Bob Ford: St. Mary's poses danger for Cats

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - The St. Mary's College basketball players gathered a year ago for the announcement of the NCAA tournament bracket and, well, you never know, but of course they would get an invitation.

The Gaels were 25-6 and had just lost the championship game of the West Coast Conference to No. 12 Gonzaga, the conference rival that had made itself into a perennial national player.

So, the St. Mary's coaches, players and students settled into their seats and waited.

They're still waiting.

You hear that kind of story often from mid-major programs that are good and have competitive teams, but aren't lucky enough to swing the kind of respect given to a school that finishes seventh or eighth in the ACC or the Big East.

Want to be sure you play in the NCAA tournament? No problem. Don't lose.

"We all sat in that room together last year with about 400 or 500 of our students and fans sitting there with us and our name didn't get called," coach Randy Bennett said. "It was humbling. I didn't have to talk about it much. . . . I told them, 'Listen, the only way we're getting into an NCAA tournament is to win the conference championship.' Whether I was right or wrong, we'll never know, but our guys bought into it and they didn't leave it to chance."

Chance can leave you all alone when the television show is over, but wins are much more dependable friends. The Gaels, despite having lost six of their top eight scorers from last season, beat No. 14 Gonzaga in the WCC finals this time around (by 19 points) and didn't have to wonder whether they were going, only where.

Welcome to Mid-Major Respect Class, Part II. Uh, that would be Providence, R.I., which is more than 3,000 miles from Moraga, Calif. And if you get there in one piece, then beat a No. 7 seed that plays a quirky Princeton offense unlike what you've seen before . . . then you get to play a No. 2 seed that went to the Final Four last season.

"Our reaction was, I mean, it's obvious, 'Oh, that's a long way to go.' [And we have to] play on Thursday against a team that's not easy to prepare for. So, getting shipped out of the west was something we weren't pumped up about. But your second reaction is, 'Let's go play. We're in it,' " Bennett said. "We have a chance to win a game in the NCAA tournament and then see what you can do from there."

And that is what has happened. The taller Gaels beat undersized Richmond on Thursday - the first NCAA win for St. Mary's since 1959 - and match up today against a sputtering Villanova team that looks ripe for the picking.

Don't look now, but this is also the kind of team that gives the Wildcats serious trouble. The Gaels have a great big man in 6-foot-11 Omar Samhan, with 6-11 forward Ben Allen standing right next to him. Both are seniors. While Villanova was encouraged by the play of freshman Mouphtaou Yarou and Maurice Sutton in its opening win over Robert Morris, this tall order is a tall order.

"I saw [Samhan] when I was going off the court [Thursday] and he looked a lot bigger than he was on TV," Scottie Reynolds said. "I was, like, 'Whoa.' So I was a little intimidated."

Most people wouldn't use "intimidating" and "St. Mary's" in the same sentence this time of year. The Gaels are one of those cute NCAA stories, but no one expected them to hang around too long. You've got a school from an unknown small town, with five Australians on the roster and a frontcourt star who is a Muslim at a small Catholic school. A neat story, but c'mon.

"We take pride in being a blue-collar team playing hard," Samhan said. "The measure you can't put on paper is how hard people want it, heart and determination. This team has a lot of it. We don't have guys who can jump 40 inches in the air, but we have guys who will dive face-first out of bounds to get a ball. So, that's why we are supposed to be here and we are a real team."

And don't forget the two 6-11 seniors standing back there.

Jay Wright indicated yesterday he's going to play Yarou and Sutton together at times to offset the height of St. Mary's. That's a perilous strategy, since it limits Villanova's offense in some ways and, to be honest, because the second round of the NCAA tournament is a tough spot to try something brand new.

"We're going to try to play them and see how they do and make adjustments from there," Wright said.

The only adjustment that really matters is the one that puts more points on your side of the board. St. Mary's got a harsh lesson in that last season. Villanova, one of those schools that can lose at the end of the season and still make the tournament, has been a while between reminders. It might get one today.

Today at 1 p.m.

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