GOLDEN — When Colorado School of Mines men’s basketball coach Pryor Orser fields an inquiry from a potential prospect, or ponders whether to recruit a high school player, he starts with screening.
“I run my program just like a Division I program in almost every facet,” Orser said in the school’s Lockridge Arena the other day. “The recruiting process is very similar, other than the fact that the first questions I ask are, ‘What’s your ACT score? What’s your SAT score? What’s your GPA? And, do you want engineering?’
“Ninety-nine percent of the kids you usually look at can’t get in the school, and once you get them in school, you have to try to keep them here because it’s so rigorous.”
Orser ends up with many players at the elite public engineering school who are excited that next Wednesday, March 14, is “Pi” Day, honoring the reality that the circumference of a Euclidean circle is 3.14 (and change) times its diameter. And, if the Orediggers live up to their unlikely No. 1 ranking in the most recent NCAA Division II national poll, they will have something extra to celebrate on Pi Day: a regional championship.
The Orediggers (27-2) won the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference’s regular-season title and league tournament championship in Pueblo last weekend. Mines is the No. 1 seed and host for the eight-team Division II Central Regional, beginning today. If the seeds hold, Mines would meet No. 2 seed and RMAC rival Metro State of Denver in the championship game Tuesday. The regional winner moves on to Division II’s Elite Eight championship tournament, set for March 21-24 in Highland Heights, Ky.
A loss by defending national champion and top-ranked Bellarmine University of Louisville, Ky., last weekend in the Great Lakes Valley Conference tournament allowed the Orediggers to move up to the top spot in the National Association of Basketball Coaches poll released Tuesday.
It’s the first time Mines ever has been ranked No. 1.
“It’s good news,” said Orser, a Montana native who took over the Mines program in 2001. “It’s great for our school, great for our program, great for our kids. It’s a testament to their hard work, perseverance, dedication and commitment. … If you had said when I first got there that we could achieve that, I would have said you were crazy. But we’ll take it and we’ll run with it.”
Junior guard Brett Green, the state’s Class 3A player of the year in 2009 and the leading scorer in all classes as a senior at Peyton High School, is the Orediggers’ leading scorer, averaging 16 points. He shrugged when the No. 1 national ranking was brought up. “It’s a number,” he said. “I take it with a grain of salt, really. It’s cool for our program to be No. 1 and have that out there. But regardless of whether you’re 1 or 30, you still have to come out every night.”
The Orediggers open the tournament against No. 8 seed Augustana of South Dakota at 6 p.m. today, in the third of the day’s four games. No. 2 Metro State, ranked No. 1 earlier this season, will face seventh-seeded Adams State, the third RMAC team in the field, at 2:30 p.m. The semifinals are Sunday, the championship game Tuesday night.
This is the third consecutive national tournament appearance for the Orediggers, but they’ve been the Denver area’s “other” RMAC team. Metro State won national championships under Mike Dunlap in 2000 and ’02 and won the league regular-season title six times since 1998. The Orediggers’ regular-season RMAC title in 2011 was their first since 1990, or before Green was born.
After Orser and his staff realized one of the state’s top prep scorers was an excellent student, but likely would be a bubble Division I prospect at best, the push was on. “A lot of the schools in the state showed interest, but Coach Orser showed tons of interest,” Green, a 6-4 swingman, said. “I could tell how much he wanted me and how much he wanted me to go here. I wanted engineering, and that was another great fit. I’ve always loved math and science.”
Terry Frei: 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com
NCAA Division II Central Regional
Site: Lockridge Arena, Golden. Inside the Student Recreation Center on the Colorado School of Mines campus, corner of 17th and Elm streets.
Ticket prices: $10 adults, $5 for senior citizens, children, college students. All general admission.
Today’s first round: Noon — No. 3 Bemidji State vs. No. 6 St. Cloud State; 2:30 p.m. — No. 2 Metro State vs. No. 7 Adams State; 6 p.m. — No. 1 Colorado School of Mines vs. No. 8 Augustana; 8:30 p.m. — No. 4 Southwest Minnesota State vs. No. 5 Minnesota State-Moorhead.
Semifinals: Sunday
Finals: Tuesday.
Winner advances to Elite Eight national championship tournament.
