All season, coach Norm Parrish would encourage and exhort his Salt Lake Community College basketball players by comparing them to last year's overachieving team that reached the championship game of the national junior college tournament.
And wouldn't you know, here were the current Bruins, about to repeat the second-place finish that gnawed at Parrish "literally every day" since then. They were trailing Midland College of Texas by 15 points midway through the second half Saturday, seemingly having spent everything the previous night in knocking off No. 1-ranked Chipola of Florida in the semifinals of the annual event at Hutchinson, Kan.
"They just looked like they didn't have anything left in their tanks," said SLCC athletic director Norma Carr.
So it would be another case of coming close and going home disappointed for Parrish, whose Bruins had lost a 13-point lead in the title game last March. It would hurt the players, too -- but not nearly as much, considering this was almost a brand-new team, not unusual in JC athletics. Everybody would say the coach deserved a better ending in his 18th season, thinking of all those years when, as Carr says with only slight exaggeration, SLCC was like the "Bad News Bears." The program was minimally funded in those days, when the Bruins played in the old South High gym and Parrish would bring the uniforms home to be washed.
And then it all changed for him and his team. A few defensive stops, a few well-executed offensive plays and the support of a crowd that adopted the trailing team in the interest of entertainment value combined to create a 27-3 run. SLCC eventually claimed a 67-60 victory.
He won't know for sure until this time next year, but there's every chance Parrish will ultimately break even on this two-year cycle, that not a day will go by without him reflecting happily on the comeback. He was off to a good start Monday, fielding congratulatory calls at home and confirming, "Man, compared to last year, it's a great feeling."
The team that finally rewarded him was talented and mature, an intriguing mix of players with backgrounds including prep school, church missions and stops at four-year schools in Utah. Forward D.J. Wright, heavily recruited out of Toronto, once was ticketed to LSU and then Louisiana Tech before academic issues steered him to SLCC. The Bruins never would have done this without Wright, who posted 34 points and 14 rebounds against Chipola, or guard Dathan Lyles, who's from Columbus, Ohio.
Yet the supporting cast made this one of Parrish's most Utah-centric teams, with five of the top seven players coming from Skyline High (Nate Bendall), Wasatch (Logan Magnusson), American Fork (Ricky Shoff), Lehi (Drew Robinson) and Viewmont (Davis Emery). Of those five, only Emery was a true freshman; the others transferred from four-year schools.
Somehow, they all came together. "I couldn't ask for better teammates; just a great group of guys," said Bendall, who has re-signed with Utah State after spending the 2005-06 season in Logan, before a mission. "For the most part, we all got along well and just blended really well."
Parrish kept telling the players how capable they were, while making clear how much work was required to match the '08 team's achievements. He preaches defense -- which, as Bendall observed, is not necessarily what JC basketball players want to hear, believing that scoring averages attract recruiters.
Yet Saturday night, shutting down Midland in the second half brought the Bruins a national title. His players were thrilled for Parrish, but only someone like Carr, his boss for nearly two decades, could really appreciate what the title meant to him. With a devastating loss in between, he had gone from the old "Bad News Bears" days to a triumph that Carr labeled "one for the good guys."
