Published: March 18, 2006 11:18 pm         

Better NAIA team won Friday; injury to MSU’s Tate not serious

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Sometimes in sport, especially basketball, the better team doesn’t win. An upstart will come out of nowhere and shock the world, or a small piece of it, anyway, with a win that nobody saw coming.

This was not one of those times.

When Olivet Nazarene (23-10), the unseeded, purple-clad Tigers from Illinois, beat Mountain State 79-65 in the NAIA Sweet 16 Friday night, the better team won.

This is how March Madness turned to March Sadness for top-ranked Mountain State.

Olivet, like Union before it, found the magic formula to topple the titans. To beat the Cougars, you had to beat up the Cougars. And that’s exactly what Olivet did. They imposed their will, especially on the defensive end.

That Olivet had only a 39-35 advantage on the boards defied belief. Or that most of MSU’s rebounds came on stickbacks they couldn’t stick back. It seemed that every big board, every second and sometimes third opportunity, went to the Tigers. Why? Because they earned it.

“Physically, they were tougher than us,” MSU coach Bob Bolen said Saturday afternoon. “Their wings were 6-foot-5 and you could tell that they’d been in the weightroom. Physically, they knocked us around. They executed offensively and defensively; they dominated.”

Still, Mountain State, which ended the year 29-3, had a chance down the stretch.

The Cougars cut a Tigers’ lead that peaked at 18 in the first half to five with plenty of time left.

And they had three possessions with the deficit at five to get closer. Those ended in a turnover, an offensive foul and a missed shot.

The good news on the night was that Dajuan Tate’s injury, incurred with 12:33 remaining and the team down 13, 49-36, wasn’t serious. He returned to the team hotel shortly before 1 a.m. CST. By Saturday afternoon, Tate finally took off his uniform for the final time.

He still was in pain, but all feeling had returned to his extremities.

“I went up for a rebound with my left hand, grabbed the ball and fell,” Tate said, recalling the incident. “I was in a down position with my chin down by my chest. Somebody came down the lane and fell over me and (drove) my chin into my chest. All I heard was a loud crack.”

The senior from Columbus, Ohio, tried to get up, but felt nothing in his arms and legs.

“For a high second I thought about being in a wheelchair,” Tate said. “But the feeling came back in my toes and then my feet, and I felt then like I was going to be OK. But I still had no feeling in my arms.”

Local EMTs wanted to move the player because there was no ambulance on site, but Dr. E. Stuart Cornett, the team doctor, wouldn’t allow it.

The feeling gradually returned, and before leaving in a neck brace on a stretcher, he told trainer Scott Brooks to tell the team to win the game.

Tate, a second-team All-American last year, is one of nine seniors who played for the final time Friday.

There hasn’t been a disappearing act this baffling since Jimmy Hoffa.

Rodney Epperson, who showed a disturbing ability to not play well in big games this season — Azusa, Cumberland, Union — totally disappeared in the nationals.

The team’s leading scorer finished with just four points in the tournament, proving to be the biggest bust in Cougars’ tournament history.

He was sick in the first game and played just eight minutes.

Then Friday, he played 21 minutes but sat out the final part of the game when MSU needed him most. When he was called on, he didn’t answer the bell.

Bolen said little about Epperson’s poor tournament showing.

“He was getting his break when we made the run, so we just went with what was working,” Bolen said.

More than anything, he let down returning players like Tate, Maurice Davis, Brian Jackson and Mersad Terzic, and guys like Marc Lewis and Tony Fox who didn’t play.