Dave Hyde: With glitz and grit, FAU reaches for last year’s magic this year
BOCA RATON — There it was Thursday night, everything Florida Atlantic University has built, brick-by-brick, since last season.
Students lined up outside the cozy arena more than two hours before tip-off outside, knowing their 500-plus allotted seats are filled long before game’s start, and late-comers get turned away.
The 100 courtside seats, which jumped from $750 a season ticket last year to $3,000 this year, were filled again with Boca Raton’s finest, just as the added row behind them for this year was. That second row sold out before the season, too.
Finally, the most elusive part came Thursday, the one everyone has seen mere glimmers of much of this year: Florida Atlantic’s basketball team plugged in its electric game with beautiful passing, which led to wide-open shots, which led to energetic defense, which led to a widening double-digit lead over Temple.
“As well as we’ve played in a long time,’’ coach Dusty May said.
That didn’t go far enough. That opening 10 minutes was more.
“That was poetry,’’ May said after FAU’s 80-68 win.
It wasn’t last year, to carry the idea further, but that opening stanza rhymed with last year. That’s how good that stretch of a 15-2 FAU run was. That’s the hope to expand on for FAU moving forward with its league championship and then March coming into view.
Once upon this time last year, FAU was a fun little story that went national. It put together stretches like that one Thursday in winning 20 straight games, began selling out its 3,000-seat arena and took everyone on a ride to the Final Four.
The sequel is always harder to pull off, isn’t it? It’s often not nearly as good. Think of movies. Speed 2. Taken 2. The Hangover Part II. The Next Karate Kid. Pick a movie from any era and for every great Godfather II there are a dozen insipid Anchorman IIs.
May has to coach the psychological as much as the physical after last year’s success. It’s why he talked with Miami Heat president Pat Riley before the season about the pitfalls of success, starting with Riley’s patented “Disease of Me.”
It’s why, whereas a No. 24 ranking at this time last year caused a campus-wide celebration, that same ranking is met with mere smiles this year. That’s nice.
It’s also why May wasn’t sleeping on a lead that grew to 17 points against Temple in Thursday’s first half. He saw trouble coming after five straight missed foul shots. Temple has lost 10 straight games, but no matter. The ball started sticking in FAU’s players hands rather that moving. Temple cut to the lead to 11 points at half.
Then to six points early in the second half.
Then it reached four and May called a timeout.
“We couldn’t sustain it,’’ May said of that start.
Some of this is just the normal ebb and flow of any basketball game. Some of it reinforces the idea that it’s not simply as easy as rolling out the ball and repeating last season. It’s a new construction, game by game.
Look at the University of Miami. It lost a couple players to the NBA, a couple of others transferred, injuries have made their rounds and they’re pressed right now to make the NCAA Tournament.
Florida Atlantic is in a better place. It’s 20-5 with some notable wins, like against No. 4 Arizona and No. 12 Texas A&M. It sits second in the American Athletic Conference heading into Sunday’s game at first-place South Florida.
It can’t re-create last year, but there’s no reason it can’t keep on its way with all its starters back. Take Thursday. Its lead ultimately was cut to two points in the second half. Then Brandon Witherspoon hit back-to-back shots followed by Johnell Davis making two more.
The lead was back to 10 points, the night soon tucked away.
“We got something out of this,’’ May said.
He meant beyond the win. Something educational. Something in those 10 opening minutes about how they look at their best. Something to build into a half of play. Then a game? Maybe the emonth in March? Godfather II is the hope.