Losses provide lessons, funding
Numerous lopsided defeats haven’t discouraged players for tiny, 0-16 Carver
Carver College has become college basketball’s equivalent of the Washington Generals, barnstorming from city to city, playing games almost every night, enduring one enormous beating after another.
Appalachian State 105, Carver 23.
Wofford 111, Carver 37. Georgia Southern 92, Carver 27.
Yet there’s one big difference between the Cougars and that hapless foil of the
Harlem Globetrotters.
Carver always takes the court expecting to win, though there’s virtually no chance of that happening unless the other team fails to show up.
“I don’t have that mindset,” says the team’s eternally optimistic coach, Bryan Spencer. “This is competitive sports, man. It’s about winning. It’s about competing. I never go into a contest expecting to lose.”
But Spencer is also a realist. He’s coaching at a minuscule, historically Black Bible college — enrollment: roughly 60 students — located in a former Seventhday Adventist grade school on Atlanta’s west side.
Most Atlantans have never heard of Carver.
“I hadn’t heard of it either, honestly,” concedes point guard Glenn Sims, who grew up in Atlanta.
In this most atypical of seasons, tiny Carver has emerged as perhaps the most unique team of all — the pandemic converging with the Cougars to produce a slate of hopeless games for a team that never loses hope.
Call ‘em; they’ll play
With NCAA Division I teams frequently facing cancellations because of COVID-19 and desperate to schedule as many games as possible, often with little notice, Carver has stepped into the void as a willing patsy.
The Cougars collect a check and gain what Spencer believes will be much-needed exposure, valuable experience and a lifetime of memories.
Never mind that the Cougars are members of not the NCAA but the NCCAA — National Christian College Athletic Association — a collection of tiny schools that don’t have anywhere close to the resources needed to compete against mid-majors like Georgia State, Florida International and Liberty.
Spencer recognizes the unique position his school is in, one that might never come around again. Even with the virus raging — and, yes, it’s stricken some of his players — he believes it’s worth the risk.
He’ll pick up the phone for pretty much any team that calls, willingly sending his team into games that are roughly akin to the Christians against the Lions in ancient Rome.
Counting Sunday’s 104-45 loss to Jacksonville State in South Carolina, the Cougars already have played 16 times, all of them on the road, losing every game by an average of nearly 59 points. The Cougars will play again at 7 tonight, facing Troy in Alabama.
Their best showing was a 35-point setback to Charleston Southern. More typical was their 15th loss, a 111-34 blowout at Florida International on Dec. 21.
Then again, they must’ve been exhausted. The Cougars were playing for the fourth straight night, and the seventh time in eight days, shuttling in two school vans over a vast expanses of the South stretching from Lynchburg to Miami.
At least they had a few days off over the Christmas holiday.
“I go in understanding the odds we’re against,” Spencer says. “But the lessons we’re getting are totally invaluable. And I really believe — I know — that if we can close the gap in physical maturity, some of these scores you’re seeing, they’re gonna flip.”
He chuckled just a bit, adding a quick caveat.
“I’m not saying we’re going to beat them by 60 or 70 points,” Spencer interjects. “But we truly believe we can beat these teams someday.”
‘Second-chance ministry’
Carver was founded in 1943, but the basketball program has only been around for about two decades.
It was the brainchild of the late school president Robert Crummie, who wanted to use the team as a religious outreach for young Black men.
“He called it his secondchance ministry,” Spencer says. “He was looking for guys who could play basketball but maybe had gotten off on the wrong path. He just wanted to give them an opportunity to play the game they love, and also give us the opportunity to reach them.”
Now that the word is out, Spencer is getting several calls a day from schools that are eager to beef up their depleted schedules with last-minute games.
Every one that Carver plays bolsters its bottom line, if not its record.
The program is entirely self-supporting, with no money coming out of the university’s extremely tight budget. Spencer is the only paid coach, though he does have two volunteer assistants. The team’s facilities are decrepit: a puny gym with a parquet floor that desperately needs replacing, though that hasn’t been much of an issue in a season where the Cougars have yet to play a home game and there’s hardly time for practicing.
Spencer does worry that the enormity of the losses — 10 by more than 60 points so far — will take a poll on his young team.
However, Spencer points out that life’s most valuables lessons generally come from adversity, not triumph.
If that’s the case, these guys should do well in life.