A March to Madness

Author:

By John Feinstein

Format:

Paperback

Availability:

In print, usually dispatched within 3-4 days.

Price:

£9.99

Tagged with:

Basketball, Behind the Scenes, College Basketball

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Further Details

• Published: 28th Feb 1999
• ISBN: 0316277126
• Pages: 512

From the Publisher:

What he did for golf in the monumental bestseller A Good Walk Spoiled and for Indiana college basketball in A Season on the Brink John Feinstein now does for basketball in the NCAA's most fiercely competitive conference-the ACC.

The Atlantic Coast Conference has always produced champions. Spectacular players including Michael Jordan, Grant Hill, Christian Laettner, David Thompson, and Kenny Anderson got their start there; the conference is home to legendary coaches like North Carolina's Dean Smith and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski; and at least one ACC team has competed in the Final Four in fourteen of the last seventeen years, with a total of five national titles.

In A March to Madness, John Feinstein follows all nine ACC teams through the unforgettable 1996-97 season and illuminates the almost inconceivable pressures on coaches and players in the conference. It was a year in which Dean Smith broke Adolph Rupp's all-time record for coaching victories, superstar Tim Duncan and coach Dave Odom attempted to lead Wake Forest to its first Final Four in thirty-five years, Mike Krzyzewski tried to fall in love with coaching again, and Carolina fought its way into another Final Four after a dismal start. Behind those stories, A March to Madness brings to light the hidden world of college basketball-the bitter rivalries between coaches, the toll of competition on marriages and careers, the difficulties coaches have in dealing with NBA-bound players, and much more.

With unparalleled access to the ACC's coaches and players, John Feinstein takes us onto the courts, into the locker rooms, even into the coaches' homes, and paints a living portrait of how college basketball is coached and played at the highest level. This is an unforgettable and moving book, full of the unerring knowledge of what drives great coaches that makes John Feinstein the most popular sportswriter at work today.

From the Book:

“One Shining Moment

In College Basketball, when you say the words ''Monday Night,'' they mean only one thing: the national championship game. Every coach dreams of seeing his team play on Monday Night. Throughout each season coaches tell their players over and over what it will take to play on Monday Night. To those who follow the college game, Monday Night has every bit as much meaning as Super Sunday does to fans of pro football.

The great Al McGuire, who twice reached Monday Night when he was the coach at Marquette, always tells coaches to remember to pause and take a look around when they walk on the floor on Monday Night. ''There is nothing like that feeling,'' McGuire tells them. ''You are at the absolute top of your profession. You are coaching in the one game that every coach dreams of coaching in.''

Each year, only two coaches get their teams to Monday Night. The rest watch. Although every Division I college basketball coach in America has a ticket for Monday Night, very few of them actually come to the arena. Most have been in town earlier in the week for the annual coaches'convention that is part of the Final Four, but few stay for Monday Night.

They all say it is because there is work to be done back home, and all are telling the truth. Or part of the truth. For most, being that close to the grand stage but not being on it is simply too painful. So, they leave. But they all watch the game. Everyone in basketball watches Monday Night.

Technically, there are 306 schools competing to play on Monday Night. Most of them have no real chance to get there. But because it only takes thirteen players (or less) to field a college basketball team, and because the potential for riches is great, almost every university with a gym either plays in Division I or aspires to play there. By contrast, only 112 schools play Division I-A football.

Even among the sixty-four who make the NCAA tournament field, only a handful have a serious chance of playing on Monday Night. For Coppin State and Navy, Valparaiso and Boston University, Fairfield and Jackson State (among others), just being in the field is a thrill and a financial windfall. Winning a game -as Coppin did in 1997 -is gravy. Anything beyond that is basketball nirvana. For a majority of the 306, Monday Night is nothing more than a fantasy.

For a chosen few -fifty, perhaps sixty schools -Monday Night is the goal. In the major conferences, the ones whose games are on TV throughout the season, it is the benchmark of success for every coach.

Nowhere is that more true than in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The ACC may not be the most powerful basketball conference in the country every single year, but year in and year out it is the most consistent. It is the deepest in talent and the most competitive. There are few off nights in the ACC. Every other league in the country has a team or two or three that the top teams know they will beat every time they play unless they make an absolute pratfall. That's just not true in the ACC. In 1997, Georgia Tech finished last in the ACC. A year earlier, the Yellow Jackets had finished first. Seven years earlier, they came within one game of playing on Monday Night. That's how quickly fortunes can change in the ACC. Let down just the slightest bit and you become instant roadkill.

The eighth-place team in the league in 1997 was North Carolina During the '96-97 season, the Wolfpack beat the team that finished first, one of the teams that tied for second, and both teams that tied for fourth. It lost to the other second-place team by one point in one game and blew a nine-point lead in the last two minutes in another.

No off nights.”