The 1985-86 Navy Midshipmen: "The Greatest Service Academy Basketball Team"
by
Justin Kischefsky
Chapter 1 / November 15 – Preseason Thoughts, First Games
Chapter 2 / November 16 – Navy Takes to the Road for Games in the Northeast, Far East and Southeast
Chapter 3 / November 17 – CAA Play Begins
Chapter 4 / November 18 – Mids Start to Roll After Loss
Chapter 5 / November 19 – Star Game Cliffhanger, Redemption vs. Spiders, CAA Tournament Champions
Chapter 6 / November 20 – March Madness, Epilogue
1985-86 Information Page
All this week, NavySports.com will relive the historic 1985-86 Navy men's basketball season that culminated in the team reaching the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. This second installment looks at the three tournaments Navy participated in during the month of December in the Northeast, the Far East and the Southeast.
December 6 * Syracuse, N.Y. * Carrier Classic
Navy 73, Ohio 62 (click for box score)
The Mids began a stretch of three-straight tournaments with a trip to Upstate New York and the Carrier Classic in Syracuse, N.Y. First up for Navy was a game against an Ohio team that had reached the 1985 NCAA Tournament and would go on to post a 22-8 record and make the NIT in 1986. The lineup for the Bobcats also featured future NBA players Paul Graham and Dave Jamerson.
Navy held a 53%-36% shooting advantage over Ohio in the first half, but the Mids led the Bobcats by the close score of 34-29. Vernon Butler paced the Mids with 12 points in the first half as David Robinson was limited to just four points on 2-4 shooting from the floor and did not make a journey to the foul line. But seeing as how Ohio held leads of 16-8 and 18-11, Navy had to feel fortunate holding the lead midway through the game.
"We were expecting them to pressure us," said Navy head coach Paul Evans after the game to the Annapolis Capital, "but I was surprised it bothered us so much."
The Mids took several seven-point leads early in the second half only to see the Bobcats regain the advantage at 48-42 with just over 13 minutes left on the clock. Robinson then made a pair of free throws to make the score 48-44. After Ohio took a 50-44 lead, Butler started to take over.
"That was when we had to turn it around," Butler was quoted as saying in the next day's Syracuse Herald-Journal. "This was not a game we could afford to lose."
In order, he scored after grabbing an offensive rebound, made one of two free throw attempts, hit a short jumper, scored on a layup and made another inside shot that gave the Mids a 53-52 lead with just under seven minutes still to play. Carl Liebert soon followed with a jumper, Cliff Rees made one free throw and Robinson scored from five feet. Those efforts allowed Navy to take a 58-52 lead with four minutes left on the clock. The Mids slowly expanded their lead out to 64-56 with 100 seconds remaining to salt the game away.
Butler played all 40 minutes and ended the game with a career-high 29 points to go along with 14 caroms.
"They spanked us like we hadn't been spanked before," said Billy Hahn, who was an assistant coach on the Ohio team before lengthy stints as an assistant at both Maryland and West Virginia. "Besides David Robinson, who was unbelievable, they had Vernon Butler. Oh my God; he whipped our butt. That Navy team had a toughness to it. They never stopped. And they were very good."
"We approached the game in that Ohio was a lot like us," said Liebert. "They were from the Ohio Valley Conference and a really good, sound team. They were junior and senior led. They had experience. It was a good win early in a season against a very solid team that we felt would go back to the NCAA Tournament. It was a confidence building win."
December 7 * Syracuse, N.Y. * Carrier Classic
(AP: 4 / UPI: 5) Syracuse 89, Navy 67
The win over Ohio advanced Navy into the title game of the Carrier Classic against tournament-host Syracuse. The Orangemen boasted four future NBA players on their roster in a dynamic backcourt of Dwayne "Pearl" Washington and Sherman Douglas plus post players Rafael Addison and Rony Seikaly. After starting the year with decisive victories over Utica, Cornell, USC and La Salle, this was expected to be the first real test of the season for the home team.
The Mids were 15-30 (50%) from the field in the first half –– Robinson was 5-7 –– but the Orange were 18-40 (45%) to take a 41-33 lead at halftime. The score was tied at 31 with 4:50 remaining before Syracuse closed the half on a 10-2 run. Washington accounted for five of those 10 points.
"Syracuse has so much depth and talent that we can't afford to rest anybody," said Evans in the next day's Annapolis Capital. "If you let up at all against a team like this, they'll run off eight to 10 points on you."
The Orange then took a 10-point lead early in the second half and led by double figures for the final 16 minutes.
Robinson tallied 22 points and 11 boards to join Butler on the all-tournament team.
"We made a lot of stupid mistakes," said Robinson in the Capital story. "We were giving them the ball too much with stupid turnovers, and we didn't keep them off the offensive boards. I don't think we are 25 points worse than Syracuse."
"We were disappointed in the outcome," said Doug Wojcik, "but the Carrier Dome was an unusual venue with its size and depth. Playing there in December really prepared us for March."
"A win over Ohio is on one level," said Liebert. "Beating a Syracuse is on another higher level. We had to believe that we could do it. And a second piece is that we were going to have to make some adjustments and do some things differently to play our game and not their game. I don't know if we were ready to do that. It was another eye-opening experience."
December 21 * Osaka, Japan * Suntory Ball
Navy 70, Air Force 53
If traffic is light and there is good weather, it is about a seven-hour bus ride from Annapolis to Syracuse. That trip would seem like a breeze compared to where Navy would go for its next pair of games. The Mids would travel 7,000 miles to Japan to take part in a round-robin series of games against fellow service academy teams Air Force and Army during the sixth edition of the annual Suntory Ball. First on the docket for Navy was a game against the Falcons at Osakajo Hall in Osaka.
"Navy was a very solid team," remembered Reggie Minton, who was the Air Force head coach that season and recently retired after 16 seasons as the deputy executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. "They were strong at the four and five positions with Butler and Robinson and were solid at the point with Wojcik. When you have that combination going for you, especially with the way we played back then, you were a good team.
"We had some obvious matchup problems. We knew going in we had to shoot the ball as well if not better than we normally did and we had to keep Robinson and Butler from killing us on the boards and getting to the basket."
The teams would be facing each other for the first time in nine seasons, and the Falcons were coming off of a 10-19 campaign the year before. Navy took an early 17-4 lead and soon went on a 14-0 run in the second half to build a 48-21 cushion and cruise to the victory.
Robinson recorded 19 points on 8-11 shooting, 13 rebounds and seven blocked shots.
December 23 * Tokyo, Japan * Suntory Ball
Navy 93, Army 63
Two days later, Navy squared off against Army at Ryogoku Stadium in Tokyo.
The Mids had defeated the Black Knights in five-straight games, but the previous two meetings were decided by a total of three points. This game started off similar to those recent ones in that Navy held a 13-12 lead nine minutes into the contest.
From there, however, the Mids closed the first half on a 33-13 run and eventually posted what was at the time the largest margin of victory by either team in the series (is now the third-largest margin).
"Army games are always interesting, to say the least," said Liebert. "Army had kind of taken on this approach that they were just going to try and take us out of our game by being, in my mind, thuggish. It was brutal early. We just kind of got mad early, and then we started pouring it on. It became fun, but for the first four or five minutes it was forearm shivers coming around from everywhere."
The trio of Robinson, Butler and Kylor Whitaker combined for 52 of Navy's 93 points. Robinson, Whitaker and Wojcik (21 assists over the two games) were named to the all-tournament team.
December 27 * Atlanta, Ga. * Cotton States Classic
Navy 67, (AP: 20 / UPI: 18) DePaul 64
There was no rest for the weary as just four days after finishing its game against Army in the Far East Navy was back on the court for competition, this time in Atlanta, Ga., against nationally-ranked DePaul as part of the Cotton States Classic hosted by Georgia Tech.
"I remember leaving Tokyo on Christmas Eve and landing at JFK Airport in New York on Christmas Eve," said Liebert. "Wojcik and I shared a taxi to LaGuardia Airport. We got on a plane to Pittsburgh. He got off in Pittsburgh and I flew on to Louisville. I arrived home at 9 p.m. We stopped by White Castle on the way home. I went to bed, got up Christmas morning, we opened presents, and then I got on a plane at noon to go back to BWI for practice. Then the next day we flew to Atlanta for the Cotton States Classic."
The Blue Demons, who would end 1985-86 with an 18-13 record and in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, featured three future NBA players on their roster in Rod Strickland, Dallas Comegys and Stanley Brundy. After having compiled a 19-10 record and reaching the 1985 NCAA Tournament, the lone two losses for the 1985-86 team to date had been setbacks to No. 5 Georgetown and at Purdue.
Perhaps the jet lag had caught up with the Mids early on as they fell behind by as many 12 points in the first half, went into the locker room trailing, 40-30, and were down, 44-38, in the second half when Robinson picked up his fourth foul of the game.
"The halftime conversation coach Evans had with us was robust, as only coach Evans could do," said Liebert. "We were flat; we were spent. Coach had some really choice words for all of us at halftime. Still, we didn't come out at halftime with that instinct. Around the 12-minute mark we just woke up. It was like we made it through that Ambien fog."
Navy closed to within 46-43 with 13 minutes left to play only to have DePaul go on a 10-0 run and open up its largest lead of the game at 56-43 with nine minutes remaining.
Navy responded just as quickly. Six different Mids scored during a run that winnowed the gap down to 57-54. DePaul was able to double the margin out to 60-54 with four minutes still to play, but from there Navy closed the game on a 13-4 run to come away with the win. Butler accounted for nine of those points –– including the final eight –– to finish with 23 in the game. The Mids held the Blue Demons to three made field goals in the last 10:07 of the game.
"We just hung in there in the second half. I thought we were extremely tough," said Evans after the game in a story published in the Washington Post.
"We just stopped playing in the last five minutes," DePaul head coach Joey Meyer said afterward to the Associated Press. "We were trying to hang on instead of being aggressive. We couldn't pull the defensive board with all our size."
"Rod Strickland got in early foul trouble and had to sit some and then again in the second half," said Rees. "If I recall correctly, we made both of our runs when he was out. He was such a dominant point guard and was a critical piece for that team. But in addition to that, it was our seniors who really got it done in that game. Vernon Butler was a total beast which wasn't unusual for him, that's for sure."
"DePaul was really long and lean and really athletic," said Liebert. "Myself, David, Vernon and Derric, we just started not allowing them to create space. We played zone. We started putting bodies on them. And then between Doug and Kylor and Cliff up front on Rod, we started to contain them. If you look at the number of lobs Rod threw in the first half, we just started to close out better. When that started to happen, DePaul really didn't have the scorers to beat us off the dribble. They had Rod creating plays for their bigs, then when we started close out better in the paint we were able to claw back and get in front of them."
The DePaul players also made several inquiries of the Navy players during the course of the game.
"I remember some of the DePaul players kept asking our guys how they went to school and played basketball when they were at sea all of the time," said Ian Cassidy. "Our players had to explain to them that we were attending a regular school and were not based on a ship."
December 28 * Atlanta, Ga. * Cotton States Classic
(AP: 7 / UPI: 6) Georgia Tech 82, Navy 64
The win over the Blue Demons advanced Navy into the tournament's title game against Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets were in the early days of their rise under head coach Bobby Cremins and had reached the regional final of the previous year's NCAA Tournament. The team had five future NBA players on it, including seniors Mark Price and John Salley, had started the 1985-86 season as the top-ranked team in the country and entered the night having won seven-straight games.
"The rise of Navy and David Robinson that year caught everyone's attention," said Price. "His size, athleticism and things he could do made him one of the all-time greats in the NBA. But Navy also had good pieces around him and that allowed David to be special."
An early 10-0 run gave Georgia Tech a 22-12 lead. Navy was able to slice the margin down to four points, but it ballooned back to 45-29 at halftime. The Yellow Jackets shot almost 60 percent from the field in the first 20 minutes of the game. The Mids were only able to shave a few points off of the difference over the remainder of the night as all five Georgia Tech starters scored in double figures, with Price totaling 23 points to go along with seven assists.
"Like playing Syracuse on its home floor with an extremely talented team," said Wojcik, "Georgia Tech was very good in an arena (The Omni) that was similar to the Carrier Dome. Looking back at our travel, that was insane. We ran out of gas, but they (Georgia Tech) were more talented."
"We had guys with a lot of size and that made it a tough matchup for Navy," said Price. "They were definitely a good team and we knew what they were capable of. I think that is why we came in so ready for the game. We were able to get them on their heels early."
"We were loaded that year," said Cremins. "We just jumped out early on Navy.
"I coached David that summer as an assistant to Lute Olson in the FIBA World Championship in Italy. We were waiting after practice for our van to arrive, and the two of us started talking. He told me basketball was not his number one goal; his top goal was to become an engineer. Then he grew and started to understand how good of a player he could be, and that basketball could make him a nice living. He said he had to change his thinking. He wasn't there, yet, but he was getting closer to it. He was one of my favorite opposing players that I had the chance to get to know."
Butler posted 22 points and 11 rebounds in the loss to the Yellow Jackets, who compiled a 27-7 record and reached the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament.
