Sunday 28 March 2004
Dear Jaspers,
The jasper jottings email list has (588 who take mail directly + 513 who are like AOL (which reportedly does funny stuff to jottings from time to time) and are difficult to get email into + 6 slim – 2 duplicates set up for the receiver's convenience equals) 1,105 subscribers.
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This issue is at: http://ferdinand_reinke.tripod.com/jasperjottings20040328.htm
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Fr Apr 16 Manhattan College Young Alumni
(classes of 1988-2003)
[JR: I protest the age
discrimination! Where is Lawyer Mike? ]
Quarterly Happy Hour Party
Metro 53 307 E. 53rd St.
(between Second & First Ave.)
(212) 838-0007
www.murphguide.com/manhattan_alum.htm
RSVP: Events@MurphGuide.com
(212) 288-0893
Tu May 4 Eighth Annual Law Enforcement Reception
Speaker:Joseph
Monteith'61
Chief of Department,Suffolk
County Police Department, Ret.
At Chase Downtown Chase Plaza,NY,NY,Executive Dining Room,60th Floor
Dinner& Drinks $40 per person.
If you did not receive a flyer con
tact Grace Feeney at Alumni Office
E-mail grace.feeney@manhattan.edu or
me Bob Van Etten'66 973-565-4330
Th, May 6th Kevin O'Shea fundraiser
Sa Jun 12 '04 National Alumni Council meeting
please contact Peter Sweeney
’64 (973) 353-7610
Please submit your events to events@jasperjottings.com
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My list of Jaspers who are in harms way:
- Afghanistan
- - Cote, Richard A. (1990)
- - Feldman, Aaron (1997)
- Iraq
- - Esposito, Steven G. (1981)
- - Mortillo, Steven F., son of Mortillo,
Steve (1980)
… … my thoughts are with you and all that I don't know about.
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ManhattanCollegeAlumni/
Alumni and Friends of Manhattan College, located in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, are all welcome here. The group has no official connection with the College. The group is operated by John Reinke at the direction of a steering committee who's membership varies.
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Manhattan_Prep/
Manhattan College Preparatory High School Alumni (from any year)
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Yahoo! Group Distribute_Jasper_Jottings has been created.
I need a few (about 25) brave souls to volunteer to BETA test this idea with me. All you have to do is go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Distribute_Jasper_Jottings/
What I want to do is get out of the distribution business,
so I can focus on content and other value added activities. Distribution takes
about 10 hours; most of which is unattended. But, a good hour or two is wasted
babysitting it and cleaning up after it when it burps or dumps. So, if I can
get Yahoo to do that for us for free, that will be a boone. But, we need to test to see if it works.
Help?
Last week:
My process for
composing jottings -- the news part -- is to push everything into a Yahoo Group.
Perhaps, we – the collective us – should think about changing to one or more
Yahoo groups as an alternative to the current content push method which appears
time-consuming, inefficient, and ineffective. This week's 45 sports stories as
really brought that to my field of vision. May I have anyone's thoughts? CIC
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One of the charities I support Sorrowful Mother Shrine in Bellevue OH (It's a long story.) sent a note and reminds us of the upcoming Respect for Life Sunday June 6th.
Now I am no holy roller by any means. Nor would I attempt to instruct anyone on matters of faith, argue opinions, or in general mess with one's head. However in this specific instance, because of the "Catholic" politicians, the secular humanistic press, the general dumbing down and coarsening of our beloved country, I'll make an exception.
Politicians are promising to fulfill every imaginable desire, plundering the public pocketbook to do so, (Rs and Ds alike). I would humbly and modestly suggest -- from a guy who holds doors for all women -- which we should recognize that we as a society should respect ourselves.
We are capable of both noble acts and despicable conduct. Let's choose to move up the evolutionary ladder not down the way the current culture is driving us.
The dead old white guys said "We hold these truths self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, which among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness". And, were the boys ever on the right track! Made a few mistakes along the way, but would we, could we, do we do better.
Self-evident meaning any fool could see them.
The Right to Life.
Is there a more fundamental principle? One could interpret that lot's of ways. My particular preference is from parents to grandchildren defines an ageless process that should not be disturbed by individuals. Religions aside.
Can the human race survive the losses we are inflicting upon ourselves?
I played an early computer game a long time ago. It was "adventure". You proceeded thru a series of caves. Found stuff and solved problems. The first thing you found was a bird. And you could do a lot of things with the bird including killing it. But, what you didn't know was that five caves down the path, you needed the bird to drive away a snake blocking your way. That game clicked a light on in my head.
What if we have already aborted the next Mozart, Salk, and George Washington?
From that I formed my opinion that every human life, no matter how badly lived, nor how hideously deformed it appeared to me, are all priceless. From that computer game, I concluded that the Government does not have the right to execute its citizens. From that "enlightenment", (which to an engineer like me means turn on the light when you enter the room),
I have urged respect of all human life from their parent's marriage to their children's natural death. If a society is truly measured on its charity to those who need help, then we are sadly poor.
The dead old white guys must be rolling over to see what we are doing.
Hence, I would suggest that we each observe the 6th of June in whatever way we deem appropriate.
Interesting that it coincides with the anniversary of the D-Day invasion, when many good men made the ultimate sacrifice to get us to this point! Do we deserve to think ourselves their progeny?
We need to return the country to its senses in its regard for human life.
Reflect well on our alma mater, this week, every week, in any and every way possible, large or small. God bless.
"Collector-in-chief" John
john.reinke@att.net
=====
CONTENTS
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1 |
Formal announcements |
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0 |
Bouncing off the list |
|
2 |
Updates to the list |
|
3 |
Messages from Headquarters (like MC Press Releases) |
|
1 |
Jaspers publishing web pages |
|
1 |
Jaspers found web-wise |
|
0 |
Good News |
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2 |
Obits |
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8 |
"Manhattan in the news" stories |
|
1 |
Resumes |
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52 |
Sports |
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12 |
Emails |
[PARTICIPANTS BY CLASS]
Class |
Name |
Section |
???? |
Akmut, Tariq |
|
???? |
Gordon, Phil |
|
???? |
Grandinetti, Saul M. |
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???? |
Pascal, Jack |
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???? |
Richardson, Ruth E. |
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???? |
Simonelli, Lucille |
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1933 |
Hassett, Buddy |
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1934 |
Tremark, Nick |
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1935 |
Rescigno, Xavier |
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1936 |
Karl, Andy |
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1938 |
Gallagher, Joe |
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1946 |
Weiden, Matt |
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1949 |
Weiden, Peter |
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1951 |
Helm, Robert |
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1952 |
Weiden, Robert |
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1953 |
McEneney, Michael F. |
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1953 |
McEneney, Mike |
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1958 |
Schilling, Chuck |
|
1962 |
Gildea, William T. |
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1962 |
Gildea, William T. |
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1966 |
Van Etten, Robert |
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1967 |
Chlupsa, Bob |
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1972 |
McGowan, Tom |
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1973 |
Chin, Dennis J |
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1973 |
McFadden, Michael J. |
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1980 |
Waddell, Tom |
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1983 |
Glendon, Bernadette Weiden |
|
1990 |
Kroculick, Joseph |
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1993 |
Taylor, Sandra |
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1994 |
Kearns, Andrew |
|
1994 |
Montemurro, Beth |
|
2005 |
Jallow, Ajola
|
[PARTICIPANTS BY NAME]
Class |
Name |
Section |
???? |
Akmut, Tariq
|
|
1973 |
Chin, Dennis J |
|
1967 |
Chlupsa, Bob |
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1938 |
Gallagher, Joe |
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1962 |
Gildea, William T. |
|
1962 |
Gildea, William T. |
|
1983 |
Glendon, Bernadette Weiden |
|
???? |
Gordon, Phil |
|
???? |
Grandinetti, Saul M. |
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1933 |
Hassett, Buddy |
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1951 |
Helm, Robert |
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2005 |
Jallow, Ajola
|
|
1936 |
Karl, Andy |
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1994 |
Kearns, Andrew |
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1990 |
Kroculick, Joseph |
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1953 |
McEneney, Michael F. |
|
1953 |
McEneney, Mike |
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1973 |
McFadden, Michael J. |
|
1972 |
McGowan, Tom |
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1994 |
Montemurro, Beth |
|
???? |
Pascal, Jack |
|
1935 |
Rescigno, Xavier |
|
???? |
Richardson, Ruth E. |
|
1958 |
Schilling, Chuck |
|
???? |
Simonelli, Lucille |
|
1993 |
Taylor, Sandra |
|
1934 |
Tremark, Nick |
|
1966 |
Van Etten, Robert |
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1980 |
Waddell, Tom |
|
1946 |
Weiden, Matt |
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1949 |
Weiden, Peter |
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1952 |
Weiden, Robert |
HSR/NY Names Phil Gordon Casting Director
Digital Producer (press release) - Newport Beach,CA,United States
... to be." Added Howie
Schwartz, "We are thrilled that Phil has come
on board." Phil Gordon received his Bachelor of Arts in English
from
Manhattan College ...
<http://www.digitalproducer.com/2004/03_mar/news/03_23/dz0y8egw.htm>
HSR/NY Names Phil Gordon Casting Director
NEW YORK, NY (Mar. 24, 2004) -- hsr/ny has named Phil Gordon Casting Director, it was announced this week by Founder/CEO Howard Schwartz. He replaces Theresa McKenna who, after four years in this post, left the company to pursue other interests.
hsr/ny, a SAG and AFTRA signatory, established its full service radio commercial production division and voice casting service for radio and television in 1995. Casting veteran Phil Gordon has taken on overall responsibility for the nine year old hsr/ny department, and will continue to cast voices for radio and television commercials, industrials, animation, Internet, CD-ROMS, and books-on-tape; handle talent payments, contracts and inquiries for talent estimates; and book and schedule talent for recording sessions. Gordon will work closely with Lauren Valentin, hsr/ny Broadcast Business Manager, and Beth Guthrie of Client Relations.
From November 2002, when he returned to the US from London, until he decided to hang his hat permanently at hsr/ny, Phil Gordon was a New York area freelance gun doing voice casting for companies including hsr/ny, Liz Lewis, House Productions, Nutmeg Recording and Pomann Sound.
Gordon had been the Assistant Casting Director at Charkham Casting (London, England) from May 2001 until November 2002, when he decided to move back to the United States. In London he specialized in on-camera casting for television programs, films, commercials and corporate projects. His UK clients included BBC, ITV, Case TV, Wordly Productions, Park Avenue Productions, Great Guns, Alias Films and Deep Water Films. Other of his clients included Danforth Productions (Canada); Filmstones, Czar CCCP and Hazazah (Dutch); Errecerre, Got Film? And Group Films (Spain); Final Touch (Germany); Plus Le Gros Le Logo (France); ITI (Poland); and Condor Productions (Switzerland).
The earlier part of his casting career was spent in New York City, and from September 1998 to February 2001, Gordon was the Casting Director at Pomann Sound Productions (New York, NY) where he cast voiceover talent for television and radios spots, cartoons, television promos and non-broadcast/in-house presentations. His clients included Saatchi & Saatchi, DMB&B, MVBMS/Euro RSCG, Bozell, FCB, Draft Worldwide, Pedone and Partners, Publicis, Cronin & Co., and Deutsch, Inc., among others. From 1988 to 1998 he was based at Voices & Other Media, Inc. (New York, NY) where he began as an assistant and by 1990 was Studio Manager of the recording studio.
At hsr/ny Gordon has already completed work on major campaigns for Accenture (Y&R), Michelob (DDB), Mercedes Benz (Merkley and Partners), Aventis Lovenox (Y&R), and Exxon Mobile (DDB), among others.
On joining the hsr/ny family Gordon explained, "Who wouldn't want to work here? This is the top player in audio post in New York, and the country. The place is always hopping. With fifteen audio-for-video studios, and two casting studios, hsr offers a diverse range of services and is an exciting place to be." Added Howie Schwartz, "We are thrilled that Phil has come on board." Phil Gordon received his Bachelor of Arts in English from Manhattan College (New York, NY), and also completed an audio engineering course at the Center for Media Arts (New York, NY). Gordon, 45, currently makes his home in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn, New York.
hsr/ny, one of the nation's pre-eminent audio facilities serving television and radio advertising, feature film and broadcast clients, is headquartered at 420 Lexington Avenue, Suite 1934, New York, NY 10170; (212) 687-4180; (212) 697-0536
Source: hsr/ny
[JR: The following people have "bounced off" the list. Some bounces expose my poor administrative skills and I can not "who" bounced off. Thus the subscriber total may change more than are shown in this section. I have done what I can to notify them. If you can help "reconnect" – or "connect" new people -- I really appreciate it. And as always, I need your "news".]
|
<The lazy CIC ran out of time> |
|
[JR: The following people have updated their information. To conserve space, "please change my email from X to Y" which isn't very interesting, and to alert you that they are here, I have listed them here. As always, I need your "news" and "recruits".]
1994 |
Kearns, Andrew |
|
2005 |
Jallow, Ajola
|
|
From: Jasper John '68
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 3:27 PM
Subject: Fund raising letter from Brother Berger
A little to flowery for my tastes, but you can see his enthusiasm coming thru. Better than the "send us your dough" letter that I'd write. But that's why I picked Enjinering rather than Arts. John
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Annual Giving Program
MANHATTAN COLLEGE
Mr. Ferdinand J. Reinke
3 Tyne Court
Kendall Park NJ 08824-1424
March 18, 2004
Dear Mr. Reinke,
The author Elie Wiesel wrote, “God loves stories and our lives are the stories God tells.” God continues to tell a great story at Manhattan College. During the season of Lent, the Church encourages us to re-examine our story… individually and collectively. We look at our direction in life, we look at the choices we make and we attempt to give meaning to our actions. As a Christian Brother involved with students daily I call tell you, our students at Manhattan College experience many different relationships in their newly evolving stories as they try to find a fit between talent and head, between possibility and commitment.
Recent Manhattan grads' stories are in constant flux searching for the path meant for them. Middle-aged Jaspers, in their unfolding stories reach critical crossroads, do they stay where they are or change direction before it is too late? Our senior alumni reminisce on their vibrant stories, wondering about what might have been and giving thanks for what is.
Whichever stage of life you now find yourself in, Manhattan College is a part of your story … a proud part. Manhattan built on the foundation prepared by your parents and today the shape of your adulthood is your gift to God. The season of Lent shapes our story as we continue to build on the foundation of youthful experiences and point our students in the direction of a faith-filled adulthood. Lent is at the center of our spring semester in many ways. Let me give you a glimpse of a few stories that are presently shaping the lives of our young people and the College as a whole.
As our Spring semester began, nine Jaspers returned from Honduras continuing a long tradition of reaching out to our neighbors in Central America. Still other students prepare for an alternative Spring Break that will help people who live below the poverty line in Appalachia. Campus Ministry/Social Action also coordinated a first ever Senior Retreat led by recent alumni/ae; sponsors two service learning weekends; will conduct the ever popular Encounter Retreat (open to all students): all this while providing for the daily sacramental needs of our campus. Many of our student-athletes returned early to pursue excellence in our NCAA Division I sports programs and now March Madness adds to the excitement on campus. Others students arrived a \~eek early for additional training as resident assistants to ensure a successful living experience for our students in Overlook, Horan, Jasper (the best!), Chrysostom, as well as the much-needed rental apartment complex on Riverdale Avenue. With increasing numbers of students wishing to live on campus, plans are underway to reconvert Dc La Salle Hall's fourth floor back to residence half space.
The Players are ready to take Broadway (and 242~) by storm with "Grease" on Apr. <ocr dropped text>. The Singers are in fill voice as they practice for two concerts (Classical Apr.4th and Broadway Tunes Apr. 18th). The Jaspers are practicing for their Spring Conceit on Apr. 29m and the Pipers, as always, marched up Fifth Avenue on St. Patrick's Day (perhaps even in a neighborhood near you.) Through the semester, other talented young men and women publish our weekly Quadrangle while others prepare another excellent issue of Manhattan Magazine and the Manhattanite yearbook. The Office of Career Services, with assistance from alum like you, helps students find internships and guides the Class of `04 into the job market as well as graduate school. Meanwhile, the Class of'08 is welcomed at Accepted Students Days. Last, but by no means least, our Physical Plant staff shoveled the snow off the steps of Smith so Jaspers can do - some serious "Quadding."
All of this activity on campus is a direct result of planning and preparation made possible thanks to the generosity of Jasper alumni like you. These "extra-curricular" activities are so much a part of preparing our students for life "after Manhattan College." Thank you for your dedication and sacrifice to ensure that the Jaspers who follow will be beneficiaries of the Lasallian Tradition we treasure and are privileged to be a part of.
Lent is a time for a deep reflection on the activities that bring us closer to God as we prepare for the celebration of Easter. The Spring semester is a time for reflection and growth on campus. What are the activities in our lives that bring us closer to God? I’d bet that your most rewarding moments at Manhattan College were those times when you were least concerned about yourself If so, where does that notion take you today? To family? To friends? To the less fortunate? Like your days at Manhattan, God calls each of us to start from our own potential and in the place where we find ourselves. Lent calls us to put the center of ourselves outside and yield space to others. This season is a graced time to renew the pattern of our activities that bring us to filler life... to the Easter story - the story of trial, tribulation and rebirth~
Please consider mailing a Lenten and sacrificial contribution to Manhattan College today. Your gift - a concrete example and clear demonstration of your dedication to "preparing the way' for a new life for today's students and for generations of Jaspers to conic - will go far to extend the Lasallian Catholic Tradition here at Manhattan.
I look forward with eagerness to what lies ahead in partnership with you... alumni and alumnae who tell a proud stony, a story of new life.
A Blessed Easter to you and your loved ones! May we continue to search for a God who is searching for us.
Sincerely
Brother Robert C. Berger. F.S.C.
Vice President for Student Life &
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
P.S. Please make a contribution today to Manhattan College as part of your Lenten preparations for the promise of the new life in the risen Christ we will commemorate on Easter Sunday. And as always, please keep Manhattan College in your prayers as we continue to pray for you and all our Jasper family around the world.
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From: Jasper John '68
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 11:10 AM
Subject: [jasperjottings] FROM JASPER HEADQUARTERS:
you may purchase auto, homeowner (including renter and condo) and life
insurance.
Manhattan College Alumni Society and Liberty Mutual Insurance Group formed a partnership through which you may purchase auto, homeowner (including renter and condo) and life insurance.
Following are some specific features of the program:
* LOW COST
Liberty's rates compare favorably with most companies and many homeowners could
realize immediate savings
* PREMIUM DISCOUNTS Automobileowners
will always receive a 10% discount, and Homeowners will receive a 5%
discount. Also multi policy discounts
are available
* CONVENIENT PAYMENT EFT deduction or
direct billing options
* ANNUAL POLICIES Guarantees you the same rate all
year
* DEAL DIRECT Liberty Mutual's
exclusive representatives to handle your specific needs
* CLAIMS SERVICE 24 hour claims service
800/486/6189
* EASY ENROLLMANT Contact Denise Kennedy
at: Phone:800/486/6189 ext 645 914/785/0180 ext 645 Fax:914/785/0011 E-mail:Denise.Kennedy@Libertymutual.com
All transaction for providing insurance services handled directly and confidentially between yourself and Liberty Mutual Insurance Group.
======================================================
Career Assistance - Want to Move into a New Job?
Career Tools can help get you rolling in the right direction. Career Tools is a FREE Internet site that provides job search and career management tools. The site includes: introductions to local professionals who can help your career; many job leads and online resume building; networking tools; and a "career wizard" that provides step-by-step directions. You'll also have access to job-search workshops, executive coaching, career assessments, resume writing or interview assistance and much more.
To view the site, go to "Career Services," http://www.manhattan.edu/stntlife/career/alumni.html you will find a link for Career Tools. For more information call Career Services at (718) 862-7224.
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[WebPage1]
http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/e/a/eam15/CV.htm
Beth Montemurro
Division of Social Sciences
1600 Woodland Road
Penn State Abington
Abington, PA 19001
EDUCATION:
2001 Doctor of Philosophy, Sociology, University of Georgia
1999 Graduate Women's Studies Certificate, University of Georgia
1998 Master of Arts, Sociology, University of Georgia
1994 Bachelor of Arts, Sociology, Manhattan College, magna cum laude
Junior Year Foreign Study: McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
HONORS AND AWARDS:
2004 Listed in Who's Who in America
1999 B.O. Williams Outstanding Master's Thesis Award, Department of Sociology, University of Georgia.
1997-2001 National Institutes of Health Research Service Award Recipient,
Institute for Behavioral Research, University of Georgia.
1996-1997 Teaching Assistantship, University of Georgia.
1994 Alpha Kappa Delta.
1994 Phi Beta Kappa
1994 Sociology Medalist, Manhattan College.
1994 Epsilon Sigma Pi, Manhattan College.
1990-1994 Dean's List, Manhattan College.
AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION:
Research Specialties
Sociology of Gender, Sociology of Culture, Popular Culture, Marriage and the
Family, Alcohol and Drugs, Qualitative Methodology, Reality Television.
Teaching Expertise and Interests
Sociology of Gender, Gender Work and Occupations, Introduction to Sociology,
Marriage and the Family, Social Problems, Feminist Theory, Qualitative Research
Methods, Sociology of Culture.
Ruth E. Richardson
Cornell
Assistant Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
317 Hollister Hall
[No Honors]
[No Engagements]
[No Graduations]
[Collector's prayer: And, may perpetual light shine on our fellow departed Jaspers, and all the souls of the faithful departed.]
Your assistance is requested in finding these. Please don’t assume that I will “catch” it via an automated search. Sometimes the data just doesn’t makes it’s way in.
Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio)
March 23, 2004 Tuesday
HEADLINE:
Lucille Braun Simonelli
Lucille Braun Simonelli, 94, died Monday, March 22,
2004 at Pleasantview Nursing Home in Barberton.
She was born in Brooklyn, New York to Herman and Auguste
(nee Krieg) Braun on October 21, 1909 and was married
to Pasquale (Patrick) Simonelli on December 18, 1932
in Brooklyn, New York. She was the mother of Patrick Alfred and James Nicholas Simonelli. Mrs. Simonelli was a
telephone operator and secretary during her working years. She was active as a
Cub Scout Den Mother and in both the Saint Francis Preparatory School and Manhattan
College Mothers' Guild organizations. She was a communicant of St.
Elizabeth Ann Seton Roman Catholic Church in Whiting, New Jersey. She was
renowned for her extraordinary pastries and confectionary delights. She would
prepare and distribute thousands of cookies and Christmas baked goods to
family, friends and business associates. Lucille enjoyed vacationing in
Greenville, New York which was a special annual event through the 1940's,
1950's and 1960's. In later years she and her husband traveled to Europe and
even into North Africa to Casablanca. Lucille lived in Brooklyn, New York from
her birth until 1978 when she and her husband moved to Crestwood Village in
Whiting, New Jersey. She most recently resided at Pleasantview
Nursing Home in Barberton, Ohio.
She is survived by her son, James; her grandchildren, Karen Krauss, Richard,
Douglas, Victor and Frances Simonelli; and her great-grandchildren,
Thomas and Nina Krauss and Victor James, Immanuele
James and Antonino Simonelli.
Further services and burial will take place in New Jersey. Funeral arrangements
are being handled through the Anderson & Campbell Funeral Home
(732-350-5700) in Whiting, New Jersey. She will be interred next to her husband
Patrick in Whiting Memorial Park in Whiting, New Jersey.
(Hahn-Hostetler-Silva, 330-825-2467.)
Please sign the guestbook at
www.ohio.com/obituaries
LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2004
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
March 22,
2004 Monday
All Editions
SECTION:
LOCAL; OBITUARIES; Pg. L03
HEADLINE: OBITUARIES
<extraneous deleted>
SAUL M. GRANDINETTI, 82, of Clifton died Sunday. Before retiring in 1989, he
was a physician with a private practice in Clifton, and also served on the
staff of St. Mary's Hospital, Passaic, for 30 years. He was an Army veteran of
World War II and an Air Force veteran of the Korean War. He was a graduate of Manhattan
College and the University of Louisville Medical
School. He was a member of the Passaic County, New Jersey, and American Medical
associations. Arrangements: Allwood Funeral Home,
Clifton.
<extraneous deleted>
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2004
[Mike reported this one also.]
From: Michael F. McEneney
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 11:55 PM
To: John Reinke (1968)
Subject: Obit
Dear John,
Today's NY Times, 3/22/04 at page B9 has the following Obituary:
Saul M. Grandinetti,M.D. 82, G.P., of Clifton, N.J. on March 21,2004. 1943 graduate of Manhattan College. Beloved husband of Lorie (Hall), dear father of Peter, Paul, Andre and Angela Pryor. Funeral Wednesday, 10 am, at Allwood Funeral Home, 660-6670 Allwood Road, Clifton. Interment Immaculate Conception Cemetery, Upper Montclair. Visiting Tuesday, 2-4 and 7-9 pm.
May He
Rest in Peace.
Best,
Mike
McEneney, Esq, '53 BBA
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/college/manhattan_college_baseball_players.shtml
Manhattan College
"Jaspers"
Major League Baseball Player Alumnus
Name Dates Played M.L. Debut
Tom Loughran 1880 - 1882 06-06-1884
Bill Finley 1882 - 1885 07-12-1886
Jack Taylor 1888 - 1891 09-16-1891
Pete McBride 1894 - 1898 09-20-1898
Henry Thielman 1899 - 1899 04-17-1902
Luis Castro 1892 - 1901 04-23-1902
Doc Scanlan 1899 - 1900 09-24-1903
Cy Ferry 1897 - 1903 05-12-1904
Jim Mullin 1901 - 1904 06-01-1904
Jake Thielman 1898 - 1904 04-23-1905
Pat Duff 1901 - 1904 04-16-1906
Tom O'Hara 1901 - 1906 09-19-1906
Eddie Zimmerman 1902 - 1906 09-29-1906
Cotton Minahan 1901 - 1906 04-21-1907
Chris Mahoney 1904 - 1906 07-12-1910
George Chalmers 1907 - 1911 09-21-1910
Dick Cotter 1909 - 1911 08-17-1911
Jim Hanley 1909 - 1912 07-03-1913
Charlie Meara 1910 - 1914 06-01-1914
Nick Tremark 1931 - 1934 08-09-1934
Buddy Hassett 1930 - 1933 04-14-1936
Joe Gallagher 1934 - 1938 04-20-1939
Xavier Rescigno 1932 - 1935 04-22-1943
Andy Karl 1932 - 1936 04-24-1943
Chuck Schilling 1956 - 1958 04-11-1961
Bob Chlupsa 1964 - 1967 07-16-1970
Tom Waddell 1977 - 1980 04-15-1984
Fast Facts
Manhattan College's baseball program started in 1863 and Tom Loughran was their first player to make it to the Major League level.
Did you know that there are twenty-seven former Manhattan College players who made it to "the show"? Send corrections (with documentation) or updates to Baseball Almanac.
The Manhattan College nickname — the Jaspers — came from the school's most memorable figure, Brother Jasper of Mary. The Prefect of Discipline brought the little known sport of baseball to the school in 1863 and served as their first coach ever.
Copyright
2004 Journal Sentinel Inc.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
March 23, 2004 Tuesday FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 03B
HEADLINE: Akmut trying to unseat La Porte from
council
BYLINE: DARRYL ENRIQUEZ denriquez@journalsentinel.com
Waukesha -- Tariq Akmut is
trying for a third time to prevent veteran politician Joe La Porte from being
re-elected to the Common Council, a job La Porte has held as far back as 1971.
La Porte, 83, said he decided against giving up being alderman of District 1
because "I love it. It's a part of me."
Akmut, 49, is out to break the incumbent's heart.
"We've had an incumbent for a long time, and he is tied into status
quo," Akmut said. "To keep this city moving
forward, we must be open for change, and that's where consistent leadership
comes from."
La Porte has a long list of accomplishments, including a stint as mayor.
Recently, he was involved in stopping a plan to build a Waukesha County
Sheriff's Department indoor shooting range in the County Jail expansion. La
Porte also is a county supervisor and is facing a re-election challenge there,
too.
La Porte said he has worked in his district to control expansion of a nearby
rock quarry.
The city's future concerns include building a new fire station on the west side
and dealing with city water problems, including radium levels that exceed
federal safety standards.
La Porte's background includes an accusation in 2003 that he slapped his
disabled wife at a restaurant while trying to feed her medicine. He says that
he never hit her but was just trying to get pills into her mouth. Criminal
charges were dropped because he successfully completed a deferred prosecution
agreement reached with the district attorney's office.
Akmut and his former wife were charged with
disorderly conduct stemming from a domestic violence incident in their home in
2003. The charge will be reduced to a non-criminal charge pending their
completion of counseling in May.
Name an issue and Akmut has a strategy for it.
He is critical of the rebuilding of Horeb Park pool,
saying that since it is close to the Buchner Park
pool it should have been closed and a new one built in another part of the
city. A "lesser facility" should have been installed at Horeb, he said.
Akmut said city residents are paying taxes twice,
once to fund a dispatch center for the city Police Department and another to
finance the countywide dispatch center. He said a common system makes financial
sense.
Other issues he promised to examine include the lack of availability to
paramedics when the Fire Department responds to mutual aid calls for nearby
communities and furthering intergovernmental cooperation.
The election for a three-year term will be April 6. An alderman is paid $6,000
a year.
Joseph C. La Porte (inc.)
Age: 83
Address; time in district: 1941 Rambling Rose Road; 35 years
Date of birth: Feb. 25, 1921
Occupation: Retired industrial engineer
Elective offices; other government experience: Waukesha alderman 1971 to 1978;
mayor 1978 to 1982; alderman since 1985; Waukesha County supervisor since 1990;
veteran of World War II.
Education: Lincoln High School in Milwaukee in 1940; Pasadena Junior College,
Army engineering.
Family: Married; two children
Tariq Akmut
Age: 49
Address; time in district: 2032 Empire Drive; 12 years
Date of birth: Oct. 25, 1954
Occupation: Environmental and safety consultant
Elective offices; other government experience: Industry representative on the
state Emergency Response Board; industry representative on the Milwaukee County
Local Emergency Planning Committee; member of the Wisconsin DNR External
Technical Advisory Committee; member of City of Waukesha Equal Opportunities
Commission; Shorewood Traffic Safety Committee chairman; and member of the
Shorewood School District Facilities and Operations Committee
Education: Manhattan College in New York; graduate studies at Milwaukee
School of Engineering
Family: Single; one child
LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2004
The Journal News (Westchester County, NY)
March 21, 2004 Sunday
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1B
HEADLINE: VOICES OF NEW YORK
BYLINE: Hannan Adely,
Staff
Fans watch Jaspers fall short in bid
Manhattan team had Yonkers bar crowd hoping for upset
At the River's Edge on McLean Avenue in Yonkers yesterday, customers were
draped in green sweatshirts and green jackets, guzzling Budweisers
and Guinness drafts all afternoon.
But it was hometown pride, not Irish pride that kept them in emerald three days
after St. Patrick's Day. The crowd came out to support Manhattan College's
Jaspers, who were battling Wake Forest for a shot at the Sweet 16 in the
National Collegiate Athletic Association's basketball tournament.
"Manhattan's program isn't that strong," said John Meehan, 68, a
bartender at River's Edge, who came in on his day off to watch the game.
"They're the underdogs and they're local, so you have to root for
them."
Meehan had another reason to root local. His son and daughter graduated from
the college, and he wore the school jacket to prove it.
A suspicious friend, though, demanded to know if Meehan put his money where his
mouth is. Meehan wouldn't say, and his friend kept pressing.
"You bet on Georgia Tech (for the Final Four), didn't you?" asked
William Moore, 64. "God is going to punish you."
Moore admitted that he picked Georgia Tech to go all the way, adding, "I'd
love to see Manhattan win, even if I lose my money. But I don't think they're
gong to come out of it."
The Jaspers didn't win, but they came painfully close,
sending waves of hurrahs and torrents of grunts through the bar.
But the buzzer beater action is precisely what makes March Madness so awesome, said
Robert Harlan, 31, of Yonkers.
"I've been watching all day and all night," Harlan said. "I've
been watching for years. I love it."
Harlan and two friends said Manhattan was a good team to root for after the
demise of the St. John's Red Storm.
"Manhattan is a good local team," said Thomas O'Hagan, 35, who
traveled in from Queens to watch the game. "It's good to see anyone from
New York after St. John's destroyed their program."
Plus, O'Hagan said, he appreciated Manhattan's "honest" program.
"Manhattan is doing the right thing," he said. "They're picking
kids from the city. They're focusing on education."
Harlan and O'Hagan scrutinized every shot, every call and every timeout until
the final seconds, when the Jaspers fell, 84-80.
That was enough to drive half the customers out of the bar. Within minutes,
many of them paid their tabs and started heading for the door.
But Mike Carlino, 54, of Yonkers, stayed put in his
chair a little longer and reflected on the game.
"It got so close and we could have won," he said. "But what are
you going to do? It was an exciting game. That's March Madness."
Reach Hannan Adely at
hadely@thejournalnews.com or 914-694-3525.
LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2004
The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)
March 19, 2004 Friday
Final Edition
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. C9
HEADLINE: Jaspers have fans big and small
BYLINE: Ryan Teague Beckwith, Staff Writer
RALEIGH -- Jack Daly is only 7, but he has his future planned out. After high
school, he's going to go to Manhattan College and play NCAA basketball
with the Jaspers. His number will be 3, just like his hero, star guard Luis
Flores.
Daly was not the only Flores fan at the RBC Center on Thursday afternoon.
Dozens of large green placards with "Go Jaspers" on one side and the
No. 3 on the other were scattered throughout the audience.
Other teams had their own heroes -- Andre Barrett for Seton Hall, Chris Duhon for Duke -- but few attracted the fervor generated by
Flores as he led the Jaspers to a 75-60 win over Florida.
Of course, college basketball is a team sport, and most die-hard fans come to
root for their alma mater, or their hometown college, or just to enjoy the
day's competition. But among certain fans, the game sometimes comes down to one
man.
For Jack Daly's 6-year-old brother, Matthew, that player was another,
Manhattan's 5-foot-8 guard Kenny Minor. The two kids, who work as ball boys
during Manhattan team practices, know both players well.
"Matthew likes Kenny because he's small. He thinks he's almost as big as
him," said Jack, with a disapproving tone. "I like Luis because he
averages more points and he's a friend to me. He's almost like a brother."
A few seats away, retired IBM executive Jack Pascal of Garden City, N.Y.,
watched the players closely. Pascal, 72, played for Manhattan College at
Madison Square Garden in the 1953 and 1954 National Invitation Tournaments.
Since then, he goes to as many Manhattan games as he can and meets up with a
former teammate for postseason games. Though he echoed Jack Daly's assessment
of Flores, he had his eye on another player, whom he wouldn't name -- a student
who is currently studying on a scholarship Pascal endowed.
"Really, they're all good," he said. "It's a small school, but
they play like heck."
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
Copyright 2004 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC
All Rights Reserved
The New York Sun
March 18, 2004 Thursday
SECTION: ON
THE TOWN; Pg. 23
HEADLINE: OUT&ABOUT With A.L. GORDON
BYLINE: mailto:agordon@nysun.com
They ate filet mignon, not corned beef, but the 1,800
or so men at the Sheraton last night were Irish through and through. The
occasion was the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick's 220th
anniversary dinner. Guests - including 14 Brennans,
20 Burkes, 19 Murphys, nine O'Briens,
15 O'Connors, and 28 Sullivans
- found their places at 209 tables jammed into the Imperial Ballroom.
Bagpipers heralded the guests on the dais, among them Governor Pataki, who sat
in the center; Edward Cardinal Egan; the president of Fordham University, Reverend
Joseph M. McShane; the president of Manhattan
College, Reverend Brother Thomas J. Scanlan, and
the president of the American Irish Historical Society, Kevin Cahill.
The society's Glee Club led all in singing "The Hail of the Friendly
Sons." It was followed by the invocation by Cardinal Egan. "We pray
for our women and men in the armed forces.... We pray for our friends in
Madrid....We pray that the Irish across the sea may continue to be a people of
faith, justice, and compassion," Cardinal Egan said.
After the meal, the president of the society, Robert Reilly, and a Nobel Peace
Prize winner, John Hume, gave toasts.
The New York Sun asked several guests to share an Irish pearl of wisdom in
honor of the occasion. Brothers Chris and Robert Gomprecht,
who attended in honor of their grandfather, recalled the Irish saying:
"May the wind always be at your back."
John Lynch, who wears his green bowtie only on St. Patrick's Day, offered up
this maxim: "Treat people the way you want to be treated."
Michael Walsh, seen sipping a scotch and soda with Joseph Barry, said his
mother used to say, "When I'm not fishing, I'm mending my nets."
"That philosophy has made me a better person," Mr. Walsh said.
Also shared were sentiments about the St. Patrick's Day holiday. "It's a
great day to be Irish," said Denis Sullivan. Charles Stillman
commented on the society's wisdom: "They were smart enough to invite a
Jewish boy to the party." Indeed, as Chris Schueller
said, "Everybody's Irish today."
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2004
The New York Post
March 18, 2004 Thursday
SECTION: All
Editions; Pg. 85
HEADLINE: 'BEST GROUP OF GUYS YOU CAN BE AROUND'
BYLINE: Steve Serby
RALEIGH, N.C. - Here come the Can-hattan College
Jaspers, reaching for that one shining moment only they can see in their
dreams, that Fred Astaire moment at the Big Dance
today at noon against Florida.
"If any team deserves to fly down to North Carolina and play an epic game
in front of 20,000 people - I don't know if they can win the game or not - but
they deserve to believe they can win, they deserve to try to win the game, and
they deserve to be in this game. They deserve to be in this game," Manhattan
College coach Bobby Gonzalez said.
You want to root for an underdog, America? Root for Can-hattan.
"This team is like the best group of guys you can be around," Jason
Benton said inside locker room 4 at the RBC Center. "If
America knew this team? They would love 'em."
The indefatigable, fast-talking coach loves 'em, and
tells why.
"The reason this is my favorite team," Gonzalez said, "is out of
29 games, we wanted it the most and played the hardest almost every time. You
sit back sometimes as a coach and just say, 'Man, will I ever have a group like
this again?' "
Billy Donovan's group has McDonald's All-Americans. Gonzo's
group eats at McDonald's, and feels like it belongs anyway.
"We're not like a deer in headlights this year," Justin Gatling said.
Can-hattan.
"Why not us?" Dave Holmes said, smiling.
Here's Gonzalez' look at "us":
Luis Flores: Shuns junk food for rice and beans. His Washington Heights barber,
Hamlet, gives him free advice and haircuts. "He's almost surprised that
people carry the Dominican flag to the games and little kids want his
autograph; he's almost caught off guard by it," Gonzalez said. "The
greatest thing about Luis is sort of his innocence."
Benton: "When I first recruited Jason Benton, he goes, 'Coach I want No.
51.' I said, 'How come?' Because he loves Bernie
Williams."
Holmes: "Works at my camp. He's just great with young kids. They follow
him around like little ducklings. Dave Holmes is like a big, 6-6, undersized
warrior beast, he's screaming in games, he's screaming in the huddles, he's
grabbing rebounds and pounding his chest. He's the heart and soul guy, no
question."
Peter Mulligan: "We're coming out of winning the [MAAC] championship in
the hallway, and he comes over and puts his arm around me, he goes, 'Coach,
thank you for bringing me into the family.' "
Jason Wingate: "The middle of the game, he'll float. The last two minutes
of the game? The guy's like ice water. It's ridiculous. So we always say,
'Jason, we're gonna start ya,
we're gonna finish ya;
we're not sure about the middle.' "
Kenny Minor: Does a Gonzalez impression. "Great smile.
The heart of a lion. So proud of the fact that he's Carmelo Anthony's best friend, he's so excited about Carmelo being in the NBA. He walks around with Denver
gear."
Here comes Can-hattan.
"I felt like [last year] I really had to get them to believe, because I
wasn't sure if they believed," Gonzalez said. "I don't know how much
I gotta get this team to believe."
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2004
Tampa Tribune (Florida)
March 18,
2004 Thursday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION:
SPORTS; Pg. 1
HEADLINE: Even Gators Fans Have To Root For The
Man Who Roots For Jaspers
BYLINE: MARTIN FENNELLY, mailto:mfennelly@tampatrib.com
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C.
RALEIGH, N.C. — It's March. Underdogs are everywhere. It's the best thing about
any NCAA Tournament. The teams carrying the slingshots dream the biggest
dreams. And we fall in love.
So it is with tiny Manhattan College, which today faces the Florida
Gators. The 12th-seeded Jaspers suddenly are the basketball pride of New York
City, where they often get overlooked. Manhattan's campus, home to 3,400
students and an arena smaller than Florida's practice facility, isn't even on
Manhattan Island. It's in the Bronx. Guess they ran out of room.
But there's a place in March for Manhattan. The Jaspers, champions of the Metro
Atlantic Athletic Conference, are making their second consecutive NCAA
appearance. They fear no one. They're city tough and they run the floor. Their
fast-talking New York coach, Bobby Gonzalez, talks faster than Florida's
fast-talking New York coach, Billy Donovan.
And there's Ronnie.
Ronnie Weintraub, the best fan any school ever had,
sat courtside as his beloved team practiced Wednesday. The gabby 43-year-old
man wore a green Manhattan sweat shirt and cap. The names of all Jaspers and
Gators already were written in his scorebook. You couldn't decipher his scrawl,
but Ronnie could. Hanging from Ronnie's neck were two of his Special Olympics
medals. Ronnie won at shot put. He warned about Manhattan.
"Don't count us out," Ronnie said.
Part Of The Family
Everyone in Manhattan athletics knows Ronnie Weintraub.
The Jaspers flew to Raleigh late Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, Manhattan
Athletic Director Bob Byrnes picked up Ronnie at the bus station. As Byrnes
looked for Ronnie, the station manager saw Byrnes and asked "You here for
Ronnie?" Ronnie, fresh from a 10-hour overnight trip, had been telling
everyone about his Jaspers.
It began 15 years ago. Byrnes, a Manhattan alumnus, was at a Special Olympics
event on campus. A mentally handicapped competitor asked if he could come see a
Manhattan basketball game. Byrnes said sure, be my guest. Ronnie showed up at Draddy Gymnasium, Manhattan's shoe box.
"I thought it was a one-time deal," Byrnes said.
For 15 years, Ronnie has made nearly every game at Draddy.
From his city apartment, where he lives under the supervision of a group-home
manager, he rides the subway for an hour and a half to reach Manhattan's
campus. He changes trains twice.
There's more. If Ronnie doesn't hop a ride with Byrnes, he takes a bus or train
to Jaspers road games. He often rides home on the team bus, which drops him at
the subway stop near campus. Once, Manhattan played in Baltimore and it snowed
so hard only a few fans attended. One of the referees didn't show. But there
was Ronnie.
"Ronnie's so great," Bobby Gonzalez said.
It figures Ronnie would be a Manhattan fan. An underdog for
the underdogs. Byrnes knows the details. Ronnie's dad, who was mentally
ill, murdered Ronnie's mother, then killed himself. Ronnie was 6. He wound up
in a special-needs home. He has older brothers who are twins but doesn't see
much of them. Mostly his family is Jaspers basketball.
Ronnie sits on press row for home games. He does play-by-play out loud and
keeps detailed statistics in a spiral notebook. He hands copies of his
statistics to media. "His stats are accurate," Byrnes said.
"He's got some Rain Man in him."
Byrnes has a grown son with special education needs. "I'm not sure how
Ronnie would be classified, officially," Byrnes said. "Let's just say
he's a special guy. I think that when Ronnie is around, our kids appreciate him
and appreciate what they have even more."
Ronnie goes to other sporting events at Manhattan. He knows the college
president. He eats in the school cafeteria and studies his statistics in the
school library. He attends commencement. He hugs the basketball kids and adorns
them with nicknames. He dubbed Manhattan bruiser Dave Holmes
"Godzilla." Whenever Godzilla sees Ronnie, he smiles.
"It's simple with Ronnie," Holmes said. "What you get is
love."
The Ultimate Road Trip
Ronnie Weintraub watched his beloved Jaspers practice
Wednesday. He mentioned his statistics. "You should see my files," he
said. Bob Byrnes hopes to introduce Ronnie to Duke coach
Mike Krzyzewski, whose team is in Raleigh for the
tournament. Ronnie wants to meet Shania Twain.
"I'd like to date her."
Ronnie works 20 hours a week as a messenger for a law firm, but the firm, and
Ronnie's doctor, allow for Manhattan road trips. And this is the trip of trips.
"This is it," Ronnie said. "Who's going to be our heroes?"
Some give Ronnie's team a real chance at beating Florida. In 1995, Manhattan
upset Oklahoma in the first round of the tournament. The Jaspers are still a
long shot. That isn't always a bad thing. "I think it's
human nature to root for the underdog," Bobby Gonzalez said.
Ronnie Weintraub smiled.
"Manhattan by five," he predicted.
Underdogs are everywhere.
Don't count anybody out.
NOTES: MARTIN FENNELLY
GRAPHIC: PHOTO
Manhattan super fan Ronnie Weintraub watches his team
practice at the RBC Center in Raleigh, N.C., on Wednesday in preparation for
today's NCAA matchup with Florida.
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2004
Copyright 2004
Times Publishing Company
St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
March 18, 2004 Thursday 0 South Pinellas Edition
SECTION:
SPORTS; Pg. 1C
HEADLINE: An inconvenient Cinderella
BYLINE: GARY SHELTON
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C.
The attitude. Under normal circumstances, you would
love the 'tude.
They take the court with a curl on their lip, and they seem to dare you to
suggest they do not belong. They are fearless. They are defiant. The chip on
their shoulder is the size of a coliseum.
They move about the court, silently, solemnly. Their faces are those of roofers
in the midday sun. There is a job to do. There is a name to make.
The effort. Most years, you would love their fury.
They bounce around the court in fast forward, five pinballs
inside the same machine. They scrap. They claw. If it makes the difference down
the stretch, they are willing to bite.
This is the dance of the overachiever, of basketball players determined to play
bigger than the tape measure says, faster than the stopwatch says, better than
the critics expect. This is the look of a team that invites you to notice it,
even if just for a while.
These are the Jaspers of Manhattan College.
And if not for the fact they play Florida today, all of Florida might fall for
them.
It is a familiar story by now, a charming bunch of dreamers from a tiny school,
buzzing around the NCAA Tournament and making life miserable for the name-brand
programs. Every year, it seems one of them comes along, full of effort and
energy, and before the day is done, the big-name coaches don't look so smart
and the big-name players don't look so slick.
In another year, you could begin a pretty good love affair with Manhattan.
Except, um, it happens to be in the way of the Gators.
Poor Billy Donovan. Most years, he might fall in love
with Manhattan himself. For one thing, the Jaspers are coached by his old
buddy, Bobby Gonzalez. For another, Manhattan's players attack the game, pretty
much, the way Donovan did when he was at Providence, sliding across floors
until ambition overtakes ability.
As it is, Donovan keeps talking as if it's his team, which was No. 1 in the
nation this year for, oh, about 11 minutes, that is the real underdog here.
"We really don't have much ability," Donovan said. "That's a
fact."
Donovan went on, talking about Manhattan's seniors and Manhattan's experience,
about Manhattan's defense and Manhattan's record. After a while, you wanted to
interrupt and offer this: Hey, it's Manhattan!
For a counterargument, we take you to Gonzalez - and don't you have to love a
coach named Gonzo? - who could remind Donovan of a thing or two about facilities
so shabby even he has to laugh when talking about them, about marginal recruits
who stammer and buy time as they hope for something, anything better, about bus
rides well into the night.
"When I worked for Pete (Gillen) at Virginia, he used to put it this
way," Gonzalez said. "They're recruiting McDonald's All-Americans,
and we can't even afford to eat at McDonald's."
Oh, of course Florida should win. Florida recruits players who won't even
return phone calls to Manhattan. Put it this way: If a recruit bombs at
Florida, he will want the school he transfers to be of more reknown
than Manhattan.
Yet, there is something lovable about Manhattan. For one thing, it isn't even
in Manhattan. It's in the Bronx. How cool is that? The entire college travels
incognito.
For another thing, there is the nickname. The Jaspers.
Gonzalez says that's the first question he gets from recruits: What's a Jasper?
Here's the story. The team was named for Brother Jasper, who used to work at
Manhattan in the early 1900s. Brother Jasper, the legend goes,
also invented baseball's seventh-inning stretch. Who knows? Maybe he was
trying to see all the way to Manhattan, the island.
How can you not love the legend of Junius Kellogg?
Kellogg was the former Manhattan player who said no to fixers and helped bring
down college basketball's point-shaving scandals of 1951. Three years later,
while playing for the Globetrotters, an auto accident left Kellogg in a
wheelchair for the rest of his life.
How can you not love a program that has embraced a fan such as Ronnie Weintraub over the past 15 years? Weintraub
is a mentally handicapped fan who befriended athletic director Bob Byrne in
1989, and now he's as much a part of the team as the mascot. Weintraub keeps his own stats, and Byrne says he's seldom
off. "He's Rain Man," Byrne has said.
How can you not love a program that has a guard like Luis Flores, a mongoose of
a player who will not slow down? Flores is the Jaspers' best player, averaging
20 points in each of the past three seasons. If Manhattan is to do any damage
in this tournament, and everyone in the building knows this, it will do so with
the ball in Flores' hands.
How can you not love a team that sees none of its own shortcomings, a team that
dares to look at the NCAA Tournament as if it is willing to take it by force?
To Gonzalez, that's the beauty of his team.
"These guys are fearless," Gonzalez said. "They play hard, and
they have a chip on their shoulder. When I watch a game, I pull for the team
that plays harder. I think we did that 29 times this year, and that's why this
is my favorite team."
Turns out, Gonzalez might not be alone. On the school's Web site, there was a
poll Wednesday asking fans how they expected their team to do.
Eight-five percent expected a win over the Gators. Seventy-one percent expected
at least the Sweet 16. Forty-nine percent expected the national championship.
On another day, how could you not love the confidence?
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2004
[RESUMES]
CIC'S SUGGESTION: Everyone who works for a major corporation should send resumes placed here into their HR system or department. While you may not see the value, it may be that one thing that delivers an opportunity to a fellow Jasper that changes their life.
FROM THE COLLEGE’S WEB SITE: Your resume can be sent to employers who contact our office seeking to fill positions. For more information contact the Recruitment Coordinator at (718) 862-7965 or Email to JGlenn@manhattan.edu
Actual jobs at MC are at: http://www.manhattan.edu/hrs/jobs
Subject: resume - joseph kroculick - march 23, 2004
Author: Joseph Kroculick
Newsgroup: misc.jobs.resumes
Date: Mar 22, 2004
Excerpt: ... of Science in Computer Science, Stevens Institute of
Technology, Hoboken, NJ, 1994 Master of Science in Electrical Engineering,
Manhattan College, Riverdale, NY ...
Read article
<http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22manhattan+college%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF
-8&scoring=d&selm=4c13de26.0403222126.1d76e64c%40posting.google.com>
________________________________
From: Joseph Kroculick
Subject: resume - joseph kroculick
- march 23, 2004
This is the only article in this thread
View: Original Format
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.resumes
Date: 2004-03-22 21:26:09 PST
Joseph B. Kroculick
Jim Thorpe, PA 18229
Dear Hiring Manager:
Enclosed is a resume in response to one of your advertisements that appeared recently. I would appreciate your time in evaluating my qualifications in relation to your current needs for a Requirements Engineer or Systems Engineer.
I have over 11 year experience in writing requirements and creating software models for mission-critical systems including telecommunication systems, and military communication networks. I have developed broad expertise in networking through direct industrial experience and research. In the last few months, I have been working on my thesis in Multilayer Network Survivability at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Should a need arise in leading requirements management or systems engineering at your company, please feel free to contact me at the phone number or email address listed. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely yours,
Joseph B. Kroculick
==
Joseph B. Kroculick
Jim Thorpe, PA 18229
GOAL
Provide technical leadership in the areas of systems modeling and requirements analysis.
CAREER SUMMARY
- Seven years experience gathering and managing business and
product requirements.
- Systems integration skills including integrating concurrent recovery
processes associated with many networking technologies.
- Presented at conferences provisioning techniques to make all network devices in
a multilayer network cooperate during a fiber cut.
- Three masters degrees in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and
Engineering Management and one bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering.
- Willing to relocate internationally.
EDUCATION
Doctor of Philosophy in Progress, 1996 - present, full time,
Aug 2001 - present, Computer Science, Illinois Institute of
Technology, Chicago, IL
Master of Science in Engineering Management, New Jersey
Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, 2003
Master of Science in Computer Science, Stevens Institute
of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, 1994
Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, Manhattan
College, Riverdale, NY, 1992
Bachelor in Engineering in Electrical Engineering, Manhattan
College, Riverdale, NY, 1990
SPECIAL SKILLS
Programming Languages: C++, C, Perl,
Visual Basic, Python, Ruby, Fortran, Ada, Smalltalk,
Lisp, Prolog, VHDL, Verilog, XML, HTML
Development Environments: ActivePerl, ActivePython, Visual C++, Delphi
Typesetting: Word, MikTek,
Visio, Acrobat, Ghostscript
Operating Systems: Linux, Unix, Windows 95/98/2000
Application Packages: Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer
Software Engineering Tools and Techniques: Opnet,
Rose RealTime, ObjecTime,
Unified Modeling Language (UML), ROOM, OMT, ClearCase,
ClearQuest, MATLAB
Databases: SQL, Oracle 6 to 9i, Sybase
Requirements Engineering Tools: Rational Requisite Pro, Telelogic
Doors
<extraneous deleted>
[JR: Email me for the whole resume. ]
The only reason for putting this here is to give us a chance to attend one of these games and support "our" team.
Date Day Sport Opponent
Location Time/Result
3/28/04 Sunday W. Lacrosse Longwood
University HOME 10:00 AM
3/28/04 Sunday Baseball Niagara* HOME
12:00 PM
3/28/04 Sunday Softball Yale New Haven, CT 1:00 PM
3/28/04 Sunday W. Tennis Fordham Bronx, NY
1:00 PM
3/30/04 Tuesday W. Tennis
Fairfield* Fairfield, CT 2:30 PM
3/30/04 Tuesday Baseball Fordham Bronx, NY 3:00 PM
3/31/04 Wednesday M. Tennis Stony
Brook Stony Brook, NY 2:00 PM
3/31/04 Wednesday Softball Saint
Francis (NY) HOME 2:30 PM
3/31/04 Wednesday Baseball Pace HOME
3:00 PM
3/31/04 Wednesday W. Lacrosse LIU
Brooklyn HOME 3:30 PM
4/1/04 Thursday Softball Monmouth HOME
2:30 PM
4/2/04 Friday Track & Field Texas
Relays Austin, TX 10:00 AM
4/2/04 Friday W. Tennis Long Island
Univ. HOME 3:00 PM
4/2/04 Friday Track & Field Sam
Howell Invitational Princeton 6:00 PM
4/3/04 Saturday Crew Manhattan
Invitational Regatta New Rochelle,
NY TBA
4/3/04 Saturday Golf Yale Spring
Opener New Haven, CT 8:30 AM
4/3/04 Saturday Track & Field Texas
Relays Austin, TX 10:00 AM
4/3/04 Saturday Track & Field Sam
Howell Invitational Princeton 11:00 AM
4/3/04 Saturday W. Lacrosse Canisius HOME 11:00 AM
4/3/04 Saturday Baseball Siena*
(DH) HOME 12:00 PM
4/3/04 Saturday W. Tennis Rider* HOME
12:00 PM
4/3/04 Saturday M. Lacrosse Virginia
Military Institute* HOME 2:00 PM
4/4/04 Sunday Golf Yale Spring
Opener New Haven, CT 8:30 AM
4/4/04 Sunday W. Lacrosse Niagara HOME
10:00 AM
4/4/04 Sunday Baseball Siena* HOME
12:00 PM
4/4/04 Sunday Softball Rider* Lawrencville,
NJ 1:00 PM
4/4/04 Sunday W. Tennis Monmouth West Long Branch, NJ 1:00 PM
4/6/04 Tuesday Golf Saint
Peter's/FDU West Orange, NJ 1:30 PM
4/6/04 Tuesday Softball La Salle HOME
2:30 PM
4/6/04 Tuesday M. Lacrosse Rutgers Piscataway, NJ 7:00 PM
4/7/04 Wednesday Softball Colgate Hamilton, NY 2:00 PM
4/7/04 Wednesday Baseball
Lafayette Easton, PA 3:30 PM
4/8/04 Thursday Track & Field
Sea-Ray Relays Knoxville,
TN 10:00 AM
4/8/04 Thursday Golf Susquehana Spring Invitational Selisngroe,
PA 1:00 PM
4/8/04 Thursday W. Lacrosse
Fairfield HOME 4:00 PM
4/8/04 Thursday Softball Army West Point, NY 6:00 PM
4/9/04 Friday Track & Field Sea-Ray
Relays Knoxville, TN 10:00 AM
4/9/04 Friday M. Lacrosse
Massachusetts Amherst, MA 7:00 PM
4/10/04 Saturday Track & Field
Sea-Ray Relays Knoxville,
TN 10:00 AM
4/10/04 Saturday Baseball Marist*
(DH) Poughkeepsie, NY 12:00 PM
4/12/04 Monday Golf Rehoboth Beach
Invitational Rehoboth Beach, DE 7:45 AM
4/12/04 Monday Baseball Marist* Poughkeepsie, NY 12:00 PM
4/13/04 Tuesday M. Lacrosse
Quinnipiac Hamden, CT 3:00 PM
4/13/04 Tuesday W. Lacrosse Stony
Brook HOME 3:30 PM
4/13/04 Tuesday M. Tennis Marist* HOME
3:30 PM
4/14/04 Wednesday Softball Saint
Peter's* Jersey City, NJ 3:00 PM
4/14/04 Wednesday M. Tennis
Fairfield* Fairfield, CT 3:00 PM
4/14/04 Wednesday Baseball Army West Point, NY 3:30 PM
4/15/04 Thursday Softball Albany Albany, NY 3:00 PM
4/16/04 Friday Track & Field
Metropolitan Championships
TBA 10:00 AM
4/16/04 Friday Golf Boston
University Cape Cod, MA 12:00 PM
4/16/04 Friday M. Tennis Siena* HOME
3:00 PM
4/16/04 Friday W. Tennis Siena* HOME
3:00 PM
4/17/04 Saturday Crew 2004 Knecht Cup Camden,
NJ TBA
4/17/04 Saturday Track & Field
Metropolitan Championships
TBA 10:00 AM
4/17/04 Saturday Baseball Iona*
(DH) HOME 12:00 PM
4/17/04 Saturday W. Lacrosse Siena Loudonville, NY 1:00 PM
4/17/04 Saturday M. Lacrosse St.
Joseph's* HOME 1:00 PM
4/17/04 Saturday Softball Marist* Poughkeepsie, NY 1:00 PM
4/17/04 Saturday W. Tennis Marist* HOME
2:00 PM
4/18/04 Sunday Crew 2004 Knecht Cup Camden,
NJ TBA
4/18/04 Sunday M. Tennis St.
John's Jamaica, NY TBA
4/18/04 Sunday Baseball Iona* HOME
12:00 PM
4/18/04 Sunday W. Lacrosse Marist Poughkeepsie, NY 1:00 PM
4/18/04 Sunday Softball Siena* Loudonville, NY 1:00 PM
4/18/04 Sunday W. Tennis Wagner Staten Island, NY 1:00 PM
4/20/04 Tuesday Golf Peacock
Invitational Ringoes,
NJ 10:00 AM
4/20/04 Tuesday Softball Central
Connecticut State New Britain, CT 3:00 PM
4/20/04 Tuesday Baseball Sacred
Heart HOME 3:30 PM
4/21/04 Wednesday Baseball Hofstra Hempstead,
NY 3:30 PM
4/21/04 Wednesday W. Lacrosse Central
Connecticut New Britain, CT 6:00 PM
4/22/04 Thursday Track & Field Penn
Relays Philadelphia, PA 10:00 AM
4/23/04 Friday M. Tennis MAAC
Championships Flushing, NY TBA
4/23/04 Friday W. Tennis MAAC
Championships Flushing, NY TBA
4/23/04 Friday Golf MAAC
Championships Lake Buena Vista, FL 7:30 AM
4/23/04 Friday Track & Field Penn
Relays Philadelphia, PA 10:00 AM
4/24/04 Saturday M. Tennis MAAC
Championships Flushing, NY TBA
4/24/04 Saturday W. Tennis MAAC
Championships Flushing, NY TBA
4/24/04 Saturday Golf MAAC
Championships Lake Buena Vista, FL TBA
4/24/04 Saturday Crew Spring Metropolitan
Rowing Championships New Rochelle,
NY TBA
4/24/04 Saturday Softball Niagara* HOME
9:00 AM
4/24/04 Saturday Track & Field Penn
Relays Philadelphia, PA 10:00 AM
4/24/04 Saturday Baseball LeMoyne* (DH)
Syracuse, NY 12:00 PM
4/24/04 Saturday W. Lacrosse LeMoyne Syracuse,
NY 12:00 PM
4/24/04 Saturday M. Lacrosse
Marist* HOME 1:00 PM
4/25/04 Sunday W. Tennis MAAC
Championships Flushing, NY TBA
4/25/04 Sunday M. Tennis MAAC
Championships Flushing, NY TBA
4/25/04 Sunday Golf MAAC
Championships Lake Buena Vista, FL TBA
4/25/04 Sunday Crew MAAC Rowing
Championships New Rochelle, NY TBA
4/25/04 Sunday Softball Canisius* HOME 9:00 AM
4/25/04 Sunday Baseball LeMoyne* Syracuse,
NY 12:00 PM
4/27/04 Tuesday M. Lacrosse
Wagner* HOME 3:30 PM
4/28/04 Wednesday Baseball
Columbia HOME 3:00 PM
4/28/04 Wednesday Softball
Lafayette HOME 3:00 PM
4/29/04 Thursday Softball Fairleigh Dickinson
HOME 3:00 PM
4/30/04 Friday W. Lacrosse MAAC
Semi-Finals Buffalo, NY TBA
WOMEN'S LACROSSE DROPS SEASON OPENER TO MT. ST. MARY'S, 16-6
Riverdale, NY (March 27, 2004) - The Lady Jaspers in their season opener fell to Mount Saint Mary's with the score of 16-6. The Lady Jaspers were led by Senior Mary Dudek who tallied two goals and two assists. The Lady Jaspers are back in action tommorrow when they host Longwood University at 10 am.
1-----
MEN'S TENNIS CRUISES PAST LOYOLA, 6-1
Riverdale, NY (March 26, 2004)- The men's tennis team beat Loyola (MD) today, 6-1 at Horace Mann. Erez Cohen and Diego Alvarado led the way winning the number one doubles match, 8-1, over Loyola's Nick Bowers and Dan Schiemel. The Jaspers improve to a 7-3 overall record and 3-0 in the MAAC.
Zoltan Bus led the way in singles beating Bowers in the number one match with the scores, 6-2, 7-5. In the number two singles match Cohen beat Dan Schiemel, 6-2, 6-1. Jasper David Alvarado won the number three singles match, 6-2, 6-1.
The Jaspers compete again on Wednesday, March 31 against Stony Brook in Stony Brook, NY at 2 pm.
Doubles
1. Nick Bowers vs. Erez Cohen MC 8-1 Dan Schiemel Diego Alvarado
2. Jonathon Falcichio vs.Zoltan Bus MC 8-1 John Curren
Nicholas Gravagna
3. Adam Wessinger vs.Klim
Fedosienko MC 8-1 Bill Horne Alon
Cohen
Singles
1. Nick Bowers vs.Zoltan Bus
MC 6-2, 7-5
2. Dan Schiemel vs. Erez Cohen MC 6-2, 6-1
3. Jonathon Falcichio vs.
David Alvarado MC 6-2, 6-1
4. Adam Wessinger vs.
Nicholas Gravagna MC 5-7, 6-2, 6-2
5. John Curren vs. Klim Fedosienko LC 4-6, 6-3, 5-10
6. Bill Horne vs.Pawel Wawrzyniak
MC 6-1, 6-0
2-----
GRECO NAMED TO JOHNNY BENCH AWARD WATCH LIST
Wichita, KS (March 26, 2004)- Senior catcher Josh Greco has been named to the Johnny Bench Award Watch list, it was announced recently by the Great Wichita Area Sports Commission. This is the first time Greco has been named to the list.
The Greater Wichita Area Sports Commission announces the official watch list for the 2004 Johnny Bench Award. This year's watch list is compiled from information based on the 2003 season, 2004 pre-season honors and nominations from coaches. Because the award is given annually to the top National Collegiate Catcher, the list will be updated to include other candidates until May 3, 2004. The watch list will be narrowed down to ten semi-finalists, whom will be announced May 20, 2004. The national voting panel will select the three finalists at the end of May, and they will be announced on June 3, 2004. Another vote will take place during the College World Series. All finalists will be brought to Wichita, and the 2004 Johnny Bench Award recipient will be announced at the 7th Annual Greater Wichita Sports Banquet on June 30, 2004.
2004 Johnny Bench Award Watch List
Josh Greco - Sr Manhattan College
3-----
FLORES, GONZALEZ HONORED BY USBWA
Riverdale, NY (March 26, 2004)- Senior guard Luis Flores and head coach Bobby Gonzalez were each recognized by the US Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) for the tremendous season the Jaspers had in 2003-04. Flores was named USBWA District 2 Player of the Year, while Gonzalez was named USBWA District 2 Coach of the Year. The voting for the honors was conducted by the USBWA national membership.
Manhattan ended its season with a 25-6 record after advancing to the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament following a 75-60 win over fifth-seeded Florida. The Jaspers gained an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament after winning their second straight MAAC Tournament Championship. Manhattan also won its second straight MAAC Regular Season Championship after posting a 16-2 conference slate. The 16 wins were the most since the MAAC exanded to an 18 game regular season.
4-----
MANHATTAN TO INDUCT EIGHT INTO ATHLETIC HALL OF FAME
Riverdale, NY (March 26, 2004)– On Saturday March 27, the Manhattan College Alumni Society will proudly welcome eight of its finest student-athletes and administrators into the Athletic Hall of Fame at the 25th Annual Athletic Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. The ceremony was originally scheduled for the fall, but was postponed due to inclement weather.
The 2003 Hall of Fame class includes former track and field standouts Bruce Philip '89 and Pat Petersen ‘82, baseball All-American John Blanco '53, softball record holder Stacy Cowan '92, men's basketball greats Richard Wilbur '58 and Keith Bullock '93, women's basketball standout Donna Seybold '90, and visionary Athletic Director Bob Byrnes '68.
Philip, a four time All-American in track and field, hold the indoor school records at 400 meters (46.22), 500 meters (61.2), and mile relay (3:09.25), as well as the outdoor record for the Distance Medley Relay (9:33.40). In addition, he was a five-time IC4A champion and won 11 Metropolitan Championships.
Petersen, a decorated long distance runner, holds two school records, in the indoor 5000m (14:05), and the outdoor 10000m (28:38), though he only competed at Manhattan for two years. He was the IC4A champion in the indoor 5000m in 1981 and the MAAC Champion in Cross Country in 1981 (24:48). Petersen qualified for the NCAA Cross Country Championships twice, and broke the 25-minute barrier at the Van Cortlandt Park Cross Country course 10 times. He also achieved a number one USA marathon ranking in 1987, and was ranked second in 1985 and 1989.
Blanco was the first Manhattan baseball player to receive All-America status after being named a Second-Team All-American at third base in 1952. He batted .363 during the 1952 season, where he was also named to the All-Metropolitan and NCAA District 2 teams. Cowan was named Manhattan College Woman of the Year and an Academic All-American in 1992 after setting or tying four NCAA Softball single-season records; batting average (.581), hits (92), runs (68), and hitting streak (24 games). The .581 season average is still third in NCAA Division I and her .530 career batting average still leads NCAA Division I. She also holds the Manhattan season and career ERA records, at 1.06 and 1.79, respectively. A 1991 and 1992 All-MAAC selection, she was named to the ECAC Division I All-Star team in 1992, and also received an invitation to the 1996 USA Olympic Softball team tryouts.
Wilbur played an integral part of two NCAA and two NIT appearances for Manhattan. He also helped the Jaspers to a Holiday Festival Championship in 1956. Known as a tenacious defender, Wilbur was responsible for guarding NBA Hall of Famer Jerry West when Manhattan upset top-ranked West Virginia in the 1958 NCAA Tournament, holding West to just 10 points in the Jaspers' 89-84 win.
Bullock, at the time of his selection to the Hall of Fame in the fall, was the All-time leader in scoring (1,992) and second leading rebounder (1,012) in men's basketball history. A Dean's List student, he led the Jaspers to the NIT Quarterfinals in 1992 and the program's first NCAA bid since 1958 in 1993. Bullock was named MAAC Rookie of the Year as a freshman and was a three-time First-Team All-MAAC selection. His senior season, he was team captain, was named MAAC Player of the Year, MAAC Tournament MVP, and First-Team All-Metropolitan as Manhattan won its first MAAC Tournament Championship.
Seybold helped lead Manhattan to two MAAC Tournament Championships and two NCAA Tournament bids, including the school's first in 1987. She is also sixth in the all-time Manhattan scoring list with 1,214 points. In 1990, her senior season, she was named MAAC Tournament MVP, and Metropolitan Player of the Year as a co-captain.
Byrnes, as a student at Manhattan, was a two-time captain if the football team. He was named Athletic Director in 1987 and led a resurgence in Jasper athletics. At the time of his selection to the Hall of Fame, Manhattan has, during his tenure, produced 24 Academic All-Americans, won 43 MAAC Championships, has had two student-athletes win NCAA Track and Field national championships, as well as having 33 MAAC Players of the Year, 15 MAAC Rookies of the Year, and 492 MAAC All-Academic honorees.
5-----
Copyright 2004 National Post, All Rights Reserved
National Post (Canada)
March 22, 2004 Monday All but Toronto Edition
SECTION: Sports; Pg. B7
HEADLINE: Manhattan was a team to remember: Tough loss to Wake Forest:
'We didn't go away, we were relentless,' coach says
SOURCE: The New York Times
BYLINE: George Vecsey
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C.
RALEIGH, N.C. - This lovely little team, this team that would do New York
proud, began in an apartment in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan
five years ago.
There, in a classic New York meeting of cultures, a coach with a Hispanic name,
who could not speak Spanish, tried to charm two grandparents who could not
speak English.
The coach's luck changed when he took out the Manhattan College jersey
and presented it to their grandson, Luis Flores.
That lovely little New York team ended its run on Saturday in a most glorious
way, with Manhattan taking the game to Wake Forest, smack in the middle of
Tobacco Road. Manhattan lost, 84-80, in the second round of the NCAA basketball
tournament, but in a manner that the Luis Flores era deserved. The players
refused to be blown out, even when they fell behind by 13 points.
"They showed the heart of a lion," coach
Bobby Gonzalez said afterward. "We didn't go away, we were relentless.
That's what this was about, trying to go uphill, against a great team like Wake
Forest."
In going down to the final seconds, Manhattan showed why the college has become
the representative basketball team of New York, while St. John's wallows in
disgrace. Whether Manhattan, always recruiting against the biggest programs,
can stand the loss of Flores and his two teammates is a question for some other
time.
His coach, at least, can revel in the recruiting process, despite a serious
language barrier. Gonzalez will quickly admit that his father's family
originally hailed from Barcelona, Spain, but the dominant culture was his
mother's Italian roots.
"My Spanish friends call me a fake person," Gonzalez said the other
day, recalling how he tried to charm Basilio and
Juanita Flores, the grandparents and custodians, by brandishing the Manhattan
jersey. Gonzalez was disappointed when Flores chose Rutgers, but elated when
Flores ultimately came back to Manhattan.
"His grandmother always remembered the guy who talked fast and held up the
jersey," Gonzalez said.
Flores joined Dave Holmes, an undersized forward, and Jason Benton, a bulky big
man without many moves. Gonzalez found other players from the margins, but
Flores was the heart and soul.
Last year, Manhattan qualified for the national tournament but lost in the
first round, 76-65, to Syracuse, which had Carmelo
Anthony and won the entire tournament.
Nobody can be sure how far Skip Prosser's Wake Forest team will go in this
tournament. But Manhattan will know that it pushed Wake Forest,
that it never gave up. This is how Holmes wants New Yorkers to think of
his teammates.
"This is a tough team that never gave up," Holmes said in the hushed
locker room.
Before cable television revenue produced checkbook baseball, the city used to
indulge in sentimental admiration for its underdogs. Now New York has expensive
professional teams, most notably the Yankees, that
either win championships as expected or fail grotesquely, most notably the
Rangers.
New York doesn't do underdogs anymore. But this team of Luis Flores was a
throwback. And it began with a coach packing a green jersey and lugging it to a
Washington Heights apartment.
This is a team New York should remember. Wake Forest certainly will.
<extraneous deleted>
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2004
1==
Copyright 2004 Paddock Publications, Inc.
Chicago Daily Herald
March 21, 2004 Sunday
Cook Edition
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 13
HEADLINE: Cottrell makes it Manhattan her college choice
BYLINE: John Leusch, Daily Herald Sports
Writer
The three Daily Herald All-Area girls basketball
honorary captains are now all officially Division I recruits.
The final one to commit came Thursday when Prospect's Gabrielle Cottrell chose Manhattan
College in Riverdale, N.Y., in the East Bronx.
The Jaspers play in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. They were 11-18 and
6-12 in the MAAC under first-year coach Myndi Hill
this winter.
"There were no negatives about the school for me," said Cottrell, who
made her official visit March 11 and 12. "I really liked the leadership
qualities in the coach. She knew what she wanted and what she expected of me.
And the players were all the nicest people."
Cottrell recently was named a tri-captain on the Daily Herald All-Area team
with Buffalo Grove's Ashley Sandstead and Fremd's Ali Ridge, who both committed before the season.
Sandstead is headed to Illinois State while Ridge
will play at Wagner College in Staten Island, N.Y.
Cottrell and Ridge will continue to compete against each other. Cottrell was
told their schools have agreed to a four-year contract to meet in women's
basketball.
Cottrell plans to study secondary education at Manhattan.
"I'd love to be able to come back to Prospect to teach biology," she
said. "And to coach basketball."
She certainly made her impact as a player at Prospect, becoming the school's
second all-time leading scorer with 1,304 points. Cottrell ranks behind only
Colleen Grant (1,352), who graduated in 1981.
Cottrell also set Prospect records for single-game points (37), single-season
3-pointers (72) and single-season steals (129). Her 204 career 3-pointers is also a school record.
Manhattan's 2003-04 roster did not include a player
from Illinois. Five were from New York and the others had hometowns in New
Jersey, Ohio, Hungary, Turkey and England.
Cottrell expects to play shooting guard, just as she did for coach
Mike Nocella the past four years at Prospect. Her No.
23 was not worn by a Jasper last season.
"It's a small campus," she said. "It's easy to get around to
your classes and the dorms are right by the gym. The school is about a two-hour
plane flight from here."
This spring, Cottrell will play softball after three years of soccer.
"It's a little easier on the legs," said Cottrell, also an All- Area
volleyball player at Prospect. "I'm excited."
LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2004
2==
Copyright 2004 Daily News, L.P.
Daily News (New York)
March 21, 2004 Sunday
METRO EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 54
LENGTH: 533 words
HEADLINE: MULLIGAN: THINGS RUNNING SMOOTHLY FOR MANHATTAN TRANSFER
BYLINE: By DICK WEISS DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
RALEIGH, N.C. - Peter Mulligan has a tattoo of a basketball nestled in a crown
underneath the skyline of New York City prominently displayed on his left
forearm.
It is there to remind him of his greatest accomplishment when he played for St.
Raymond's High in the Bronx. Manhattan's 6-5 junior forward came out of nowhere
to be selected New York's Mr. Basketball his senior year in 2000. "It's
kind of like, 'The King of New York,' " he said.
But that was not enough to land him a big-time scholarship. Mulligan signed
early with University of Maryland-Baltimore County because he was worried about
getting shut out of a Division I offer.
"My junior year at St. Raymond's, we had a lot of talent. We had an
All-American, Majestic Mapp, who went to Virginia and
I really didn't play that much. I guess people didn't see me as a high-major
prospect.
"So my family and coach thought it best I sign early and UMBC was the
school that was pursuing me the hardest. I just wasn't confident in what was
going to happen. I didn't know if more schools were going to come. I wanted to
play on the Division-I level. I was worried I wasn't going to have that chance.
"I heard rumors a couple Atlantic 10, Big East schools wanted me later on,
but what happened happened. You can't change the
past."
Mulligan had a good first two years at that Northeast Conference school, making
first-team all conference as a sophomore. But something was missing. "It
just wasn't working out basketball wise," he said. "I love basketball
a lot and I didn't feel I'd have a great opportunity down there to make the
national tournament."
So Mulligan left, transferring to Manhattan, a MAAC power located just a
20-minute subway ride from his home in the Bronx. "I'm happy the way
things worked out," he said. "Not everybody gets a chance to play in
the NCAA Tournament."
Mulligan has made the most of it so far, scoring 17 points as the Jaspers
defeated Florida, 75-60, to advance to yesterday's second-round matchup with ACC power Wake Forest at the RBC Center.
"We don't have anything to lose," Mulligan said on Friday.
"They're one of the top-ranked teams in the country. Nobody is really
expecting us to win."
Nobody but Manhattan players, who watched tape of Wake's
79-78 close call with VCU when they got back to the team hotel. "We
learned from watching their game on tape," Mulligan said. "We learned
that if we play together, play confident and hang tough we can stick with them.
VCU was down double-digits early, but they didn't give up. They came back and
lost by one point. So, if we play our 'A' game, it could get interesting."
The Jaspers had the luxury of playing Florida on a neutral court.
That wouldn't be the case against Wake, with the Deacs'
campus only 60 miles away.
The Jaspers' biggest challenge figured to be controlling Wake's great young
point guard, Chris Paul, who scored 22 points, had seven assists and took over
the Deacs' first-round victory.
Manhattan coach Bobby Gonzalez said he'd start 6-0 Jason Wingate on Paul, then come in with 5-8 water bug Kenny Minor.
Mulligan also was put on alert if Paul is too big or physical for Wingate or
Minor.
Mulligan was just happy to be playing for the New York City school.
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2004
3==
Copyright 2004 Daily News, L.P.
Daily News (New York)
March 21, 2004 Sunday
SPORTS FINAL EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 54
HEADLINE: JASPERS LEFT IN THEIR WAKE DEACONS TAKE MANHATTAN WITH
FANTASTIC FROSH
BYLINE: By DICK WEISS DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
RALEIGH, N.C. - Wake Forest's Chris Paul was too young to watch Phil Ford of
North Carolina play. But he did see former Molloy star Kenny Anderson of
Georgia Tech play on TV when he was growing up in Winston-Salem.
Now, even though Paul is a freshman, he can be grouped with those ACC legends.
With a spectacular 29 points and eight assists, Paul led fourth-seeded Wake
Forest over Manhattan, 84-80, yesterday at the RBC Center to help the Demon
Deacons advance to the East Rutherford Regional semifinals against top-seeded
St. Joseph's.
"No," Paul protested. "They're legends you hear about and talk
about. When somebody mentions my name in the same breath, they must have me in
the wrong conversation."
Paul is quickly climbing into that rarefied air after his brilliant performance
on this platform. He shot 10-for-14 and was 8-for-9 from the line. He scored 16
points in the first half to help Wake (21-9) take a 48-35 lead. Then, with 10
seconds left in the second half, he made the play of the game after the Jaspers
had pulled within 82-80, making a sensational cross-court pass to an open Trent
Strickland for a layup after being double-teamed in
the corner.
"He's the best player we've played against all season," Manhattan
coach Bobby Gonzalez said.
Paul will get a chance to test his skills against St. Joseph's senior
All-American Jameer Nelson on Thursday. Wake coach
Skip Prosser knows who he likes in the matchup.
"I wouldn't trade Chris for any point guard in the country," he said.
"I just try to give him the ball and he gives it back to me two hours
later in pretty good shape."
Paul, who scored 22 points and triggered the decisive rally in Wake's 79-78
victory over VCU in the first round, was the difference between Manhattan going
to the Sweet 16 and back to Riverdale. It was a tough
way for the Jaspers (25-6), who proved they could play with an ACC power, to
end the season.
"It's very hard," said Manhattan's senior guard and all-time great
Luis Flores, who finished with 20 points on 8-for-17 shooting in the final game
of his college career.
"We were maybe one, two defensive stops away from victory. This shows there are a lot of mid-major teams out there, a
lot of players who may have been overlooked or who may not have gotten the
publicity coming out of high school, who can play."
Senior forward David Holmes scored 19 points and grabbed 12 rebounds for
Manhattan. Junior forward Peter Mulligan had 13 points and senior center Jason
Benton added 12 for the Jaspers, who refused to go away the entire second half,
taking advantage of the Deacs' porous defense.
"It took an epic performance by a great team to end our season,"
Gonzalez said. "Anything other than that, we survive and advance."
The Manhattan players were quiet when they returned to the locker room. Then
Benton got up and spoke from the heart.
"I just told everybody this was the best team I had ever been on," he
said. "I said we played hard. We were warriors. And how
much I loved everybody."
Graphic: NO MAN'S LAND.
Jason Wingate (l.) and Manhattan were bounced from NCAA Tournment
yesterday in the second round. Here's a look at the school's history in the Big
Dance.
2004 12th seed in E. Rutherford Regional
Defeated Florida in first round, 75-60
Lost to Wake Forest in second round, 84-80
2003 14th seed in East Regional
Lost to Syracuse in first round, 76-65
1995 13th seed in Southeast Regional
Defeated Oklahoma in first round, 77-67
Lost to Arizona State in second round, 64-54
1993 11th seed in East Regional
Lost to Virginia in first round, 78-66
1958 East Regional
Defeated West Virginia in first round, 89-84
Lost to Dartmouth in second round, 64-54
Lost to Maryland in regional third place, 59-55
1956 East Regional
Lost to Connecticut in first round, 79-62
Overall Record: 3-7 (.300)
GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC;INFOGRAPHIC, GETTY IMAGES THROUGH THE FOREST
Manhattan's David Holmes (c.) gets past Vytas Danelius (l.) only to have his shot blocked by Kyle Visser. The senior scores 19 points in his final game for
Jaspers.
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2004
4==
Copyright 2004 Daily News, L.P.
Daily News (New York)
March 21, 2004 Sunday
SPORTS FINAL EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 60
HEADLINE: GONZALEZ MISSES SWEET 16 PARTY
BYLINE: BY DICK WEISS
RALEIGH, N.C. - Manhattan coach Bobby Gonzalez didn't want this to get out, but
back on the first day of practice at Draddy Gymnasium
up in Riverdale, he walked in and calmly announced to his team that his goal
this season was to make the NCAA's Sweet 16.
His dream nearly came true.
Wake Forest knocked the Jaspers out of March Madness yesterday, defeating them,
84-80, before a sellout crowd of 19,772 at an RBC Center that was filled with
hostile ACC fans.
"We never told anyone this all year because it would have sounded like an
arrogant, cocky goal, an unrealistic dream," Gonzalez said. "Today,
we were 40 minutes away, 20 minutes away, 13 seconds away. So that's what I'm
focused on. We just came up a little short. I'm just disappointed for New York City, that our team represented New York and we couldn't get
to the Meadowlands for all the people in New York, New Jersey who would have
been coming to the game next weekend."
For Gonzalez, this was all more than just a dream.
"I'm not being cocky, but we came down here to win two games," he
said. "We felt like we belonged in the Meadowlands. I feel bad for kids
like Luis Flores, Jason Benton, David Holmes that
we're not in the Sweet 16. But I'm glad I was coaching Manhattan today. I'm
glad I was in the underdog's locker room. That's where I belonged."
Gonzalez does not have a blue-blood pedigree. He went to Buffalo State and
worked his way up from JV jobs in the New York City Catholic league, summer
league gigs at Riverside Church and 5-Star camp. He spent time as an assistant
on Pete Gillen's staff at Xavier, then at Providence and Virginia before
finally getting his big chance five years ago.
"I grew up on Robinson St. in Binghamton," said Gonzalez, who turned
40 on Thursday. "My father was a used car salesman. But I'm coaching out
there today and I felt I could coach with anyone. I felt like I was an
underdog, going against (coach) Skip Prosser. My team was an underdog going
against Wake. But we proved to everyone we belonged."
The hoarse, foot-stomping Gonzalez, who once described himself as "a
Division III Bobby Hurley," was the perfect guy to get the most out of
this special 12th-seeded team filled with city kids who were overlooked or
under-recruited. The collar of his pink shirt loosened and his blue tie hanging
down, Gonzalez looked ashen afterward. He and his Cinderella Jaspers had laid
it on the line against a powerful ACC team that had beaten Duke, Cincinnati,
North Carolina and Georgia Tech.
After Holmes got Manhattan within 82-80 on two free throws with 43 seconds
left, the Jaspers actually looked like they might pull off this huge miracle
when they tied up Wake Forest's sensational 6-1 freshman point guard Chris
Paul, who had scored 29 points and dominated the game. The alternate-possession
arrow favored Wake, but there were only five seconds left on the shot clock,
and Prosser called timeout to set up an out-of-bounds play in front of his
bench.
Forward Jamaal Levy inbounded to Paul in the right
corner, but the 6-7 Holmes, afraid Paul might beat the Jaspers by himself, left
his man in a vain attempt to double-team the ball. Paul had the presence of
mind to spot the open man and make a cross-court pass to forward Trent
Strickland, who was all alone underneath and hit an uncontested layup to put the game away with 10 seconds to play.
"It seemed to me like he was open," Holmes said of Paul. "I ran
out and doubled him because he looked like he was open for a split-second. He
had been killing us the whole game. He just made a great play."
Gonzalez refused to let Holmes shoulder all the blame.
"If somebody does something emotional, as a coach, you can't prepare for
that," he said. "It's part of the game. He (Holmes) was so crushed
because he's such a great defensive player, such a smart player. He knows what
I told him. He did exactly the opposite of what I told him coming out of the
huddle. But I told him his career was not going to be determined by one
play."
Performances like this should get Gonzalez - one of the hot mid-major coaches
in the country - longer looks when bigger jobs open up. "It may surprise
people when I say this, but I never worry about the next job," he said.
"I wasn't campaigning, auditioning out there. I care about the job I have.
The players know that.
"I gave them everything I had and that's why they went to war for me. They
ran through a wall for me and I ran through a wall for them because we knew how
much it meant to each other."
E-mail: mailto:dweiss@edit.nydailynews.com
GRAPHIC: AP GONE-ZO Manhattan coach Bobby Gonzalez gives as good an
effort as his team, but it's not enough against Wake Forest.
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2004
5==
Copyright 2004 The Journal News (Westchester County, NY)
All Rights Reserved
The Journal News (Westchester County, NY)
March 21, 2004 Sunday
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 3C
HEADLINE: Leaving with respect
BYLINE: Jane McManus, Staff
Jaspers' attempt at second upset comes up short
Jane McManus
The Journal News
RALEIGH, N.C. - Dave Holmes did not want the final game of his Manhattan career
to end like this. So close to reaching a faraway dream, such
a hard crash to reality when the buzzer went off and the dull ache of guilt
that he could have done more to prevent such a disappointing outcome.
The Jaspers further proved themselves in the national spotlight by cutting a
13-point halftime lead to a slender two in the final seconds, but Wake Forest
prevailed. The fourth-seeded Demon Deacons escaped the upset with an 84-80 win
yesterday in the second round of the NCAA tournament at the RBC Center.
Manhattan, however, took a win and some newfound respect from the tournament.
"The first thing I want to say is congratulations to Manhattan College,"
Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser said. "Down 13 at the half, a couple of
times we were on the verge of knocking them out. They made big plays that
allowed the game to be very competitive until the very, very end. I think Coach
(Bobby) Gonzalez and his kids deserve a great deal of credit."
The Demon Deacons (21-9) advanced to the East Rutherford Regional where they
will meet top-seeded Saint Joseph's Thursday in the Sweet 16. It is a place
Manhattan (25-6) had hoped to go.
"It's always hard to lose, especially for us seniors, but it shows we had
fight in us," Holmes said. "We worked hard to get back in the
game."
Luis Flores, who had a team-high 20 points, thought Manhattan had Wake Forest
cornered. The 12th-seeded Jaspers trailed by two points and Peter Mulligan tied
up freshman point guard Chris Paul to force a jump ball with 13.6 seconds left.
The possession arrow pointed to Wake, a fact that registered slowly with the
members of the team.
"I thought it was our ball," Holmes said. "It was the spirit of
the moment."
The Demon Deacons had five seconds left on the shot clock when Manhattan coach
Bobby Gonzalez called a timeout. No fouls, he said, tight defense. When play
began, Wake got the ball to Paul, who dribbled into the corner.
Paul had 29 points and had thrown daggers at the Jaspers all night. Holmes
thought Paul had shaken his defender and ran to cover. Once pinned by the
double team, Paul passed the ball to Trent Strickland, who was wide-open under
the basket.
Strickland slammed home an emphatic dunk for a four-point lead with 10 seconds
left.
Holmes felt terrible after the buzzer sounded. His eyes filled with tears and
neither his coach nor Flores could ease the sting of the defensive mix-up.
"Why did I jump on the double team with Chris Paul?" he asked after
the game. "It was just a mental lapse on my part."
But without Holmes, Manhattan wouldn't have come back from a 48-35 halftime
deficit to pull within a layup of overtime. The 6-7
Holmes had 19 points and eight rebounds and positioned himself
beneath the basket so effectively that Wake Forest outrebounded
the smaller Jaspers by only five.
"He was so crushed and he's such a great defensive player and such a smart
player," Gonzalez said. "I told him his career is not going to be
defined by this last play. It's not important, don't hang on to it. ... Who
knows if we'd have scored to tie the game up? You don't know."
Unlike the first-round win over Florida, Manhattan did not have the crowd on
its side against Wake Forest. The 300 or so Manhattan fans who
made the trip could not offset the huge contingent for the locally based Demon
Deacons. After Holmes was fouled on a 3-point attempt with 44.2 seconds left,
he heard the full force of 10,000 jeers.
The Jaspers were called for six fouls in the first five minutes of the second
half to just one for Wake Forest. When asked about the whistles, Gonzalez
weighed his words against whom they might offend.
"I thought there was a difference and I thought they got protected a
little bit," he said.
Mulligan, who had 13 points and three steals, was less diplomatic. He thought
Paul had been able to run into the lane and didn't get called for travels. How
much of that was from the disappointment of losing was hard to say.
"It's just a lot of hurt," Mulligan said. "We had a big
opportunity and it hurts when you're so close but we also feel very proud of
ourselves. We gave a great effort in the second half."
Senior forward Jason Benton, who had 10 points, said he'll see the red
possession arrow in his mind for a long time.
"But that will die eventually," Benton said. "But the way we
played will be with me forever."
Reach Jane McManus at jmcmanus@thejournalnews.com.
LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2004
6==
Copyright 2004 The Journal News (Westchester County, NY)
All Rights Reserved
The Journal News (Westchester County, NY)
March 21, 2004 Sunday
SECTION: SPORTS; Ian O'Connor; Pg. 3C
HEADLINE: Gonzalez is right man for the job at St.
John's after all
BYLINE: Ian O'Connor, Staff
Bobby Gonzalez did not just punctuate a wildly successful basketball season by
making the mighty Atlantic Coast Conference quiver with sudden-death doubt. The
head coach at Manhattan College aced his job interview, too. If St.
John's doesn't hire him and fast, it deserves another season of folly and
regret.
Father Harrington and friends had better see the Wake Forest for the trees.
Gonzalez ripped Florida from the SEC in the first round of the NCAA tournament
before nearly upsetting an ACC school that only produced the world's best
player, Tim Duncan. That 84-80 loss in Raleigh should've been the slam dunk,
case-closed moment the St. John's search committee has been looking for, the
deciding development in the hunt for a coach who can return the Red Storm to
relevance.
How in the world does St. John's ignore Gonzalez now? He just pulled from the
clouds a two-day slice of mid-major heaven. No, make that low-major heaven. The
MAAC doesn't even qualify as a middleweight, and yet Manhattan lasted longer in
March than Providence. Manhattan was more impressive in defeat than Stanford.
In the end, Gonzalez looked better than Gonzaga.
Somehow, some way, the Manhattan coach still isn't regarded as the odds-on
favorite to get the one and only job he covets. Here's what Lou Carnesecca was telling friends in the days before the
Jaspers went off to take on the world: Gonzalez will get some measure of
consideration. Carnesecca might've been the only
person with a say at St. John's who was even giving Gonzalez that.
Everyone else around the search was declaring that St. John's didn't want
another Jasper, didn't want another Fran Fraschilla
to come in, win a few games, and start rummaging through the want ads for
fatter contracts and greener grass. Only minds the size of your average Titleist would think so small.
Fraschilla's dream job was Notre Dame; that's why he
flirted with Arizona State and its AD, Kevin White, who was already rumored to
be heading where he ended up, South Bend. Gonzalez's dream job is St. John's.
He's the only candidate in the field who can make that claim with a straight
face.
The track records of Fraschilla and Brian Mahoney
shouldn't be held against Gonzalez any more than the successes of other MAAC
alums, such as Paul Hewitt, should be used to help Gonzalez. The people at St.
John's wouldn't be any smarter to dismiss Gonzalez as a serious candidate
because Dick Vitale and Rick Pitino have been
stuffing him down their throats.
The right man for the job is the right man for the job, and no amount of
screaming changes that. John Calipari, among the
leaders in the St. John's clubhouse, is clearly not the right man for the job.
This has nothing to do with a remark he allegedly made to a prospect in the
middle of a recruiting war way back when. Calipari
allegedly told the prospect he shouldn't attend St. John's because its coach, Carnesecca, might be dying of cancer. For years a friend of
Calipari's worked to mend the relationship, assuring Carnesecca that the remark was never made.
"If John says he didn't say it," Carnesecca
finally said, "OK, it's over. I'll forget about it."
Carnesecca won't make the St. John's appointment, but
he most definitely holds a vote. And now when he's asked
about Calipari, Carnesecca
says, "He's a good recruiter and a good coach."
Calipari is a better floor coach than he's given
credit for. But his desire to leave Memphis and the gobs of money that school
keeps throwing at him is rooted in his belief that a Conference USA without the
Big East defectors, Cincinnati and Louisville, isn't a stage worthy of his star
power and skill.
St. John's can't see that as a good starting point in negotiations. Oh, and one
other thing: In the wake of its embarrassing sex scandal, can St. John's
possibly turn to the man who left Massachusetts a UMess?
No, Father Harrington and friends can't afford a mistake this time around. It
can't afford to sign up another Mike Jarvis, a coach who comes in body but not
in soul.
"I do think St. John's needs someone who knows this place and who has some
roots in New York," Chris Mullin told me last weekend. "I was at some
Big East (tournament) games and it was upsetting to see all these New York kids
on other teams."
For the first time, Mullin would say that he'd consider leaving the front
office of the Golden State Warriors if St. John's asked him to rebuild its
team. But Mullin isn't the right guy, either. He's never been a coach, and
right now St. John's can't gamble on a novice, even a novice with the
all-American, original Dream Team resume of Chris Mullin.
Gonzalez is the man for all reasons and seasons. I didn't think he was ready
for this last year, but that was then and this is now. Gonzalez knows how to
work the city. He knows the high school and AAU coaches. He talks and walks
like a New Yorker, and he wins more games than a coach with his marginal talent
base has a right to win.
St. John's shouldn't have needed to watch Gonzalez's work against Florida and
Wake Forest, but there it was, anyway, in high-definition color. That wasn't
just a punctuation mark yesterday to one of the greatest seasons a low-major
team has ever played .
That was a job interview aced by a man who deserves to be king of Queens.
Ian O'Connor is a sports columnist for The Journal News. He can be reached at
ioconnor@thejournalnews.com.
LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2004
7==
Copyright 2004 The Times Mirror
Company; Los Angeles Times
All Rights Reserved
Los Angeles Times
March 21, 2004 Sunday
Home Edition
SECTION: SPORTS; Sports Desk; Part D; Pg. 11
HEADLINE: NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT;
Wake Forest Sidesteps Upset;
Paul scores 29 points and the Demon Deacons defeat pesky Manhattan, 84-80.
BYLINE: Don Markus, Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C.
Chris Paul and Luis Flores took different roads to Saturday's second-round NCAA
tournament game in the RBC Center, but Wake Forest's freshman point guard and
his senior counterpart from Manhattan College each wanted to wind up in
the same destination.
Paul will go to Continental Airlines Arena for the Sweet 16 in the East
Rutherford, N.J., regional as a result of his performance against the Jaspers.
Paul scored 29 points, including seven of his team's last 11, to help the
fourth-seeded Demon Deacons survive a huge scare from the region's No.
12-seeded team.
Wake Forest won, 84-80, but not before the little team from the Metro Atlantic
Athletic Conference took the game into the final, frantic minute in which Paul
found Trent Strickland for a wide-open dunk that sealed the victory with 10
seconds to go.
The play developed after Manhattan's Peter Mulligan nearly stole the ball from
Paul and helped tie him up, only to have the possession arrow pointing in favor
of the Demon Deacons.
There were 13.6 seconds left and Wake Forest had only five seconds left to
shoot.
After a timeout, Paul took the inbounds pass and found Strickland. "I saw
that he was open," Paul said later. "I probably took one extra blink
because he was so wide open."
With that blink, Manhattan's season was over. The Jaspers were paying so much
attention to Paul that they neglected to see Strickland go from setting a
screen on the baseline to moving toward the basket.
Two Manhattan players, sophomore point guard Kenny Minor and senior center
David Holmes, flew at Paul in the corner. In an instant, which is all is seems
ever to take with Paul, the Atlantic Coast Conference rookie of the year
whipped a pass to Strickland.
"We were so worried about Paul because he had such a great game,"
said Minor, who made two three-point baskets to fuel Manhattan's rally from a
48-35 deficit at halftime. "We had a mental lapse."
The victory enabled Wake Forest to advance to the round of 16 for first time
since 1996 -- Tim Duncan's junior season -- and set up a much-anticipated matchup between Paul and Jameer
Nelson of Saint Joseph's.
Flores, a senior who started his college career at Rutgers, had 20 points.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: EYE ON THE BALL: Wake Forest's Chris Paul, right, can't
get a handle on the ball as Manhattan's Jason Wingate looks on. PHOTOGRAPHER:
Reuters
LOAD-DATE: March 21, 2004
8==
The Miami Herald
March 21, 2004 Sunday F1 EDITION
SECTION: C; Pg. 22
HEADLINE: FIU rallies to win;
COLLEGES ROUNDUP
BYLINE: From Herald Staff and Wire Reports
Trailing 3-0 through five innings, the Florida International University
baseball team scored five runs in the next three innings for a 5-3 victory
Saturday afternoon over visiting Manhattan College.
The Golden Panthers (14-16) started the sixth inning with an Eduardo Davila
walk, and Yahmed Yema's
single put runners on the corners for Jeff Skellenger.
The junior from Portland, Ore., delivered a two-run single through the left side
to score Yema and Davila, cutting the deficit to 3-2.
In the seventh, Fernando Alvarez tripled, then scored
on a single by Adrian Casanova to tie the contest at 3-3. After a wild pitch
and a sacrifice bunt, the Golden Panthers had runners on first and second for
pinch-hitter Cody Jacobs. The freshman delivered a sacrifice fly to give FIU a
4-3 lead. The Golden Panthers picked up an insurance run in the eighth inning
on an RBI groundout.
Manhattan falls to 4-10.
<extraneous deleted>
LOAD-DATE: March 21, 2004
9==
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
March 21, 2004, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 8; Page 6; Column 1; Sports Desk
LENGTH: 825 words
HEADLINE: Sports of The Times;
Era Began for Jaspers In Washington Heights
BYLINE: By GEORGE VECSEY
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C.
THIS lovely little team, this team that would do New York proud, began in an
apartment in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan five years ago.
There, in a classic New York meeting of cultures, a coach with a Hispanic name,
who could not speak Spanish, tried to charm two grandparents who could not
speak English.
The coach's luck changed when he took out the Manhattan College jersey
and presented it to their grandson, Luis Flores.
That lovely little New York team ended its run yesterday in a most glorious
way, with Manhattan taking the game to Wake Forest, smack in the middle of
Tobacco Road.
With all the Wake fans wearing the yellow-and-black outfits, and the Wake
players using every ounce of their Atlantic Coast Conference talents, this team
of Luis Flores and Dave Holmes and Jason Benton came to a proud end.
Manhattan lost, 84-80, in the second round of the N.C.A.A. tournament, but in a
manner that the Luis Flores era deserved. The players refused to be blown out,
even when they fell behind by 13 points. They came back. They scrapped against
bigger players.
"They showed the heart of a lion," Coach Bobby Gonzalez said
afterward. "We didn't go away, we were relentless. That's what this was
about, trying to go uphill, against a great team like Wake Forest."
In going down to the final seconds, Manhattan showed why the college has become
the representative basketball team of New York, while St. John's wallows in
disgrace. Whether Manhattan, always recruiting against the biggest programs,
can stand the loss of Flores and his two teammates is a question for some other
time.
At least Manhattan went out in a better way than weary Seton Hall did in the
earlier game, overwhelmed by Duke, 90-62.
Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski, who does try to say the
right thing about vanquished opponents, suggested yesterday that Seton Hall had
expended all its energy in the late victory over Arizona on Thursday night.
"That was like a regional final," Krzyzewski
said of the Pirates' 80-76 victory. "That took something out of them. We
understand that."
Louis Orr, the Seton Hall coach, began his postgame
remarks, as he usually does, by witnessing his Christian faith.
"To God be the glory," Orr said. "We've been blessed to have a
year when we could overcome our trials. You have to look at the whole. We were
playing against a great team." And he concluded, "I give God the
credit for his glory and his grace."
Seton Hall may have been weary from the grueling late victory Thursday. But
Manhattan also expended energy in humbling Florida on Thursday afternoon, and
it retained its fervor yesterday. "We showed our tenacity," Flores
said after his last game with Manhattan.
Now that Flores is the heralded career leading scorer of Manhattan, his coach
can revel in the recruiting process, despite a serious language barrier.
Gonzalez will quickly admit that his father's family originally hailed from
Barcelona, Spain, but the dominant culture was his mother's Italian roots.
"My Spanish friends call me a fake person," Gonzalez said the other
day, recalling how he tried to charm Basilio and
Juanita Flores, the grandparents and custodians, by brandishing the Manhattan
jersey. Gonzalez was disappointed when Flores chose Rutgers, but elated when
Flores ultimately came back to Manhattan.
"His grandmother always remembered the guy who talked fast and held up the
jersey," Gonzalez said.
Flores joined Holmes, a forward with not enough size for the biggest leagues,
and Benton, a bulky big man without many moves. Gonzalez went out and found
other players from the margins, but Luis Flores was the heart and soul of this
team.
Last year, Manhattan qualified for the national tournament but lost in the
first round, 76-65, to Syracuse, which merely had Carmelo
Anthony and soon won the entire tournament. The Manhattan players trudged off
the court and kept that loss to a national champion with them for a year.
Nobody can be sure how far Skip Prosser's Wake Forest team will go in this
tournament. But Manhattan will know that it pushed Wake Forest,
that it never gave up. This is how Holmes wants New Yorkers to think of
his teammates.
"This is a tough team that never gave up," Holmes said in the hushed
locker room.
Benton said: "This is a hard-working team. We all love each other."
Before cable television revenue produced checkbook baseball, the city used to
indulge in sentimental admiration for its underdogs. Now New York has expensive
professional teams, most notably the Yankees, that win championships as
expected or fail grotesquely, most notably the Rangers.
New York doesn't do underdogs anymore. But this team of Luis Flores was a
throwback. And it all began with a coach packing a green jersey and lugging it
to an apartment in Washington Heights, and talking a lot with his hands.
This is a team New York should remember. Wake Forest certainly will.
http://www.nytimes.com
LOAD-DATE: March 21, 2004
10==
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
March 21, 2004, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 8; Page 1; Column 2; Sports Desk
HEADLINE: COLLEGE BASKETBALL;
Manhattan Cannot Bring Home a Second Upset
BYLINE: By VIV BERNSTEIN
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C., March 20
A spot in the N.C.A.A. tournament's Round of 16 was almost within the grasp of Manhattan
College. For most of its second-round game with Wake Forest on Saturday at
the RBC Center, the small college from the MAAC proved it could play at the
same level as an A.C.C. team, and perhaps even win.
Maybe Manhattan, of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, could have proved
even more next weekend in the East Rutherford regional at Continental Arena.
The Jaspers were that close to home-court advantage in the Round of 16. But in
the end, fourth-seeded Wake Forest held off No. 12 Manhattan, 84-80, to claim
that spot next weekend.
Manhattan, which has not defeated an Atlantic Coast Conference team since the
1969-70 season and had never played Wake Forest, came back from a 13-point
halftime deficit to create a nail-biter. When the senior forward Dave Holmes
made two free throws with 44.2 seconds remaining, the gap closed to 82-80. The
Jaspers then tied up Wake Forest's freshman point guard, Chris Paul, with only
a few seconds left on the shot clock. But luck and the possession arrow were not in the Jaspers' favor, and the Demon Deacons
retained control of the ball.
On the inbounds play, the sophomore guard-forward Trent Strickland was left
alone under the basket, and Paul found him. Strickland's dunk with 11.1 seconds
remaining was too much for Manhattan to overcome. The Jaspers' career leading
scorer, the senior guard Luis Flores, missed on a runner from the lane, and the
Jaspers never got another shot. Flores finished with 20 points to lead Manhattan (25-6).
"It's always hard, especially for us seniors," Holmes said of losing.
"But it also shows that we had fight in us. We worked hard to get back in
the game. It came down to one last basket and we needed a stop. I have to tip
my hat to Chris Paul."
The Jaspers, who won their first N.C.A.A. tournament game since 1995 Thursday
with a victory against No. 5 Florida in the opening round here, handled almost
all that Wake Forest could offer, except for Paul. The A.C.C. rookie of the
year this season -- he took won the award ahead of Duke's impressive freshman
forward, Luol Deng -- Paul scored 29 points to lead
the Demon Deacons. He also had a team-best eight rebounds, six assists and
three steals.
"I thought Chris Paul was the best guard we played against all year,"
Manhattan Coach Bobby Gonzalez said. "I thought he was, literally, maybe
the best player I've seen this season. I just thought he was another
level."
Still, Manhattan almost overcame him. Gonzalez said he thought Paul had walked
when he was tied up by the Jaspers on that last-minute play. Gonzalez then
railed against the possession rule in college basketball.
"You can get a stop in a key situation and not get rewarded," he
said.
Not surprisingly, Wake Forest Coach Skip Prosser had the opposite opinion.
"I think it's the greatest rule ever invented," he said.
Wake Forest advanced to the Round of 16 for the first time since 1996.
Meanwhile, Gonzalez's future is now officially up in the air.
There has been speculation that he could be hired as the next coach at St. John's,
although Gonzalez declined to comment Saturday when asked about his future.
http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Photos: Wake Forest's Kyle Visser,
right, and Vytas Danelius
stuffing a shot attempt by Manhattan's Dave Holmes. (Photo by Getty Images)(pg. 6); Wake Forest Coach Skip Prosser consoling Manhattan's Kenny
Minor after Wake Forest's victory. (Photo by Getty Images)(pg. 1)
LOAD-DATE: March 21, 2004
11==
Copyright 2004 Sun-Sentinel Company
Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
March 21, 2004 Sunday Broward Metro Edition
SECTION: SPORTS SUNDAY; Pg. 21C
HEADLINE: WAKE SURVIVES A SCARE FROM MANHATTAN;
DEACONS' PAUL OUTLASTS FLORES IN MATCHUP OF POINT GUARDS
BYLINE: Don Markus The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C.
Chris Paul and Luis Flores took different roads to Saturday's second-round
NCAA Tournament game at the RBC Center, although Wake
Forest's freshman point guard and his senior counterpart from Manhattan
College each wanted to wind up in the same destination.
Paul will go to Continental Airlines Arena for the Sweet 16 at the East
Rutherford, N.J. regional as a result of his performance against the Jaspers.
Paul scored 29 points, including seven of his team's last 11, to help the
fourth-seeded Demon Deacons survive a scare from the region's No. 12 seed.
Wake Forest won 84-80, but not before the little team from the Metro Atlantic
Athletic Conference took the game into the final, frantic minute as Paul found
Trent Strickland for a wide-open dunk that sealed the victory with 10 seconds
to go.
The play developed after Manhattan's Peter Mulligan nearly stole the ball from
Paul and helped tie him up, only to see the possession arrow pointing in favor
of the Deacons; 13.6 seconds were left and Wake Forest had only five seconds
left to shoot.
After a timeout, Paul took the inbounds pass and found Strickland.
"I saw that he was open," Paul said. "I probably took one extra
blink because he was so wide open."
With that blink, Manhattan's season was over. The Jaspers were paying so much
attention to Paul, as they had for most of the game, that
they neglected to see Strickland go from setting a screen on the baseline to
moving toward the basket.
Two Manhattan players flew at Paul in the corner. In an instant, Paul, ACC
Rookie of the Year, whipped a pass to Strickland.
"We were so worried about Paul because he had such a great game,"
said Manhattan point guard Kenny Minor, who hit two threes to fuel Manhattan's
comeback from a 48-35 deficit at halftime. "We had a mental lapse."
The Jaspers had fought all kinds of obstacles, everything from the pro-Wake
crowd in the heart of ACC country to foul troubles that sent Flores to the
bench and the Deacons to the line for their first one-and-one with 15:37 to go.
Flores had 20 points.
The victory sets up an anticipated matchup between
Paul and Jameer Nelson of Saint Joseph's.
The Baltimore Sun is a Tribune Co. newspaper.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO; BACK AT YA: Wake Forest's Chris Paul blocks Manhattan's
Luis Flores in the first half in Raleigh, N.C. Paul scored 29 points, including
seven of his team's last 11. AP photo, Chuck Burton
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2004
12==
Copyright 2004 The Hearst Corporation
The Times Union (Albany, NY)
March 21, 2004 Sunday THREE STAR EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS, Pg. E9
HEADLINE: Gonzalez right for St. John's
BYLINE: Ian O'connor
Bobby Gonzalez did not just punctuate a wildly successful basketball season
by making the mighty Atlantic Coast Conference quiver with sudden-death doubt.
The head coach at Manhattan College aced his job interview, too. If St.
John's doesn't hire him and fast, it deserves another season of folly and
regret.
The Rev. Donald J. Harrington and friends had better see the Wake Forest for
the trees. Gonzalez ripped Florida from the SEC in the first round of the NCAA
Tournament before nearly upsetting an ACC school that only produced the world's
best player, Tim Duncan. That 84-80 loss should've been the slam dunk,
case-closed moment the St. John's search committee has been looking for, the
deciding development in the hunt for a coach who can return the Red Storm to
relevance.
How in the world does St. John's ignore Gonzalez now? He just pulled from the
clouds a two-day slice of mid-major heaven. No, make that low-major heaven. The
MAAC doesn't even qualify as a middleweight, and yet Manhattan lasted longer in
March than Providence. Manhattan was more impressive in defeat than Stanford.
In the end, Gonzalez looked better than Gonzaga.
Somehow, some way, the Manhattan coach still isn't regarded as the odds-on
favorite to get the one and only job he covets. Here's what Lou Carnesecca was telling friends in the days before the
Jaspers went off to take on the world: Gonzalez will get some measure of
consideration. Carnesecca might've been the only
person with a say at St. John's who was even giving Gonzalez that.
Everyone else around the search was declaring that St. John's didn't want
another Jasper, didn't want another Fran Fraschilla
to come in, win a few games, and start rummaging through the want ads for
fatter contracts and greener grass. Only minds the size of your average Titleist would think so small.
Frashilla's dream job was Notre Dame; that's why he
flirted with Arizona State and its AD, Kevin White, who already was rumored to
be heading where he ended up, South Bend. Gonzalez's dream job is St. John's.
He's the only candidate in the field who can make that claim with a straight
face.
The track records of Fraschilla and Brian Mahoney
shouldn't be held against Gonzalez any more than the successes of other MAAC
alums, such as Paul Hewitt, should be used to help Gonzalez. The people at St.
John's wouldn't be any smarter to dismiss Gonzalez as a serious candidate
because Dick Vitale and Rick Pitino have been
stuffing him down their throats.
The right man for the job is the right man for the job, and no amount of
screaming changes that.
Rev. Harrington and friends can't afford a mistake this time around. It can't
afford to sign up another Mike Jarvis, a coach who comes in body but not in
soul.
"I do think St. John's needs someone who knows this place and who has some
roots in New York," Chris Mullin told me last weekend. "I was at some
Big East (Tournament) games and it was upsetting to see all these New York kids
on other teams."
For the first time, Mullin would say he'd consider leaving the front office of
the Golden State Warriors if St. John's asked him to rebuild its team. But
Mullin isn't the right guy, either. He's never been a coach, and right now St.
John's can't gamble on a novice, even a novice with the All-America, original
Dream Team resume of Chris Mullin.
Gonzalez is the man.
Ian O'Connor writes for the Westchester Journal News.
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2004
13==
Copyright 2004 The Hearst Corporation
The Times Union (Albany, NY)
March 21, 2004 Sunday THREE STAR EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS, Pg. E9
HEADLINE: Wake stops Jaspers;
Defensive lapse costs Manhattan its chance
BYLINE: Don Markus; Baltimore Sun
Wake Forest84 Manhattan80
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Chris Paul and Luis Flores took different roads to Saturday's second-round
NCAA Tournament game at the RBC Center, but Wake Forest's freshman point guard
and his senior counterpart from Manhattan College each wanted to wind up
in the same destination. Paul will go to Continental Airlines Arena
in East Rutherford, N.J., for the Sweet 16 as a result of his performance
against the Jaspers. Paul scored 29 points, including seven of his team's last
11, to help the fourth-seeded Demon Deacons survive a huge scare from the
region's No. 12 seed.
Wake Forest won, 84-80, but not before the little team from the Metro Atlantic
Athletic Conference took the game into the final, frantic minute that saw Paul
find Trent Strickland for a wide-open dunk that sealed the victory with 10
seconds to go.
The play developed after Manhattan's Peter Mulligan nearly stole the ball from
Paul and helped tie him up, only to see the possession arrow pointing in favor
of the Demon Deacons. There were 13.6 seconds left and Wake Forest had only
five seconds left to shoot.
After a timeout, Paul took the inbounds pass and found Strickland.
"I saw that he was open," Paul said. "I probably took one extra
blink because he was so wide open."
With that blink, Manhattan's season was over. The Jaspers were paying so much
attention to Paul, as they had for most of the game, that
they neglected to see Strickland go from setting a screen on the baseline to
moving toward the basket.
Two Manhattan players, sophomore point guard Kenny Minor and senior center
David Holmes, flew at Paul in the corner. In an instant, which is all it seems
ever to take with Paul, the ACC's rookie of the year whipped a pass to
Strickland.
"We were so worried about Paul because he had such a great game,"
said Minor, who hit two big threes to fuel Manhattan's comeback from a 48-35
deficit at halftime. "We had a mental lapse."
The Jaspers had fought all kinds of obstacles, everything from the pro-Wake
Forest crowd in the heart of ACC country to foul troubles that sent Flores to
the bench and the Demon Deacons to the line for their first one-and-one with
15:37 to go.
"It took one of the best teams in the country to end our season,"
Manhattan coach Bobby Gonzalez said. "We had them on the ropes and we took
them right to the wall."
Said Flores, who finished with 20 points, "I don't think anything that
they did was different than what I faced all year long. I've got to tip my hat
to their team. At the end of the game, they were able to come up with the plays
and we were not able to come up with plays."
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2004
14==
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 20, 2004 Saturday Home Edition
SECTION: Sports; Pg. 6D
HEADLINE: NCAA TOURNAMENT: Another test for toast-of-the-town Jaspers
BYLINE: TONY BARNHART
SOURCE: AJC
Raleigh --- It takes a lot to get A-Rod and the Yankees off the front of the
New York sports pages, but that's exactly what tiny Manhattan College
will do today if it can beat third-seeded Wake Forest in the second round of
the NCAA East Rutherford Regional.
Manhattan (25-5) recorded the first upset of the NCAA tournament Thursday when
the 12th-seeded Jaspers knocked off fifth-seeded Florida 75-60. That alone got coach Bobby Gonzalez a phone call Thursday night from former
New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Manhattan's most famous graduate.
"It's definitely gone through the roof when that kind of stuff starts
happening," said Gonzalez, in his fifth season at Manhattan.
Gonzalez has not been able to field all of the media requests from the Big
Apple, lest he not have enough time to prepare his team for the Demon Deacons (20-9),
who advanced with a 79-78 victory over Virginia Commonwealth.
But as big as Thursday's victory was for Manhattan, it would pale in comparison
to what a victory over Wake Forest would mean. That would not only put the
Jaspers into the Sweet 16 for the first time but would give them essentially a
home game in the regional semifinals Thursday at East Rutherford, N.J.
"That," said senior guard Luis Flores,
"would be incredible."
Manhattan, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champion, has the perfect
attitude to be the Cinderella of this year's NCAA tournament. The Jaspers never
flinched against Florida, outre- bounding the taller
Gators 36-26 while shutting them down on defense.
Afterward, Florida coach Billy Donovan praised Manhattan.
"Coming from New York, I know these kids," Donovan said. "Every
time they play they have a chip on their shoulder. They feel they have
something to prove. And they are tough."
Manhattan, which has won 20 of its past 22 games, is led by three seniors ---
Dave Holmes, Jason Benton and Flores, the MAAC player of the year, who had 26
points against Florida.
"We feel as though we can play with any team in the country on a given
night," said Holmes, who had 12 rebounds (eight on the offensive end)
against Florida. "Nobody expected us to be in this situation, and now if
we win tomorrow we go back home to Jersey."
Wake Forest is in the second round for the third consecutive year and for the
ninth time in 13 years. But the Deacons have not been to the Sweet 16 since
1996, Tim Duncan's senior season.
"It's hard to get to this game and even harder to get past this
game," said Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser. "I have coached in that
league [the MAAC], and my son played in that league. I know how good Manhattan
is."
As for the excitement back in New York should Manhattan win today, Gonzalez
says his team will be able to handle it.
"When you play in New York, you have to be tough," Gonzalez said.
"You can't take the pat on the back too seriously because the kick in the
butt is right around the corner."
LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2004
15==
Copyright 2004 The Baltimore Sun Company
All Rights Reserved
The Baltimore Sun
March 20, 2004 Saturday FINAL Edition
SECTION: SPORTS, Pg. 7C
HEADLINE: Ex-UMBC star Mulligan finds a different March today with
Manhattan;
While his former school deals with turmoil, junior forward and Jaspers revel in
NCAAs;
NCAA REGIONAL EAST RUTHERFORD
BYLINE: Don Markus
SOURCE: SUN STAFF
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C.
RALEIGH, N.C. - Peter Mulligan thinks of what might have happened had he
decided to remain at UMBC for the last two years of his college basketball
career rather than transfer back home to Manhattan College.
"We could have done something special," said Mulligan, who left
around the same time as two UMBC teammates, Ronald Yates and Will McClurkin, after the Retrievers went 20-9 in 2001-02.
As his former team finds itself in turmoil after last week's forced resignation
of longtime coach Tom Sullivan amid allegations that he verbally abused his
players, Mulligan's career is reaching new heights
with the Jaspers.
On Thursday, the 6-foot-5, 205-pound junior forward from New York City scored
17 points in 12th-seeded Manhattan's 75-60 upset victory over No. 5 seed
Florida in the opening round of the NCAA tournament at RBC Center.
Today, Mulligan and his teammates will try to topple another nationally
recognized program, fourth-seeded Wake Forest, with a chance to return to the
New York metropolitan area to play in the Sweet 16 at the East Rutherford
Regional.
With an early layup that seemed to put Florida back
on its heels from the start, Mulligan set the tone for what turned out to be
the first NCAA tournament victory for the Jaspers since 1995.
It was a continuation of his recent play. Mulligan has averaged 13.1 points
during a stretch in which the Jaspers have won 10 of 11 (and 13 of 14 overall).
"If you look back to that run, I think there's been a direct link to Peter
Mulligan and his production offensively and his stats, how he's played and how
aggressive he's been," Manhattan coach Bobby Gonzalez said yesterday.
"He lifted us up (Thursday). He's emotional about it. That's how he's been
the last month of the season."
The performance against Florida was the ninth time in the past 11 games that
Mulligan has scored in double figures, and it came against the kind of marquee
program that the former New York State Mr. Basketball only dreamed about coming
out of St. Raymond's High School.
Because of his in-between size and blue-collar style, Mulligan didn't attract
the big-name programs for which he had hoped to play. While he had an immediate
impact at UMBC, averaging 15.5 points on an 18-11 team as a freshman, there was
an undercurrent of unhappiness that continued into his sophomore year.
Mullgan has nothing but praise publicly for Sullivan,
saying yesterday: "He's a good coach; he looks out for his players."
But Mulligan admitted that some of the problems that surfaced recently were
glossed over a couple of years ago because the Retrievers were winning.
"Winning takes care of a lot of things," said Mulligan, who averaged
16.0 points as a sophomore.
In the end, it wasn't enough to keep Mulligan from coming to Manhattan, Yates
to Saint Peter's and McClurkin to Marist. When they
saw each other during the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference season, they
talked about how lucky they were to leave.
"I just got a message from Eugene Young," Mulligan said of the lone
member of their class who stayed at UMBC. "He was really excited. He
congratulated me and told me to keep it up. He told me I to keep representing
well."
Mulligan has become an important part of the Manhattan program. His decision to
transfer to the Bronx school was a factor in sophomore point guard Jason
Wingate's choice of schools. The two grew up in the same neighborhood, once
living on the same street.
"Peter plays with a big heart," said Wingate. "He brings a lot
of things to the court. He always brings the team up."
The two often send a message to each other, with one saying "Harlem"
and the other nodding in agreement.
It was that New York toughness that was evident against the Gators. At one
point in the second half, Mulligan saw a lapse in Florida's zone defense, drove the lane and scored. He immediately picked up
a loose ball lost by Gators forward Matt Walsh, and scored again, to stretch
the lead to 14 and silence any chance of a comeback.
As he running back downcourt,
Mulligan pointed to one of his biceps and stared at Walsh.
"I was saying, 'We're here, we the kings of New
York until somebody dethrones us,'" said Mulligan.
GRAPHIC: Photo(s), New York native Peter Mulligan, who left UMBC after
two successful seasons, has averaged 13.1 points over his past 11 games, including 17 Thursday in Manhattan's upset of
Florida. The Jaspers face No. 4 seed Wake Forest today.;
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOAD-DATE: March 21, 2004
16==
Copyright 2004 Daily News, L.P.
Daily News (New York)
March 20, 2004 Saturday
SPORTS FINAL EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 22
HEADLINE: OIL-FOR-GRAFT AT THE UN
<extraneous deleted>
March gladness
The powerhouse play of the fifth-seeded Gators turned
out to be a crock. The underdog Jaspers of Manhattan College trounced
Florida 75-60 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, advancing to this
afternoon's meetup with Wake Forest. No. 12 meets No.
4 at 3:40 p.m. in East Rutherford, N.J.
Wake Forest's nickname, for some unfathomable reason, is the Demon Deacons.
Manhattan draws its own from Brother Jasper of Mary, who was the college's
first athletic director in the 19th century and is credited with creating
baseball's seventh-inning stretch.
One can be certain Brother Jasper likes basketball just as much as baseball and
has a courtside seat up in heaven. One wonders where the original Demon Deacon
is today. Hmm. Is this truly a battle of good vs.
evil? Naw.
Just a battle of good vs. better. The
better being, of course, Manhattan.
LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2004
17==
The Miami Herald
March 20, 2004 Saturday F1 EDITION
SECTION: D; BRIEF; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 483 words
HEADLINE: While we continue to wait for someone big to get knocked out
of the...
DATELINE: ORLANDO
While we continue to wait for someone big to get
knocked out of the NCAA tournament, watching these little-known schools scare
the fat cats of college hoops silly will have to tide us over.
On Thursday, defending champ Syracuse, Maryland and Wake Forest got wake-up
calls. Friday, it was time for Cincinnati, Oklahoma State and Georgia Tech to
wring out their sweat-soaked towels.
So far, all the top seeds have survived. Maybe some of these favorites are
better off getting a scare early on. Coaches preach the value of never looking
ahead on a daily basis, but sometimes players need something tangible to make
that point sink in.
If it hasn't, those upsets we're all looking for
should come soon enough.
<extraneous deleted>
ONE FOR THE YANKS
Entering Thursday, the last time a team from the Bronx beat a team named
''Florida'' was Game 3 of the World Series. That was Oct. 21, when the Yankees
dropped the Marlins at Pro Player Stadium.
Thursday afternoon, Manhattan College gave a Bronx cheer to Florida by
beating the Gators. Before the Jaspers upset the Gators, coach Bobby Gonzalezread an inspiring letter from former New York mayor
Rudy Giuliani,a Manhattan
grad.
''We knew all eyes were going to be on us from New York City,'' Gonzalez said.
''We were representing all five boroughs.''
<extraneous deleted>
LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2004
18==
The Miami Herald
March 20, 2004 Saturday F1 EDITION
SECTION: D; Pg. 6
HEADLINE: Manhattan now the new Bronx Bombers;
Tiny Manhattan is euphoric after beating UF and dreams of a trip to the Sweet
16 just across the Hudson.;
MANHATTAN
BYLINE: BY MIKE PHILLIPS; mphillips@herald.com
DATELINE: RALEIGH
Cinderella lives in the Bronx.
She's adorned in green and coached by an Italian with a Hispanic name. She's
led by a kid from the Dominican Republic who made the journey from New York's
blacktop ball to tiny Manhattan College through New Jersey.
She's called the Jaspers, named for an Irish Catholic who is the father of the
seventh-inning stretch.
There's more: Little Manhattan College has already captured the Big
Apple's heart and is on the brink of becoming America's Sweetheart.
If you're looking for Cinderella in this year's NCAA tournament, she's there, a
step away from the Sweet 16 and a possible matchup
against St. Joe's, across the Hudson in East Rutherford, N.J.
''I told our kids the only way we could get home was to win,'' said Manhattan
coach Bobby Gonzalez, whose Jaspers meet Wake Forest today at the RBC Center in
the second round. A victory means the Sweet 16.
RAISING THE ROOF
''The roof is coming off back in New York,'' said Gonzalez, who was overwhelmed
when, after his team beat Florida, he got a phone call from former New York
Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Manhattan's most famous alum.
Gonzalez isn't exactly a household name. Before the Florida game, he was listed
twice in the Florida media information as coach Bobby
Rodriguez. After the game, Florida's Anthony Roberson kept referring to the
team that eliminated the Gators as ''Montana,'' not Manhattan. Wake Forest
forward Vytas Danelius
thought Manhattan was located in Chicago.
IT'S NO BIG DEAL
''I'm used to it,'' said Gonzalez, who met the media Friday by announcing he
was Coach Rodriguez. ''My neighbors don't even know who I am.''
America didn't know about Manhattan until a year ago, when the Jaspers fell to
Syracuse by nine in the opening round. Syracuse went on to win the national title, and Gonzalez just kept reminding his kids they could
have beaten the national champs.
New York didn't know much about Manhattan, either. The Jaspers had to beg for a
tiny headline in the big papers, and none of the networks was giving Jaspers
scores on the nightly news.
Now they've knocked A-Rod off the back page of The New York Post.
''I think us knocking A-Rod off the back page is spectacular. I could never
imagine that ever happening,'' said center Jason Benton, one of four seniors
who start.
MASTER BUILDER
When Gonzalez, who is 48-12 the past two years, got there five years ago, Manhattan was 5-23 and living in the largest shadow in
the nation. But Gonzalez, a self-proclaimed Italian who doesn't speak or read
Spanish [''My father's from Spain, and my mother is from Italy''], went to work
and built a powerhouse. The biggest piece of the puzzle was point guard Luis
Flores, the fourth-leading scorer in the nation.
Flores was the first kid Gonzalez tried to recruit, but he lost him to Rutgers
because Flores ''dreamed of playing in the Big East.'' But when the dream turned
sour, Flores left Rutgers and the first man he called was Gonzalez.
''We have come a long way,'' said Flores, who was born in the Dominican
Republic and moved to New York when he was 8. ''We put up with a lot to get
here. To me, we deserve [the media attention] we're getting now.''
LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2004
19==
The New York Times
March 20, 2004, Saturday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section D; Page 1; Column 4; Sports Desk
HEADLINE: COLLEGE BASKETBALL;
Two Campuses Share Faith and Hoops
BYLINE: By LYNN ZINSER and VINCENT M. MALLOZZI; George Vecsey, in Raleigh, N.C., contributed reporting for this
article.
The two universities sit in quiet neighborhoods, removed from their grittier
surroundings not by distance but by atmosphere. Manhattan College seems
to avoid even itself. Nestled near Van Cortlandt Park
in Riverdale, it is not in Manhattan, but in a rare tree-lined corner of the
Bronx.
Seton Hall recedes into a lush pocket of South Orange, N.J., where the team has
outgrown its basketball arena, only a stroll from the Newark city limit. To
play, Seton Hall drives through the grit, all the way to the Meadowlands.
They are small Roman Catholic colleges, hardly the kind of athletic factories
that rule college sports, but they are being swept into the sporting whirlwind
of the moment.
Both teams won their first-round N.C.A.A. tournament games in Raleigh, N.C., on
Thursday after progressing through the tournament's Darwinian selection
process, each toppling a bigger-name opponent -- Manhattan knocking off
Florida, Seton Hall beating Arizona.
For a day, at least, March Madness pierced these quiet campuses.
At Seton Hall yesterday, students lined up in the bookstore to buy N.C.A.A.
T-shirts, as the team prepared to play Duke today.
At Manhattan, though the college is on spring break, a group of students found
its way to Draddy Gym for some pickup basketball,
inspired by its team, which faces Wake Forest today.
"It has been crazy around here since we beat Arizona," said Christine
Whited, a 20-year-old sophomore at Seton Hall.
"After that game, people were running around the Residence Hall shouting
into megaphones: "We're gonna
beat Duke.' "
For Seton Hall, whose history includes one odds-defying trip to the national
championship game in 1989, the victory is not a drastic departure. The Pirates
often struggle to keep pace with the titans of the Big East Conference, and
usually do not fill half of the 20,049-seat Continental Arena, but at least
they play in a conference with titans.
Manhattan usually finds titans only when it makes the N.C.A.A. tournament,
which is usually reserved for when the Jaspers win the Metro Atlantic
Conference tournament.
Conferences like the MAAC may put the spice in the N.C.A.A.'s,
but the spice gets invited parsimoniously. The MAAC tournament winner receives
an automatic bid. Everyone else usually goes home.
"The great thing about coaching at Manhattan is, Manhattan knows what it
is," said Fran Fraschilla, a former Jaspers
coach, now a broadcaster. "What I like about it, whether they win or lose,
they are not going to compromise the values of the school. It just goes back to
normal. That's the fun part."
Fraschilla coached the Jaspers the last time they won
an N.C.A.A. game, beating Oklahoma in 1995, before losing in the second round
to Arizona State. He remembers the team being sent off by Rudolph W. Giuliani,
an alumnus who was mayor of New York City at the time,
and a trip to City Hall when the team returned.
A few hundred students bused and car-pooled their way to the game then, as they
have done this year.
Fraschilla moved on after that victory, landing the
head coaching job at higher-profile St. John's, but he retains a warm spot for
Manhattan.
"There's an innocence there," Fraschilla said, speaking by telephone from courtside at a
tournament game he was working for Westwood One radio. "They have a sense
of priorities. They are proud of their team, but it's not the most important
part of the house. It's the porch, the part people see."
This is at the root of why colleges like Manhattan, with an enrollment of
3,144, and Seton Hall, enrollment around 10,000, play Division 1 basketball.
When they reach the N.C.A.A. tournament, their games are free advertising, the
kind that colleges like Ohio State and Miami take for granted.
When their basketball teams do well, applications for admission jump,
fund-raising receives a boost, the entire campus feels
the effects.
"Last night, you came back to the lobby and people were clapping, the band
was playing, the Seton Hall family was with us," Pirates Coach Louis Orr
said. "They got something out of us prospering. You don't realize it until
you see it how many people are enjoying it."
Manhattan officials say that happened in 1995. The excitement caught everyone
up. Admissions rose. Donations rose. Still, at heart, little has changed.
"It's a small school," said Dave Holmes, a senior forward for the
Jaspers. "It's like a family."
The families are Catholic, at Manhattan and at Seton Hall.
Opened in 1853 -- when it actually was in Manhattan -- Manhattan has background
that is LaSallian, following an educational mission
based on the teachings of John Baptist de La Salle.
Seton Hall was founded in 1856 and is run by the Archdiocese of Newark. That
background did not keep Seton Hall from grabbing its place in big-time college
basketball when the Big East was founded in 1979. The Pirates have boasted a
few prominent players, but play largely under the college basketball radar even
when they are good. Beyond campus, the current players are nearly anonymous.
That approach seems to suit the college's character, and this year, it has them
in the second round of the tournament.
"They did a great job, and their coach, Louis Orr, did a great job,"
said the announcer, Dick Vitale, an alumnus. "I believe that they have a
great opportunity here. There's so much parity in college basketball these days
it's incredible. As far as Seton Hall is concerned, if you can beat Arizona,
you can beat anyone."
That is the thinking around Seton Hall and Manhattan. It is why a group of
students felt moved to play basketball on a Friday afternoon at Manhattan. It
is why Seton Hall students are telling one another where they plan to watch the
Duke game.
"This is our national team," said Pete Reader, chairman of Seton
Hall's Department of Communications. "We don't have football. The kids are
here. The basketball team is here. This is huge for our students. People are
talking about basketball. They are high-fiving each
other. They're excited."
March Madness has dropped by for a rare visit.
http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Photo: Pete Reader, a professor at Seton Hall, in the campus
bookstore with a T-shirt supporting the men's team. (Photo by Richard Perry/The New York Times)(pg. D3)
Map of New Jersey and New York highlighting Seton Hall University and Manhattan
College. (pg. D3)
LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2004
20==
Newsday (New York)
March 20, 2004 Saturday
NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. A38
HEADLINE: Ellis Island for hoops embraces players rejected elsewhere
BYLINE: SHAUN POWELL
RALEIGH, N.C.
They all wanted to be here, meaning in the NCAA Tournament, where they're
playing before big crowds and getting big national attention.
But almost none of them wanted to be here, meaning at Manhattan College.
Of course, that won't be evident Saturday afternoon. Right now, they're
thrilled to be Jaspers. They're proud to represent their school, happy to carry
the flag for New York basketball, and only too willing to beat Wake Forest and
become America's favorite NCAA bracket-buster.
Still, when some of the players left high school years ago, they didn't exactly
embrace the idea of spending four years at a mid-level school from the Bronx.
"It's funny," forward Dave Holmes said. "In my junior year, I
used to get all these letters from Manhattan College. I looked at them
and wondered why they even bothered. I said, 'I'm not going there.' Didn't even think about it."
High school stars don't dream about Manhattan. They expect to see Duke, North
Carolina, maybe Kansas, or at the very least, one of the lesser Big East
schools. There are three former Mr. Basketball stars with the Jaspers, and that
doesn't include Luis Flores, their best player. All wound up at Manhattan more
by circumstance than choice.
"We all believe we got overlooked," Flores said. "We all have
the same story."
Because they were 'tweeners or late bloomers or
simply victims of poor timing, they were mostly ignored by the big schools.
This is why the Jaspers, their pride still showing the bruises from rejection,
are anxious to prove they belong in this tournament no matter whom they play.
"Their players have a chip on their shoulders," Florida coach Billy
Donovan said after losing to Manhattan in the first round. "Some of them
think they belong on the next level up. For whatever reason, they didn't get
there. So they play with an edge."
Flores led all New York City high school players in scoring at 35.6 a game as a
senior, which usually means an automatic ticket to big-time college basketball.
He took Norman Thomas to the public league quarterfinals. He went to a
Five-Star camp and won the MVP award.
He received only one major scholarship offer, and that was from Rutgers. There,
he ran into a numbers crunch at guard. Rutgers also gave a scholarship to Todd
Billet, another guard, and recognized him as their top recruit. Flores didn't
feel too secure in his position or his chances for playing time. He began
exploring his transfer options, and none of the big schools came
calling.
"If you ask me if I saw myself at Manhattan, to say yes wouldn't be
truthful," he said.
But it worked out. Flores was one of the nation's leading scorers this season
and won his second straight MAAC player of the year award. This is also his
second straight trip to the NCAAs. And he's a win
away from advancing to the Sweet 16. Most likely, none of this would have
happened at Rutgers.
"My situation has been great," he said. "I came to a program
where I could make a difference. So it has worked out."
Peter Mulligan was named New York's Mr. Basketball as a senior at St.
Raymond's. He even has a tattoo that celebrates the award. Problem is, Mulligan signed a year earlier with Maryland-Baltimore
County on the advice of family. "I wasn't sure I would get any good looks
from Division I," Mulligan said.
The bigger schools weren't sure about chasing a 6-5 forward anyway. He left
UMBC after two unhappy seasons and came home to Manhattan, partly so his mother
could see him play, partly because he had no other major offers. He finally
delivered in a big way on the college level Thursday by scoring 17 points
against Florida.
Jason Benton was Connecticut's Mr. Basketball, but at 6-6, he was an undersized
center who didn't show the quickness to play one of the forward positions. The big
schools took a pass. Mike Konovelchick twice was
named the top player in New Hampshire, but because the state is better known
for producing skiers, the basketball powers looked elsewhere. Konovelchick didn't even get an offer from his state
university.
As for Holmes, he eventually committed to Manhattan after receiving one too
many letters from coach Bobby Gonzalez and none from
the bigger schools.
"I think I can speak for all of us and say I'm happy where I am,"
Holmes said. "I look at some of the guys on my high school team, some guys
who did go to big schools, and they haven't had the opportunity to play in the
tournament. They're at home somewhere. I'm here."
Here, meaning Manhattan.
LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2004
21==
Copyright 2004 Sarasota Herald-Tribune Co.
Sarasota Herald-Tribune (Florida)
March 20, 2004 Saturday All Editions
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. C1
HEADLINE: It's tough to ignore Jaspers any longer
BYLINE: MIC HUBER, mic.huber@heraldtribune.com
DATELINE: RALEIGH N.C.
The day before, they were just one of 64 teams in the NCAA tournament. They
were the little team from New York that the Big Apple almost ignored.
Friday, the day after they shocked the Florida Gators, the Manhattan Jaspers
were the darlings of every borough in the big city and the team underdog
dreamers throughout the country were ready to rally around.
"We have never seen anything like this," said Manhattan basketball
coach Bobby Gonzalez, who was running on fumes Friday, admitting that he got
very little sleep Thursday night.
There were television spots to do, interviews to give, radio shows clamoring
for time. There were congratulations pouring in. There was the call from former
mayor Rudy Giuliani to take. Giuliani -- a Manhattan graduate -- tracked down
Gonzalez on his cell phone.
"I spoke to him on the phone, myself, for about 10 minutes," Gonzalez
said, as if in awe. "He's our most famous graduate. I had never met him,
and that was my first chance to speak to him."
It's like that when you become Cinderella. The team that Florida coach Billy Donovan said played as if it had a chip on its
shoulder is now waltzing in the NCAA tournament in glass slippers.
The Jaspers, a team one Florida player kept calling Montana on Thursday, is
suddenly the pride of the city of Yankees. In fact, Manhattan College --
which is actually in the Bronx -- managed to knock those
Yankees off the back pages of most New York City tabloids.
"To know we knocked A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez) off the back page is
spectacular," Manhattan center Jason Benton said. "I never thought
that would happen."
The little team that could, did it by knocking Florida
out of the NCAA tournament in the first round. They did it behind the play of
guard Luis Flores, who was the first player Gonzalez tried to recruit five
years ago when he took over a Manhattan team that had gone 5-22 a year before.
Right after the press conference announcing his hiring, Gonzalez went to
Flores' high school and offered a scholarship.
"I knew there weren't very good players at Manhattan," Gonzalez said.
On the day Flores was to sign, a scholarship opened at Rutgers and he jumped at
the chance. It had been his dream to play in the Big East.
When things didn't work out at Rutgers, Gonzalez was the first coach Flores
called.
Today, the Jaspers hope to stretch their Cinderella story further when they
play Wake Forest here at the RBC Center. Gonzalez, reveling in the moment, also
knows the warm attention his team is getting can be fleeting.
"When you are in New York, and involved in sports, you get thick skin as
coach and your kids become tough because you have to handle the possibility of
'They love you today and they want to throw you in the Hudson (River)
tomorrow,'" Gonzalez said.
"If we, God forbid, get beat (today) they will forget about us by next
time the papers come out."
But what a ride while it lasts.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO; ASSOCIATED PRESS; Manhattan's Luis Flores celebrates his
team's 75-60 defeat of Florida in a first-round NCAA tournament game in
Raleigh, N.C., Thursday. Flores scored 26 points in the upset.
LOAD-DATE: March 21, 2004
22==
The Virginian-Pilot(Norfolk, Va.)
March 20, 2004 Saturday Final Edition
SECTION: SPORTS, Pg. C1
HEADLINE: MEET THEJASPERS: LITTLE DARLINGS FROM BIG CITY
BYLINE: Tom Robinson
DATELINE: RALEIGH
It's good to be king of New York. You get phone calls
from Rudy Giuliani, for one thing.
"My mother was really excited about that," Bobby Gonzalez, Manhattan
College's basketball coach, was saying Friday about his first conversation
with the former mayor.
"He's our most famous graduate, you know. It's definitely gone through the
roof when things like that start happening."
Sure, Manhattan whipped Florida and became the first darling of the 2004 NCAA
tournament. But fame can flee in a New York minute, Gonzalez says.
He's from the city. He taught and coached in its high schools. He's seen too
many back-page headlines.
King for a day is more like it.
"In New York, you've got to handle the possibility that they love you
today, and they want to throw you in the Hudson tomorrow," Gonzalez says.
"That's just the mentality. You can't take the pat on the back too
serious, because the kick in the butt is right around the corner.
"If we lose, God forbid, they'll forget about us by Sunday."
Forget? That's the wise guy in Gonzalez talking - he's a walking one-liner like
his former boss, Virginia's Pete Gillen. There's too much to love about the
Jaspers, No. 12 seeds who will try to bring down fourth-seeded Wake Forest
today.
Hizzoner's favorite dark horse plays with the compelling
boldness born of its urban roots, which aren't even Manhattan but the Bronx. It
represents a 3,400-student Catholic school, sharing gym space when the baseball
and softball teams are forced indoors.
"We can adapt," forward Dave Holmes says. "That's one of the
reasons for our success."
Success has come in buckets under Gonzalez, who spent a year with Gillen at
Virginia before taking a 5-23 team and building it - as St. John's has slipped
into disarray - into New York's finest.
The Jaspers, named for a "Brother Jasper of Mary" from the late 19th
century, have won 68 games the last three seasons using an interesting array of
pieces:
Luis Flores, the soft-speaking, high-scoring guard who came home from Rutgers
after his freshman year.
Peter Mulligan, who did the same from Maryland-Baltimore
County as a sophomore.
Sharp-shooting Mike Konovelchick, twice voted New Hampshire's best high school player.
And Holmes, the wide-body from Virginia's Oak Hill Academy with no real
position, but with tons of the toughness Gonzalez prizes.
"We accept that Cinderella role," says Holmes, "but we feel we
can play with anyone in the country on a given night."
Once upon a time, Manhattan was famous for another role - as the savior of
college basketball's integrity. That came in the person of Portsmouth's Junius Kellogg.
In 1951, as a point-shaving racket spread throughout the East, Kellogg, who
played for Manhattan, was offered $1,000 to "influence" a game.
Kellogg, who died in 1998, reported the contact to authorities. His courageous
help in the government's investigation is still hailed as a defining moment in
the history of the college game.
These Jaspers seek their own legacy - a victory today sends them to the
regional in East Rutherford, N.J., next week as one of 16 teams left in the
tournament.
"We're up against a mighty giant, Wake Forest in ACC country,"
Gonzalez says. "If I sit and think about it, I'm gonna
throw up.
"We'll do the best we can."
You know the Jaspers will, too. The Hudson is chilly this time of year.
LOAD-DATE: March 22, 2004
23==
Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, NC)
March 20, 2004 Saturday, METRO EDITION
SECTION: C; Lenox Rawlings; Pg. 1
HEADLINE: MOVING: JASPERS CAN HANDLE ROAD TRIPS
DATELINE: RALEIGH
Manhattan College isn't in Manhattan and Wake Forest University isn't in
Wake Forest, and by sundown one of them won't be in the NCAA Tournament.
The Relocation Bowl will propel an inspired winner to the Basketball Bowel, or
whatever they're calling that swamp-locked arena in the New Jersey Meadowlands
this year. Four guests will grace Tony Soprano's homecourt
at the East Rutherford Regional, each presumably facing the swinging door that
leads to the San Antonio Final Four.
One man's graveyard can constitute another man's paradise. Coach Bobby Gonzalez
floated above the clouds after Manhattan trounced favored Florida 75-60 in the
first round.
"There's still work to be done," Gonzalez said. "I tell our guys
that the only way we can go back home - at all, ever - is if we can get to the
Meadowlands."
He laughs and rocks forward with the same crackling energy as Pete Gillen, his
boss at three different schools. (Wake Forest's Skip Prosser also worked for
Gillen at Xavier, but the one winter Gonzalez spent there, Prosser coached
Loyola of Maryland.)
Gonzalez, a Buffalo State grad, just turned 40. He looks and acts like Manager
Bobby Valentine after 40 cups of coffee, but Gonzalez seems calmly assured that
the Jaspers can handle road trips, far or near.
Manhattan, founded by Catholic brothers, opened its heavy wooden doors in 1853
on Canal Street in Lower Manhattan. Seeking open spaces, the college moved
north to rural Manhattanville (now Uptown) and moved
again in 1923 to Riverdale in the Bronx. The college of 3,400 students - 550
fewer than Wake Forest's undergraduate enrollment - sits at the intersection of
Broadway and 242nd Street, 35 blocks north of the Manhattan-Bronx boundary.
Guard Luis Flores emigrated from the Dominican Republic when he was 8, living
with his grandparents about a 10-minute subway ride from campus. Flores, a 6-2
guard and Division I's fourth-leading scorer, burned
Florida for 26 points, two more than his average. He also heard the old lines
about Manhattan not being in Manhattan.
"That's something that pushes us," Flores said. "We're out there
on the court and you ask us: 'How come Manhattan is in the Bronx? Manhattan
should be in Manhattan.'"
His customary retort to opponents: "Well, just so you know, you will know
who we are after you play us."
On the flip side of the map, New Yorkers sometimes stare quizzically when they
discover that Wake Forest moved out of Wake Forest in 1956, using gas and vans
supplied by Reynolds tobacco money for the long haul to Winston-Salem. Wake
Forest is the hometown of center Eric Williams, much closer to Wake County's
RBC Center than to Wait Chapel.
Outsiders often refer to Wake Forest University as a Baptist affiliate, which
was true from its founding in 1834 until 1986, when the school ended its
governing relationship with the N.C. Baptist State Convention. The convention
still helps finance the Poteat Scholarships for
Baptist students, but that remains the only formal financial link.
Arnold Palmer attended Wake Forest in Wake County. Tim Duncan graduated from
Wake Forest in Forsyth County.
Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor of New York, graduated from Manhattan. So did
boxing announcer Don Dunphy and ACC ref Larry Lembo, once the school's career scoring leader.
The most revered athlete, Junius Kellogg, received
recognition for his character more than for his basketball skills, which were
considerable. In 1951, when gamblers and fixers swirled around Madison Square
Garden, a former teammate visited Kellogg in his dorm room and offered $1,000
to shave points against DePaul.
Kellogg, an Army veteran from a poor Virginia family and Manhattan's first
black player, evicted the intermediary. Kellogg told Coach Kenny Norton about
the offer the next morning. Norton encouraged Kellogg to approach the district
attorney. Kellogg did. He wore listening devices and helped investigators trap
fixers in a broad scandal that involved 86 games in 17 states and 32 players
who admitted guilt.
Kellogg joined the Harlem Globetrotters in 1953. The next year, he was
traveling through Pine Bluff, Ark. The car blew a tire and rolled over several
times, throwing passenger Kellogg out the window. He was paralyzed below the
waist and never walked again. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, though,
Kellogg coached a wheelchair basketball team to international titles. He became
director of strategic planning for New York City's youth department, a job he
held until dying six years ago at 71.
Manhattan alumni clutch certain traditions like gold, especially the athletic
nickname that honors Brother Jasper, the first athletics director in the late
1800s. Jasper, also the school's first baseball coach and Prefect of
Discipline, started the widely recognized tradition of standing for a
seventh-inning stretch during baseball games.
During a tepid game against a semipro team on a sweltering day, Jasper detected
restlessness in the stands. He stopped the game and instructed students to
stand up and take a break. They repeated the habit game after game, even while
playing the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds. The Polo Grounds fans stood
with them, sparking an endearing custom that spread throughout the big leagues.
Manhattan's habit of upsetting NCAA heavyweights occurs with far less
frequency. If the 12th-seeded Jaspers shock Wake Forest, they'll do so with a
seven-man rotation that tops out at 6-7. Manhattan beat Richmond, swept four
New York City opponents, lost only five games and also received four votes in
the last AP poll.
They haven't been ranked since 1957 and haven't knocked off a top-ranked team
since dispatching Jerry West's West Virginia powerhouse in the 1958 tournament.
The Jaspers hibernated between NCAA victories, until Coach Fran Fraschilla's surprising at-large invitees stunned Oklahoma
in 1995. Manhattan threatened eventual champion Syracuse in the first round
last March before losing 76-65.
Forward Peter Mulligan insists that these Jaspers are stronger, the best team
in the school's 98 seasons and the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference's 23
seasons. They thrived as Cinderella Thursday, captivating the sellout crowd
after Florida's Matt Walsh hammered Mike Konovelchick
to the floor on a fast break. As soon as the ref called an intentional foul, Konovelchick pulled his jaw out of the hardwood and
grinned.
"I was just trying to send a message to Florida and everybody in all the
country out there," he said. "That's how our team is. We play with
toughness. You can do what you want, but we're going to keep getting up and
coming back at you."
That's how they see the world from Manhattan in the Bronx, with a twinkle in a
blackened eye.
GRAPHIC: AP PHOTO , C8: Bobby Gonzalez coached
Manhattan past Florida in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
LOAD-DATE: March 21, 2004
24==
Calgary Herald (Alberta, Canada)
March 19, 2004 Friday Early Edition
SECTION: Sports; Pg. E4
HEADLINE: Manhattan surprises Florida: St. Joe's, Stanford advance in a
walk
SOURCE: Herald News Services
Top seeds Saint Joseph's and Stanford easily won their first-round games in the
NCAA men's basketball tournament, while 12th-seeded Manhattan College
upset No. 5 Florida 75-60.
Luis Flores scored 26 points as Manhattan (25-5), champion of the lightly
regarded Metro Atlantic Conference, got its first victory in the National
Collegiate Athletic Association tournament since 1995. The victory by the New
York City school marked the 14th time in 15 years that a No. 12 seed won a
first- round NCAA game.
"We felt coming in that we had a chance," Manhattan coach Bobby
Gonzalez said after the victory in Raleigh, N.C. "We thought our seniors
were iron tough and had been tested a number of times the past few years."
Saint Joseph's beat Liberty 82-63 in Buffalo, New York, and Stanford routed
Texas-San Antonio 71-45 in Seattle to continue the winning streak of top seeds
in the first round. A No. 1 seed hasn't lost in the opening round since the
tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
All-American Jameer Nelson scored 35 points for Saint
Joseph's (28-1), which rebounded from its loss to Xavier in the Atlantic 10
Conference tournament.
"Before the game I said to him, 'Today is what great players live
for,"' Hawks coach Phil Martelli said.
"He knew that offensively he would have to lead."
Josh Childress, the Pacific-10 player of the year, scored 26 points to lead
Stanford (30-1) to its 10th consecutive first- round win in the NCAA
tournament.
Gerry McNamara scored 43 points, including nine 3-pointers, to lead defending
national champion Syracuse over Brigham Young 80-75 in Denver.
The fifth-seeded Orangemen (22-7) trailed by 11 points in the first half before
rallying to avoid becoming the first defending champion to lose in the first
round since UCLA in 1996.
Maryland and Wake Forest, Atlantic Coast Conference rivals seeded fourth in
their regions, narrowly avoided upsets against No. 13 seeds. Maryland defeated
Texas El-Paso 86-83 in Denver, while Wake Forest downed Virginia Commonwealth
79-78 in Raleigh.
Alabama topped Southern Illinois 65-64 in Seattle on Antoine Pettway's running shot in the lane with five seconds left.
GRAPHIC: Photo: Jeff Roberson, Associated Press; Maryland's John
Gilchrist (11) shoots over UTEP's Filiberto
Rivera at Denver.
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
25==
Copyright 2004 CanWest
Interactive, a division of
CanWest Global Communications Corp.
All Rights Reserved
Calgary Herald (Alberta, Canada)
March 19, 2004 Friday Final Edition
SECTION: Sports; Pg. E4
HEADLINE: Manhattan surprises Florida: St. Joe's, Stanford, Duke win
easily
SOURCE: Herald News Services
Top seeds Duke, Saint Joseph's and Stanford easily won their first-round games
in the NCAA men's basketball tournament Thursday, while 12th-seeded Manhattan
College upset Florida.
Luis Flores scored 26 points as Manhattan, champion of the lightly regarded
Metro Atlantic Conference, beat fifth-seeded Florida 75-60. The victory by the
New York City school marked the 14th time in 15 years that a No. 12 seed won a
first-round National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament game.
"We felt coming in that we had a chance," Manhattan coach Bobby
Gonzalez said after the victory in Raleigh, North Carolina. "We thought
our seniors were iron tough and had been tested a number of times the past few
years."
<extraneous deleted>
Manhattan held Florida 18 points under its scoring average and outrebounded the Gators 30-24. Florida (20-11) hasn't
gotten past the second round since reaching the 2000 title game, where the
Gators lost to Michigan State.
"I felt our guys had that 'deer in the headlights' look," said
Florida coach Billy Donovan, whose team was ranked No. 1 for one week early in
the season. "We were very, very nervous and uptight."
GRAPHIC: Photo: Jeff Roberson, Associated Press; Maryland's John
Gilchrist (11) shoots over UTEP's Filiberto
Rivera at Denver.
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
26==
Copyright 2004 Daily News, L.P.
Daily News (New York)
March 19, 2004 Friday
SPORTS FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6
HEADLINE: JUBILANT JASPERS Underdog Bx. squad:
Later, Gators!
BYLINE: By AUSTIN FENNER DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
It's a long road to the Final Four, but Manhattan
College made it past the first exit.
The lightly regarded team from the Bronx knocked off - make that trounced -
heavy favorite Florida yesterday to advance to the second round of the NCAA
Tournament. The 75-60 rout had the Jasper student body dreaming impossible dreams.
"I'm ecstatic," shouted junior Kate Kelleher, 20. "It's amazing
to have a win like this. It showed we have a lot of heart."
March Madness swept over the Riverdale campus, as some 200 students and faculty
members clamored in front of giant-screen television sets to watch their
12th-seeded team wallop the fifth-seeded Gators in the first round in Raleigh,
N.C.
The victory earned the Jaspers a date with Wake Forest tomorrow for a chance at
what college basketball fans call the Sweet 16.
"It feels good," said senior Alberto Rodriguez, 22, who gave hugs and
high-fives in the closing minutes of the game.
"It's awesome," said senior Val Muriqi, who
gushed over star guard Luis Flores' performance after he poured in a game high
26 points.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the Catholic college's most famous alum, was
traveling on a plane to South Dakota for a speech, so his son, Andrew, E-mailed
him with frequent updates on the game.
"They can play with anybody because they played like a team,"
Giuliani said after landing. "I love a basketball team that can play
defense."
Giuliani predicted that the Jaspers will win tomorrow and advance to the Sweet
16 - and play in their backyard, in East Rutherford, N.J.
Brother Thomas Scanlan, the president of the Catholic
college, said last year's loss to Syracuse University in the first round
prepared the team for yesterday's win.
"They weren't bedazzled," said Scanlan, who
watched the game with his students in the school's student union at Thomas
Hall. "We have a quality coach and a quality team."
GRAPHIC: MATTHEW ROBERTS PSYCHED Manhattan College fans celebrate
Jaspers' NCAA tourney victory yesterday at Fenwick's Bar and Grill in the
Bronx.
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
27==
Daily News (New York)
March 19, 2004 Friday
SPORTS FINAL EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 84
HEADLINE: FLORES JOURNEY HAS WAY TO GO
BYLINE: BY DICK WEISS
RALEIGH, N.C. - Luis Flores never figured his future would be in basketball
when he was growing up in San Pedro de Marcos, a Dominican Republic hot bed for
major league baseball prospects.
He was an infielder in the youth leagues there and his favorite players were
Jose Conseco and the then-Yankee Danny Tartabull. But all that changed when his parents sent him
from that sun-drenched Caribbean island to live with his grandparents Basilio and Juanita Flores in Washington Heights when he
was just 8 years old.
"It was a huge decision," he recalled. "My grandparents
basically decided to take care of me. My father was like, 'It's better off to
go to the United States, get a better education, have a better chance in life.'
I know at the time, if I had a say in it, I would have said, 'Yes, let me come
to New York.' "
Flores' baseball career quickly froze up when the temperature dipped below 30.
"It was too cold for me to play outside, so I picked up a basketball. I
didn't even know what a basketball looked like when I first came to the United
States. But all my friends played basketball and I would just follow them.
Fortunately for me, I was able to follow them, pick up a ball and I'm here
today."
Here, as in the NCAA Tournament against Wake Forest. Flores was one of the
stars of the first round, scoring 26 points yesterday
as the Jaspers defeated perennial SEC power Florida, 75-60, at the RBC Center
to advance to a second-round matchup tomorrow against
the Demon Deacons.
All those nights practicing in the park with his good friend
Francisco Garcia until 3 or 3:30 in the morning must have paid off.
Flores used to emulate Michael Jordan in those pickup games, copying the famous
fadeaway that he now uses so effectively.
The 6-2 Flores must have looked like Jordan to Florida in the second half when
he ripped off 16 points, taking over the game with a pair of threes and a
jumper as the Jaspers went on an 8-0 run to take an 11-point lead that
eventually swelled to 19.
Flores is no fluke and neither is Manhattan. The Jaspers may be a mid-major but
they play with that hard New York City edge that comes from surviving all those
brutal pickup games in the park. Flores has done the circuit,
playing anywhere he could find a game from Rucker Park to 189th St. to IS 48 to
IS 143. "There were times in this game when I got hit real hard and I'd
just look at my teammates and smile," he said. "I'm used to it
because I grew up playing street ball and that's the way we played. Nobody
called any fouls and you just get used to playing hard."
They learn how to get up the way Jaspers forward Dave Konovelchick
did when he was hammered with an international foul by Florida guard Matt Walsh
after the Gators had closed to within 50-40 with 12:01 to play. Konovelchick dusted himself off, then calmly went to the
line and made two free throws. Then, Flores scored on a layup
and the game in effect was over. "We're the type of team that gets up and
keeps coming at you," Konovelchick said.
That's the way it is at Manhattan, where the Jaspers play like they have a chip
on their shoulder. Most of these kids, like Peter Mulligan from St. Ray's or
Jason Benton of Wilbur Cross in New Haven, were overlooked in high school - or,
like Flores, were pushed to the background at his first stop, Rutgers. All
Flores wanted was a chance to show what he can do, but he got limited playing
time because Dahntay Jones, Todd Billett
and Jeff Greer were ahead of him in the rotation.
Flores is the man at Manhattan, a 2,000-point scorer who has a chance to play
in the NBA.
Sadly, his parents have never seen him play in person. "Unfortunately,
they live in the Dominican Republic and they have no interest in coming to the
United States," he said.
But his grandparents came to his final home game at Draddy
Gymnasium, where he was honored on Senior Night as one of the greatest players
ever at Manhattan.
And they tuned in yesterday to see their grandson put Manhattan's name in
lights.
E-mail: mailto:dweiss@edit.nydailynews.com
GRAPHIC: AP FLOURISH Manhattan's Luis Flores (l.) goes to hoop over
Florida's David Lee on way to 26 points.
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
28==
Copyright 2004 Daily News, L.P.
Daily News (New York)
March 19, 2004 Friday
SPORTS FINAL EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 85
HEADLINE: JASPERS GIVE GIFT TO GONZO BLOW OUT CANDLES, GATORS FOR COACH
BYLINE: By DICK WEISS DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
RALEIGH, N.C. - Manhattan coach Bobby Gonzalez turned 40 yesterday. But he
never bothered to tell his players because he did not want any distractions as
the 12th-seeded Jaspers prepared to play Florida in the first round of the NCAA
Tournament.
Yesterday, they threw a surprise party for Gonzalez, defeating the fifth-seeded
Gators, 75-60, at the RBC Center to advance to a second-round matchup with Wake Forest. "This is the best birthday
present I've ever received," Gonzalez said.
The ice cream and cake can wait. Gonzalez plans on celebrating by looking at
tape of Wake's 79-78 victory over VCU. "I think people in New York City
knew we were pretty good," he said. "But I think after today, they're
saying, 'Wow, they're for real.' Even if it's for a day.
I think it's for more than a day, but in this tournament, you never know. You're
up against a lot of Goliaths."
The secret's out on Manhattan. The MAAC-champion Jaspers (25-5) are not a
one-day fairy tale. They barged into the national consciousness with a sense of
bravado, outcompeting and outplaying the surprisingly
comatose-looking SEC power.
The players began to celebrate in the final seconds, chest bumping and high-fiving. Luis Flores, the Jaspers' outstanding senior guard
from Norman Thomas, walked over to the Gators' bench to shake hands with
Florida's high-scoring guard Anthony Roberson, one of three McDonald's
All-Americans in Billy Donovan's lineup, and junior forward Peter Mulligan even
took time to perform the Gator chomp in front of the Florida bench.
"We went alligator hunting today," he said in a jubilant locker room.
"We're the kings of New York. We've been the best team in the city for the
past few years and we're a team to be reckoned with."
The Jaspers may have been star-struck in the final 10 minutes of a first-round
loss to Syracuse last year, but it didn't take long for them to figure out they
were a more motivated team than Florida.
"America is going to look at this as an upset, but behind closed doors we
know it wasn't an upset because we know we can play with anybody on any given
night in the country," senior forward David Holmes said. "We just try
to keep that behind closed doors. We belong here and that's no fluke."
Flores led Manhattan with 26 points. Mulligan had 17 and the 6-7 Holmes
contributed 12 points and 12 rebounds. Roberson scored 22 for the Gators
(20-11), but was constantly harassed by 5-8 dynamo
Kenny Minor and Jason Wingate.
But what set the Jaspers apart in this one was their rebounding margin - 36-23
- and the aggressive way they defended Florida's free-flowing offense, holding
the Gators to 18 below their average, limiting them to just 3-for-13 on
three-point attempts. The Jaspers used 6-6 senior center Jason Benton and
Holmes to bottle up Florida's 6-9 junior David Lee, another McDonald's
All-American.
"When you get to the tournament all that stuff like All-American honors
goes out the window," Benton said. "Everybody starts over and you
have to just play basketball. We went to war today and came out with a
victory."
Manhattan surged to a 36-29 halftime lead and stifled Florida's lone run in the
second half. The Gators cut the lead to 38-35, but just as quickly, Flores -
who scored 16 points in the final 20 minutes - buried a three, then a jumper,
then another three to push the lead back to 11. Florida never responded.
"This game was about one thing," Donovan said. "I can sum it up
in one word. Manhattan's competitiveness was much, much better than ours."
GRAPHIC: REUTERS HAPPY 40TH Bobby Gonzalez (l.) celebrates birthday and
Manhattan's opening-round upset victory with help of star guard Luis Flores.
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
29==
The Kansas City Star
March 19, 2004 Friday 2 EDITION
SECTION: D; Pg. 6
HEADLINE: FAST BREAKOUT;
First round gets going with upset, near-misses
BYLINE: By BLAIR KERKHOFF; The Kansas City Star
First final score of the NCAA Tournament's opening day: Manhattan College
(enrollment 3,600) 75, Florida (enrollment 42,000) 60. We regret we cannot
provide information on the school's athletic budgets, but suffice to say the
difference would be about as great as the enrollment.
That is why it's called March Madness. Upsets, plus a little
attitude.
"I know America's going to look at this as an upset, but behind closed
doors we don't," Jaspers forward Dave Holmes said. "We know we can
play with any team on any night."
Get through the top seeds against the 16s, and a Manhattan can happen to just
about anybody.
<extraneous deleted>
Fourth-seeded Wake Forest needed the steady hand of freshman guard Chris Paul,
who scored 22 points, to hold off Virginia Commonwealth 79-78. Now the Deacons
get Manhattan.
<extraneous deleted>
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
30==
Los Angeles Times
March 19, 2004 Friday
Home Edition
SECTION: SPORTS; Sports Desk; Part D; Pg. 1
HEADLINE: Mike Penner THE DAY IN THE NCAAS;
He Took Manhattan; It Wasn't Even a Stretch
During the seventh inning of exhibition baseball games played on fields all
over Florida and Arizona on Thursday, thousands of fans rose to their feet to
pay tribute to tiny Manhattan College's 75-60 victory over Florida in
the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament.
Yes, these tournament bracket pools have gotten totally out of hand.
Those fans may have been singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," but
they were celebrating the tradition of Manhattan College athletics,
whether they realized it or not. Manhattan's sports teams are nicknamed the
Jaspers, so christened because of the Catholic school's first baseball coach,
Brother Jasper of Mary, who in the late 19th century invented the
seventh-inning stretch.
According to the legend, Brother Jasper also served as the school's Prefect of
Discipline, which sounds like a job Bob Knight might have held in a previous
life. During one especially hot afternoon, with Manhattan baseball fans
sweating out a game against a semipro team, Brother Jasper interrupted the
seventh inning when he noticed the crowd growing restless.
After calling timeout, Brother Jasper advised Manhattan fans to stand up,
stretch awhile and basically chill out in an 1880s
kind of way.
With that, the seventh-inning stretch was born.
Thursday, the Jaspers were playing a different sport, and Billy Donovan's
players were the ones fading down the stretch, but the message to the 2004
Gators was the same: stop everything, stay where you are, take
a timeout.
See you in November.
Technically, the Jaspers were underdogs. Manhattan was seeded 12th and Florida
fifth in the East Rutherford Regional. But this year, NCAA tournament underdogs
aren't what they used to be. Saint Joseph's is top-seeded in the East
Rutherford Regional and a hopeless underdog, if you choose to buy into Billy
Packer's pump-up-the-ratings bluster.
Manhattan over Florida was the thinking fan's pick, the best-bet bracket-buster
-- perhaps the most fancied No. 12 seed since the first NCAA bracket sheet was
belched out of an office copier.
Manhattan came in 24-5, 11-1 in its last dozen games. Florida was 20-10 but 7-6
in its last 13.
Manhattan plays an up-tempo style with a physical inside game. Florida is soft
inside and not defensively tough anywhere.
Manhattan is coached by Bobby Gonzalez, this year's mid-major-name-on-the-rise,
eager to make a mark this March with jobs now open at St. John's, Georgetown
and Miami. Donovan reached the final in 2000, but hasn't lasted beyond the
second round since.
By game time, the Jaspers' bandwagon was already SRO -- with Rudy Giuliani, a Manhattan alum, sending the team a go-get-'em fax that Gonzalez read aloud to his players as
motivational fodder.
The Jaspers advanced, getting 26 points from their best player, two-time Metro
Atlantic Athletic Conference player of the year Luis Flores. The biggest
surprise was the margin of victory: 15 points, the second-largest ever by a No.
12 seed over a No. 5.
Next, Manhattan plays Wake Forest, a No. 4 seed that looked very vulnerable in
a 79-78 victory over 13th-seeded Virginia Commonwealth. VCU, making its first
NCAA appearance in eight years, had a chance to tie in the final minute, but
handled the waning seconds like a tournament sapling. After throwing the ball
away, VCU wasted 14 seconds -- from 26 to 11.9 -- before deciding to commit the
obvious foul.
Rookie mistake? Or just one more round of the same old
story?
VCU is coached by 29-year-old Jeff Capel, youngest
Division I coach in the country ... and a former Duke player
who went 1-8 against Wake Forest during the Tim Duncan era.
<extraneous deleted>
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: STEAL TRAP: Manhattan stole Florida's thunder; in this
case, Kenny Minor took ball from Anthony Roberson. PHOTOGRAPHER: Reuters PHOTO:
JUMPIN' JASPER: Peter Mulligan, left, Jason Benton and Manhattan had great day.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Associated Press
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
31==
The Miami Herald
March 19, 2004 Friday F1 EDITION
SECTION: D; Pg. 1
HEADLINE: Florida has 'deer-in-headlights look'
BYLINE: BY MIKE PHILLIPS; mphillips@herald.com
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C.
Anthony Roberson kept saying ''Montana'' when he should have been saying
''Manhattan.''
But you couldn't blame the Florida guard.
After all, Roberson -- like the rest of the Gators -- was a little punch drunk
after being flattened by Manhattan College, a tiny school from the Bronx
(yes, the Bronx) that knocked Florida silly 75-60 on Thursday afternoon,
handing the Gators one of their most embarrassing losses in years.
The Gators are done, knocked out in the opening round of the NCAA tournament in
a listless performance at the RBC Center that left coach
Billy Donovan furious and all but questioning his team's heart.
''This game was about one thing. I can sum it up in one word,'' Donovan said.
''Manhattan's competitiveness was much, much better than ours. We didn't even
come close in the backcourt or the frontcourt of playing with the competitive
attitude that was necessary going into the game.''
The defeat left Donovan uncertain about the future of his program.
''I have no expectations for next year,'' he said.
The Gators looked like five guys who just met in the parking lot and played
what was easily their worst game of the season.
''Our guys had that deer-in-headlights look,'' Donovan said. ''I felt like our
guys didn't compete, and I felt like our guys were overwhelmed that it was the
NCAA tournament.''
MISMATCH ON PAPER
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Manhattan, the 12th
seed in the region, was supposed to be the little guy. The Gators (20-11), who
had won six of their previous eight and reached the SEC title game Sunday, came
in as the fifth seed with a coach who was bringing UF to its sixth straight
NCAA tournament.
But after Seth Davis said Manhattan was the obvious upset pick during CBS'
Selection Sunday, just about everyone was picking Manhattan (25-5) to upset
Florida. Donovan felt that should have inspired his team. Instead, UF looked
timid.
''I'm from New York, and knowing the mentality Manhattan was going to have, I
talked to them the last couple of days about that,'' Donovan said. ''Some of
our guys, maybe it scared them a little bit.''
Manhattan was tougher, quicker and just better. Despite being undersized, the
Jaspers outrebounded Florida
36-26 and beat up the Gators on the offensive boards, where they had a 13-4
edge, outscoring UF 12-2 on second-chance points.
Luis Flores led the way with a 26-point afternoon, and after Florida made its
only run to start the second half to close to 38-35, Flores hit a pair of
threes on a personal eight-point run to lift Manhattan to 46-35 edge.
Florida, which finished with four assists, was never heard from again.
But this loss wasn't about statistics.
''I don't know what happened. I don't know how we could be at the NCAA
tournament and not compete at the highest level,'' said Matt Walsh, who shot 0
for 5 from three-point range and scored only 13 points.
''I'm pretty disappointed,'' said Walsh who played on an injured foot but
refused to use it as an excuse. ''I don't think we lived up to our potential
this year.''
A quick review would substantiate that comment: Florida started the season
ranked No. 8 in the country and moved quickly to No. 1 with a 5-0 start. Then
the wheels started falling off. They were 14-8 when Christian Drejer left the team for a pro career in Spain, then
rallied to win six of eight to get in the tournament.
ROBERSON'S SLIP
Roberson scored a very quiet 22 points to lead the Gators, and afterward he
kept referring to Manhattan as ''Montana'' in interviews in the locker room.
His mind might have been on other things -- like leaving UF for the NBA.
Roberson, a sophomore who doesn't play enough defense to be considered a
first-round NBA pick, didn't commit himself to the NBA, but he certainly didn't
give any indication he was staying. Asked where the Gators would go from here,
Roberson said: ''To the dorm,'' and acted like a man with one foot out the
door.
Roberson went scoreless last year when the Gators were eliminated in the second
round of the tournament by Michigan State, saying afterward ''that was the
longest walk I've ever had back to the locker room.'' He said the one Thursday
was just as long.
Early exits are nothing new for the Gators, who haven't made it past the second
round since their trip to the Final Four in 2000. They were knocked out in the
second round in 2001 and were upset in the first round by Creighton in 2002.
They came in as a No. 2 seed last year and knocked off 15th-seeded Sam Houston
State before being hammered 68-46 by Michigan State.
Now they have been embarrassed by Manhattan.
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
32==
The Miami Herald
March 19, 2004, Friday
SECTION: SPORTS
HEADLINE: Manhattan knocks Florida into silly season
BYLINE: By Mike Phillips
RALEIGH, N.C. _ Anthony Roberson kept saying "Montana" when he should
have been saying "Manhattan."
But you couldn't blame the Florida guard.
After all, Roberson _ like the rest of the Gators _ was a little punch drunk
after being flattened by Manhattan College, a tiny school from the Bronx
(yes, the Bronx) that knocked Florida silly, 75-60, on Thursday afternoon,
handing the Gators one of their most embarrassing losses in years.
The Gators are done, knocked out in the opening round of the NCAA tournament in
a listless performance at the RBC Center that left coach
Billy Donovan furious and all but questioning his team's heart.
"This game was about one thing. I can sum it up in one word," Donovan
said. "Manhattan's competitiveness was much, much better than ours. We
didn't even come close in the backcourt or the frontcourt of playing with the
competitive attitude that was necessary going into the game."
The defeat left Donovan uncertain about the future of his program.
"I have no expectations for next year," he said.
The Gators looked like five guys who just met in the parking lot and played
what was easily their worst game of the season.
"Our guys had that deer-in-headlights look," Donovan said. "I
felt like our guys didn't compete, and I felt like our guys were overwhelmed
that it was the NCAA tournament."
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Manhattan, the 12th seed in the region, was
supposed to be the little guy. The Gators (20-11), who had won six of their
previous eight and reached the SEC title game Sunday, came in as the fifth seed
with a coach who was bringing UF to its sixth straight NCAA tournament.
But after Seth Davis said Manhattan was the obvious upset pick during CBS'
Selection Sunday, just about everyone was picking Manhattan (25-5) to upset
Florida. Donovan felt that should have inspired his team. Instead, UF looked
timid.
"I'm from New York, and knowing the mentality Manhattan was going to have,
I talked to them the last couple of days about that," Donovan said.
"Some of our guys, maybe it scared them a little bit."
Manhattan was tougher, quicker and just better. Despite being undersized, the
Jaspers outrebounded Florida
36-26 and beat up the Gators on the offensive boards, where they had a 13-4
edge, outscoring UF 12-2 on second-chance points.
Luis Flores led the way with a 26-point afternoon, and after Florida made its
only run to start the second half to close to 38-35, Flores hit a pair of
threes on a personal eight-point run to lift Manhattan to 46-35 edge.
Florida, which finished with four assists, was never heard from again.
But this loss wasn't about statistics.
"I don't know what happened. I don't know how we could be at the NCAA
tournament and not compete at the highest level," said Matt Walsh, who
shot 0 for 5 from three-point range and scored only 13 points.
"I'm pretty disappointed," said Walsh who played on an injured foot
but refused to use it as an excuse. "I don't think we lived up to our
potential this year."
A quick review would substantiate that comment: Florida started the season
ranked No. 8 in the country and moved quickly to No. 1 with a 5-0 start. Then
the wheels started falling off. They were 14-8 when Christian Drejer left the team for a pro career in Spain, then
rallied to win six of eight to get in the tournament.
Roberson scored a very quiet 22 points to lead the Gators, and afterward he
kept referring to Manhattan as "Montana" in interviews in the locker
room. His mind might have been on other things _ like leaving UF for the NBA.
Roberson, a sophomore who doesn't play enough defense to be considered a
first-round NBA pick, didn't commit himself to the NBA, but he certainly didn't
give any indication he was staying. Asked where the Gators would go from here,
Roberson said: "To the dorm," and acted like a man with one foot out
the door.
Roberson went scoreless last year when the Gators were eliminated in the second
round of the tournament by Michigan State, saying afterward "that was the
longest walk I've ever had back to the locker room." He said the one
Thursday was just as long.
Early exits are nothing new for the Gators, who haven't made it past the second
round since their trip to the Final Four in 2000. They were knocked out in the
second round in 2001 and were upset in the first round by Creighton in 2002.
They came in as a No. 2 seed last year and knocked off 15th-seeded Sam Houston
State before being hammered 68-46 by Michigan State.
Now they have been embarrassed by Manhattan.
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
33=
National Post (Canada)
March 19, 2004 Friday Toronto Edition
SECTION: Sports; Pg. S5
HEADLINE: Manhattan's man: Luis Flores guides his team to an upset, then
acts as if it was to be expected
SOURCE: The New York Times
BYLINE: George Vecsey
He comes from the town of shortstops, San Pedro de Macoris,
in the Dominican Republic, but when Luis Flores came to New York, it was much
too cold to play baseball.
Instead, on outdoor courts with metal baskets and clanking chain nets, Flores
played the New York game, pointing toward those wonderful moments yesterday.
Flores' wary survivor's poise helped him score 26 points as Manhattan
College first demoralized and then demolished Florida, 75-60, in the first
round of the NCAA basketball tournament.
It is dangerous to even suggest that urban hardship might be a training ground
for success, even in something so limited as sports. Flores has surely seen
sadness all around him in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, but
somehow he kept going, to become the high scorer in the history of his college.
He and his teammates, a mix of the overlooked and the underrated, made the
all-American types from Florida look like laggards. It was the highlight of
their careers, at least so far.
"It's still not over," Flores cautioned after the game, meaning that
Manhattan, seeded 12th, will play Wake Forest, seeded fourth, tomorrow for the
right to reach the regional at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.
If Manhattan should somehow win, Basilio and Juanita
Flores, his grandparents who raised him, would probably come across the George
Washington Bridge to watch him play. His parents live in the Dominican Republic
and have never seen him play.
Basilio and Juanita Flores should be very proud of
their grandson, who is 6-foot-2 of wispy, purposeful talent. By now it is a
well-known story how Flores was recruited by the new whirlwind coach of
Manhattan, Bobby Gonzalez, only to swerve to Rutgers of the Big East.
After playing only 10 minutes per game as a freshman, Flores went back to his
original instincts and transferred to Manhattan. Now Flores is educating people
about the college, which is not even on the island of Manhattan but in the
northern reaches of the Bronx.
The college's athletic Hall of Fame opened in 1979, honouring,
among others, Brother Jasper, the college's first athletic director, who is
said to have originated the grand baseball tradition of the seventh-inning
stretch, as well as Junius Kellogg, the lanky centre
who turned in teammates who were dumping basketball games in 1951.
Someday there will be a place in Manhattan's hall for Flores, who was already a
legend long before yesterday's instant classic against Florida.
Gonzalez (who was called "Rodriguez" twice in the Florida media
guide) and his players probably suspected Florida was about as resourceful as a
rube gawking at a game of three-card monte on a
portable cardboard box on a New York sidewalk. But Manhattan still had to play
its game, which involves Flores wriggling his way into scoring position.
At the half, Flores had 10 points, with shaky shooting and a couple of
turnovers. When Florida came to within three points early in the second half,
Flores launched a three-pointer, a short jumper and another three-pointer
within 127 seconds.
"I picked my spots," he said afterward. "In the first half, they
were concentrating on me but in the second half they seemed to forget about me
against the zone so I took advantage of it."
Not in the slightest had Florida's coach, Billy Donovan, forgotten Flores.
Donovan had put his players into a zone defence and
ordered them to come out on Flores, who was due, but somebody blew an
assignment. The man from Washington Heights picked his spot.
Florida continued to play the role of an enraged victim. Adrian Moss flung his
elbows until the refs finally caught on. Matt Walsh, with his gym-rat curls and
passe headband, committed a flagrant foul on Mike Konovelchick that turned Carolinians into yowling fervent Manhattanites.
Donovan will not soon forget the inept frustration of his players, and neither
will Florida fans. As a Long Islander, Donovan knows street smarts when he sees
it in Flores and his mates.
"What it came down to was being tough," Flores said softly. "I
grew up with street ball. You can't call fouls. I get hit real hard and I
smile."
He and his teammates never postured as they closed out the game. In the closing
seconds, Flores walked over to the Florida bench and extended his hand to a few
despondent regulars. From a distance, it appeared that he received a limp
collection of dead fish.
"They're disappointed," he said. "I'm a classy guy. I went over
to shake their hands. I just felt it was the right thing to do. I understand
how they feel."
Flores felt what that was like after losing to Syracuse in last year's opening
round. When Syracuse won the Final Four two weeks later, Flores felt marginally
better. Now he has avoided that feeling, at least for a while. He is a city
boy, and survival is a daily experience.
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
34==
The New York Post
March 19, 2004 Friday
SECTION: All Editions; Pg. 127
HEADLINE: GONZALEZ'S CITY KIDS AIN'T DONE DANCIN'
BYLINE: Steve Serby
RALEIGH - Outside Locker Room 4, the Manhattan Jaspers were hooting and howling
and whooping on the magical day the Bronx version of Hoosiers had forced its
way into the NCAA Tournament.
Bobby Gonzalez, Gene Hackman on caffeine, was on the
court with Luis Flores and Dave Holmes telling CBS all about their stunning
75-60 dismantling of Florida. The rest of the Jaspers had dashed through a red
canopy and were whooping and howling in the hallway when here came Peter Mulligan
of St. Raymond's High and 118th and 7th, shimmying to the delight of his
teammates, who were clapping rhythmically and chanting, "Hey . . . hey . .
. hey . . . hey."
"That's the Harlem Shake," Mulligan would say with a big smile.
Little Manhattan College, dancing at The Dance.
Waiting for the door to be opened, Kenny Minor yelped: "We ain't done yet!" Mulligan roared: "We're here.
We're here, baby."
Now Gonzalez came charging through the canopy, his arm around Muggsy Green, his point guard two
years ago. The man they call Gonzo looked into the New York cameras and said:
"It's for New York."
The transformation from Kings of New York, from New York's Team to America's
Team came when the crowd began adopting the underdog Jaspers, so long on heart
and fearlessness and defiance and toughness and belief, and helped the school's
200-strong throng root them on. It sounded like Draddy.
"I think the country respects us now," Jason Benton said.
Up 36-29 at the half, Gonzalez reminded them of a Syracuse game earlier this
year when they blew the lead. "No game's ever won in 20 minutes," he
said.
Everyone could smell upset because Dominican Dandy Flores (16 second-half
points, 26 overall) had yet to explode. When Flores squared up for a three-ball
from the top of the key, Gonzalez was already in the air, way up there, his
arms thrust skyward. When he came down, it was 46-35. "It was a scissors
off the high post and we knew he was gonna bump
back," Gonzalez said, "and I just knew it was going in."
With 11:25 left, a suspect foul against Jason Wingate had moved Gonzalez to
settle his Jaspers during a timeout. "Listen," he said. "You
don't get frustrated. That's my job. I'll worry about the refs."
Gator frustration boiled over when Matt Walsh committed a flagrant foul on a
driving Mike Konovelchick with 9:41 left.
"That's the NCAA Tournament; it's like playoff basketball in the
NBA," Konovelchick said. "I just got up
from it just to send a message out there that that's the attitude of our team -
you can knock us down but we're gonna keep getting up
and keep coming at you. No one's gonna be able to
hold us down."
Holmes flashed a Sonny Liston glare at the RBC
Center's villain. "I thought they underestimated us," Holmes said.
"They didn't look like they were hungry out there at all. We just wanted
it more."
Mulligan, a tattoo of a basketball with a crown on it flanked by New York
skyscrapers on his left arm, sent the vanquished home with a Gator Chop.
"We were alligator hunting today," Mulligan said.
Forty minutes from the Sweet 16, Gonzalez said this to his Jaspers, who try to
slay Wake Forest tomorrow: "Let's try to get back to the Meadowlands by
playing our way back to the Meadowlands."
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
35==
The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)
March 19, 2004 Friday
Final Edition
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. C1
HEADLINE: Mid-major teams are major hits
BYLINE: Caulton Tudor, Staff Writer
RALEIGH--The 66th NCAA men's basketball tournament was barely 10 minutes old
Thursday when it became apparent that the mighty would get no respect from the
meek.
In the RBC Center, Florida, the nation's No. 1 team on Dec. 8,
was going the way of Howard Dean's presidential campaign.
Manhattan College, a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference member with an arena
roughly the size of a traditionally weak Indiana high school's,
quickly was turning the Gators into a richer, fancier version of Niagara.
By the time Manhattan, the 12th seed in the East Rutherford Regional,
eventually settled for a 75-60 victory, Wake Forest fans were worried.
They had good reason to be. About three hours later, the fourth-seeded Demon
Deacons eliminated 13th-seeded Virginia Commonwealth, 79-78, but only after the
Rams had ruled long stretches of the game.
The stories around the country were roughly the same. Maryland, seeded fourth
in the Phoenix Regional, beat No. 13 Texas-El Paso by an eyelash. Fifth-seeded
Syracuse couldn't have been more relieved to survive against No. 12 Brigham
Young had the Orangemen whipped Kansas for the national title.
That's what happens when your 2003 star is starring for the Denver Nuggets
rather than just stopping in Denver for the NCAA Tournament.
Sense a pattern here? Sooner rather than later, a straight-shooting long shot
is going to reach the Final Four.
"It could be Manhattan this year," said Les Robinson, an NCAA
committee member and former N.C. State coach. "It would have been Kent
State a couple of years back. But sure, it's going to happen. Everything is
moving in that direction."
That direction favors the so-called mid-majors with good coaches and players
who stay in school.
Start with the coaching.
VCU's Jeff Capel
out-coached Wake's Skip Prosser on Thursday. Manhattan's Bobby Gonzalez did the
same to Florida's Billy Donovan.
Good basketball coaches, it seems, are a heck of a lot easier to find than good
big men. The sport has become so competitive that if a school doesn't have a
good coach, that alone is grounds to fire the
athletics director.
No longer does a school have to have an enrollment of 20,000 to find a coach
with enough know-how to win.
But Gonzalez and Capel also had experience going for
them. Manhattan starts three seniors, a junior and a sophomore. Senior guard
Luis Flores, a transfer from Rutgers who was recruited heavily as a high schooler, wound up with 26 points.
Capel's Rams depended heavily on 6-foot senior Domonic Jones, the Colonial Athletic Association player of
the year, and classmate Troy Godwin.
Florida and Wake Forest start no seniors.
You don't have to be Dean Smith to figure this stuff out. Get a team with
decent talent, keep it together, see to it that the team improves, and you've
got a good chance of beating a bunch of freshmen and sophomores with one eye on
the opponent and the other on NBA draft projections.
"The experience definitely helped us today," Gonzalez said. "If
you can put a good team together and keep them and develop them, then that can
be an advantage for the mid-major teams, no question."
Perhaps that is where college basketball is headed.
There weren't many NBA scouts at courtside Thursday in the RBC Center. The ones
there probably showed up to see freshmen and sophomores. A few years ago, pro
scouts flooded any and all NCAA first-round sites. Now, they're likelier to be
attending an AAU summer jam or trying to figure out the European rail schedule.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. The NBA gets the celebrities, and the
college game gets the television ratings. Thursday's games are why.
GRAPHIC: Manhattan's Luis Flores celebrates after hitting a big shot in
the second half of the Jaspers' upset of Florida at the RBC Center in Raleigh.
Staff Photo by Chris Seward
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
36==
Daily News (New York)
March 18, 2004 Thursday
SPORTS FINAL EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 76
HEADLINE: JASPERS ARE DREAMERS FLORES & CO. FOLLOW STEPS OF
UPSETTERS
BYLINE: BY DICK WEISS
RALEIGH, N.C. - Luis Flores met Florida's high-scoring guard Anthony Roberson
through his good friend Francisco Garcia of Louisville last summer when the
three worked as counselors at the ABCD camp in Teaneck.
When Garcia and Roberson began talking about playing against each other,
Manhattan's senior guard could only stand there, listening and dreaming.
"I never figured we'd have a chance to play against Florida," he
said.
Manhattan, a MAAC team, doesn't get many chances to play in front of the
national TV cameras. But Flores, the pride of Washington Heights, and his
teammates get a chance to play in prime time today when the 12-seeded Jaspers
(24-5) play the fifth-seeded Gators (20-10) in the first round of the NCAA
Tournament at the RBC Center. "All the spoils go to the winner,"
Flores said. "If we win, we'll be viewed as a Cinderella."
Twice before, Manhattan has worn the glass slipper. In 1958, the Jaspers pulled
a great upset of Jerry West and West Virginia in the first round. And they
stunned Oklahoma in the first round in 1995. Some of the former players from
that Fran Fraschilla-coached team - like center and
former assistant Travis Lyons - still come back to the Riverdale campus to talk
to the current players about that moment in history.
Winning a first-round game is the one thing neither Flores - the two-time MAAC
Player of the Year - nor coach Bobby Gonzalez - the MAAC Coach of the Year -
has accomplished.
For Gonzalez, one of the hottest mid-major coaches in the country, it would be
a chance to further pad an impressive resume. Gonzalez, who is set to do
"Good Day, New York" this morning, is again the prince of the city.
If he pulls off this upset, he could become a king in the eyes of Louisville
coach Rick Pitino, who is close friends with both
Gonzalez and Florida's Billy Donovan.
"I got a call from Pete Gillen of Virginia, who told me this is the Pitino sub-regional," Gonzalez said. "There's some
history there. Billy played for Rick and is almost like a son . . . I'm more
like a stepchild."
Gonzalez has been linked to jobs at Massachusetts, Miami and St. John's. But
Massachusetts has opted to give Steve Lappas one more
year. Miami, which must pay a hefty entry fee to join the ACC, may not have the
money to buy out Perry Clark, and Gonzalez is not at the top of the list at St.
John's.
Gonzalez has wisely taken a low-key approach when asked about high-profile
jobs. He steered away from a question about the Georgetown opening posed by a
D.C. reporter.
Gonzalez said he wouldn't touch that one, then he
quickly tried to change the subject.
"Hey, did you know Rudy Giuliani sent our team a fax?" he asked.
"He's big in Washington, isn't he? Did you know he's a Manhattan
graduate?"
Manhattan AD Bob Byrne, who knows Gonzalez will leave someday, could only laugh
in the back of the room.
What Gonzalez would leave is a legacy at Manhattan. He is 83-51 in five years
and has coached his teams to two NCAA appearances and one NIT berth.
What Flores has done since transferring from Rutgers after his freshman year
cannot be disputed either. Flores, who averaged 24.1 points a game this season,
is a leading candidate for the Haggerty award, presented to the metro area's
top player.
That should please people like Pedro Perez - who took Flores under his wing and
still works him out every summer at IS 143 - and the folks in the barber shop
at 189th St., where Flores hangs out.
"It usually takes you a half hour to get your hair cut and two hours and a
half to talk about the games," Flores said. I can always count on getting
a call from Francisco.
"Every time you go back to the neighborhood, you hear about your game from
everybody. I want to go a good job so everybody will be smiles."
E-mail: mailto:dweiss@edit.nydailynews.com
GRAPHIC: AP BEST SHOT Manhattan's Luis Flores gets reacquainted with
NCAA hoopla yesterday.
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2004
37==
FLORIDA TODAY (Brevard County, FL)
March 18, 2004 Thursday Final and all Editions
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 3
HEADLINE: Gators face first-round scare
BYLINE: DAVID JONES
Gators face first-round scare
RALEIGH, N.C.-- In 2000, when Florida reached its first and only national
championship game, the Gators almost were sent packing in the first round.
If not for Mike Miller's buzzer-beater against Butler, UF would have left
Winston-Salem, N.C., as just another high seed upset by an underdog.
In 1994, it was a layup by Dan Cross in the final
seconds that prevented Florida from being upset by James Madison in the first
round in Uniondale, N.Y. Those Gators also recovered and reached the Final
Four.
Fifth-seeded seed Florida (20-10) meets 12th-seeded Manhattan College
(24-5) at 12:20 p.m. today in the opening round of the East Rutherford Region.
It's another game the Gators are supposed to win. It's another opportunity for
an underdog.
What is it about that first game in the NCAA Tournament? No matter how good a
team is, those first moments of the Big Dance almost annually lead to better
teams stepping on their toes and stumbling.
"Anytime you have 12-, 13th-, and 14th-seeded teams, they go in with a
nothing-to-lose attitude," Gators coach Billy Donovan said.
"Manhattan is talented and will play with a nothing-to-lose attitude. They
will play loose and confident, having been in the tournament before."
For higher seeds, the first round can be the only round if you're not ready.
Especially when you run into an underdog that comes in fighting -- which is
what the Gators are up against.
"The kids are showing a different mentality," Manhattan coach Bobby
Gonzalez said. "We feel we belong in the tournament, we know we're good
and now we are going to try to go win a game."
Beware of the Manhattans of the world. As history has proven, lower seeds that
are talented, hungry and a little unknown can be as dangerous as a Duke or a
Kentucky.
"After we won that first game, everyone realized we just needed to relax
and play," recalls Andrew DeClercq, who played
on UF's 1994 squad. "There's so much pressure on
you to get past that first game when you're a higher seed. After we almost went
home, we realized how quickly it can really end if you're not ready."
Florida won't have time for a wake-up call today. The Jaspers gave eventual
national champion Syracuse a serious scare in last year's first round and
return 6-foot-2 guard Luis Flores, who averages 24.1 points a game.
"I think he is different because of everything that he has gone through
and everything that he has accomplished," Gonzalez said. "He looks to
me like he's more polished, more relaxed."
He's also feeling no pressure.
That's on Florida's shoulders.
Even Gators guard Anthony Roberson, the 2003 SEC Freshman of the Year, had the
jitters when he walked out on the court for his first NCAA Tournament game. He
scored 16 points in the opener, but went 0-for-6 and didn't score in the second
game, a 68-46 loss to Michigan State.
"It was something new for me," Roberson said. "I think it was
more excitement than nervousness."
Florida has two players who have been to more than one NCAA Tournament: junior
David Lee and senior Bonell Colas. UF's four freshmen admit they aren't sure what's about to
happen.
Donovan remembers talking to Major Parker after his freshman season at Florida.
"He thought everybody got in," Donovan said. "I probably need to
educate our guys about the tournament, what it's all about."
Of course, freshmen will be freshmen. First-year center Chris Richard promises
he won't be nervous. After all, he played in a state championship in high
school, he said without smiling. Guard Lee Humphrey calls it "a dream come
true. This is why you practice all those years, to come to a big school like
Florida and get a chance to play in the NCAA Tournament."
But dreams can quickly become nightmares if the rookies don't wake up --
especially at Florida, where so many are experiencing something very new.
"The first few times up the court will probably be pretty tense,"
Humphrey confessed. "You have to get the tightness out."
He better hurry up. Manhattan, with a senior-dominated lineup, has no time for
the shakes.
"You have about two days to scout a team and you don't really know what
their tendencies are," said Colas, who's appearing in his fourth, and
final, Big Dance. "There's a lot of things going through your mind, like,
'If you we lose this game, we're out of here.'
"That makes teams play a little bit tighter, a little apprehensive and we
don't need that."
__________________________________________________
Walsh update
The right foot of Florida sophomore guard Matt Walsh
has been among the hottest topics surrounding the Gators' NCAA Tournament
hopes.
He will definitely play in today's 12:20 p.m. game against Manhattan. The
bottom of Walsh's foot has been covered with a silicone wrapping since he tore
a callous from it in last Sunday's 89-73 loss to Kentucky.
"I'm very concerned about just how well it will all hold up, the medical
attention he's been given," Gators coach Billy Donovan said. "The
doctors also have some concerns. That's the big unknown answer we're all
waiting for."
Walsh got a cortisone shot before the UK game and couldn't feel the damage he
did to his foot early in the second half, when he tore a large callous off the
bottom of it.
He's holding off testing the foot as long as possible.
"Every 24 hours, it is feeling so much better," Walsh said.
He won't try to cut on the foot until game time. Walsh went back to wearing an
older pair of shoes that are more comfortable.
"It is just going to be a matter of pain tolerance," Walsh said.
-- David Jones
____________________________________________
Round 1 for Florida
--- Who: Florida (20-10) vs. Manhattan (24-5) in NCAA Tournament
--- When: 12:20 p.m. today
--- Where: RBC Center, Raleigh, N.C.
--- TV: CBS
--- The Line: Gators by 5 1/2
Contact Jones at 242-3682 or djones@flatoday.net
AP Photo:
Staying focused. Matt Walsh and the Florida Gators face Manhattan in today's
opening round.
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
38==
The Journal News (Westchester County, NY)
March 18, 2004 Thursday
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 3B
HEADLINE: GIRLS BASKETBALL
BYLINE: Lisa Sokolowski, Staff
Somers' Malpelli bounces back from knee injuries
Senior guard returns to enjoy strong season for
Masters
It's been two years since Somers' Jess Malpelli had that
familiar knee surgery. She's been able to finish two consecutive seasons of
basketball, a feat considering the way her basketball career had gone.
The drama started during her third-ever AAU tournament. She was defending
another player when the then 11-year-old's world was changed.
"I went to slide one way and my knee popped out the other way," the
senior at the Masters School said.
That slide tore her left ACL. Because of her age, she wasn't able to have
surgery. Her growth plates were still developing, so seven months of physical
therapy was the only remedy.
Malpelli, a 5-foot-6 guard, wouldn't be a stranger to
therapy for that long though.
She played a whole AAU season and had made the varsity team at Kennedy, the
school she attended her freshman and sophomore years.
The summer she was 13, she went to a basketball camp at Manhattan College,
slipped on some Gatorade that was spilled on the floor and re-tore her left ACL
and tore her medial meniscus.
"Her knee was black and blue and scarring," Malpelli's
father, Mario, said.
This injury required two surgeries, each six months apart, each followed by six
months of physical therapy.
"I wondered why it kept happening to me," she said. "I kept
doing physical therapy. Every time I tried to go back, it was like God didn't
want me to play, but I figured I'd keep trying."
And try again she did. But, as fate would have it, she wasn't able to make it
through her sophomore season.
In a game against Fox Lane, she drove in and got tangled up with a couple girls,
resulting in her tearing everything in her right knee. She had one
reconstructive surgery and found herself, once again, in physical therapy for
six months.
"I wanted to play," she said. "I wanted to tell everyone that I
could beat this. Sports are a major part of my life. Just to be able to say
that I overcame this three times, I don't want to let it stop me."
But others weren't as positive as she was.
"My physical therapist and a lot of my relatives always questioned
me," she said. "They told me to pick up a non-active sport. They were
just like, 'Go play chess,' just, like, the silly things that I would never
want to do. They knew that nothing they said could get me to stop."
Her parents, though feeling her pain every time something went wrong, weren't
going to be the road block in her dream.
"We had contemplated it, but we knew the love she had for the game,"
Mario said. "With a lot of trepidation, we let her make the decision.
"Deep down, we were hoping she'd find something else to play. Swimming, or some other less demanding sport. She wanted to
play (basketball). My wife and I would not take that away from her."
This past season, Malpelli helped Masters finish 20-6 and advance to the Independent Division NYSAIS
championship game where it fell 41-37 to defending champion Hackley.
Malpelli was the team's third-leading scorer,
averaging 9.7 points per game. She led the team and tied for fifth among area
players in 3-pointers made with 56.
Ironically, though, it's only the winter season when Malpelli
was prone to injuries. She has played four seasons of field hockey, earning
accolades the last two years. She never missed a season due to her knees, but
once she steps from the grass to the court, that's when the problems seem to
start.
"I know now that I can get through pretty much anything if I put my mind
to it," she said. "I'm a determined person, and I'm not going to let
something stop me from doing what I want to do."
LOAD-DATE: March 19, 2004
39==
The Montgomery Advertiser
March 18, 2004 Thursday 01 Edition
SECTION: D; Pg. 4
HEADLINE: Hornets experience Duke fever
BYLINE: Josh Moon
<extraneous deleted>
Take Florida head coach Billy Donovan's reply to a question about his team's
preparation for Manhattan College.
"They have been to the NCAA Tournament and have probably been the best
team in New York," Donovan said.
A rather bold statement about a school that's 100 miles down
the road from Syracuse, the defending national champions. Even bolder
considering the Jaspers lost to the Orangemen this season.
LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2004
40==
Newsday (New York)
March 18, 2004 Thursday
NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. A91
HEADLINE: Flores demands perfection from himself and it shows
BYLINE: SHAUN POWELL
RALEIGH, N.C.
The perfect small-school basketball player dug his fingertips into the crease
of the ball, eyed the rim, released and then relaxed. Luis Flores shot 100 free
throws exactly like this. He missed three. So much for
perfection.
"Three?" said Bobby Gonzalez, almost in shock. The coach, faking
disappointment, then shook his head.
"Bad day, Lu," Gonzalez said. "Bad day."
Gonzalez is a demanding coach at Manhattan College, constantly pushing
his team and always trying to squeeze major-college production from players
stuck with small-college talent. And yet, even his standards fall slightly
below those of the Jaspers' senior guard. The only person on the planet who
could really find fault with Flores missing three of 100 is Flores.
"Should've had them all," he said. And while you waited for him to
crack a just-kidding smile that never came, he repeated: "Should've had
them all." He doesn't waver in his quest for perfection because, if he
did, he'd never be what he is now: the ideal mid-major player, a possible NBA
draft pick and more importantly for Manhattan, the best argument for the
Jaspers today against Florida in their NCAA Tournament opener.
The only reason to watch the NCAA Tournament first round, and what makes it the
best weekend in sports, is the upset. There's nothing more heartwarming in
college basketball than a small school celebrating madly and the unveiling of a
star player. This can happen this afternoon at the RBC Center because the
Jaspers, and mostly Flores, are due for such a moment. Being from New York, they
don't suffer stage fright. And being such a perfectionist, Flores won't settle
for anything except his best.
He has a natural feel for the game. He knows how to score, how to free himself
for the shot, how to make something happen. He comes into the tournament as the
two-time Metro Atlantic player of the year who averages 24.1 points, and that's
not the most encouraging sign for Manhattan.
Flores arrives today with the annoying memory of his last game, a below-par
performance in the MAAC title game in which he missed two late free throws that
gave Niagara a shot to win.
"It didn't sit too well with me," he said. "I'm a better player
than that. We won the game, and that's what's important, but I feel an
obligation to play better and put us in a better position to win games."
The Jaspers are 67-21 since Flores arrived three years ago and have reached
postseason play every year. They've followed the example of their coach,
obviously, but also Flores. His teammates marvel at his businesslike approach
to the game, his constant work ethic and dedication. He applies it not only to
basketball but his life.
The other day, in fact, brought a stunning revelation: Flores eats plenty of
vegetables.
Imagine that, a college student ignoring the 10 p.m. fast-food call and
skipping all artery-clogging meals in favor of anything green and edible.
"I don't see how he does it, personally," said Manhattan guard Jason
Wingate, who also is Flores' roommate. "The guy's a complete health nut.
He doesn't even drink any soda. Have you ever heard of that?" Wingate
tries to follow the same schedule as Flores, which can be difficult because
Flores refuses to follow all sensible rules regarding college lifestyle.
"He's up at six in the morning, going to the gym," Wingate said.
"I'm still sleeping. I can't crawl out of bed that early. But that's just
him. He's extremely focused. That's what makes him the player you see
now."
The discipline comes mostly from a no-nonsense upbringing in Washington
Heights, but also stems from imperfection. No matter what anyone says, nobody
dreamed of spending their college career at a mid-major, not the players or the
coach. They all wanted the next level up. Flores fully expected to be there,
especially after averaging 35.6 points a game as a high school senior at Norman
Thomas. But he went to Rutgers, and when that didn't work out, landed at
Manhattan. Three years later, it looks like the right place for a player to
spend his time while he still searches for perfection.
"When I came here, the school wasn't what you'd think about when it came
to basketball," Flores said. "Now, it is. I think my situation is a
lot like Speedy Claxton's. Speedy left a tradition when he graduated from Hofstra. He left his mark. You can look at their record
book and can see when he was there. That's something I'd like to do here."
All Flores needs is to help the Jaspers advance to another game. The perfect
small-college player won't have to play the perfect game today against Florida.
But it'll help. And he'll try.
GRAPHIC: AP Photo - Luis Flores chats with teammate Kenny Minor during
practice at RBC Center in Raleigh, N.C.
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2004
41==
San Antonio Express-News (Texas)
March 18, 2004, Thursday , METRO
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 2F
HEADLINE: PAGE 2
<extraneous deleted>
Did You KNOW?
What's a Jasper?
It's no secret why the University of Florida has a Gator as its mascot. But what about the nickname of Florida's opponent in the first
round of the NCAA tournament, Manhattan College?
The Jaspers name comes from Brother Jasper of Mary, F.S.C., who served as
prefect of discipline at the school in the late 19th century and is credited
with introducing baseball to Manhattan College. But that's not Brother
Jasper's only claim to fame. The school also credits him with originating the
seventh-inning stretch.
According to Manhattan College, Brother Jasper noticed on May 31, 1882,
that Manhattan's student fans were becoming restless as their team came to bat
in the seventh inning of a tight game played on an uncomfortably humid day.
Hoping to relieve the tension, Brother Jasper called timeout and instructed the
students to stand and stretch.
The practice soon spread to the New York Giants, who annually played Manhattan
at the Polo Grounds in the 1880s and 1890s. Although the Baseball Hall of Fame
has other theories as to its origin, the seventh-inning stretch will always be
the brainchild of Brother Jasper to Manhattan's faithful.
<extraneous deleted>
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2004
42==
Copyright 2004 The Daily Vidette via U-Wire
University Wire
March 18, 2004 Thursday
SECTION: COMMENTARY
HEADLINE: Big Apple team will be waltzing in Big Dance
BYLINE: By R. Jake Flannigan, The Daily Vidette;
SOURCE: Illinois State U.
DATELINE: NORMAL, Ill.
Manhattan is more recognized for shopping and restaurants than it is for hoops.
But that's OK with the men's basketball team from Manhattan College,
nestled 10 minutes north of the hustle and bustle of the downtown area.
You see, the college was originally founded in Manhattan but then in the early
1900s moved north to the Bronx.
It is here that the school has played in the postseason 26 times in the last
century.
The last time the Jaspers went dancing was just a year ago when they were
defeated in the first round of the NCAA Tournament by the eventual champions
from Syracuse.
The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) is not a powerhouse that sends
multiple schools to the tourney, but it did prepare Manhattan to give the
Orangemen a challenge just 362 days ago.
For some reason, this team has stood out more than the other 63 dancers and has
become my prediction for this year's version of a Disney classic gone straight
to television.
That's right, the Jaspers are untying their sneakers and trying on the glass slipper,
and I think it's going to fit quite nicely.
America will absolutely fall in love with the Jaspers, who score 75 points a
night and force their opponents to make creepy errors with their defensive
pressure.
There are three players who are scoring in double figures regularly and five
others that can do the same at any given opportunity.
Manhattan is a 12 seed facing a team from a big conference that has big names
and a successful history.
The Florida Gators do have a trio that can flat out put the ball through the
net, but consistency has been in question the entire season for the swamp
swimmers.
Anthony Roberson, Matt Walsh and David Lee each have the capability to pour in
30 points, but recently their scoring has been down.
Despite the fact that Florida has not lost to a team other than Kentucky in the
last month, something tells me the Gators are not going to come out firing on
all cylinders and that will be just enough for the Jaspers to outstroke their
opponent.
Manhattan has an exceptional head coach who will probably be moving job sites
after this season because of his ability to get kids to play to their full
potential.
Bobby Gonzalez has improved his program in each of his five seasons at the
helm.
This year the Jaspers have surmounted a record (24-5) and a pair of close
losses to Syracuse and Wichita State.
One game that stands out on their schedule is a beating they handed Richmond, a
team that later went on to defeat Kansas.
The tiny college that's gymnasium only seats 3,000 fans will knock off Florida
and then pounce on a Wake Forest team in the second round that has lost its
last three games.
The Jaspers will be playing with passion and pride, something their head coach
brings into the locker room before every battle his team faces.
Dance Manhattan, and dance like no one is watching when really the whole world
will be cheering for your every move.
(C) 2003 The Daily Vidette
via U-WIRE
LOAD-DATE: March 18, 2004
43==
JOHNNIES, CALL ON BOBBY G.
New York Post - New York,NY,USA
Sit him down, Father Harrington, and get an eyewitness
account of how Manhattan College has become the talk of our college basketball
town under Gonzalez' watch ...
<http://www.nypost.com/sports/17464.htm>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 22, 2004 --
MAKE the call, St. John's.
Bobby Gonzalez is home now.
Call him!
Sit him down, Father Harrington, and get an eyewitness account of how Manhattan College has become the talk of our college basketball town under Gonzalez' watch.
Share a bowl of linguini at Dante's with him, Looie - Gonzalez is half-Italian - and learn first-hand how Draddy Gymnasium in Riverdale has surpassed Alumni Hall in Jamaica as the best place to watch The City Game. You talk Picasso, he'll talk Pitino.
Paul Hewitt (Georgia Tech) and Tim Welsh (Providence) are no-brainers. But what if they're too content where they are and can't be lured to Zootopia Parkway?
Chris Mullin is a romantic notion. A fresh New Yawk face from the once-proud family tree. The fail-safe choice. Surround him with established assistants who know their way around the landscape so this wouldn't be the minor-league version of Don Mattingly being named Yankee manager, and few would object.
But how do you not place a call to Bobby Gonzalez?
Because he comes from the same school that gave you Brian Mahoney and Fran Fraschilla? Ridiculous. Mahoney may not have won, but at least he was a class act, and Fraschilla, up to the bitter end, coached his pants off.
Because he sometimes comes off as a self-promoting, snake-oil salesman? Hey, they're all self-promoting, snake-oil salesmen. Some just disguise it better than others.
OK, he's still too thin-skinned for his own good. But he's getting better. A year ago, Gonzalez made the ill-advised decision to impose a media blackout on his players in the days leading up to Manhattan's first-round NCAA Tournament game against Syracuse. He learned from it.
This year his players, starting with star Luis Flores, were engaging, polite, classy. They weren't cocky, they were confident. They believed they were a Sweet 16 team, and nearly were. They were sweethearts instead. They sat forlornly at their lockers and answered all the questions like men. They were champions in defeat.
And that tells you this: Gonzalez has been able to recruit both tough guys and good guys. When you have both inside the same package, you have yourself a dream team.
And with all the griping by New York city high school coaches about Mike Jarvis' aloofness, who better than a dream recruiter who has the right connections and relationships in the city?
With all the interviews Gonzalez did over the past few days with big-timers he likes to call "the silk suit guys," the New York media can't possibly faze him.
But the resume was played out on CBS for all to see: A team that played together, a team that played harder than everyone else, and a team that honored its school and its city.
Call Bobby Gonzalez!
44==
SOAKING up the madness
The Journal News.com - Westchester,NY,USA
... I was a physical education major at Manhattan College, so the tournament holds
a special interest - and torment level - when Manhattan's Jaspers are playing
...
<http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/032304/b0123baird.html>
Soaking up the madness
By BOB BAIRD
(Original publication: March 23, 2004)
I've just emerged from a long weekend of March Madness.
I do it every year, taking two vacation days to celebrate a personal rite of spring.
From noon Thursday until about 7:15 Sunday evening, I immersed myself in the NCAA basketball championships, commonly known as March Madness even though the final is played in April.
That's good timing, really, since that usually coincides - give or take a few days - with start of the pro baseball season - a day I've always thought would better mark the beginning of the new year.
I was a physical education major at Manhattan College, so the tournament holds a special interest - and torment level - when Manhattan's Jaspers are playing.
This year, they played the opening game against the University of Florida. Florida was favored, but Manhattan won pretty easily, earning a second round matchup against Wake Forest.
That posed a typical sports dilemma. Do I root for Manhattan, being an alumnus and all, or do I root for Wake Forest, the team I picked to win the championship in a tournament pool?
I hedged a bit, picking Manhattan to win on one sheet and picking Wake to win on another.
Wake Forest was favored on Saturday and Manhattan quickly fell behind. Wake pulled away in the second half, but Manhattan fought back to within a basket three times before losing 84-80.
There were several upsets Saturday and more Sunday. That's why I watch the tournament with such devotion. There's no telling when some Cinderella team will play its heart out and knock out a nationally ranked school, like when the University of Alabama-Birmingham beat Kentucky.
Even when that doesn't happen, the games are played with passion because players know a loss means a trip home. No matter who the foe, they fight like mad to stay alive, like when Xavier fought back to upset Mississippi State.
You don't need to know the players - or the teams - to enjoy those games.
This year, given what's going on in pro sports, that's refreshing.
I love baseball and I should be itching to watch my team, the Mets.
But not this year. I'm disgusted that Mets management has done little to become competitive. And I'm tired of Yankees fans crowing over owner George Steinbrenner gobbling up talent like Pac Man on steroids.
Steroids. That word alone has me wondering what I've been watching in recent years.
America was captivated watching Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa battle each other and the record books. Then we marveled at Barry Bonds hitting more home runs than either of them.
Now I'm wondering how many players may have been jacked up on steroids when they jacked pitches into the streets.
I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed, that the players - through their union - continue to oppose drug testing. For one, this fan won't spend a dime in a ballpark until there's meaningful, periodic testing of all players.
I'm worried about pro football too - the steroids, the off-field violence, even the ever-increasing speed and size of players. If William "the Refrigerator" Perry were playing today, his nickname might be "Ice Tray." If the hits get much harder, with bigger players moving faster, I'm thinking someone is going to die on a field.
Hockey, we recently saw, is coming close. Periodic episodes of on-ice violence, some resulting in criminal assault charges, didn't keep Vancouver's Todd Bertuzzi from punching Colorado's Steve Moore from behind, knocking him out and driving him into the ice. Moore suffered broken vertebrae and a concussion.
Players and many fans justify fighting and retribution as part of hockey. But if that eye-for-an-eye reasoning holds, Bertuzzi, who is suspended for the rest of this season, shouldn't be allowed to play again until Moore can - if ever.
I'm not any happier with pro basketball, where players often go through the motions until the final few minutes and refs don't enforce the rules. Seeing Kobe Bryant facing sexual assault charges and Jayson Williams on trial in the shooting death of a chauffeur is all the more disturbing because both were considered to be among the league's "good guys."
I know the St. John's University basketball team had its trouble on the court and off this season. A Missouri basketball player says he was paid by coaches and other programs have been caught bending recruiting rules.
But this time of year, college basketball can still appeal to my sense of optimism and idealism, offering a small team a chance for a big win on a national stage.
For me, that's more of a winning combination.
45==
ALL-AMERICAN Runners Shine at NCAA Championships
The Georgetown Hoya - Washington,DC,USA
... The men's team finished in 16th place with a total score of 17 points. Manhattan
College won the championship with 60 points. ...
<http://www.thehoya.com/sports/032304/sports4.cfm>
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
All-American Runners Shine at NCAA Championships
By Nick Jammet
Hoya Staff Writer
As most students prepared for a relaxing spring break, the Georgetown track team remained on the Hilltop, working hard to prepare for its most important meet of the season. Closing out the indoor season, the Hoyas competed in three meets, including the NCAA Indoor Championships, and saw success at each meet.
<extraneous deleted>
At this same time, the other half of the team was competing at the IC4A/ECAC Championships in Boston. The men's team finished in 16th place with a total score of 17 points. Manhattan College won the championship with 60 points. This team effort was led by freshman Brian Dalpiaz and sophomore Fleet Hower, who were the Hoyas' top finishers at the meet. Dalpiaz earned five points, finishing fourth in the 3000m run in a time of 8:16.59. Hower turned in a fifth-place finish in the 5000m in a time of 14:19.36.
<extraneous deleted>
Although these competitions drew the indoor season to a close, the outdoor season is just beginning. The Hoyas will look to continue their success on March 26-27 at the Florida Relays at the University of Florida, the Stanford Invitational at Stanford University and the Raleigh Relays at North Carolina State University.
46==
EDITORIAL: Local boy makes good
Press & Sun-Bulletin - Binghamton,NY,USA
The star of Manhattan College basketball coach Bobby Gonzalez is not just on
the rise; it may be heading toward the universe of NCAA greats. ...
<http://www.pressconnects.com/today/opinion/stories/op032504s77215.shtml>
Thursday, March 25, 2004
The star of Manhattan College basketball coach Bobby Gonzalez is not just on the rise; it may be heading toward the universe of NCAA greats.
Gonzalez, a Binghamton native and 1981 graduate of North High School, rang the opening bell Wednesday at the New York Stock Exchange. He was joined by his team that made it to the second round of the NCAA Men's Division I basketball tournament.
The road to head coach at Manhattan began 18 years ago when Gonzalez was an assistant coach at Broome Community College. From there he worked as an assistant at Binghamton University and two New York City high schools, then headed the program at New York's prestigious Riverside Church. Gonzalez worked as an assistant to star coach Pete Gillen, following him from Xavier University to Providence College to the University of Virginia.
In 1999, Gonzalez got the head coach job at Manhattan College, the last-place team in its conference. He quickly showed his knack for recruiting, adding five new players that re-energized the team to a 12-15 record and sixth-place conference finish. Within two years, Manhattan had improved its record to 20-9 and the Jaspers made it into the postseason National Invitation Tournament, the first since 1996.
Last year under Gonzalez's lead the team won the MAAC Championship and made it into its first NCAA Tournament since 1995, losing to eventual champion Syracuse. This year, his team thrilled New York City fans by upsetting fifth-seeded Florida in the first round. And though the ensuing loss to fourth-seeded Wake Forest was a disappointment, Gonzalez and his players can hold their heads high. It's hard to believe this program started at the bottom just five seasons ago.
So what does the future hold for Gonzalez, this year's National Association of Basketball Coaches District 2 Coach of the Year? His contract with Manhattan is supposed to extend through the 2004-05 season. However, some New Yorkers hope he will be asked by St. John's University to revitalize that school's program.
Whatever his decision, Gonzalez should know that proud residents of Greater Binghamton will be keeping an eye on his stellar career
47==
From: Mike McEneney
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2004 12:41 AM
Subject: The Parade
Dear John,
For the first time in about 15 years, I did not march in the Parade. Instead I stayed home with my bride Cathie (it was her birthday) and we watched some of the Parade on TV. It was a good day for Manhattan. The Grand Marshal Thomas W. Gleason, Esq.'50 led the Parade, Brother Thomas was interviewed on camera and there were 3 or 4 Manhattan College Ads run during the day. There were a few mentions of "McEneneys" by the commentators, but even though my brother Ed marched, I do not think he was the subject of the mention.
All of that exposure, coupled with today's NCAA win, has to be great for the School.
Best,
Mike McEneney, Esq. '53 BBA
From: William T.
(1962) Gildea
Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2004 11:15 PM
Subject: Bronx
John:
This may be too long for Jottings but I thought you might appreciate it:
For those of you who don't, won't, or never have lived in the Metro New York area, there is a borough or county north of Manhattan known as "Da Bronx."
Da Bronx, a part of Greater New York, holds a unique place in history. The South Bronx is industrial and commercial. As one travels northward, the setting changes to primarily residential and parkland. One passes what is, arguably, the most famous sports venue in the country -- The House That Ruth Built.
Not every one of you was born and grew up where you're now living; many of you came up through the outer boroughs, Da Bronx included. If you're one of those who left Da Bronx to grow up, live or work elsewhere, read on and shed a tear for what we've lost.
Read and enjoy . . .
YOU KNOW YOU'RE FROM THE BRONX IF:
You know someone who went to Roosevelt, Taft, Morris, Columbus, Evander,Smith,Gompers, Jane Adams, Dodge, Kennedy, Truman, Lehman, Clinton, Walton, Science, Monroe, Stevenson, All Hallows, Catherine's, Cathedral, Ursula, Fordham, Rice, Aquinas, Barnabas, Mt St. Michael, St.Simon Stock, Preston, St Helena's, Hayes, St Raymond's, Spellman, Tolentine and many more.
You know that Lehman College is really Hunter College in the Bronx.
You actually think the subway is fun and a very reliable form of transportation.
You've taken the Bx 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 20, 31, 34 or 41bus, at least once in your life.
You agree that the Grand Concourse has too many lights and no parking!
When people ask you where you're from you tell them the closest train stop.
You don't go to Manhattan. You go "downtown." You say downtown and expect everyone to know that this means Manhattan.
You never realize you have an accent until one of your new neighbors tells you it's cute.
You're the toughest person you know; your best friend is a close second.
There was at least one pizza place about 1 block from your house.
You curse .... a lot! With no guilt whatsoever!
You were sure Son of Sam was looking for you, so you wore your long dark hair with a scarf.
You went to Orchard Beach and walked all the way to section 13 which was the best section.
You went to Rye Playland at least once a year.
Your friends came over to hang out on the porch/stoop or in front your house/apt building.
You've been to the Bronx Zoo & Botanical Gardens on class trips.
You shopped at Alexander's on Fordham Road.
You stop and have a Gorman's Frank on Fordham Road.
You call it the Stadium, not Yankee Stadium.
You used to go to Fordham Road to buy jewelry and household appliances.
You bought a slice of pizza AND a soda for $. 25
You still don't understand why people are crazy enough to drive to the Stadium for a Yankee game, when you can take the 4 or the D train.
You know that Riverdale is really the Bronx.
Every year when you were little around Christmas time you would go to see the houses on Pelham Parkway .... only if your parents had a car.
You know how to get on a bus using the rear door.
You have never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building.
You know that the Bronx is the best borough of all, except for maybe Manhattan.... maybe.
You went to #6 parking lot at Jones Beach.
In high school, you cruised the strip on Central Ave in Yonkers.
You had to take city buses and/or the subway to get to high school, most likely walk to school too, unless you went to Spellman and you got your own special bus.
Your mother would yell your name out the window when it was time to come home and eat or time to go to sleep.
You played stick ball and stoop ball, potsy, etc.
You rode horses in Pelham Bay Park or Van Cortlandt Park.
When you say "New York" you mean the "City."
The rest of the state really doesn't exist.
You know what a bodega is ..... you secretly wish there was one where you live now.
Jaywalking is imaginary. It is an important skill you were taught when learning how to cross the street.
You went sleigh riding at the Van Cortlandt golf course, or Danger Hill.
You knew New Jersey sucked before the phrase came into vogue.
You know it is really the "Liberry" and not the Library.
You know what a Spaldeen is, right?
You kept your bike underneath the stairway on the first floor hallway of your apartment building.
Your fire escape was the closest thing you had to a back yard.
You've played Ringaleevio & Kick the Can around your apartment building.
You have a great sense of humor.
You know that the Pelham diner is one of the best diners in all of New York City.
During the summer, you went to the public park to play in the sprinklers.
You know that all people from places outside of the Bronx don't know what they missed out on ... and
You know you're from the Bronx if this e-mail made you a little nostalgic, and you wish you could back & do it all over again.
BUT, you know that it will never be the same ever again for the rest of your life!! You were privileged to have been there at the right time and place!!!
Bill Gildea, V.P.
Senior Technology Recruiter
A. E. Feldman Associates, Inc.
From: Michael J. McFadden (1973)
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 4:37 AM
Subject: ?
I don't know if I should reply to you John, or to the alphabet soup of letters that appear on my reply to mail, but I'm betting on you! :>
I don't know if this sort of thing is "newsworthy" enough for the newsletter, but I just had a "Rapid Response" printed in the online British Medical Journal. Use your judgment. (Heehee... after a full week I seem to have intimidated them enough that NO ONE has dared respond to me! LOL!)
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/328/7438/476#53153
:)
Michael
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"
http://www.Antibrains.com
=
From: Michael J. McFadden (1973)
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 4:44 AM
Subject: Sorry...
I just realized that if indeed you wanted to do anything with what I just sent you that I could make your life a lot easier by saying:
Michael J. McFadden
Peace Studies / Psychology
1973
:)
Michael
=
From: Jasper John '68 @ Jasper Jottings.com
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 9:58 AM
Subject: RE: ?
I usually respond to anything. The alphabet soup merely slots it into the proper "pigeon hole" for handling. This particular bucket is one of about forty I read. (Arghhh!) But augmented with my faithful companion LookOut, (actually Microsoft OutLook but it sometimes develops a rudimentary mind of it's own, hence the name LookOut) I have a massive rule set that takes inbound email and pigeon holes it where I need it. So you wind up in the alphabet soup pigeon hole with all the other Jottings material. Regardless of how you try to escape. No one avoids the "mixmaster". The model does breakdown where one message really should be in two places. Sigh. ;-) John'68
From: Mailsweeper@nei.org [mailto:Mailsweeper@nei.org] Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2003 3:07 PM Subject: RE: http://ferdinand_reinke.tripod.com/jasperjottings20030803.htm
The message that was sent to " " was quarantined by NEI's virus checking system because it contains words or other suspicious material.
The recipient has been notified that the email has been quarantined andas soon as it is verified by NEI's IT Staff as clean, it will be released.
Note: Please view attached document for possible causes of email disruption.
=
From: Jasper John '68
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 9:58 AM
To: Mailsweeper@nei.org
Subject: RE: http://ferdinand_reinke.tripod.com/jasperjottings20030803.htm
How about letting me know, by bouncing my message back, so that I can tell the addressee that he won't be receiving my mail because of you? You're causing me extra work because of your dumb filtering rules. This is a Habeas-compliant newsletter requested by the receiver.
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem
[mailto:mailer-daemon@worldnet.att.net]
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 3:15 AM
Subject: Returned mail: delivery problems encountered
A message (from < >) was received at 20 Mar2004
21:59:34 +0000.
The following addresses had delivery problems:
Dennis chin
Persistent Transient Failure:
Delivery time expired
Delivery last attempted at 20
Mar 2004 22:00:27 +0000
=
From: Jasper John '68 @ Jasper Jottings.com
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 9:58 AM
To: 'Dennis J Chin'
Subject: FW: Returned mail: delivery problems encountered
Dennis, Yet another problem? John'68
=
From: Dennis J Chin
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 11:53 AM
Cc: **jake.holmquist@manhattan.edu; **stephen.desalvo@manhattan.edu
Subject: RE: Returned mail: delivery problems encountered
Hi John, problems never cease to amaze me. In the future please use <privacy invoked> for your NEWSLETTER, Okay? Send it to me ASAP, it is part of my sunday reading!
Another problem with this Jasper mail box. I will put on my RED FIRE HAT and CC this message to Jake Holmquist.
Thanks for letting me know about this problem.
Dennis, Jasper Class of '73'
PS: Jake, could you please look into this problem? I hope that you are the right person to contact, protocol wise!
=
From: Jasper John '68
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 12:33 PM
Subject: FW: This issue is at:
http://ferdinand_reinke.tripod.com/jasperjottings20040321.htm
Special service for a distinguished warrior against the evil doers temporarily in charge of the College's alumni office. ;-) John'68
=
From: Dennis J Chin
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 4:11 PM
Subject: RE: This issue is at:
http://ferdinand_reinke.tripod.com/jasperjottings20040321.htm
John, you have made my day with that remark!! You made me laugh so much!
Dennis'73
=
From: Jake Holmquist
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 9:12 AM
To: 'John Reinke'; 'Dennis J Chin'
Cc: stephen.desalvo@manhattan.edu
Subject: RE: Returned mail: delivery problems encountered
Dennis and John,
We were able to fix this problem over the unday.
Thanks,
Jake
Jake Holmquist
Associate Director Computer Services
=
From: Dennis J Chin
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 10:33 AM
To: 'Jake Holmquist'
Cc: stephen.desalvo@manhattan.edu
Subject: RE: Returned mail: delivery problems encountered
Jake, thanks for your speedy help in this matter. I hope I did not ruin your weekend?
Have a good day, Jake.
Dennis Chin, Jasper'73
From: Tom McGowan (1972)
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 8:40 AM
Subject: April 29-30 ASME Shortcourse in Orlando on
Combustion, Thermal Systems and Multipollutant Air
Pollution Control Course
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Joe Santoleri and I will be giving a two-day combustion and air pollution shortcourse via ASME in Orlando on Thursday and Friday April 29 and 30. Several people have signed up already, so things are looking good for attendance. If you are interested, contact ASME at 800-843-2763 regarding course PD414. You can also access information on ASME's website. The course is the last on the list for Orlando at the following URL http://www.asme.org/education/shortco/aprilorlando.htm
Other courses available are a half- or full-day course on NOx Control, as well as half- or full-day courses on thermal treatment of soil. These are available on an in-house basis for industrial firms and regulatory authorities and other interested parties. You can get more detail on what is covered on these courses, on our website at http://tmtsassociates.home.mindspring.com/ We can also produce custom courses and training for technical and operations staff.
Based on past experience, this location is a draw for attendees bringing their spouse and children, as Mickey and Shamu are close at hand for fun in the Florida sun.
Regards,
Tom McGowan
President,
TMTS Associates, Inc.
From: Sandra Taylor (1993
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: FW: REINKE asks FW: Returned mail: delivery problems encountered
yes, thank you
From: Van Etten, Robert (1966)
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 10:01 AM
Subject: RE: This issue is at:
http://ferdinand_reinke.tripod.com/jasperjottings20040321.htm
John,
Please add Manhattan College Alumni Society, Manhattan Prep
Alumni
Eighth Annual Law Enforcement Reception
May 4,2004 6:00P.M.-8:00 P.M.
Speaker:Joseph Monteith'61
Chief of Department,Suffolk County Police Department,
Ret.
At Chase Downtown Chase Plaza,NY,NY,Executive
Dining Room,60th Floor
Dinner& Drinks $40 per person.
If you did not receive a flyer con tact Grace Feeney at Alumni Office E-mail
grace.feeney@manhattan.edu
or me Bob Van Etten'66 973-565-4330
From: Bill Gildea 62S
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2004 11:38 PM
To: Jasper John '68 @ Jasper Jottings
Subject: Read: New Email address
This is a receipt for the mail you sent to
Bill Gildea 62S at 3/12/2004 6:18 AM
This receipt verifies that the message has been
displayed on the
recipient's computer at 3/16/2004 11:38 PM
=
From: "Jasper John '68"
Date: 2004/03/17 Wed AM 08:22:55 EST
To: Bill Gildea 62S
Subject: FW: Read: New Email address
Bill, Did it work this week? I didn't get any "bounces" from your address. John'68
=
From: Bill Gildea 62S
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 11:24 PM
Subject: Re: FW: Read: New Email address
Interestingly I didn't get the Jottings again this week 3/21.
Bill
=
From: Bill Gildea 62S
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2004 10:58 PM
Subject: Jottings
I found that there is a default filter for "junk mail" on Adelphia, so I turned it off. Maybe now I will be able to receive the Jottings. Please send me the URL to lpok at last week's issue.
Bill Gildea 62S
From: Michael F. McEneney
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 11:55 PM
Subject: Fw: update on the Cinderella
Old but still good!!!!!
An update on the Cinderella we all remember --
Cinderella is now 95 years old. After a fulfilling life with the now dead prince, long gone lo, these many years, she happily sits upon her rocking chair, watching the world go by from her front porch, with a cat named Bob for companionship.
One sunny afternoon out of nowhere, appeared the fairy godmother. Cinderella said, "Fairy Godmother, what are you doing here after all these years?"
The fairy godmother replied, "Cinderella, you have lived an exemplary life since I last saw you. Is there anything for which your heart still yearns?"
Cinderella was taken aback, overjoyed, and after some thoughtful consideration, she uttered her first wish: "The prince was wonderful but not much of an investor. I'm living hand to mouth on my disability checks, and I wish I were wealthy beyond comprehension."
Instantly her rocking chair turned into solid gold.
Cinderella said, "Ooh, thank you, Fairy Godmother." The fairy godmother replied "it is the least that I can do. What do you want for your second wish?"
Cinderella looked down at her frail body, and said, "I wish I were young and full of the beauty and youth I once had." At once, her wish became reality, and her beautiful young visage returned.
Cinderella felt stirrings inside of her that had been dormant for years.
And then the fairy godmother spoke once more: "You have one more wish; what shall it be?"
Cinderella looks over to the frightened cat in the corner and says, "I wish for you to transform Bob, my old cat, into a kind, loving and handsome young man."
Magically, Bob suddenly underwent so fundamental a change in his biological make-up that, when he stood before her, he was a man so beautiful the likes of him neither she nor the world had ever seen.
The fairy godmother said, "Congratulations, Cinderella, enjoy your new life. With a blazing shock of bright blue electricity, the fairy godmother was gone as suddenly as she appeared.
For a few eerie moments, Bob and Cinderella looked into each other's eyes. Cinderella sat, breathless, gazing at the most beautiful, stunningly perfect man she had ever seen. Then Bob walked over to Cinderella, who sat transfixed in her rocking chair, & held her close in his young muscular arms. He leaned in close, blowing her golden hair with his warm breath as he whispered . .
"Bet you're sorry you took me to that vet now, aren't you."
From: AntiSpamAdmin@ndsweb.com
[mailto:AntiSpamAdmin@ndsweb.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2004 11:17 AM
Subject: Profanity to sender
Inappropriate language has been detected in an e-mail sent by you with a subject of "This issue is at: http://ferdinand_reinke.tripod.com/jasperjottings20040321.htm" to " ".
[JR: Sigh! ]
From: Bernadette Weiden Glendon ('83)
Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2004 11:27 PM
Subject: Re: This issue is at: http://ferdinand_reinke.tripod.com/jasperjottings200403...
Please let Robert Helms know that I will pass along his condolences and thoughts to my Dad, Peter Weiden ('49) and his brother Robert ('52 I think) on the passing of Matt ('46). It was nice to read about those Weiden boys!
Bernadette Weiden Glendon ('83)
[JR: Done. ]
Copyrighted material belongs to their owner. We recognize that this is merely "fair use", appropriate credit is given and any restrictions observed. The CIC asks you to do the same.
All material submitted for posting becomes the sole property of the CIC. All decisions about what is post, and how, are vested solely in the CIC. We'll attempt to honor your wishes to the best of our ability.
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Operating Jasper Jottings, the "collector-in-chief", aka CIC, recognizes that every one of us needs privacy. In respect of your privacy, I will protect any information you provide to the best of my ability. No one needs "unsolicited commercial email" aka spam.
The CIC of Jasper Jottings will never sell personal data to outside vendors. Nor do we currently accept advertisements, although that may be a future option.
This effort has NO FORMAL RELATION to Manhattan College!
This is just my idea and has neither support nor any official relationship with Manhattan College. As alumni, we have a special bond with Manhattan College. In order to help the College keep its records as up to date as possible, the CIC will share such information as the Alumni office wants. To date, we share the news, any "new registrations" (i.e., data that differs from the alumni directory), and anything we find about "lost" jaspers.
You may only subscribe to the list, only if you have demonstrated a connection to Manhattan College. This may require providing information about yourself to assert the claim to a connection. Decisions of the CIC are final. If you do provide such personal information, such as email, name, address or telephone numbers, we will not disclose it to anyone except as described here.
Should you wish to connect to someone else on the list, you must send in an email to the list requesting the connection and please address your email to connector@jasperjottings.com. We will respond to you, so you know we received your request, and send a BCC (i.e., Blind Carbon Copy) of our response to your target with your email address visible. Thus by requesting the connection, you are allowing us to share your email address with another list member. After that it is up to the other to respond to you. Bear in mind that anything coming to the list or to me via "@ jasperjottings.com" or my john.reinke@att.net address is assumed to be for publication to the list and you agree to its use as described.
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We want you to be pleased not only with this service. Your satisfaction, and continued participation, is very important to all of us.
Please remember this effort depends upon you being a reporter. Email any news about Jaspers, including yourself --- (It is ok to toot your own horn. If you don't, who will? If it sounds too bad, I'll tone it down.) --- to john.reinke@att.net. Please mark if you DON'T want it distributed AND / OR if you DON'T want me to edit it.
Or, you can USMail it to me at 3 Tyne Court Kendall Park, NJ 08824.
Feel free to invite other Jaspers to join us by dropping me an email “recruiter @ jasperjottings.com”.
Report any problems or feel free to give me feedback, by emailing me at john.reinke@att.net. If you are really enraged, or need to speak to me, call 732-821-5850.
If you don't receive your weekly newsletter, your email may be "bouncing". One or two individual transmissions fail each week and, depending upon how you signed up, I may have no way to track you down, so stay in touch.
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The following link is an attempt to derail spammers. Don't take it.
<A HREF="http://www.monkeys.com/spammers-are-leeches/"> </A>
FINAL WORDS THIS WEEK
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese51.html
March 19, 2004
This Cliché Is A Lie
by Charley Reese
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years, reporting on everything from sports to politics. From 1969–71, he worked as a campaign staffer for gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional races in several states. He was an editor, assistant to the publisher, and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel from 1971 to 2001. He now writes a syndicated column which is carried on LewRockwell.com. Reese served two years active duty in the U.S. Army as a tank gunner. Write to Charley Reese at P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802.
=== <begin quote> ===
One of the clichés one hears incessantly from the mouths of politicians is that we have the "best-trained, best-equipped Army" in the world.
No we don't. We have a military that is overstretched and under equipped because it has more missions than resources. We have a military that is suffering from a leadership crisis. We have a military with way too many women in it. We have a military that still suffers from logistics problems.
<extraneous deleted>
And we have promiscuous medal-giving. Some of our top generals look like stereotypes of Latin American dictators with their ribbons and medals. Then there was the case of the young West Virginia girl who was made a celebrity and given a medal for bravery even though she herself said she never fired her weapon and was knocked unconscious by a vehicle crash. She was honest. The brass were not.
<extraneous deleted>
I highly recommend Col. Hackworth's Web site. You will get more truth from there in one five-minute visit than in listening to Donald Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs for 10 hours.
The only protection the ordinary fighting man has is informed and aroused citizens who demand of their politicians that problems be corrected. That's especially true when the top generals and admirals fail in an officer's most basic duty, which is to look out for the men and women under his command.
=== <end quote> ===
Taking nothing away from the brave boys and girls in the field, we are too "thin". Y'all know I love Heinlein. Especially the parts about only people who have earned citizenship have the right to send troops to die. While I am sure that no leader, no matter how venial, doesn't feel something doing that Presidential duty, I do think we are too cavalier with our troops. When discussing it with my wife, the subject of the Guard came up. She says they took the check now they have to take that particular end of the stick. Point well taken. But, I replied they expected the stick to be in their home state, not in Iraq. One could reasonably sign up for the Guard and expect to face power outage duty, flood duty, snow duty, terrorist duty, shine your shoes to look impressive at the airport duty (despite having no live ammo), and expect that the worst you'll see is shooting looters or engaging the foreign light infantry in our cities called gangs. Heck, one could even expect to be called up for "minute man" duty; you know the redcoats are coming to take our guns and women (no, that's the government BATF) like in the movie the Patriot. (In all likelihood, invaders would be met by the militia, like you and I with hunting rifles and pitchforks. Lest you think that that is a joke, consult the writings of the 1930 Japanese military that dismissed an invasion of the US because they would be met "with an armed force that was like the blades of grass, well-armed, well-hidden, and motivated".) Now, I annoy the you know what out of her by pointing out the sign near our house that says "Protect Our <Insert YOUR State Here>, Join the Guard". Yup, our political leadership -- politicians and top generals -- are living proof that the government can't by definition do anything right. So be that "informed and aroused" citizen that Charley is talking about. I give you permission to be "irritable" to. Every time you here a "politician", say "Barbara Streisand" as loud as you can. Every time someone talks about "war", especially if it is in that antiseptic condescending it's-no-big-deal way, ask why they aren't out in front, at the front, leading the charge. It's dangerous out there. Bring our people home. Not out of fear. But, out of pride in the value they represent to us.
As with the way John always end, GBUGBA
And that’s the last word.
-30-
GBu. GBA.