Abdoulaye Thiam (11) releases jumper as High Point battled Purdue in NCAA Tournament. Panthers lost to Boilermakers, but acquitted themselves well after 29-win season. (Photo by High Point Athletics)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — It began with a charter flight of boisterous fans who made their presence known early and often, cheering the first vestige of purple on the floor an hour before tipoff. It continued when Dr. Nido Qubein made his way into the stands to a standing ovation and chants of “Nidooooooooo!”
Louder it grew as High Point kept pace with Purdue in the first half and into the second. The cheers turned into groans over fouls and blown whistles, but the enthusiasm never waned.
If this is High Point basketball on every game night, it speaks to what head coach Alan Huss has built in just two short years with the reins of the Panther program in his hands.
“We hope some of the folks that got introduced to High Point this week will be guys that want to come spend time with us in the future,” Huss said after he had a moment to process High Point’s first NCAA Tournament experience, a 75-63 loss to Purdue. “I took the job sight unseen. We go to the Elite 8 (at Creighton), we commit a foul with 0.2 seconds left (against San Diego State) in the game to go to the Final Four. The next thing I know, the team’s headed left and I’m headed right with my family to North Carolina, to a state I’ve only been to a couple of times. And when I got to campus, my eyes were like, ‘whoa!’ You walk in and it’s like sensory overload, it’s so nice and everyone is so nice. And then you settle in and you start realizing the people, the programs, the human capital of the place is what draws you in.”
“We always felt if we can get ourselves to win just a little bit and get people to this campus and have them experience this place, we’re gonna get this place rolling because honestly, it sells itself.”
If the campus atmosphere—something senior guard Trae Benham described as a family you can sense upon arrival—makes the initial sales pitch, the closing occurs when you get a chance to watch this High Point team at work. Even with the loss to Purdue, the Panthers still finished 29-6 on the year, one in which Huss recollected was fruitful and prosperous for what led him and his players to the stage they occupied this week, even if the first part of it was a struggle.
“They’ve been a fun group,” he said with an appreciative smile. “We went through our fair share of difficult moments early in the season, where it wasn’t real fun. We were all struggling a little bit, me included, but this group really came together and they were so much fun to coach. I’m a 46-year-old man, (and) the fact that I get to hang out with these kids, it’s just so much fun. It’s fun to be able to be a part of their youthful energy, and I’m just so grateful to be in the position that I’m in, to be around them.”
Even though High Point rolled through the Big South portion of its schedule, winning 14 of 16 conference games, there was still a point where it was uncertain as to how strong a side Huss would have going down the stretch in league play. The second-year coach found his answers at the end of January, and not from competition.
“We finally had a week, we had the last bye the first way through,” he said. “After we had that bye, that was the first time we got a full week of practice with everyone. We weren’t shifting guys in and out with injuries, all those things, that was the first time. We had some rough moments that week, and we came out the back side of that. We could have fractured after that and really, really struggled, but we came out of that and our bench guys were kind of reinvigorated, if you will. They had a new energy out of that. That week, I think, really turned us around.”
“Everybody kind of saw, ‘man, there’s value here all across the board.’ We kept dividing it up and the results were different. There were no commonalities as to who was the best player. We all came to the same conclusion that the sum of our parts is so much greater than our individual pieces, and that was the first time we got to that space. I point to that week, and after that week, we went on a run. We didn’t lose another game.”
Winning breeds a multitude of emotions, but in this particular group, two were cultivated stronger than others: Fun, which ensued from a 14-game win streak going into the NCAA Tournament, and care, which Huss elaborated on by citing how poignant the end of his team’s Big South championship run was.
“Fun is something you only have when you have care and you have character,” he opined. “And we have both of those in abundance. We have a lot of care and we have high-character guys. You watch Chase (Johnston) and Trae, and those guys are competing for the same spot. They’ve kind of bonded through their faith, but those two guys, they don’t care which one finishes. I watch the way those guys care about each other, and we go through the Big South championship game…we’ve got four all-conference players on our team, all four of them are on the bench and they’re the happiest guys in the building. That’s true care.”
The last impression of that came minutes after the buzzer, when Huss emerged from a room behind the court, concluding his postgame press conference. The coach, not an easy figure to miss at 6-foot-9, turned back, noticed High Point’s pep band, and offered the following:
“Thank you all for being here today! You guys were awesome!”
So too is the university they represent.
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