By PAUL GOTHAM
When members and staff of the New Orleans men’s basketball team say they are happy to be here, they mean it. Not that the Privateers don’t want to try and win a game, but six seasons ago appearing in the NCAA Tournament was an impossibility.
Tuesday night UNO takes the floor at the University of Dayton Arena against Mount St. Mary’s looking to advance to the field of 64, and the opportunity is not taken lightly by sixth-year head coach Mark Slessinger and his team.
“For us to come full circle and for this moment to be, for this moment to be real, I wish I could put it into words in the right way that could sound eloquent, but I don’t think it’s possible,” Slessinger said during Monday’s media session. “Because I know the sacrifices that our kids have made, the sacrifices my staff has made to get us to this point and the people that have been behind us.”
Six years ago New Orleans athletics was in the process of making a transition from Division I athletics to Division III while still considering Division II. A casualty of Hurricane Katrina, UNO, the mid-major contender from the 1980s and 1990s, sought conference affiliation to make the move.
“When I arrived in that first year and we were kind of nomadic, I guess, to a certain extent because we didn’t have a conference home or affiliation,” Slessinger stated. “We were in flux in classification for what division we were going to be. Had three student-athletes committed that were staying in the program and they were at my press conference, didn’t have an assistant, didn’t have a lot of other things.”
Saturday night, UNO (18-11/13-5) knocked off Texas A&M-Corpus Christi to secure the Southland Conference’s NCAA Tournament automatic bid.
“There’s a lot of people that this means a lot to that has nothing to do with basketball,” Slessinger added. “But it means a lot to them that we’re back and we’re a champion and the city feels like it’s a champion and the people in the city feel like they’re champions again.”
The Privateers will come full circle when making their fifth NCAA Tournament appearance and first since 1996.
For Slessinger, appearing in Dayton completes a personal journey. The former Northwestern State assistant was on the bench when the Demons beat Winthrop.
“In 2001, I was lucky enough to be an assistant coach at Northwestern State and play in the first-ever play-in game,” Slessinger noted. “Then it was a play-in game. It wasn’t called an opening round game. But it was one of the most special experiences that I’ve ever had in coaching.”
Slessinger’s players, as one can imagine, aren’t McDonald’s All Americans with blue-chip resumes.
“That was my only Division I offer,” said Christavious Gill who attended camps at Northwestern State when Slessinger was an assistant there. “Schools were showing interest, but that was my only Division I offer. Coach Sless believed in me from the beginning four years before I became a senior. I was a freshman in high school. He believed in me and he believed we had a future for this program to bring it back.”
Erik Thomas scored 19.5 points and grabbed 7.8 rebounds to earn Southland Conference Player of the Year. He netted 14 and hauled in 11 caroms in Saturday’s win to grab tournament MVP honors.
“Coach gave us the opportunity to play Division I basketball,” the junior college transfer said. “A lot of these guys had to take that chance coming from a Division III to Division II to Division I, that’s a lot of jumps. They put faith in the coaches. That’s personally why I came to the school. I love the family-oriented program we had, and all the coaches showed interest in what I had and they believed in me.”
Gill and Thomas join Tevin Boyles as the three seniors in the starting lineup. Juniors Makur Puou and Travin Thibodeaux round out the starting lineup.
“They’ve been peanut butter and jelly ever since he got here,” Slessinger said when asked about inserting Thomas into the lineup as a junior transfer. “It’s been fun to watch them all grow together.
UNO and Northeast Conference champion Mount St. Mary’s will play for a chance to meet No. 1-seed Villanova on Thursday. TruTV will televise the 6:40 pm tipoff on Tuesday.
A year ago, Stephen F. Austin won the Southland Conference and grabbed national attention when Thomas Walkup and the Lumberjacks knocked off West Virginia in the NCAA opening round. Tuesday night, all eyes of NOLA will watch as the UNO Privateers take the court.
“To be able to come, to play a like-level team that is also a conference champion and a tournament champion on a neutral court, on national TV and be the first game of this entire tournament, the world’s greatest tournament, the world’s greatest sporting event,” Slessinger said. “No disrespect, World Cup, but this is the world’s greatest sporting event, whew, it’s pretty cool. It’s pretty awesome. We couldn’t be happier and be a part of it.”
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