Being the little big guy;
It’s fun to dream about

March 26, 2004
by Jake Lloyd
Sports Editor

Just call it the year of the small school in Division I college basketball.

I was watching the St. Joseph’s Hawks (undergraduate enrollment: 3,500) defeat the Texas Tech Red Raiders (undergraduate enrollment: 29,000) in the second round of the NCAA tournament last Saturday when something occurred to me that I had to double check in my head. Albion, with its 1,700 undergrads, has just 1,800 less students than St. Joe’s.

“No, let’s not think that way,” I thought to myself. St. Joe’s is in the big city of Philadelphia. It can attract standout players like its highly volatile backcourt tandem of Player of the Year frontrunner Jameer Nelson and Delonte West (90 combined points in the team’s first two tournament games).

It has a great coach, Phil Martelli, that little D-3 schools like us only think about when we’re blowing out our birthday candles. It has a strong fan base that will only increase with this year’s excellence. The Hawks were 29-1 heading into yesterday’s regional semifinal against another small school, the Wake Forest Demon Deacons (undergraduate enrollment: 3,800).

Despite its size, St. Joe’s has all the tools to establish a great basketball program. There’s nothing bigger than a small school showing up one of those “Big Twelve” schools.

I tried to, but I couldn’t contain my excitement. “Just 1,800 fewer students” kept reverberating through my head. I thought, “What if . . . Albion’s enrollment keeps growing, and it reaches 3,000, and the basketball team gets real good—too good for D-3 or D-2—and Albion becomes a D-1 school, and. . . ”

I was almost salivating. I thought about coming back to campus as an alum in 15 years and watching the Brits face Kalamazoo’s . . . Western Michigan University, a team that made the NCAA tournament this year. I thought about watching Albion play on TV; not BBG style, but CBS style.

I thought about watching a player close to Nelson’s caliber light up Kresge Gymnasium with so many three-pointers that the gym is renamed after him. I thought about the convocation speaker being someone who coaches at our level. I thought about Albion going to the Big Dance and beating the “Big” East and “Big” Ten and “Big” Twelve schools.

As the final seconds ticked off the clock and one of the Hawks’ players heaved the ball high in the air, I thought about how great it would be for Albion to be like St. Joe’s.

I thought about how great it would be to have our star player featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated like Nelson was back in February. Just think of the positive press the campus would receive if the letters A-L-B-I-O-N graced the cover of a big-time national magazine.

Think of how well-known Albion would become if the Britons made a highlight clip on SportsCenter. I can just imagine Stuart Scott saying “Booh-yah” after a rim-rattling dunk by one of our highly-touted 6-foot-11 centers.

I can just imagine sitting in class next to a player with Nelson’s talent and asking, “So, where do you think you’ll get selected in the upcoming NBA draft.”

Just 1,800 kids short in size. That amount times 100 short in talent . . . and everything else.

But it can happen, can’t it? St. Joes must have started like us too, right? In 20 years we’re gonna be just like the Hawks, playing in the NCAA tournament, right?

It was great to think—or dream—about. Playing in Division I and having a season in which you almost go undefeated would be utopia, not even to mention the NCAA tournament victories.

But it is, sadly enough, never going to happen. Albion will always be the small Division III liberal arts college more likely to produce a Nobel Peace Prize winner than an NBA player.

Albion will never have a sports program like the Hawks’ basketball team. And that’s okay. Albion sports are still exciting and led by great coaches.

But it was still fun to dream about for a few minutes.

Wouldn’t it be Big-Time?