Lynx make long, long trek to NCAA tourney
Another frenetic mid-week basketball practice had concluded at Mallory Gymnasium on the Rhodes College campus and coach Mike DeGeorge huddled his team together for something this program hasn’t received in 24 years.
DeGeorge delivered the group a detailed itinerary on its travel plans to the NCAA Division 3 Tournament.
Rhodes (17-10) will be making its first trip since 1993 — before anyone on the Lynx roster was born — so, perhaps, it’s fitting the team will make a lengthy trek to Walla Walla, Washington, to play unbeaten and top-ranked Whitman (27-0) at 9:30 p.m. CT in Friday’s opening round. The multi-stop flight, followed by a three-hour bus ride from Spokane to Walla Walla, will give the team ample time to appreciate the magnitude of what it has accomplished.
Or to wonder why it didn’t draw a more favorable opening-round assignment.
“Logistically, it’s been a nightmare,” DeGeorge said. “There’s no easy way to get from Memphis to Walla Walla, Washington.”
DeGeorge wasn’t really complaining as much as he was marveling, with a smile, at the long and winding road to a postseason berth. DeGeorge, in his seventh season at Rhodes, led the Lynx to the Southern Athletic Association tournament title last weekend, the program’s
first conference tournament championship in school history.
He did so by installing a fast-paced, uptempo attack last summer, an approach that features three shifts of wholesale substitutions every 30 seconds, forces turnovers at an alarming rate and gets the bulk of its scoring off 3-pointers and layups.
Rhodes ranks third nationally and led the SAA with a 109.6-point scoring average, nearly 33 points more than second-place Centre.
They shot 1,082 3-pointers, or roughly 400 more than anyone else in the conference.
And while they averaged 19.2 turnovers, most in the SAA, they forced a league-high 27.6 per game.
It’s safe to say the Rhodes show should attract its share of attention in the Northwest.
The Lynx will bring a 10-game winning streak to Walla Walla.
“This is a new (approach) and one of the things we talked about in the beginning was we wanted to have an explorer’s mindset about this,” DeGeorge said. “We said we were going to venture out and see what the limits of the game could be played at the championship level.
“We were mixing groups and trying to figure out combinations. And we had some early season injuries (to absorb) as well. But the time we settled in on this playing rotation was in our last loss.”
In a 92-91 loss Jan. 22 at Berry College in Mount Berry, Georgia, DeGeorge said the Lynx were down in the closing minutes but almost rallied.
“In the last three minutes we put two defensive pressing groups on the floor and the groups really clicked defensively,” he said. “We thought, `Hey, those two kind of worked; what can we do with this third group?’ It worked, too.
“That third group does something a little differently, but when we found that combination of players we haven’t lost.”
The breakneck pace and style, originally developed by coach Dave Arsenault at Grinnell College in Iowa, wasn’t embraced by all when DeGeorge unveiled his plans. Several Rhodes players chose not to return.
“Originally, I was pretty skeptical about it,” said Tyler Gee, a 6-5 senior forward from Atlanta and the SAA Defensive Player of the Year. “I’ve always been kind of a defensive-minded player. But I decided to stick with it. We all bought into it and gave it a shot and we progressed incredibly far during the season.”
Gee, whose brother, Brian, played football at Cornell, handles the back of the press, much like the safety position his brother manned in the Ivy League.
“When (DeGeorge) told us that game to really be more aggressive, not worry about giving up the easy (basket) over the top, you could see the change,” Gee said.
Gee was named the SAA Tournament MVP after posting a double-double (13 points, 10 rebounds) in the title game.
Brennan Sullivan, a senior guard from Jacksonville, Florida, also made the all-tournament team. He said his goal since coming to Rhodes has to been to be part of the next group hanging a black (NCAA tournament) banner in Mallory Gymnasium. If it had to be realized with a crazed, somewhat unorthodox, high-energy approach, so be it.
“At first, I thought it was a swindle,” Sullivan said of the change in playing philosophy. “And I told (DeGeorge) I thought he just wanted to play younger guys.
“Then I met the freshmen and we started to play and I slowly realized this might work. The idea of making (an opponent) uncomfortable in a basketball game is a championship mentality. That is something you get behind.”
DeGeorge said Rhodes likely got “shipped out” to the Walla Walla because it got off to a slower start than four other NCAA-tournament teams with similar records. Whitman is one of 16 schools hosting first- and second-round games.
“They are very good and we will have our hands full," DeGeorge said. "They are similar to BirminghamSouthern, but they shoot it better from the perimeter and they have a dynamic point guard. He's pretty special. But they'll want to press and play fast. So it could be a crazy game.” Well, of course it will be. Reach Phil Stukenborg at phil.stukenborg@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @phil_stukenborg.