California Dreaming Adds a Feeling of Deja Vu at NCAA Tournament
3/16/2017 11:56:00 AM | Men's Basketball
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Eric Haut's first trip to an NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament was all the way back in 2001 when he was a freshman on the Kent State Men team that notched the program's first March Madness victory. Sixteen years later, the Golden Flashes associate head coach experienced a feeling of deja vu as the team plane touched down at Sacramento International Airport just before 2 p.m. on Wednesday.
"It was really neat, because this is a very similar trip to our trip in 2001," said Haut. "That year, we went to California, too. We were the No. 4-seed vs. the No. 13-seed game, just like we are this week. We played Indiana, which is a storied program. We'll play UCLA on Friday, which is also one of college basketball's storied program with all kinds of tradition. And Cincinnati was waiting for us in the second round that year. Well, we have Cincinnati in the same pod with us right now, and if we can win on Friday we could see Cincinnati again on Sunday."
The Flashes take on UCLA at the Golden 1 Center in downtown Sacramento on Friday night, 30 minutes after No. 6 Cincinnati battles No. 11 Kansas State as part of the tournament's South Regional.
Haut still remembers that wide-eyed feeling he dealt with during his first NCAA Tournament experience.Â
"It's unavoidable. You are going to feel that way," he said. "There's that energy about getting on a plane. It's a charter flight. You get to go somewhere you've never been before. That all kind of builds the excitement to get ready to play. I think our guys are dealing with that right now."
For Haut and the rest of head coach Rob Senderoff's staff, the trick until gameday is to convince the players that this is all business as usual.
"You try to do that, but this is obviously different," said Haut. "When we go on a road trip, normally there are 25 people on the bus. Today, there are 160 people with us. But in terms of our preparation and what we do in practice, studying personnel and film, it will all be the same."
Director of basketball operations Mike McKee played on the last Kent State team to appear in an NCAA Tournament game back in 2008. Like Haut, he has been trying to prepare this new generation of Golden Flashes for what lies ahead ever since the team secured its NCAA Tournament berth with a win over Akron in Saturday's Mid-American Conference championship game in Cleveland.Â
"Our first-round game in 2008 didn't go very well," McKee remembered. "We got off to a little bit of a slow start against UNLV that year, to say the least. But the overall experience was awesome with the charter plane from Akron-Canton to our tournament site in Omaha, Nebraska. Then you get on the bus and have a police escort. The whole experience for the players is just very cool.
"I've been trying to give our guys small bits of advice. If you check the box score of that game against UNLV, I didn't play many minutes, but I can still tell our players what they can expect, what they have to look forward to, how it's all going to work leading up to the game. They are going to be busy, but they are going to have fun. And on Friday night at 6:57 local time, when the ball goes in the air, they just have to play their hearts out."
As of Thursday morning, the Golden Flashes players have been handling the experience with tremendous poise. Their first practice in California, held Wednesday night at Capital Christian High School, was all business.
"In 2001, it didn't hit me that we were actually at the NCAA Tournament until we walked into Cox Arena in San Diego and saw how many people were there," Haut remembered. "It's like that for everyone, but then eventually everyone calms down. In that game, we were down early, but we came back and made plays. You really don't even notice what you are doing in the game. You don't realize all the excitement going on in the arena. We didn't realize it even after we beat Indiana. We just kind of went back to the hotel, went to bed, and then the coaches had a gameplan ready for us the next morning for who we were going to play next.
"For our guys, I think it's going to hit them that they are here on Thursday night when we go to the arena for the open practice and there is all of the media stuff, the press conference. That's when they'll get it."
