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10B SPORTS
THE UNIVERSITY OF DARY KANSAN
THURSDAY, MARCH 26 2009
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MEN'S BASKETBALL
Flood threatens Fargo, N.D.
TIM DAHLBERG
ASSOCIATED PRESS
North Dakota State basketball team works to help save hometown
A week ago they were on the big stage at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, playing the defending national champions in a game they were supposed to have no chance of winning.
No one from North Dakota State believed that. Neither did any of the 10,000 fans who drove down 1-94 from Fargo to cheer the Bison on in their first NCAA tournament appearance.
"It's obvious that if anyone needs a helping hand, they can expect to get help."
"My last memory of college basketball was walking off the court to their cheers," senior Brett Winkelman said. "They've given us so much over the last few years."
BRETT WINKELMANN
North Dakota State
basketball player
Had a few more bounces gone their way they might be in Indianapolis right now, practicing for a third-round game against Michigan State. Instead they're working on something a little more
Working right alongside them, shovel for shovel, are coach Saul Phillips and the Bison basketball team.
Now the Bison are giving back. They're trying to save their town.
Once again, the odds are against them.
Snow was falling Wednesday in Fargo, just more bad news in the city's fight against the swelling Red River. The bad weather was hampering efforts to fill a staggering 2 million sandbags to protect the city amid new projections that the river would crest at levels never before seen by the weekend.
Thousands of people from all walks of life, many of them with vivid memories of the disastrous 1997 floods, are racing around the clock to keep the city dry. With school canceled, students are stacking sandbags, while others are taking time off from work to do what they can to help.
urgent - saving people's homes.
"It's just the way of life around here," Winkelman said. "It's obvious that if anyone needs a helping hand, they can expect to get help."
People in Fargo first began worrying about a possible flood about
the same time the Bison were eliminated by Kansas in the first round, a game they were in until the final minutes. The Red River is bloated from heavy winter snows made even worse by spring rains, and has risen some 20 feet in the last week alone.
The prognosis isn't good, which makes the sandbagging even more critical. Every able body is needed including the big bodies of the Bison.
Phillips began calling his players during the weekend when it became apparent how bad things might get. He hoped to have the entire team working together, filling and stacking the sandbags.
His players beat him to it. Half of them were already on the front lines.
"You go from a terrific diversion like the NCAA tournament to everybody literally walking down streets asking if anyone needs help," Phillips said. "It's a
really weird dynamic. I don't think you could find two more opposite deals."
The team has worked together the last few days, going house-tohouse near the river to offer help. Like all volunteers, they're braving freezing temperatures and muddy lawns that quickly give way to size 17 boots.
The people being helped are not only grateful, but eager to talk some hoops.
"They want to talk about the Kansas game and how much fun it was to watch," senior center Lucas Moormann said.
The basketball players are just a small part of an army of thousands of volunteers, some from other towns, who have been working long hours to protect homes and businesses along the river that separates the city from Moorhead, Minn.
They work in shifts as dump trucks loaded with sand rumble by on a continuous loop.
Phillips worked an extra shift, from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., figuring that would be a time the city would be hurting for volunteers. He was wrong.
"I went to the Fargodome to hop on a bus and the buses were all jam-packed," the coach said. "There were so many college students on them going out to help."
A week ago those students, like the rest of the town, were ready for a wild ride in the NCAA tournament. It didn't happen.
Now, instead of coming together for a team, they're coming together for a town.
"If this is our country's future." Phillips said "then we're in awfully good shape."
NCAA
Tigers duke it out in Sweet 16
No. 2 Memphis takes on No.3 Missouri in third round of the tournament
BOB BAUM ASSOCIATED PRESS
Energy, intensity and speed will be on display in this Tiger vs. Tiger semifinal at the NCAA West Regional Thursday night.
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Missouri and Memphis have much more in common than a nickname.
"You will see some things that you marvel at." Missouri coach Mike Anderson said. "You will probably see some things like 'Wow, did he do that?'"
"You will see some things that you marvel at."
"We saw each other in the hallway out there and I said 'It is going to be another boxing match, I can just see it coming.' John Calipari said after the teams worked out at University of Phoenix Stadium. "And he laughed, because we have had wars."
Anderson needs
MIKE ANDERSON Missouri coach
Missouri's Leo Lyons said that when Anderson first arrived in
Anderson, a disciple of Nolan Richardson at Arkansas, coached the Tigers to the Big 12 tournament championship in just his third season at Missouri.
The last time Memphis lost a Conference USA contest — to UAB 62 games ago — Anderson was the opposing coach.
everybody to keep up with the deep, talented Conference USA champions, and he got a scare Wednesday when one of his most relentless players DeMarre Carroll twisted his left ankle in practice and limped off the court. Carroll downplayed the incident.
And he knows how to beat Memphis.
"Trying to make a move and I tweaked my ankle a little bit," he said. "But at this point, it is the Sweet Sixteen, I'm 100 percent."
Missouri (30-6) and Memphis (33-3) are right where they were supposed to wind up after being tabbed the No. 3 and No.2 seed in the region, respectively.
Columbia, one of the first things the new coach did was show the videotape of that UAB-Memphis game.
"And we watched that UAB tape, watched how they pushed the ball." Lyons said. "I think
we are pretty close to where he wants us to be. We are still trying to get better every single day"
Anderson gives Calpari and Memphis the edge in pure talent, though.
"He has probably three or four guys that are going to the NBA," the Missouri coach said. "I got some guys that are 'hoping' they get into the NBA."
No program has won more games since the start of the
2005-06 season than Memphis' 137.
Memphis carries a schoolrecord 27-game winning streak into Thursday's game, the team's fourth consecutive appearance in the round of 16.
Tyreke Evans is the slick freshman at the controls, but the heart and soul is senior Antonio
While this team has, Calipari said, developed an identity separate from the one that nearly won the NCAA title a year ago, Anderson is a common denominator.
Anderson', the Conference USA defensive player of the year and the only player in school history with at least 1,000 career points, 500 rebounds and 500 assists.
"He is a guy that comes out on our team and does everything on the court," teammate Robert Dozier said. "You don't have to pep him up, talk to him like 'We need you' in a game. He has been that since he has been a freshman."
Anderson is concerned about rebounding with the athletic talent of the 6-6 Anderson, 6-9 Dozier and 6-10 Shawn Taggart.
The Missouri coach remembers Dozier and Anderson from his days at UAB.
"One of the things they do is
"They feel unleashed, and that's what I'm always trying to get my teams to be."
JOHN CALIPARI
Memphis coach
things they do is crush people on the boards," he said. "Their best offense was to throw it up there and go get it. We can't afford to let that happen."
When told of Anderson's comments, Memphis' Taggart said, "he should be worried
about it (rebounding). But there are other things he should be worried about, too."
Missouri's LT. Tiller said that Memphis controls the game with its offense.
"With us it is more we try to control the game with our defense, control the pace with our defense," Tiller said. "I think that's the tale. It will be our defense against their offense, and try to keep them off the glass."
And it all should be played at a fever pitch.
"One of the things I have always respected about his (Coach Anderson's) teams is they play. They get after it," Calipari said. "They feel unleashed, and that's what I'm always trying to get my teams to be. I want them to have more fun than anybody in this tournament."
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