Snow disrupts Atlantic 10 games

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By Doug Harris, Staff Writer 11:23 PM Monday, February 8, 2010

The major snowstorm that buried the Northeast over the weekend caused some major headaches for traveling Atlantic 10 teams.

Duquesne found its charter bus unable to move in 20 inches of snow in Washington, D.C., before its game against George Washington. The Dukes had to find a taxi-cab service with four-wheel-drive vehicles to travel the half-mile to the gym.

But at least they were able to get their game in on time. St. Bonaventure left its campus Tuesday, played at Saint Louis on Wednesday and arrived in Philadelphia on Thursday for a Saturday game with Saint Joseph’s — just before the city was inundated with 28.5 inches of snow.

Their game was postponed until Sunday, making for a grueling road trip for the Bonnies, who lost, 78-71.

“It disrupts your schedule, that’s the biggest thing,” St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt said. “I told the team, ‘You have to deal with adversity, and the team that deals with it best is going to be the team that comes out and wins.’ ... But you can’t do anything about the weather.”

When Richmond coach Chris Mooney was an assistant at the Air Force Academy, he thought he had some built-in advantages in inclement weather because of the school’s abundant supply of pilots and planes. But it didn’t always work out that way.

“We’d take military planes sometimes to games. One time, a military plane broke down, and that’s all we had (planned for),” he said. “We had to scramble and make reservations for a couple different flights, some guys out of Colorado Springs, some guys out of Denver. ... That was just a horrendous two- or three-hour situation.

“The biggest thing is not to worry your guys about it and let them focus on the task at hand. But in the meantime, you’re always scrambling.”

Expand NCAA field?

Discussions are being held about expanding the NCAA tournament from its current 65 teams. Since the NCAA purchased the NIT in 2005, there’s been a presumption that the two tourneys ultimately would be rolled into one and the field increased to 96 teams.

Most A-10 coaches are proponents of that.

“I think the only coaches not in favor of it probably come from schools at the highest level,” Richmond’s Chris Mooney said. “When they expanded to 64 (in 1985), there were probably 260 teams, and we’ve added 70 or 80 teams since then. We should be matching that percentage wise.”

But Phil Martelli of Saint Joseph’s, who serves on the National Association of Basketball Coaches, thinks the NCAA shouldn’t mess with a good thing. The only revision he might make is to add three more opening-round games like the one held in Dayton, bringing the field to 68 and allowing a few more 16 seeds to experience winning in a tourney game.

“I don’t believe in 96,” he said. “To me, 96 becomes something more than March Madness. ... You have almost perfection in the NCAA tournament as it is, and to me it would move up a notch if we could have four opening-round games.”

UMass guard out

UMass sophomore point guard David Gibbs broke his foot at practice and will be out for the season. The Minutemen have been able to move leading scorer Ricky Harris to the point, but that’s not an ideal option to coach Derek Kellogg.

“It was a tough blow for our team and also for him. ... It’s enabled me to play more freshmen, get them more experience, but it’s hurt our team some because I thought we were pretty thin at the point guard spot to begin with,” Kellogg said.

Temple guard out

Temple guard Juan Fernandez suffered a head injury against Fordham last week and sat out a loss at Richmond on Saturday. He’s the team’s best 3-point shooter at 43.6 percent.

“He’s been playing a little bit, but he’s not 100 percent, so the medical staff said it would be better if we could just rest him another week or so,” coach Fran Dunphy said.