How building 'the right culture' will someday lead the Aces back to the NCAA tournament

Editor's note: This is the second of a three-part series running this week about how the University of Evansville is attempting to bridge the gap since its last NCAA tournament team in 1999.

Part 1:What made Evansville's last NCAA tournament team so special?

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Curt Begle was in St. Louis. Criag Snow watched from his couch. Marcus Wilson remembers the game. Members of the 1999 University of Evansville men’s basketball team recalled watching and hoping for the best.

The Purple Aces looked doomed for another year away from the NCAA Tournament. Down by as many as 17 points to Northern Iowa, UE was left for dead in the 2016 Missouri Valley Conference Tournament championship game.

However, little by little, UE got back into the game, with its first trip to the Big Dance since 1999 becoming more tangible with each passing possession.

With the game tied 54-54, Panthers guard Wes Washpun took control and drove to the top of the key. He put up a shot that, most of the time, doesn’t fall in. It hit the back of the rim, and skimmed the backboard on its way to the top of the glass.

Unfortunately for the Aces, this wasn’t like most other times, and the wait continued. All because of that bounce. The bounce.

“It hurt me for that team for them to be that close,” Begle said. “That was a tough blow because I knew how much it would’ve meant to them, how much it would’ve meant to the community. It was just the wrong bounce.”

UNI won 56-54, punching its ticket to the NCAA Tournament while forcing UE’s 16-year absence to continue, a wait that’s now ballooned to 23 years. While the Aces finished 25-9, their resume wasn’t deemed strong enough for an at-large bid. Members of the 1999 team recalled every detail of watching that game and the pain that came with it.

“That shot should not have gone in,” Snow said. “I can remember watching it. I was on my couch, had the remote, turned the TV off as soon as the game was over, pissed for the rest of the day.

“That’s basketball. That’s sports. It was just really unlucky. That team deserved an opportunity, I believe, but the margins between winning and losing are so slim.”

Wilson, who is now an assistant at UE under coach David Ragland along with Snow, knows about a bounce falling his way. If his winning shot against Southwest Missouri State didn’t bounce around and fall in to clinch the 1999 MVC regular season title, the Aces would’ve finished in a three-way tie with the Bears and Creighton.

Had that happened, Wilson said, “We probably don’t get into the tournament.”

“That was the best team since the ‘99 team,” Wilson said. “Sometimes you just need luck. … History is completely different on the bounce of one inch.”

Of course, there are more factors at play in UE’s 23-year tournament drought than the bounce of one shot.

Wilson: “It’s hard to make the tournament, but they were still a good team”

In the immediate years that followed 1999, UE struggled to adapt to losing Wilson and Begle. Wilson was the leading scorer every season in his four years with the Aces, and Begle was a leader on the team after taking a redshirt year.

“He was like the original fifth-year senior,” Snow said of Begle.

Losing that leadership hurt UE, as did injuries.

Snow had a knee injury the following season. He felt that he never fully recovered from that, which led to some of the Aces' shortcomoings.

“I don’t know if we make it back to the NCAA Tournament,” he said, “but I definitely know we’d finish better, my junior season, without my knee injury.”

Jeremy Stanton battled injuries over the course of the next few seasons along with other players. However, the main part was that the Aces just didn’t win enough games. With more players needing to pick up different roles with Wilson and Begle graduating, UE didn’t have those two to lean on.

“The difference between winning and losing oftentimes is razor-thin,” Snow said. “We ultimately didn’t get the job done. We were doing the same stuff, we were working just as hard in the offseason, but at the end of the day we didn’t accomplish the goal.”

The Aces still competed, and they still won games. They just didn’t make it back in the immediate future.

“They were still good. It wasn’t like they went from the NCAA Championship to six wins,,” Wilson said. “It’s hard to make the tournament, but they were still a good team.”

The team thought it had “a legit chance to get back,” Stanton said, but things just didn’t go the Aces’ way. After his time, Stanton said some teams have been good enough to get to the tournament, but just haven’t “quite got over the hump,” but he’s hopeful for the future.

“I feel like it’s going in the right direction,” he said. “You gotta still keep plugging away, and eventually, we’ll get back there.”

“It takes the right culture”

UE has had successful seasons over the years. The Aces made the semifinal of the CBI in 2013 and won it in 2015. The UNI loss happened a year later.

Even with that title in 2015, that doesn’t touch making the NCAA Tournament.

“Even if you won the NIT,” Wilson said, “you’re still finishing 65th in the country.”

Snow added: “What was unfortunate is they didn’t get the NIT. That team deserved that. … But they would’ve traded the NIT for (an NCAA Tournament berth), too.”

After "The Bounce," UE has only finished above .500 once — a 17-15 record in 2018. Since then, the Aces have won 35 games and are on their fourth full-time coach in a five-year span.

“I think they’ve had some teams that have been good enough to do it,” Stanton said. “In order to do it, it takes the right group. It takes the right culture, in my opinion. I think that’s something we had.”

Looking at the 1999 tournament team, coach Jim Crews was in the 14th season of his 17-year tenure at UE, firmly establishing the culture he wanted with the Aces. At the time, he hadn’t had a four-year class leave without a championship. Marty Simmons, who coached UE from 2007-2018 and is now at Eastern Illinois, was the closest to establishing that culture, but his tenure was inconsistent.

Walter McCarty replaced him, and after a tumultuous tenure that ended with sexual assault allegations and lawsuits that are yet to be settled, he was fired. That set the program back several years as Todd Lickliter was hired and then fired, too.

Ultimately, it comes back to the culture Ragland, Wilson, Snow and the rest of the new staff are trying to build at Ford Center. Getting the right players and through “tireless recruiting” is the first step to that.

“We get it. We know what it’s like to be tired, but, for me, most importantly we know the work that it takes,” Wilson said. “I’m not telling them how to win because I read something in a book. … We won as players here, we won as coaches at the college level. We know what that looks like, the work ethic that it takes.”

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: 'Right culture' can lead Evansville basketball back to NCAA tournament