Chapman Shows Up With Winning Hand

The Incredible Shrinking Chapman College Basketball Team, down to 11 players and counting, has put a crimp on Coach Kevin Wilson’s maneuverability--”handcuffing me,” as Wilson puts it.

But Wilson keeps trying. Wednesday night against Concordia College of Nebraska, it was Dial-A-Lineup again, as Wilson sent out his seventh different starting combination in 10 games--and came away with victory No. 6, a 69-49 triumph in the Hutton Sports Center.

Got a white and red jersey? Had a good practice the other day? Is your moon in the seventh house?

Stick around. You, too, might be able to start for Wilson.

Nearly everyone on the Chapman roster has. Wilson dabbles in magic as a hobby, but juggling seems to be an on-the-job interest. A new point guard here, a different power forward there.

So far, junior guard Pat O’Hern is the only Panther player who hasn’t started for Wilson this season.

But give him time.

Against Concordia, Wilson tried a front line consisting of two centers, Karl Cato and Mike Brennan, and a forward, Johnny Williams. Statistically, it didn’t look like a stroke of genius--Cato and Brennan both scoring five points, with Williams hitting a routine 14.

But the overall results were impressive. The Panthers (6-4) scored the first nine points of the game and eventually won by 20, their largest victory margin of the season.

“This one has possibilities,” Wilson said of his newest first five. “With Brennan, Cato and Williams in there together, we were reacting to the boards more. We were rebounding harder, playing harder.”

Also working to Chapman’s advantage was a struggling opponent. Concordia (6-9) won four of its first five games, but has lost five straight. The Bulldogs have been brutalized by a demanding road schedule (12 of 15 games played away from home), losing to UC Riverside and Loyola Marymount to start their current five-game West Coast trip.

“We’re not playing any worse now,” Concordia Coach Brian Mueller said, “it’s just that the competition is better and we’ve been on the road so much.

“We want to play good teams, but we have no reputation, so we have to come to their place to play them . . . I would have liked to play Chapman at our place. This is a team we should compete with--and I think we could’ve beaten them at home.”

Instead, Concordia fell behind, 9-0, before you could dig out a Rand-McNally and locate Concordia’s whereabouts. (For the record, it’s an NAIA school in Seward, Neb.) And, the Bulldogs had to play with their best shooter, Ray Nutter, limping.

On a sore ankle, Nutter still managed to sink 9 of 12 field goal attempts for 21 points.

But that was hardly enough to keep Concordia close to Chapman. No other Bulldog scored more than eight points and a team that usually shoots 50% from the field hit 41.7% Wednesday.

“We got beat by 20 and we shouldn’t have,” Mueller said. “We made them look good because we couldn’t put the ball in the hole.”

At times, Chapman had trouble with that facet of the game, too. The Panthers shot 48% from the field, but there were a couple of dry spells during the second half when neither team would score for two, three minutes.

“That makes it tougher to coach,” Wilson said. “When nobody scores for a while, the players get into a lull. It’s harder to play defense than offense, and it’s easy to lose your intensity in that situation.”

Making it even tougher to coach is a depleted roster. The latest Chapman departures (freshman guard Jim Motis and junior forward John Winston) have sliced Wilson’s numbers to 11. With an injury and a case of the flu, Wilson can find himself trying to conduct a practice session with nine able bodies.

“That makes it tough to run your offense,” he deadpanned.

So, Wilson keeps shuffling, and reshuffling, his deck, throwing players into the fray like a Las Vegas blackjack dealer.

And for one night, he happened across a winning hand.

CONCORDIA (49)--Russert 2, Wood 6, Nutter 21, Love 8, Nordman 4, Wert 2, Koehnke 2, Wolfram 4.

CHAPMAN (69)--O’Hern 2, Ross 6, Kelly 10, Clark 3, Jones 11, Briggs 9, Marusich 4, Williams 14, Cato 5, Brennan 5.

Halftime--Chapman, 32-23.