The OVC Championship: Reflections on a Long Afternoon in Nashville

Murray St. 54 - 52 Tennessee St.

I really liked Eric's live-blog, but I wanted to add some thoughts of my own.

These days, Nashville is mostly thought of as a new, up-and-coming city. The skyline is dominated by gleaming new towers, the suburbs are filled with the latest McMansions, and Nashville has recently joined both the NFL and the NHL. Even more traditional pastimes have been updated. The Grand Ole Opry moved out of Ryman Auditorium back in 1974. Vanderbilt University carefully passes along to its students the latest notions from the East and West Coasts. Even many of the churches are trying to be new -- the Two Rivers Baptist Church recently renamed itself the Fellowship of Two Rivers.

But those of us who know and love Nashville know that beneath this somewhat artificial facade, the Tennessee capital is soaked in history. Nashville was incorporated in 1784, decades before Atlanta (incorporated 1847) and Birmingham (incorporated 1871) were even imagined. Nashville still features a State Capitol that was completed in 1859, and it still maintains the same spirit of pragmatic populism as its great Hero, Andrew Jackson. Kids at Vandy still worry about getting into the right fraternity or sorority, you can still get delicious biscuits at the Loveless Cafe (opened 1951), and tourists still clamber over Nashville's Parthanon (built in 1897 for the Tennessee Centennial Exhibition). Even Ryman Auditorium (originally built in 1891) has been restored, and the Opry returns there during the winter months. And this afternoon, about 15 minutes away from the shiny new Bridgestone Arena (which was hosting the SEC women's tournament), the old town hosted a very old school basketball game.

Nashville's Municipal Auditorium opened in 1962, and it features the circular seating and domed roof so popular in that era. It looks like, and is, the sort of place where the Jackson 5 would have performed back in the 1970's. It seats about 8,000 people for basketball, and is in many ways an ideal home for the Ohio Valley Conference tournament. The OVC itself is very old school. Founded in 1948, the OVC had an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament long before John Wooden became famous.

The OVC title game is always on the first Saturday of Championship Week, and it usually draws a respectable if somewhat mediocre crowd. But this year, the old Auditorium was nearly full, because this year, the OVC title game featured a Murray State team that was 29-1 and ranked ninth in the country -- the gaudiest rating for any OVC team since 1971. All year, the Racers have benefited from outstanding fan support, and today was no exception. Watching the Murray State fans on TV, I could imagine them driving down from Murray and Benton, Mayfield and Paducah, Smithland and Marion. The stands behind the MSU bench looked like a high school basketball crowd in the Purchase -- you could see grandparents, children, husbands, wives, folks who looked like doctors and folks who looked like farmers -- all of the types you meet in any western Kentucky town.

Now I believe that Kentucky basketball fans are the best fans in the world, and that the best fans in Kentucky live in western Kentucky. They did not let me down today. On TV, you could see them leaning forward in their chairs, jumping up at every key moment, yelling at their team, the other team, and the referees as appropriate. This was no group of Cameron Crazies cavorting for the TV cameras; these were serious people engaged in a serious activity. (Even the cheerleaders were serious. At one point, you could see a Murray State cheerleader pleading to the officials: "That was a travel.") And they should have been serious. Many of them have been watching Murray State for decades, and this year Murray State's ship had come in.

But Murray State was not the only team at today's game. Tennessee State has a rich tradition of its own. One of the nation's best-known historically black colleges, TSU has been part of Nashville life since its founding in 1912. It also has an extraordinary athletic tradition; its alumni include Ed "Too Tall" Jones and Wilma Rudolph. TSU was the only team to beat Murray State all year, the Tigers had won 10 of their last 11 games, they had the incentive of knowing that only a win would get them into the NCAA Tournament, and they had a big block of their own fans who were not intimidated by the larger Racer crowd.

Most importantly, the Tigers had a great game plan and some excellent luck. Murray State is a very good three-point shooting team; the Racers are fourth in the nation at 41.4 percent from three-point range. TSU's plan was to be extremely aggressive on the perimeter, not allowing any good looks to Murray's main long-range guns, Isaiah Canaan and Donte Poole, and counting on their bigger front court to stop any MSU drives to the basket. On offense, TSU would rely mainly on Robert Covington, its excellent big man. It was a good plan. But TSU was also lucky in that even when Murray State got open looks, the Racers usually missed (they were only 4-18 for the game from beyond the arc). Meanwhile, Covington played very well; he went 6-11 from the field, including 2-4 from three-point range.

Put it all together and the fans from western Kentucky quickly realized they were likely in for a long afternoon. After all, these are people who have spent most of their lives rooting against teams from Tennessee, and they know wins are not easy to come by in the Volunteer State. All through a tense, nervous first half, the Murray fans acted as if every possession was critical. Less than a minute before halftime, there was a wild scramble under the goal that apparently ended in a TSU dunk. But the officials, after reviewing the tape, concluded that the shot clock had expired before the dunk, and waved off the basket. On the instant replay, you could see Murray fans here and there exploding from their seats and signaling that the shot clock had expired. (As they should have; the two points at issue were equal to the final margin of victory.)

Murray was up 29-27 at the break, and I hoped that they would finally make some shots in the second half. But instead, they quickly fell behind, and trailed 38-31 with 15 minutes to go. At this point, however, Covington was whistled for his fourth foul (all those MSU drives to the basket) and he went to the sidelines. Murray took advantage, going on a 12-2 run to grab a 43-40 lead with 8:18 left. But then Covington returned to the proceedings, and TSU responded with a 10-0 run of its own.

So now Murray trailed 50-43 with 5 minutes left, and that's a big margin in such a low-scoring game. You could sense the weight of all those potentially sad drives back to western Kentucky, the beautiful, almost perfect season ending with a clang. The ESPN announcers kept assuring us that Murray would be in the NCAA tournament no matter what, but that's not really the point. For over 60 years, Murray has been trying to win OVC titles, and any Racer team that lost in the OVC tournament would always have an invisible asterisk in every MSU fan's memory, even if the team still went to the Big Dance. It would burn in the memory, and these fans have long memories. (And you can see why. It occurred to me that almost every single person at the game probably has at least one grandparent who is a native of Kentucky or Tennessee.)

Murray brought the ball up the court, trying to start another comeback. Suddenly the ball skittered out of control and was headed toward the mid-court stripe -- a potential half-court violation, a deadly turnover at this point in the game -- and then Donte Poole was diving, tipping the ball over to a teammate at the last second. Soon afterward Poole made one of MSU's rare three-pointers, and the Racers were still alive. 50-46.

From then on, Murray's defense was really good. I don't know if they made an adjustment, or if they just started playing better, but suddenly TSU couldn't get good looks for Covington, and their offense stalled. But Murray couldn't do much either. TSU held a 52-48 lead for several minutes before Ivan Aska put back his own miss to make the score 52-50 with 1:50 left. TSU got the ball to Covington, who missed; another TSU player missed a put-back, and Murray had the ball. This time the Racers found Edward Daniel, their big forward who is best known for his 1977-style Afro. Daniel was fouled, and made two huge free throws to tie the game with 1:01 left.

TSU called time with 45 seconds left, and the ESPN guys speculated on how they might get the ball to Covington. But something went terribly wrong for TSU, because their point guard threw the ball to no one, and the ball went skidding wildly over the mid-court stripe and all the way down to the other end of the floor, rolling out of bounds before anyone could catch it.

So now Murray had the ball with 30.5 seconds, and they could go for the last shot. TSU guarded it well, smothering Canaan and Poole and forcing Murray to rely on Jewuan Long, a 6' 1" senior from Jackson, Tennessee who only scores 8.6 points per game. With time running out, Long drove down the baseline, leaped, and banked a shot high off the glass as he bumped into a TSU defender about four feet from the basket. The shot fell home, and Murray had the lead with only 4 seconds left. The Murray fans exploded, but TSU quickly raced the other way. A Murray defender apparently knocked the ball out of bounds, but TSU would have a final chance under the MSU goal with 1.1 seconds left.

During the intervening timeout, ESPN's Fran Frischilla insisted that Long should have been called for a charge, but to me it seemed clear that the Tennessee State player was moving, so if anything he should have been called for a block. (And besides, the replay appeared to show that the last out-of-bounds call should have gone the other way, as the Murray defender seemed to deflect the ball off of the TSU player.) I spent the entire timeout hoping that whatever happened, Murray wouldn't let TSU hit a three-pointer; I thought the Racers could win in overtime, and I was terrified of an ending like this year's Indiana/Kentucky game.

Finally, the ball was in-bounded -- all the way out to Covington, who shot a three (just as I had feared). The ball seemed to hang in the air forever, and one could sense the stillness in the gym, the waiting and hoping as everyone concentrated on its path. But then it turned out to be an air ball, and the game was over, and the Racer players were having their picture taken, and you could imagine many of the happy fans stopping at the Cracker Barrel in Clarksville for dinner on their way home -- just laughing about how worried they had been, and how well Tennessee State had played, and "what would have happened if Poole hadn't prevented that over and back," and all the happy, happy memories. Years from now, old men will tell their grandchildren about Murray State's miracle year -- 30-1, number 9 in the nation -- and how they were there (maybe with their parents, or even their own grandfather) when the Racers came from way behind in the last few minutes to win the OVC title. And you felt sorry for the TSU fans and players -- they had been tremendous, and honorable, and it was a shame their season was over -- but college basketball is a harsh mistress, and it's every fan base for themselves.

There will be plenty of time to worry about Murray's draw in the NCAA's, but this is a day to celebrate another OVC title, perhaps Murray's greatest ever. My family came to western Kentucky in 1969, right at the end of a glorious period for the OVC, when the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers were still in the league, and spent several seasons in the top 20, and even went to the Final Four. All through my childhood, there was a sadness about the OVC, as if its moment in the sun had passed. But if the long and tragic history of the South tells us anything, it is that no idea, no cause, no institution, ever goes away as long as people believe in it. And today, those of us who love the OVC got to experience a little Golden Age of our own.