San Antonio – It happened only three years ago, a low point in the annals of Texas A&M basketball and seemingly impossible to comprehend unless you were there. And not many were.
The Aggies played Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, which, until it reached this year’s NCAA Tournament, you were excused if you thought it was A&M’s veterinary school. But three years ago, the Islanders were in their fifth season as a Division I program and went into A&M’s 12,500-seat Reed Arena and beat the Aggies 82-80.
Attendance: 1,500.
“I can’t exactly remember what game it was but it was two students in the stands and they had paper bags over their faces,” said A&M senior guard Acie Law IV. “One had a zero and the other had 11, indicating our record in conference. That always stands out as one of the lower points in my career.”
It was easy for Law to laugh about it Wednesday. Today he will traverse the polar axes of A&M basketball history. He and the Aggies, 0-16 in the Big 12 only three years ago, take a 27-6 record and No. 3 seed against No. 2 Memphis (32-3) in the South Regional semifinals at the Alamodome.
Only three hours from Texas A&M’s campus, the Alamodome will be bathed in maroon, just like an A&M football game, which is about all Aggies usually ever talked about this time of year. That was before Billy Gillispie, from a Texas town so small it actually likes basketball, arrived in 2004 and pulled off one of the fastest rebuilding projects in NCAA history.
“I’d never imagined playing in San Antonio in the Sweet 16 with an opportunity to be in the Elite Eight after what I experienced my freshman year,” Law said. “That was tough. But coach came in and changed all of our mind-sets. He said we were going to win, and it wasn’t going to take as long as people thought.”
Some thought Gillispie was committing professional suicide. After all, he lifted Texas-El Paso from 6-24 to 24-8. Sure, Shelby Metcalf was the Southwest Conference’s all-time winningest coach, but he toiled at A&M from 1963-90 and the Aggies had one winning season since. Gillispie, 47, saw something he didn’t see elsewhere.
“They have unbelievable support,” he told ESPN Radio on Monday. “They’ll have 86,000 for football. They’ll have 7,500 for each baseball game. They’ll have 3,000 for every women’s volleyball game. They set national records for women’s soccer. They live to support. I knew we could do that if we got some players here that they could identify with and play the style.”
Melvin Watkins, let go after that 7-21 season of 2003-04, did hand Gillispie some gifts. Law was a good but not great prospect out of Dallas who wanted to stay close to home. But he broke both his arms as a child and had the ugliest jumper in Texas. Watkins also signed a 6-foot-8 Canadian named Marlon Pompey and, before getting fired, got a commitment from a burly forward named Joe Jones from tiny Normangee (Texas) High.
After arriving in March 2004, Gillispie was able to sign only Dominique Kirk, a Dallas guard no one else but Liberty wanted.
However, Gillispie used a defense-first philosophy to win 21 games in 2004-05. Suddenly, the mother lode Texas high school talent looked to College Station and muttered, “Hmm.”
“It’s about the way Acie Law has played and Joseph Jones has played and matured and developed and Marlon Pompey has developed,” Gillispie said Wednesday. “When you get a new job, you don’t usually have guys like that in your program.”
Armed with a winning record, Gillispie went out that spring and signed 6-10 Antanas Kavaliauskas, a Lithuanian considered the most improved JC player in the country, and Eddie Smith, the national JC player of the year with a one year of eligibility left. Then Gillispie landed 6-7 Josh Carter, another Dallas product and his first top-100 recruit.
With Law developing into an all-Big 12 guard and Jones turning into a basher inside, Texas A&M went 22-9 last season and made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1987.
Then A&M basketball became a hot spot for recruits. Last spring Gillispie signed a top-15 class, beating the likes of Connecticut, Kansas and North Carolina for 6-9 Bryan Davis, the state’s No. 2 recruit, also out of Dallas. Gillispie beat Kansas and Oklahoma for another Dallas guard, 6-2 Donald Sloan.
Today, Law is a finalist for the Wooden and Naismith awards, given to the nation’s best player; Jones averages 13.4 points; Kavaliauskas averages 11.8 points and 6.2 rebounds; and Carter is shooting .503 on 3-point attempts.
Oh, yes. Gillispie is a finalist for the Naismith coach of the year award. He has come a long way since his days as a guard from tiny Grafford (pop. 578), the lone place in Texas where football plays second fiddle.
You also haven’t seen the last of Texas A&M. Gillispie already has a top-10 recruiting class.
“He’s never satisfied,” Law said. “I honestly believe that if we were to win the national championship next week, we’ll get a couple of days off and then we’ll come back to practice and he will honestly say something like, ‘You think you’ve done something,’ just to make you mad. It makes it great to play for a guy like that.”
How’d he do that?
Since landing in College Station in 2004, Billy Gillispie has made an incredible turnaround at Texas A&M. His tricks:
Staying in state | Eighteen of the 20 players on the roster are from Texas.
Guard, then shoot | The Aggies have a defense-first philosophy.
Player development | He has improved the holdover players from the Melvin Watkins era with a tough-love coaching style.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
