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News Nuggets, 03.15.04
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Compiled from staff reports and electronic dispatches

NCAA, NIT sweep up eight C-USA teams

Conference USA will be sending an all-time record number of teams to the NCAA Basketball Championship. The league is joined by the ACC, SEC and Big East in producing six tournament berths.

The five C-USA teams that tied for the league’s regular season championship — Charlotte, Cincinnati, DePaul, Memphis and UAB — will be joined by Louisville in this year’s 65-team field.

C-USA members Marquette — which reached last season's Final Four — and Saint Louis also will have life in the postseason. Both teams received bids to participate in the National Invitation Tournament.

Charlotte (20-8) will be making its seventh NCAA appearance in the last 10 years. The 49ers are the No. 9 seed in the East region and will face eighth-seeded Texas Tech on Thursday in Buffalo, NY.

Joining the 49ers in Buffalo will be the DePaul Blue Demons, the No. 7 seed in the West Region. DePaul (21-9) will be making its first NCAA appearance since 2000 and will battle No. 10 seed Dayton in the opening round on Thursday.

Nationwide Arena in downtown Columbus, OH, will be the opening round site for Cincinnati and UAB.

The C-USA Tournament champion Bearcats (24-6) are the league's highest-seeded team at No. 4 and will battle No. 13 seed East Tennessee State on Friday in a South region contest.

UAB (20-9) is back in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1999 as the No. 9 seed and will play No. 8 seed Washington on Friday.

Louisville (20-8), which has made more appearances than any other C-USA team, will make its 31st trip to the Big Dance. The Cardinals will be the No. 10 seed in the South region and will play No. 7 seeded Xavier, tournament champions of the Atlantic 10 Conference, in Orlando on Friday.

Memphis (21-7) is in the NCAA field for the second straight season and 18th time overall. The Tigers are the No. 7 seed in the East Region and will play No. 10 seed South Carolina in a rematch of the 2002 NIT championship game which Memphis won, 72-62.

Marquette (17-11) will play the opening game of the 2004 NIT when it hosts Toledo on Monday night in Milwaukee, while Saint Louis (18-12) will battle Big Ten foe Iowa in St. Charles, Mo. on Tuesday.

Atlantic Sun Conference champion Central Florida, which will join C-USA in 2005-06, also received a postseason invitation. UCF currently plays I-A football in the Mid-American Conference but competes in the Atlantic Sun in other sports.

The Knights, slotted in the NCAA's East Rutherford Regional, will face Pittsburgh at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee on Thursday.

NCAA conference-by-conference selections

AMERICA EAST CONFERENCE (1) — Vermont
ATLANTIC 10 CONFERENCE (4) — Dayton, Richmond, Saint Joseph's, Xavier
ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE (6) — Duke, Georgia Tech, Maryland, UNC-CH, N.C. State, Wake Forest
ATLANTIC SUN CONFERENCE (1) — Central Florida
BIG EAST CONFERENCE (6) — Boston College, UConn, Pitt, Providence, Seton Hall, Syracuse
BIG SKY CONFERENCE (1) — Eastern Washington
BIG SOUTH CONFERENCE (1) — Liberty
BIG TEN CONFERENCE (3) — Illinois, Michigan State, Wisconsin
BIG 12 CONFERENCE (4) — Kansas, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas Tech
BIG WEST CONFERENCE (1) — Pacific
COLONIAL ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION (1) — Virginia Commonwealth
CONFERENCE USA (6) — Charlotte, Cincinnati, DePaul, Louisville, Memphis, UAB
HORIZON LEAGUE (1) — Illinois-Chicago
IVY LEAGUE (1) — Princeton
METRO ATLANTIC ATHLETIC CONFERENCE (1) — Manhattan
MID-AMERICAN CONFERENCE (1) — Western Michigan
MID-CONTINENT CONFERENCE (1) — Valparaiso
MID-EASTERN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE (1) — Florida A&M
MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE (2) — Northern Iowa, Southern Illinois
MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE (3) — Air Force, Brigham Young, Utah
NORTHEAST CONFERENCE (1) — Monmouth, N.J.
OHIO VALLEY CONFERENCE (1) — Murray State
PACIFIC-10 CONFERENCE (3) — Arizona, Stanford, Washington
PATRIOT LEAGUE (1) — Lehigh
SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE (6) — Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Miss. State, South Carolina, Vanderbilt
SOUTHERN CONFERENCE (1) — East Tennessee State
SOUTHLAND CONFERENCE (1) — Texas-San Antonio
SOUTHWESTERN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE (1) — Alabama State
SUN BELT CONFERENCE (1) — Louisiana-Lafayette
WEST COAST CONFERENCE (1) — Gonzaga
WESTERN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE (2) — Nevada, Texas-El Paso

O'Leary, UCF seek redemption together

ORLANDO — George O'Leary wanted another chance. Central Florida was the perfect place to start over.

O'Leary was coach at Notre Dame for less than a week in 2001 before he was fired for lying on his resume. Now, after two years as an assistant with the Minnesota Vikings, O'Leary is ready to put all his mistakes behind him.

The 57-year-old O'Leary is focusing only on next Friday, when he can lead his new team through spring practice.

The Golden Knights also are eager for the start of 15 days of drills, film sessions, meetings and scrimmages. They, too, want a second chance after last season's losses, lawlessness and apathy.

"He said, coming in, everybody's got a clean slate," defensive end Paul Carrington said.

Including O'Leary. He landed his dream job in South Bend., Ind., after seven-plus seasons guiding Georgia Tech.

But falsehoods on his resume were exposed: O'Leary said he was a three-time letterman in college football and also earned a master's degree in education. The man players and colleagues regarded as a straight arrow was, to the rest of the nation, a liar.

So now it starts over for O'Leary at Central Florida -- where there is no Touchdown Jesus, no "Play like a champion today" sign, no news conferences televised nationally to a rabid fan base.

But O'Leary couldn't care less.

"That was a bad dream that didn't go away for a while," O'Leary said. "But I've moved on."

UCF needs to do the same after a disastrous 2003 campaign.

One player was suspended after being charged with bringing a gun on campus; seven others were suspended for violating team rules -- including the quarterback, touted on the cover of the media guide as a Heisman hopeful. Amid the turmoil, the Knights went 3-9, attendance lagged and coach Mike Kruczek was fired.

So UCF athletic director Steve Orsini turned to O'Leary, whom he knew after serving three years as Georgia Tech's senior associate athletic director.

O'Leary's record at Georgia Tech made it easy to see why Notre Dame hired him. He went 52-33 overall with five straight bowl berths. He was ACC coach of the year in 1998 and 2000, and received the Bobby Dodd National Coach of the Year Award in 2000.

Orsini knew the real O'Leary -- and it wasn't the man a late-night comedian labeled as "George O'Really?"

"Never would I ever describe George as someone who fabricated things, embellished things," Orsini said. "He's not a liar."

O'Leary was in his second season coaching defense for the Vikings, a job he took because he did not want to hide after the Notre Dame debacle. He talked with Orsini and soon after met with UCF representatives.

At the meeting, O'Leary learned what the school had to offer. And the more he heard -- a committed administration, a football-crazed state, a world-class airport near campus to ease the recruiting process -- the more he liked.

"The school has great potential," O'Leary said. "It's a sleeping giant."

On Dec. 8, O'Leary became the eighth coach in UCF history. His five-year contract has a base annual salary of $700,000, but incentives could push the yearly payout to more than $1 million.

After arriving on campus to stay in early January -- brushing off a New Year's Eve heart attack -- O'Leary started evaluating his program.

"Last season, we had the athletes and we wanted to win, but we just didn't know how to work to win," Carrington said.

O'Leary also started focusing on academics. Proving his point to a squad with 16 of its 62 scholarship players on academic probation, he moved study hall to the team's meeting room.

"Right under his nose," Orsini said.

Though O'Leary wants to move on from what happened, there are some advantages to becoming so well known.

"That's what made recruiting in January a little bit easier -- I didn't have to introduce myself," he said. "They pretty much knew who I was."

Now he wants everyone to know about UCF.

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News Nuggets are compiled periodically from staff, ECU, Conference USA and its member schools, and from Associated Press and other reports. Copyright 2004 Bonesville.net and other publishers. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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