Brey's BOB finishes with 21-6 first-round victory
By BRIAN BURKE and
KATHLEEN O'BRIEN
He's not Allen Iverson, but Monday afternoon former George Washington player and current Notre Dame head basketball coach Mike Brey showed he can still run the floor.
Brey's Bookstore Basketball team, BOB, notched a 21-6 victory over We Gotta Get Our Balls In There Somehow in first round action at Stepan Courts. BOB relied on a balanced effort from Brey and Holy Cross students Rob Rait, James Thurston, Ryan Tucker and Joe Catanzarik for the win. While the students did much of the shooting in the first half, Brey played to the crowd in the role of distributor.
In one such instance, a spectator yelled, "Let's see the ups coach!" to which Brey responded, "You couldn't fit a clipboard under me!"
After dishing off an assist, Brey exclaimed to the onlookers, "I know my role!"
Brey did finish 2-3 from the field with a 17-foot jump shot and a nice move driving in the lane. Overall, BOB was the quicker of the two teams and capitalized on several points in transition. The team's bigger players dominated down low and owned the boards. After an 11-2 halftime deficit, We Gotta Get Our Balls In There Somehow eventually digressed into a crazy display of wild shots and fancy passes when it became apparent the game was out of reach.
"I'm in as good of shape as some of these 22 year olds," said Brey. "These Holy Cross guys called me up about a month ago and I said "I definitely want to play.' I've always seen this spectacle from afar, but it was fun to be a part of it. And so we won, so we're still alive."
Brey occasionally shouted out words of wisdom during play, but mostly brought the ball up and played atop the key. He plans to change his game plan next week.
"I'm just trying to be unselfish, but really what I'm doing is, I'm setting these guys up," Brey said. "First game, you always pass a lot, and then they think "that was good because Coach gave the ball up, but I'm shooting every time next week, so I've got 'em all set up."
In other Bookstore action, the No. 24 seed Ill Tempered Sea Bass survived a first round scare when it prevailed 21-19 over the MBA Stars.
Ill Tempered Sea Bass opened up a 4-0 lead, but MBA stars made a run to take an 8-6 lead, and Ill Tempered led just 11-9 at the half. It was a seesaw battle from that point on, with no lead ever getting above three points.
The keys to the Ill Tempered win were Jon Pentzien's inside scoring and Tom Slabach's outside shooting during a stretch when his teammates had gone cold.
"It was real tight the whole way, and in the second half Tom Slabach started hitting a couple outside shots," Ill Tempered Sea Bass point guard Matt Yung said. "It was a big defensive battle mostly. They're a very fit team — they had some big guys that can crash the boards. They're the best team we'll play for a few rounds."
It's not usually considered a close game when one team scores three times more than its opponent, but that's what No. 3 seed NDToday.com thought of its 21-7 first-round win over O-DAG!
"They played hard the whole time," said NDToday's Todd Titus. "They were more aggressive than I thought."
NDToday, which lost in the finals a year ago, used a rebounding advantage to advance past a better-than-average first-round opponent. Mike Oesterle led the team in scoring and B.J. Kloska dropped in several long-distance jump shots.
"We were getting the cobwebs out," said Oesterle. "Their guard was pretty good."
Varsity basketball player Meaghan Leahy's team, Team 392, may have lost to Whipple Effect IV Monday, but Leahy said their Bookstore run isn't over yet.
"We got 14 points," Leahy said. "Now we're gonna go win the girls' bracket."
Leahy's Notre Dame teammate Imani Dunbar disputed Leahy's claim, saying, "They're not gonna win."
What was Dunbar's take on who would win Bookstore?
"I don't know," joked Dunbar, who is also playing Bookstore. "Not Meaghan Leahy's team."
One factor working against Team 392 was its lack of experience, with the exception of Leahy.
As Lina Sidrys said, "We haven't played basketball in 10 years."
All Sports Stories for Tuesday, April 10, 2001
