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Episode 8: Rock Chalk, Spider Shock · Spiders Sound Off

0:04
Welcome everybody, this is Porter and Tom with another
0:07
episode of Spider Sound off. Porter Last week we talked about
0:11
the move to the A10 in the quest for more at large bids.
0:14
That move paid off 3 short years later in 2004 when the Spider
0:18
men's team received an at large invite to the NCAA tournament,
0:22
ending an 18 year drought for an at large bid.
0:25
Despite a very tough non conference schedule, the men's
0:28
team was not trending towards AN at large on January 15th.
0:30
In fact, we were coming off three straight losses, including
0:33
A. Bad loss to LaSalle.
0:34
Which moved our team to 8 and eight overall, but things were
0:38
about to. Change Facing the toughest Rd.
0:41
stretch of the season, the men had their backs against the
0:43
wall. Looming was an out of conference
0:45
game thrust into the middle of A10 play against #12 Kansas.
0:49
Kansas had won 52 straight non conference games in fog Allen
0:53
Fieldhouse and on a cold Thursday night in January 2004,
0:58
they had every reason to believe it would be #53.
1:01
Instead of Tom and I telling you what happened next, we have a
1:04
very special treat for you. We are joined today by Richmond
1:06
Spiders Hall of Famer and star of that upset victory over
1:11
Kansas, Mike Skrocky. Welcome, Mike, and thanks for
1:14
being our first ever guest on Spider Sound Off.
1:23
No thank you. Thanks for having me.
1:24
Sounds like the Robin Center is cheering me on again.
1:28
As we would, you know, as we're focusing on the Kansas game
1:32
today, we thought we'd just maybe start back to the
1:35
beginning of your senior season, you know, before games even
1:39
started. What, what kind of goals did the
1:41
team have? Did you have clear goals that
1:44
you set before every season or before your senior season of
1:47
what what you're hoping to accomplish?
1:50
Yeah, I mean, you know it. I think it varies.
1:54
Based on the the age of the player on the team, you know,
1:57
but as a senior you really just hoping to make the tournament
2:01
and that's the goal every year. I don't know if expectations
2:04
were high purely because you know the year.
2:06
Before we were just. Above 500 now.
2:10
It was a transition year, you know, we had a new.
2:13
Coach and Coach Wainwright. So it was expected that there
2:16
was going to be a feeling out process, but we kind of felt
2:19
like. Year 2 we.
2:20
Were going to be better and we had a.
2:23
Good core returning. And Coach Wainwright was
2:25
bringing in his players that year.
2:27
We had some of his recruits coming.
2:29
And so that was a good thing. And so we we were we were
2:32
looking forward to it. But you know, the schedule, we
2:35
took an early look at it and we knew it was tough.
2:37
So we knew it was going to be difficult from the onset.
2:39
Through November, December, you guys start seven and five OOC
2:45
and then you start one and three in the conference.
2:48
So how, how are you feeling at that point in time?
2:50
You're 8 and eight. You know, you're probably
2:53
thinking to yourselves not exactly where you were hoping to
2:56
be through 16 games, but tell us how you were feeling.
2:59
Yeah. I mean, after out of conference
3:02
wrapped up, you know, we felt we felt OK because we knew it was a
3:06
difficult out of conference. So even though we were, I think
3:10
we were just above 500, we had some good wins.
3:13
Like we won like Colorado, which was a tough road trip.
3:18
We played, we hung with Wake, which had Chris Paul at the time
3:22
and was a is a top team. We beat VCUI think by 15 or 20,
3:28
who I think ended up winning the CIA.
3:29
So even though our record didn't reflect, we felt good going into
3:33
the A10. Then we started, I think we beat
3:37
Duquesne. I had to go back and look.
3:39
So we start out good, but then the next three, especially that
3:43
loss to LaSalle, if you want to talk about a loss coaches were
3:46
not happy with, that was probably top of the list.
3:49
And then you come back, usually after a loss, you regroup, you
3:53
come back and you think, all right, just go to the next game.
3:57
But all of us, I mean, you know, truthfully speaking, we saw
4:01
Kansas on the schedule from day one.
4:03
So we knew it was coming. We were excited about it.
4:07
We weren't overlooking Temple, but we knew Temple was a team we
4:11
generally played well against just because they played that
4:14
zone. And quite frankly, myself, guys
4:17
like Reggie Brown who like to shoot, you know, Temple was like
4:20
almost the perfect match up for us because it was like, hey, we
4:23
just get to shoot threes today, so let's just sit out there, try
4:27
to drain a couple and we'll get out of here.
4:29
So we weren't we weren't feeling great.
4:31
I mean, honestly. And part of us were looking at
4:34
that Kansas game going, yeah, we're excited we're going there.
4:37
But you know, what in the world was coach thinking schedule in
4:41
Kansas in the middle of our A10 bye week and here we are.
4:45
You know, it might have been a different feeling had maybe we
4:48
started 3:00 and 1:00 because, you know, Saint Joe's, I think
4:51
was one of those losses and they were a top five team that year.
4:54
They were juggernauts. So that that that loss, I think
4:57
we said, all right, that's acceptable.
4:59
But the others we felt like we're not.
5:01
But coach had instilled a big thing in US.
5:04
Is that the the most important game of the year is the next
5:07
game. You know, forget the rest.
5:09
I mean, you can't. So we all had that mindset and,
5:13
you know, we knew. All right, we're coming up on
5:15
this road trip. What's the big game?
5:17
Temple. So let's just go beat Temple and
5:20
then we'll figure out after that what happens.
5:22
But we had to go beat them first.
5:24
And you know that that's a, you know, they're, they're a tough
5:27
team simply because they they play that weird zone or they
5:30
did. You know, with coach.
5:32
Cheney They had big long guys and they usually had, I mean,
5:36
almost every year we were there one or two guards that were
5:40
just, you know, you couldn't stop them.
5:42
I mean, I think it was Hawkins and there was another guy there
5:45
who, you know, it was like 20 points a night for both of them
5:48
and you were just trying to hope could you outscore them enough?
5:51
And, and luckily we were able to.
5:54
My God, I. Hate to pivot away from the
5:56
Temple game for just a second and before we get to Kansas, but
5:59
you mentioned Saint Joe's and that meant also that you played
6:04
against Jameer Nelson. Tell us a bit about what it was
6:07
like, you know, getting a chance to play against Jameer and just
6:12
just in general, any, any thoughts you have about the
6:15
Saint Joe's program? Yeah, I mean it was a lucky for
6:18
us. We got to play them at the Robin
6:21
Center, so that was good. But, you know, bad news.
6:25
Is they came in. Jumped out on us.
6:27
Early, I think. Took like a 1520 point lead and
6:30
then we were playing uphill and when you're playing Jameer, they
6:34
also had another NBA guy, Dewante West, and they had the
6:38
big guy Jones and then shooter Carol, you know, it was just
6:43
tough to deal with. And Jameer was.
6:45
Just one of those guys that could really just take over a
6:49
game whenever he wanted and probably could score. 203040 at
6:53
any given night. But he kind of knew his role was
6:56
to keep others involved, to keep them going.
6:58
So I think of that second-half, we got close and then all of a
7:02
sudden he just decided, yeah, I'm not going to let this
7:04
happen. And I think he scored like 8 or
7:07
10 in a row. And next thing you know, we're
7:09
we're back down and, you know, just trying to hang in there.
7:12
But, yeah, I mean, they were a great program that year.
7:15
They had a great run. You know, funny story with
7:18
Jameer was I was actually recruited by Saint Joe's out of
7:22
high school and Coach Martelli would always talk to me about
7:26
this Jameer guy saying, hey, you know Jameer, he's you're going
7:30
to be great paired up with him. He's going to drive kick to you.
7:33
You know, it's going to be a lot of open shots, a lot of this.
7:36
And you know, I was like, who is this Jameer kid?
7:39
I've never heard of him. Never seen him.
7:41
I don't know who he is, you know.
7:43
Next thing you know, I'm in college playing against him and
7:45
he's, you know, top ranked player in college, top ranked
7:49
team. And here we are playing at the
7:52
Robbins Center and you know, he's getting the best of us.
7:54
So but you know, they they were a good team.
7:56
They had a good run that year. And you know, just glad you
8:00
know, it's a story you can tell people.
8:01
You got to play against them. I'm guessing when they played us
8:05
they were still undefeated at that point in time because they
8:07
had a big undefeated streak. Correct.
8:10
Yeah, yeah, I think they were undef.
8:11
They they were, yeah. No, they were definitely
8:12
undefeated. I think the game might even have
8:14
been and and it would nationally televised simply because they
8:18
were drawing such attention at the time.
8:20
So it was again, a big game. Robin Center, top ranked team,
8:24
undefeated. And you know, we even though we
8:29
were coming off that out of conference schedule where we
8:33
played good teams. So we felt like, hey, we can
8:34
hang with them, but they were just so tough.
8:37
I mean, you you get behind. It was hard to come back.
8:41
So getting back to Kansas, would love to know more about what the
8:46
transition was from playing on the road at Temple and ending up
8:51
in Kansas for a Thursday game. What happened between?
8:55
What were the logistics that the team had to manage?
8:58
Yeah. Luckily we were on break so we
9:01
didn't have any classes to deal with.
9:03
And you know, Coach always tried to instill in US, you know, how
9:08
he liked the road games better than home games because he said,
9:10
hey, look, on a road game you get to act like a professional.
9:14
You get to go out to eat, you get to just practice, lounge in
9:18
the hotel, you know, you could walk around the city if you
9:20
want. So you really are like a
9:22
professional for a day or two. And so he really tried to sell
9:26
us on that any time we went on the road.
9:29
And it might be a good reason why we had a good Rd. record
9:33
under Coach Wainwright is just, you know, we really bought into
9:36
that. But I think, I think with that
9:38
game, we came home from Philly, we came back to Richmond.
9:41
But typically you would go out to a game one day before.
9:45
So if the game's on Thursday, you'd usually fly out on
9:47
Wednesday. We went out a day early.
9:49
So I think we went out on Tuesday just because we had the
9:53
time to do it. And then we had a practice
9:57
Wednesday there and then you do a shoot around the morning of.
10:01
But I remember at practice, Coach would generally just let
10:04
us kind of run around, shoot around, get a feel for the gym
10:08
for the 1st 1015 minutes, and then he would call us into the
10:11
middle. And he did.
10:13
And I remember him just saying, OK, everyone, go ahead, take a
10:15
look. You know, because you're in
10:17
Allen Fieldhouse, historic college basketball.
10:20
There's banners everywhere. The gym looks like it's still
10:24
set in like the 1900s and some pieces and there's just a lot of
10:28
history there. And of course, we're all going
10:31
to be looking, staring at it. Look at that banner.
10:33
Look at that name. Look at that guy.
10:36
So for him to acknowledge and just say, hey, take a look, take
10:40
your time, but then say, all right, now let's get back to
10:43
work. I think really just kind of set
10:45
the mindset, Hey, this, this is a pretty cool thing, but let's
10:49
remember why we're here. How much I guess pre game
10:53
scouting is the are the coaches able to do like during that
10:56
practice the the day before the game?
10:59
Are, are you talking about all of the great players on Kansas
11:04
and kind of their tendencies like how, how, how, how much are
11:07
you able to study that up in between?
11:09
Yeah, I mean, it, it depends on the time in between.
11:12
I mean, since this game was Saturday to Thursday, I mean, we
11:16
had a lot of time. I mean, that's usually more than
11:19
you get. So we, you know, our, our team,
11:22
I think it was Coach Wenecki, you probably had that.
11:24
Scout. You know, they go over every
11:28
play because they they split up the teams per coaches.
11:30
Even though your game might not be for two weeks as an assistant
11:33
coach, you're already scouting them so they're well prepared.
11:36
It's just now can you translate that information to an 18 year
11:39
old kid who's in college and probably not as focused?
11:44
So it's really just a matter. But I mean, the, the scouting is
11:48
pretty intense. I mean, we know what plays
11:50
they're running. We know what they're, what
11:53
they're called. Even sometimes we know the call
11:55
for it. If teams use hand signals, we
11:58
would know the hand signals that they're going to use.
12:00
But it's a mind game too. They're going to we, we, we
12:03
expect them to change it because we expect them to know that we
12:05
know this. But a lot of times, you know,
12:10
you really just try to hone in on the things they run the most,
12:13
their biggest tendencies, and then you don't try to overload
12:17
because if you're thinking too much, then you're just going to
12:20
ruin when you get out there what you're trying to do.
12:22
So, and and a lot of it is focused on too.
12:25
What are we going to focus on? What are we going to try to do
12:27
offensively? What are we going to try
12:30
defensively? Another good story about
12:32
scouting. I don't think we did it in the
12:35
Kansas game. I can't.
12:37
But Coach Wainwright was big on it doesn't matter what we do.
12:42
It just matters how we do it. And one of his big things that
12:46
we did, and a lot of people don't know this is for a lot of
12:51
our out of conference games. And I think some of the in
12:54
conference games, our first play of the game, we would typically
12:58
run a play that the other team ran.
13:01
And it was mainly just because it was his way.
13:05
He was very big on. We're not going to let them push
13:08
us around. We're going to meet him in the
13:09
middle of the room and we're going to let them know like if
13:12
they're going to win this game, they're going to have to go
13:14
through us. So we would run one of their
13:17
plays at the beginning of every game.
13:19
And it was his way to just say, yeah, we just ran one of your
13:22
plays. What are you going to do about
13:23
it? And it, and it was a play we
13:26
knew it was. It was, yeah, it was a play we
13:28
never practice. I mean, we we ran it once, you
13:31
know, a day before the game. And he was like, that's going to
13:33
be our first play. And we were like, this play that
13:36
we never ran. We're running that as the
13:37
opening play. But finally we got used to it.
13:40
We were like, expect us to run one of their plays.
13:44
It's so. But it was his just way of
13:45
saying like, listen man, it doesn't matter what we run.
13:48
It doesn't matter how you know, it just matters how you do it
13:51
and how you execute. And so that that was something I
13:55
thought was funny that we would do a lot of games, we would run
13:58
one of the other teams plays to open the game.
14:01
The Kansas and won. 52 in a row, non conference games.
14:04
You guys had to know that going in.
14:07
You're in the locker room before the game starts.
14:09
I mean, what's the feelings? Are there nerves or are you guys
14:12
amped up? Yeah, we were.
14:15
I mean, we were pretty amped up. I mean, just because, you know,
14:18
we typically would get to a game about an hour and a half before,
14:22
maybe 2 hours before. So when we got to Kansas, you
14:25
know, they weren't letting people in yet.
14:27
So we go out there to shoot around, you know, just get
14:31
warmed up, kind of get our lights sweat going.
14:34
And then they let the students in and at Kansas, you know,
14:39
they're, they're camping out. You know, funny story from that
14:42
shoot around the night before, there was kids camping out in
14:45
the hallway the night before. And I asked, you know, one of
14:49
our coaches, what are they, what are they doing out there?
14:51
And he said, hey, they're, they're camping out to get
14:53
tickets to. And I said, well shoot, you can
14:55
give. Them one of mine.
14:56
Nobody from my family's come in, see if they want see if they
15:00
want to buy one. Like they could sit right behind
15:02
the bench, you know, like it's. Like Reese, Bobby in.
15:06
Talladega nights, right? Yeah, Yeah, go ahead and.
15:09
Tickets for sale. But what was funny is I
15:11
remember, you know, we're shooting around and then the
15:14
doors open and here come like 500 kids running because it's,
15:18
it's not an assigned seat for them.
15:20
It's first come, first serve. So they just like flood in
15:24
'cause they want to get first row and here they come and then
15:27
and as soon as they get in there they're yelling at you like, you
15:30
know. Skrocky, you stink.
15:32
It's going to. Be a bad night.
15:33
You know they're yelling and they know everyone.
15:35
They know everyone on our team. They're.
15:37
They're yelling, screaming, so we're like they scouted.
15:40
Too the. Students.
15:40
Yeah. So it, it was great.
15:44
You know, we were ready, you know, Coach Wainwright did a
15:46
good pregame, I thought where you know the.
15:50
Well, there was 2 pregames, 1 was good, one was not so good.
15:55
One was he listed all the great players we had played against.
15:59
So this was kind of before we went out that, that first time.
16:03
And it was basically like, hey, Jameer Nelson, you know, Delante
16:06
W, you know, all these great play, you know, guys from like
16:10
Colorado, all these great players.
16:13
And he's basically saying, are you telling me that there's guys
16:15
on Kansas that are better than what you've already faced?
16:18
He's like, I don't believe it. He's like, you guys have played
16:21
against good players. They're no better than any of
16:24
these guys, you guys. Deserve to be here.
16:27
You can take them. Let's go.
16:29
You know, So we go out to our initial warm up, you know, then
16:32
you usually have a second time when you come into the locker
16:34
room. And you know, I don't, I don't
16:37
know what his mindset was with this one, but we come in and he
16:40
just started yelling at us. And not to get too descriptive,
16:45
but someone had used the bathroom and not flushed and he
16:50
was not, he went off about it for 5/8 minutes and we're
16:54
sitting there going coach, we get it.
16:56
We're so we don't know who did it, but like we got to go.
17:00
We got to go out and play this game.
17:01
Is this really what you want to talk to us about?
17:02
And that's all he talked about. He just was like yelling at us,
17:05
like how disrespectful it was how how you weren't.
17:09
You, you weren't like nodding towards O'Malley.
17:11
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, we're like, we
17:13
don't even know who did this. But, you know, looking back on
17:16
it, you know, I was thinking about it before I came on here,
17:20
you know, because the guys on the team, we've talked about it
17:23
like, that is the wildest pregame.
17:25
I wonder if it was like, you know, if you've ever seen the
17:27
movie Rocky, you know, before he goes out for one of his fights,
17:31
he's talking about his robe. He's like, yeah, this is a
17:33
really nice robe. And his trainer's like, what are
17:36
you talking about? Like, this is the biggest fight
17:38
of your life. And you're talking.
17:40
Yeah. So maybe it was just his way to
17:42
kind of get our mind off the game before we go out there and
17:47
just go, hey, if I get him loose for just a few seconds before
17:51
they step on that court, maybe it was his way.
17:53
But I I don't know. He said some pretty wild stuff.
17:56
You know, my two years with him and and this was near the top of
17:59
the list, but, you know, but yeah, but the other, the other I
18:05
will say the thing about the pregame was just, you know, the
18:09
Rock Chalk Jayhawk. So it's this like rocking chant
18:14
and they do it during pregame and we could hear it because our
18:19
locker room was like under the stands.
18:21
And all of a sudden we could hear this like chanting and it's
18:26
just like this. And then we could see it when we
18:28
come out, they're swaying back at the whole gym.
18:31
I mean 18,000 people in unison swaying doing this Rock chalk
18:36
Jayhawk. And it was just like, wow, this
18:39
is this is intense. You know, this is good.
18:41
You're. Listening to that and you can't,
18:42
you can't even turn to the guy next to you and say we're not in
18:44
Kansas anymore. Exactly, exactly so.
18:50
So maybe just. Getting into the game like you
18:54
know, as you said, it's loud as can be, I'm sure.
18:58
Did you ever experience anything louder than that?
19:01
From an arena, I know that's maybe hard to measure, but I'm
19:04
I'm sure. That you look.
19:05
That way you're you're on the. Floor opening tip.
19:07
I mean, was it just like, no, the the yeah, the closest one I
19:12
would say is Dayton. Dayton gets pretty loud, mainly
19:16
because they do sell out. They typically put the band
19:19
right next to your bench. So their band is like blowing
19:23
into your, you know, bench the, you know, under your basket.
19:28
And their fans just, I mean, good for them.
19:30
They get really into it. So Dave Dayton was probably
19:33
pretty close, you know, in terms of being loud.
19:37
But it, you know, just a sea of blue, you know, the Jayhawk blue
19:42
was everywhere. And yeah, it's definitely one of
19:45
the loudest I've I've experienced.
19:50
How's the game open? Was there a was there a big
19:52
play? I think.
19:54
Yeah, not good. Yeah, Yeah.
19:56
One of our one of our pregame rules, you know, sometimes we
20:00
would have things that we wanted to focus on and one of the
20:02
pregame rules was no dunks. Coach was like, I don't want any
20:06
dunks. If somebody goes up for a dunk,
20:08
foul them. I don't want the crowd to get
20:11
energized. And we understood that.
20:13
We were like, yeah, it makes sense.
20:14
We get it. And I think, you know, literally
20:18
off the tip, they dunked. I think they tipped it made one
20:22
or two passes. It was like an alley dunk.
20:25
And I remember like, I think, I think I was running back and I
20:29
looked at the bench and was like, OK, well, we got that out
20:31
of the way. Like let's let's go to Rule 2.
20:35
What was Rule 2 like Rule 1's over with Let's let's move.
20:39
Like, you know, but maybe maybe it was a good thing, you know,
20:42
maybe it was like, all right, we don't have to worry about it
20:45
anymore. They dunked.
20:46
It was early crowd crowds into it.
20:48
But so be it. They were into it anyway.
20:51
So I don't know it did it. But you know, right after that,
20:55
I think you know, the key with any road game that we tried to
20:59
focus on was just keep the game close.
21:01
We knew our we knew our defense was good.
21:04
You know, you got Tony Dobbins, who's best defender in the A10,
21:08
probably one of the best defenders in the country.
21:11
And our team defense behind Tony was so good that we felt
21:16
confident. You know, although probably from
21:18
a fan perspective, not only not always very pretty because games
21:23
would be low scoring, but we that's what we wanted.
21:26
We wanted low scoring. We wanted it to be ugly because
21:30
we knew if that was the case, all we had to do was hit a few
21:33
shots and we had guys that could knock down shots timely.
21:37
So we we were able to do that early.
21:39
We can, we never let them kind of get away from us.
21:42
You know, they would go up 4 go up five, never let it get to 810
21:47
twelve. We always just were able to make
21:49
that stop early because typically on on these types of
21:52
games, you know, especially Kansas, you know, playing us,
21:56
they probably looked at us and said, all right, easy win.
22:00
We're going to squash these guys.
22:01
Yeah, they they want to jump out early, they want to jump out
22:03
1520 point lead in the first half.
22:07
And as long as we can get through that first half and not
22:10
have them do that, you know, now the second-half becomes a whole
22:13
different story for him. You.
22:16
I was watching that game and I remember with I was watching it
22:19
with a good friend and we, we, we felt like you guys weren't
22:24
intimidated right from the start.
22:25
Like, you're right, Kansas would go up five and you guys would
22:27
claw back and then you go up 7 and you guys would claw back.
22:32
I think we were 9th overall in the country that you're in
22:34
defensive. Efficiency, according to Ken.
22:36
Palm, tell us about. Tony Dobbins, one of the
22:39
greatest, if not the greatest on ball defender I've ever seen
22:42
play at Richmond. Yeah, I mean, Tony had the
22:46
ability to make up for a lot of stuff on defense that, you know,
22:50
maybe we didn't do so well. You know, definitely, you know,
22:53
a 10 defender of the year, I think two years in a row.
22:58
And then, you know, definitely one of the best defenders in the
23:00
country at the time. He was just so long, could come
23:04
up with a steal when you needed it, could come up with a stop
23:07
when you needed it. You know, just kind of did all
23:09
those other things, steals, rebounds, those blocks, loose
23:15
balls, you know, But we also had guys on the back end that would
23:18
help people forget. That was Gaston Oliva's freshman
23:21
year, and he was not built like a freshman.
23:26
And then you had Kevin Steenburg, who was 610 long and
23:31
lean and could block shots. And then you had he had Eric
23:35
Swyer, who felt like he was there for eight years.
23:38
It was kind of a shell of himself at the time.
23:41
Him and Reggie dealt with back issues.
23:42
But still, anytime you could throw a guy out there who's
23:45
built like a tight end, you know, 69250 coach did a good job
23:51
with those big guys. He frequently rotated them.
23:54
He wanted them to be fresh, so they never played long minutes,
23:58
but the minutes they played were intense.
24:00
And you, you pair that along with Tony, you know it.
24:04
It's a good recipe on defense and something that we definitely
24:07
focused on throughout the year. So you're at halftime?
24:12
I think you're down. Five.
24:14
Do you remember what? What halftime was like was.
24:17
There a big halftime. Speech.
24:18
Or was it just? Getting.
24:20
Rested and getting back out there.
24:21
Yeah, I mean usually. Yeah, not, not much at halftime
24:24
usually. I mean, for me it was usually
24:26
just rest because I typically had played a lot in the first
24:31
half, but, you know, to to back up a SEC.
24:34
But before we went into halftime, you know, an
24:37
interesting story from this game that kind of I think sets to our
24:40
mindset. I think I mentioned earlier
24:42
about us running other plays and I actually talked to this guy
24:46
about it. People forget to like who played
24:50
in that game? And one of the people that
24:52
played was Peter Thomas, who was a walk on.
24:57
And I remember him coming into the game because I asked him
24:59
this question of a year or two ago when we had an alumni event.
25:03
You know, Kansas was shooting a free throw and it was just
25:06
before the end of the first half and I looked up, saw, heard the
25:11
buzzer and next thing I know. I see Pete Thomas.
25:14
Coming in the game and I'm looking like.
25:15
Why? Why is our walk on coming in the
25:17
game? You know, we're not losing by
25:20
20. It's the first half.
25:21
What's what is coach doing? And I look over at Coach.
25:24
Wainwright because he's standing.
25:26
Behind him and he just gives me this look like deal with it like
25:31
and and that was his mindset was like it doesn't matter who I
25:34
put. In there.
25:35
It doesn't matter now. And now credit to Pete, he was
25:38
not a typical walk on. And I think that showed later in
25:41
his career. I mean, he was, you know, we
25:43
were fortunate to get him at at Richmond, mainly because I think
25:46
he suffered an injury his senior year in high school.
25:48
I mean, he he very well could have went somewhere else deep
25:51
one and played and showed that. But that year he was our walk on
25:56
and most games did not play. And I asked Pete, I said, hey,
25:59
did coach coach tell you you were coming in that game?
26:01
Like did you have a lot of family there?
26:03
You know, he's from Arkansas. I wasn't sure on the map if
26:06
Kansas was near Arkansas. I was like, is this a home game
26:11
for you? You know, sometimes they try to
26:12
schedule home games. And he said no, nobody told me I
26:14
was going in. He just yelled my name and I ran
26:16
in. And so, you know, and he he
26:19
played about a minute and a half, two minutes, didn't didn't
26:21
do anything to hurt us or anything or he was just fine.
26:24
But I think it just kind of set the mindset of like, it doesn't
26:28
matter who I put in this game, you guys are going to figure it
26:31
out. And you know, to, to your
26:33
question, we we went into halftime, we felt good.
26:36
It was close. That's what we wanted.
26:39
You know, we had kind of taken the crowd out of it a little
26:41
bit. And now the key was we had just
26:43
shortened this game to 20 minutes.
26:45
Now it's a 20 minute game, not a 40 minute game.
26:49
And we just need to continue keeping it close.
26:52
We know they're going to go on a run.
26:54
That was usually our halftime speech.
26:56
Expect a run out of them, but don't let it go too crazy.
26:59
And then we've got a counter with one ourselves.
27:01
So that's what that's what we were thinking coming out.
27:04
We felt good, we liked our position and we just knew we had
27:08
to keep it going. And that's where we'll pause
27:11
things halftime in Allen Fieldhouse next week.
27:14
Mike takes us to the second-half of that epic Kansas game and
27:17
what it meant for Richmond. NCAA at large bid.
27:20
Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss Part 2 of our
27:22
conversation with Hall of Famer Mike Skrocky.
27:25
We'll see you then.