Ex-Gorman coach Adras has NAU in line for upset shot

Steve Guiremand

Tuesday, March 14, 2000 | 10:26 a.m.

Northern Arizona's basketball team was making the long trip back from Missoula, Mont., on Sunday when coach Mike Adras decided to pull the team bus into a sports bar called Max's Sports Lounge in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale.

The Lumberjacks sat down and did what just about every other college basketball fan in America did on Sunday afternoon: They watched the NCAA Tournament pairings show.

"I wanted our team to be able to sit there and enjoy the thrill of hearing their name getting called out," said Adras, a former star player and coach at Bishop Gorman High School. "I didn't want them to hear it on some cell phone while driving back to Flagstaff. Twenty years from now when these players look back, I want them to remember that special moment."

NAU (20-10), which won the Big Sky Conference tournament on Saturday night with an 85-81 overtime win over Cal State Northridge, had to wait until the final sub-regional was revealed on CBS before learning its fate.

The Lumberjacks are headed to Tucson as the 15th seed in the West Regional and will face No. 2 seed St. John's on Thursday night.

"Do you realize there's a lot of media back in New York City?" Adras joked Monday night after spending much of his day doing interviews with writers from the Big Apple.

The 38-year-old Adras, in his first year as head coach of the Lumberjacks after spending seven years in Flagstaff as an assistant, isn't complaining.

"I'm really excited," he said. "It's a big thrill for me. Obviously, I'm more excited for our players. There's a great chemistry there. They really hung together in tough times instead of falling apart like some teams might have."

Back at the start of Big Sky action, it looked as if the Lumberjacks would be lucky to have a winning record, much less go on to claim only the second NCAA Tournament berth in school history.

Faced with the daunting task of opening Big Sky play with four consecutive road games, the Lumberjacks quickly found themselves with an 0-4 conference mark.

"We had played a very tough nonconference schedule, the best since I've been here," Adras said. "Then we started conference play with four straight road games. We had a chance to win three of those games, but we just couldn't get over the hump."

But when the Lumberjacks did get over the hump, they got way over the hump.

Northern Arizona closed out the season with the most successful stretch in the 90-year history of the program, winning 14 of its last 15 games.

It's the fourth straight year NAU has won 20 or more games. The Lumberjacks, led by 6-5 senior guard Ross Land, who holds the Big Sky record for career 3-point baskets, are an exceptional outside shooting team. They rank 12th in the nation in 3-point shooting (39.4 percent) after having led the NCAA in that category for three straight years.

The school's motto is "Recruit to Shoot." NAU hit 16 of its 27 3-pointers in the Big Sky tourney final against Northridge.

So NAU has at least a shooter's chance of an upset in Thursday night's contest with a St. John's squad that just won the Big East tournament.

In their only other NCAA Tournament game, in 1998 in Boise, Idaho, the Lumberjacks nearly upset Cincinnati before losing, 65-62, on a 3-pointer with four seconds left.

"It's exciting that we get to play in Tucson," Adras said. "It's in our state and hopefully the fans there will share it with us. Everybody likes to root for the underdogs. And you can't be much more of an underdog than being a 15th seed and playing a team the caliber of St. John's."

Adras, who coached Bishop Gorman to two state titles and also played on state title teams in 1978 and 1979, said he keeps in touch with a lot of friends in Las Vegas.

"I've been getting a lot of calls and e-mails from Vegas since we won on Saturday night," he said. "Unfortunately I haven't had the time to answer a lot of them yet because I've been so busy getting ready for St. John's. But I will."