Gene's Blog: Fun 15-month ride for UST men's hoops

January 30, 2010

We're No. 2!

Over the last two seasons, St. Thomas has the second-best winning percentage among 1,000 NCAA men's basketball teams.

Coach Steve Fritz has guided St. Thomas to a Division III-best 46-3 record (.939 winning percentage) over the last two seasons. The Tommies went 30-1 last season and are off to a 16-2 start thus far in 2009-2010. That includes a 24-0 home record, 29 victories off campus and 30 consecutive wins in games played in St. Paul or Minneapolis.

UST closed No. 3 last season in the national poll and is currently rated sixth. The Toms, looking to secure the school's fifth consecutive MIAC championship, hold a two-game lead in the conference race with seven games remaining. 

Defending Division II national champion Findlay (Ohio), which went 36-0 last season, has the best NCAA win percentage with its 51-3 record (.943).

The best Division I men's records in that 15-month span are Memphis (48-9), Pitt (47-9), Kansas (46-9) and Michigan State (49-10).

Among other MIAC teams, the next best record by a men's team is Bethel at 29-16; on the women's side, St. Ben's has a conference-best 39-9 record, while the Tommies are 31-13.

Best NCAA Men's Baskeball W-L Records, Last Two Seasons
(Through Jan. 28)   **-D-II    ***-D-III

.944, **Findlay (Ohio)  51-3

.939, ***St. Thomas (Minn.) 46-3

.915, ***Washington (Mo.) 43-4

.898, **C.W. Post (N.Y.) 44-5

.891, ***Chapman (Calif.) and ***Middlebury (Vt.) 41-5

.875, **Metro State (Colo.) 42-6

.865, **Southern Indiana 45-7

.860, Guilford (43-7

.854, UW-Stevens Point (41-7)

.849, ***Richard Stockton (N.J.) 43-4

.842, Memphis (48-9)

.839, Pitt (47-9)

.836, Kansas 46-9

Bench lift

The Tommies' bench came up big again Wednesday night to help hold off third-place Augsburg, 77-66. UST bench players knocked down 11-of-16 shots.

Sophomore point guard Peter Leslie had made just one 3-point basket in 32 college games before he sank 3-of-3 from bonus range in a 10-point performance.

Junior Brady Ervin shot 4-for-4, all pull-up jumpers, and contributed eight points. In his two seasons, Ervin is shooting 65% from the floor (61-of-94).

Seven different players have scored in double figures at least once in UST's current five-game winning streak.

My old school

My former high school, Davenport Assumption, had three alumni athletes get special honors during 2009. It’s hardly Cretin-Derham Hall -- where ESPN filmed a 30-minute show this week on favorite son Joe Mauer -- but not bad for an Iowa Catholic high school with approximately 350 students:

--Illinois freshman OF Bill Argo landed in Sports Illustrated’s Faces in the Crowd last spring after he homered in his first three college at-bats (ironically, against No. 1-ranked Louisiana State).

--UW-Whitewater senior Jeff Schebler won college football’s top placekicking award and helped the Warhawks to a 15-0 season and the D-III championship win over Mount Union.

--Iowa Hawkeye special teams player Joe Conklin was on the ballot for the Rudy Award as major-college football’s top walk-on.

In the school-pride department, Kirsten and Whitney Moran from the Tommie women’s soccer team can top my experience. The sisters graduated from Southlake Carroll High, located near Fort Worth. Today that school is still buzzing about two marquee January football performances by alumni players.

Ex-Dragon Greg McElroy, Carroll Class of 2006, quarterbacked Alabama to college football’s national championship. He led a convincing 37-21 Rose Bowl win over his home-state team, Texas, and capped Bama’s 14-0 season.

Sunday night in New Orleans, the New Orleans hero was placekicker Garrett Hartley, a former Oklahoma Sooner from Carroll High’s Class of 2002. Hartley’s pressure kick in overtime sent the Saints to the franchise’s first Super Bowl in 43 seasons.

Another Carroll High graduate is on the Saints’ rookie squad -– ex-Missouri QB Chase Daniel. A fourth, Kris Brown, is the veteran placekicker for the Houston Texans.

Kirsten Moran recalls at least five other classmates who played in Division I in football, soccer, baseball or track and field, including Kristi Eveland, who played on three NCAA champion soccer teams at North Carolina.

PHOTOS: Top, Kirsten Moran; below, Whitney Moran

How good is Carroll High in football? The Dragons won four Texas large-class state titles and had a 79-1 record between 2002-2006. They’ve had nationally-televised games and once played in front of 46,339 fans in Texas Stadium. The school’s $20 million home stadium -- which has an elevator in its two-level press box -– has 10,000-plus seats that are often sold out. The Dragons' offense is a touchdown machine that keeps its placement kicker busy. Hartley broke a state record as a senior when he made 90 PAT kicks, and two other Carroll kickers have since broken that record in 2004 and 2009.

The 5-foot-8 Hartley went undrafted after his Sooners career. He signed with the Saints in 2008 and made 13-of-13 field goals last season, but has had a strange last six months. He was suspended by the NFL for four games for testing positive for a banned stimulant (he blamed prescription meds that he said he didn’t realize were on the banned list ). He kicked four field goals in an overtime win over the Redskins in his first game back. Before Sunday’s pressure kick, he was 10-of-12 on the season in field goals, although he missed a late game-winning try against Tampa Bay. That Saints’ overtime loss nearly cost them the top-seed and home field in the playoffs. Hartley drilled a 43-yarder in the playoff win over Arizona, and calmly converted the game-winner to sideline the Vikings.

UST’s Kirsten Moran has had an interesting sports career of her own. She was a state runner-up in cross country as a ninth grader, and later was an all-state soccer player for the Dragons. She was a scholarship soccer player at Division I Southern Methodist but later transferred to St. Thomas.

"It's hard to explain how much pride Southlake has in its sports teams, especially football, it being Texas as well as our ranking and state championships," Moran said. "People don't always understand how much it really is like (the book or TV show) Friday Night Lights, where the whole town shuts down to go to the game. Athletes were and still are looked at as 'hometown heroes in Southlake, and that will probably never change. It was really an awesome experience playing sports in high school, and one that I know I'm lucky to have experienced because there is nothing that compares to it. Even when I go back and visit, people still know me for my accomplishments in soccer and track, and having left my mark I still feel really connected to that community."

Moran sat out the 2007 season with a knee injury but came back in 2008 and helped the Tommies win the conference championship after being picked sixth in the preseason coaches’ poll. She scored seven goals and 10 assists in 40 games over two seasons. That helped St. Thomas go 27-7-6, made two NCAA playoff appearances, and post two top-two conference finishes. She capped her career as she made third-team All-America this season.

Sophomore Whitney Moran joined the team this season and played in all 20 games and had two goals and one assist.

Family ties

Another Tommie watched the college bowl season with interest. Assistant coach Brandon Staley’s first year with UST football was rewarding. A former Division I quarterback, Staley was defensive line coach last fall and enjoyed the ride as St. Thomas finished 11-2 and reached the NCAA quarterfinals.

Staley coached in two bowl games while working as a graduate assistant coach at Northern Illinois. He followed the Huskies in their Jan. 3 International Bowl loss in Toronto to South Florida.

Staley also kept tabs on Iowa Hawkeye football –- his cousin, junior Ricky Stanzi, was that team’s starting quarterback and guided his team to an 11-2 record. Iowa’s Orange Bowl win over Georgia Tech helped it finish No. 7 in the final national polls –- the school’s highest final ranking since 1960. Stanzi missed two games with a late-season injury, and the Hawks were 10-1 in games he started. Stanzi played at Lake Catholic High in Mentor, Ohio.

Staley was a four-year letter winner at quarterback at Dayton and captained the Flyers in his senior season of 2004. He posted a 16-5 career record in two seasons as a starter, including a 9-2 mark his junior year and 7-3 mark as a senior. Dayton was ranked No. 5 in the country by Football Gazette both seasons. Stanzi was named Lake County Offensive Player of the Year after his career at Perry High.