|
LANCASTER, PA -- After Franklin & Marshall's men's basketball team blew out Juniata Tuesday, somebody asked coach Glenn Robinson to talk about the next game. "You mean, because it's the first one after Thanksgiving?" Uh, no. "You mean because it's the first conference game?" Come on, big fella. Finally Robinson acknowledged the obvious. The Juniata game was the 699th win of Robinson's career. That means 700 could come today, when the Diplomats host Swarthmore in a 4 p.m. tip-off at the Mayser Center. "Hopefully it will come along,'' Robinson said, still in coy mode. "If it does it'll be a moment the school can be very proud of.'' That's how Robinson plays it whenever such milestones come up, and they do come up, for the all-time career wins leader in NCAA Division III. When that mark fell, in February 2004, he accepted the school-created hoopla, credited his players, sent his sportcoat to the Basketball Hall of Fame and got on with things. Understandably. The kind of guy who dwells on such numbers is the kind who'll probably never reach them. "I really don't think about it at all,'' Robinson said Tuesday. "I haven't mentioned it to the players once. There's no need to.'' Still: 700. That's 25 per season for only… 28 years. Dean Smith has done it. So have Adolph Rupp, Bobby Knight and Mike Krzyzewski. And Clarence "Big House'' Gaines, Jim Phelan, Jerry Johnson, Don Meyer, Herb Magee, Lefty Driesell, Eddie Sutton, Lou Henson, Hank Iba, Ed Dibble, Phog Allen, Lute Olson, Jerry Tarkanian, Norm Stewart, John Chaney, Ray Meyer, Don Haskins, Jim Boeheim, Jim Calhoun and Dick Sauers. That's all. Twenty-five men, only 10 of them currently active, and none of them working in NCAA Division III. Note who didn't do it: John Wooden. Robinson is in his 35th season at F&M. His career record is 699-243. His resume includes four NCAA Final Fours, and lacks only a national championship. The current team may not be one of his best. Its features a superb senior swingman in Brandon Smith, a solid veteran point guard and otherwise an ill-defined cast of many, jockeying for roles. They can still win the way so many of Robinson's teams have, by grinding away at opponents, wearing them down. Robinson used 10 players by halftime of the Juniata game, and led by only 33-31. But the Eagles, in a bit of foul trouble, started the second half in a zone defense. F&M immediately got the ball wherever it wanted, scored on five straight possessions, and built the lead to 10. Soon it was 20. Soon it was over. The Diplomats are 2-1, the lone loss in overtime to highly-regarded Trinity in F&M's own Sponaugle Tournament. "We're still in flux,'' Robinson said. "We don't know what we have yet. We should have that cleared up soon, certainly by the second semester, and then we should have some real depth.'' It's the kind of project Robinson has made his life's work, gladly and without regret. Big-time college ball never really beckoned, although F&M got a small taste of it by playing Princeton seven times in the 1970s and ’80s. The Dips went 0-7. "Of the seven games, four of them were very competitive,'' Robinson said. "The real reason it ended was that [legendary Princeton coach] Pete Carril retired. We were buddies. He always promised me that they'd come here one year, but that never happened.'' Maybe more than any other American sport, big-time college hoops is a coach's game. But for Robinson, that small taste of it was more than enough. "[F&M is] is a very good school in a very nice place,'' he said. "That's why we've been able to get so many good players and good people, and that's one reason I've stayed here so long. "I'm not from here, but I love it here. I'd never want to leave Lancaster County.''
|
