size of Manchuria. The cupboard is not exactly bare, but the replace- ments represent a huge helping of nexperience which is reflected in the 2-3 record as USD prepares for aturday's annual dance with S'an Diego State. ln attempting to I rn how one effects such extensive repairs, we Joined coach Hank Egan yesterda

dacity to insist their athletes be able to read and write. "I thought we o be able to reach a lot of people here we couldn't at the Academy," .he ays. ·'but that hasn"t been true. The entrance re-

'Once you win, the expectation level changes considerably, and I sense that around here' -Hank Egan

Attecs: Host USD at Kr'erla tonight Continued from E-1

S.1n Diego, CA (San Diego Co .) San Diego Union l C1r . D. 21 7,089) Cir. S. 34 1,840) 1987 Jlliffl ' 1 p C. 8 Eu

I IU

"Part of our problem has been rushing things; a lot of it 1s that we aren't familiar with each other yet," ~aid junior forward Mike Haupt. •·we have a chance to be a good team if we can get playmg be t r together." With 6-foot-8 freshman center Keith Colvin nursing an ar.kle injury, the Toreros· tonight will start two freshmen, 6-i John Sayers and 6-6 led in scoring by junior gu:fr'aI)anny Means, who has aver- aged 13.4 points. Haupt is averaging 7.6 points and a team-leading 6.2 re- Randy Thomprnn. USD i · Against USIU, Ross scored 27 and Junior point guard Bryan Williams. a community-college transfer, had his best night as an Aztec with 22 pomts The Aztecs were 10-for-14 from three-pomt range against USIU and shot a sea on-high 56.9 percent from Brandenburg i more reserved than Egan in his asse ment of the Aztec·' performance agamst USIU. •I think Hank's crying wolf," Bran- and eight assists. the field. bounds SDSlJ has four double figures, guard Tony Ros (19.3J. tarters scormg in led by sophomore

credit, now it must be 48 hours of transferable credit "That ha~ elimi- nated a lot of transfers." Egan points out. Beginning the latest recruiting season with a list of 700 names, Hank and his staff cventuaUy identified 24 that would be acceptable at USD. After going into the 24 homes, they invited 12 to visit campus. They signed four. Egan says it's his best group yet. The common conception is that a young man who is superior academi- cally should be a dream when it comes to learning athletic X's and O's. The fact 1s, classroom intelli- gence does not always transfer into basketball savvy. "I once had a kid who was 4.0 in mathematics," Hank was saymg yes- terday, "but we couldn't get him to zone press. He said the technique didn't compute, that it wasn't feasi- ble." The solution? "I benched him," Egan replied, "and an amazing thing happened. The longer he sat, the more feasible it became." Now, however, it is the year after the big year, !ind there is this new challenge. "The inexperience is my call," Hank Egan admits. "I chose to play the same lineup for 30 games last winter. "Those guys were so seasoned that when we went on the road, they didn't even hear the other team's band. They just played. With the ex- ception of UNLV, we won more road games than anybody west of the Mis- sissippi. "Now we're balancing the ledger, and it's a hard change of pace in

Azt cs, Toreros new rivalry c;<

~-3) most recently played !!! Boise State, losmg, 70-54, in Idaho la t Saturday in a game Egan found Egan shuffled his starting lineup after a 0-2 start and went with three freshmen. The change produced two victories, then the Boise loss. Egan watched SDSU play USIU, and comparing that performance with his team's effort against Boise State was not encouraging. "This (SDSU) 1s a game we view as very importaat~ and l wish at thi moment we were m better shape," Egan said. "Right now the kids at San Diego State are playing better together and playing harder than we "That's the mo t d1 appomtmg part of our e on I had the feeling going m that with a lot of new people we would be di jointed for a while But the effort and the enthu iasm that you would expect - e ·pecially when you're deal111g with young peo- i not vhat it hould be I hope th t this game. which I take very seriously, will give u ome kind of incentive to get this thm going and on the right track "I don't think we can continue to play good-quality people - San Diego State program is tartmg to evolve mto a quality program as particularly disturbing. do. pie -

To test its mettle, Egan will be upgrading the schedule to include ap- pearances at such places as the Lap- chick tournament in New York City and the Indiana Classic in Blooming- ton, Ind. _ Contrary to widespread opinion, he 1s pleased by San Diego State's com- mitment to upgrading that basket- ball program. "Nothing but better happens to us if State gets better," Hank Egan says. "The good kids have been leaving the city. If there's suc- cess locally, it will be easier to keep them m town. "It's like the restaurant business. If you want to start one, the best place to put it is next to a good res- taurant."

denburg said.

I don't thmk he's in

awe of our program or our team. and the We're right m the middle of trying to make ourselvc a lot better than we are. W 've got several area where

evidenced by

th ir perfor ance

we need to improve.

•·1 know Hank Egan; 1 know what kmd of a coach he, , and I cant help

against USIU - unle s we go af er 1t

with ome enthusiasm. '

ll O ha been clo e to its five op- ponent m hootmg and rebounding But II has committed 86 turnover

bu

think a lot of t

positive of his

teams from the last couple years will

rub off on

lh1s

team during the

an aver,1ge,.__"'of'--'l'--'-7"".2.:...

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