Common ground for Vandy, Wildcats
SALT LAKE CITY — At Northwestern, they’re celebrating a first-of-its-kind accomplishment — the Wildcats are embarking on a trip to the NCAA men’s tournament that has eluded a school known for books, not basketball.
At Vanderbilt, they’re shrugging their shoulders — proving once again that smart guys can play hoops, too.
Welcome to the Brain Game, the NCAA’s plausibly deniable attempt at humor in the form of today’s round-of-64 matchup of “smart schools” in the West Region.
The student-athletes from Northwestern (23-11) are seeded eighth; their counterparts from Vanderbilt (19-15) are ninth. Just as importantly, in this case: On the U.S. News and World Report list of top national universities, Northwestern ranks 12th and Vanderbilt 15th.
“I wanted to have guys who wanted to be great basketball players and great students,” Wildcats coach Chris Collins said, in a way of explaining a turnaround that has the Wildcats in the bracket for the first time in more than 100 years of basketball. “To me, there’s no reason — why can’t you have both?”
No reason, really, as Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and, yes, Vanderbilt, have proven
from time to time over the years. It just takes more hard work, and sometimes a lot more time.
For instance, at Northwestern, where the academic year still runs by quarters instead of semesters, the first week of the first March Madness ever for the Wildcats happens to coincide with finals week back home. That is why many of these players found themselves not with heads buried in their iPads to be entertained during the flight to Utah, but studying or putting the final touches on term papers that are coming due.
“I would say that’s a challenge not everyone has to face,” said fifth-year senior Sanjay Lumpkin, who has been going against Big Ten behemoths such as Michigan, Michigan State and Indiana for years now while attending a school where the undergrad enrollment is 8,300.
Vanderbilt has been dealing with such challenges and thriving for decades.
To say the least, the Commodores and their league, the Southeastern Conference, have not always gone hand in hand. While Kentucky is famous for its ever-rotating corps of oneand-done players who stop in to tie their shoes on the way to the NBA, Vanderbilt is famous for … music, engineering and economics. Among its unofficial nicknames are The Harvard of the South.
As former Commodores coach Kevin Stallings once put it: “They want us to be Harvard on Monday through Friday and beat Alabama on Saturday.”
That isn’t totally impossible on the basketball court. This is Vanderbilt’s 13th trip to the tournament in 30 years, and while the Commodores haven’t reached the Sweet 16 since 2007, they’re never to be completely overlooked. Just ask Florida, because the No. 4 seed in the East went 0-3 vs. Vandy this season.
When guard Nolan Cressler was looking to leave his first school, the Ivy League’s Cornell, to attend a school with a bit better hoops pedigree, he chose Vanderbilt, with its undergrad enrollment of 6,883.
“I wanted to go to a school like Vandy or Northwestern, so I could keep that balance in my life,” Cressler said. “So when the ball stops bouncing, you take care of academics. … It’s something that will probably help us down the line.”
It’s the same sort of line delivered for years from the Ivy League, which traditionally sends its lone qualifier to the tournament for one, maybe two games if things go well.
This year’s entrant is Princeton, which has more trips to the tournament than any of its Ivy League brethren. After winning the league’s first-ever postseason tournament last weekend, Princeton headed to Buffalo where, like Northwestern, the players are dealing with a heavy academic load despite being away from campus. This is Princeton’s midterm week.
“Focus is on the game,” Princeton forward Spencer Weisz said. “You only go to the NCAA tournament so many times in your life.”
At Northwestern, they’re smart enough to get that message, too.
“This is not just the end goal for Northwestern basketball,” Lumpkin said. “We see this as the starting point.”