Lafayette Stribling admits his memory’s not as tight as it once was. His conversations ramble a bit, and the 73-year-old’s tone at times is weary.
But the man who spent 27 years coaching the Mississippi State Valley basketball team, taking three Delta Devil teams to the NCAA Tournament while racking up a record 315 wins in the process, establishes something early in an interview.
“Now understand that when I say ‘our team,’ I mean Valley. I will always be a Valley guy,” said Stribling, who retired from the university in 2005 and is an assistant at Tougaloo College today.
At 8:55 tonight, his former team makes its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1996. The game against the UCLA Bruins will be televised on CBS.
When talking about his tournament experiences, Stribling got caught up in the excitement.
“They didn’t pick you to be there. You’re the underdog and all that,” he said. “ But when you get in that arena, your team is breathing the same air the other guys are; you put your jersey on just like they do.”
Stribling said his 1986 team proved that “you don’t get to the dance by accident.”
That Valley team faced Duke, the country’s top college basketball team that season, in the tournament’s opening round in Greensboro, N.C.
“I remember Dick Vitale said that within three minutes of tip-off, the parking lot would be empty because people would be leaving a blowout game,” Stribling said. “But at halftime, let me tell you, we were up by three points.”
The Delta Devils that year didn’t have a player taller than 6-foot-4, Stribling said. “Our starting center was all of 6-foot-2.”
“But,” he added, “we had one hell of a game plan for them. We pushed them to the wire.”
The Devils ultimately lost, 85-78, Stribling said, because four of his players got into foul trouble late in the game.
“But I’m not a guy that makes excuses,” he added. “You’re accountable for your actions, and we gave them all they wanted. We didn’t go in there tip-toeing.”
If nothing else, the 1986 Devils (22-11) proved – one season after the NCAA expanded the tournament’s pool to include four 16 seeds – that small schools could run with big schools, Stribling said.
After the game, the crowd in Greensboro applauded the players from Itta Bena.
Ten years later, the Devils were back in the tournament, in large part because of the impressive play of forward Marcus Mann.
“One newspaper guy said that season said that Marcus did everything for us except sweep the floor,” Stribling said.
Mann, pastor of Sylva Rena Baptist Church in Brandon today, said the 1996 team was focused on one thing.
“The driving point for us was the unity of the team,” he said of the Devils, who went 22-7. “We didn’t care how many points somebody scored; we were going to do whatever it took to win.”
The team lost to No. 1 seed Georgetown in the tournament, 93-56, but nonetheless, Mann said the experience is something to behold.
“Once you get to the tournament, it’s a whole new world,” he said. “There’s so much excitement, you don’t have any problem getting hyped up for the game. Sometimes when you’re in the middle of it all, you can’t consume it all.”
Mann, 34, said his most vivid memory was when the team was departing Itta Bena: “I remember getting on the bus on campus, thinking about the fact that we were about to go play Georgetown. I remember thinking to myself, ‘I’m ready to play. I’m ready.’”
For Faragi Phillips, another player on that 1996 team, his most startling experience was the media coverage.
“At home games, we average, what — 4,000 people? Well, here we are at practice at the tournament, and there’s 7,000 people just watching you practice,” said Phillips, 32, who coaches basketball at a middle school in Memphis today. “We had never really even been interviewed.”
Stribling, Mann and Phillips all said they hope the 2008 Delta Devils take in every moment of the experience.
“I’m talking about the trip to the game, every meal, every ride, every practice and every second of the game,” Phillips said. “Because you may not ever get it again.”
Stribling, the coach who delivered 27 years worth of pre-game talks to Delta Devil players, offered a bit of advice.
“One thing you’ve got to have is your confidence,” he said. “You’re there. Just like 63 other teams. That’s all I see. And you gotta believe you belong there. Our team always has a chance.”
