Marquette makes return to Final Four in 2003
More than a decade after the Marquette Golden Eagles made their improbable run to the 2003 Final Four, the magnitude of the achievement finally began to sink in to Travis Diener.
“I don’t think I had a sense of it until I came back on staff, and just how many people remember that time in their life,” Diener, the starting point guard on that team, said recently.
Back at MU and in his third year as director of player personnel on coach Steve Wojciechowski’s staff, the Fond du Lac native still gets regular reminders from fans of just how much that 2002-’03 team meant to them.
“People don’t come up to me and talk about how many points I scored or how many assists I had. It’s, ‘Oh, I remember that time I saw you against Holy Cross,’ or ‘I remember when I saw you in the elevator during the Final Four.’
“I think that’s what makes it so special now. I realize just how big it was.”
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Indeed, it’s hard to overstate the effect Diener, Dwyane Wade & Co. had on a university that had famously reached the mountaintop in 1977 behind legendary coach Al McGuire but struggled to maintain national relevancy for the next 25 years.
After Mike Deane was dismissed in 1999, the key to the turnaround was the hiring of Tom Crean. An assistant to Tom Izzo at Michigan State, Crean proved to be a tireless recruiter and promoter for the program as well as a big-time motivator.
The Golden Eagles opened the Crean era with consecutive 15-14 seasons before finally making a big leap by going 26-7 in 2001-'02. Wade, a lightly recruited guard out of Chicago who was forced to sit his freshman year due to academic reasons, burst onto the scene by leading the team in scoring (17.8 points per game), rebounding (6.6), assists (3.2), steals (2.5) and blocked shots (1.1).
MU earned a No. 5 seeding in the NCAA Tournament – its first appearance in four years – only to be knocked off by No. 12 Tulsa in the closing seconds in St. Louis, 71-69.
Disappointing as the loss was, expectations were high for 2002-’03.
“Losing to Tulsa in the NCAA Tournament and being on the bus going to the airport, Cordell Henry was like, ‘Dude, you guys have got a chance to be really good,' ” said forward Todd Townsend, now the top assistant at UW-Milwaukee and one of five eventual 33-game starters on that Final Four team.
MU took a couple hits shortly after the Tulsa game when Odartey Blankson and Ron Howard – both of whom were expected to be major contributors in 2002-’03 – transferred. But the addition of Mississippi State big man Robert Jackson and a recruiting class anchored by Brown Deer gunner Steve Novak more than mitigated the losses.
With Diener replacing Henry at point guard and Wade at shooting guard, MU had great balance in the backcourt. The 6-foot-7 Townsend was a great fit as a jack-of-all-trades at small forward, while Wauwatosa East product Scott Merritt and Jackson, a former Milwaukee Washington star, gave MU a pair of talented 6-10 bookends in the paint.
There also was a local flavor to the team, with seven players hailing from the state on the roster. Joining Diener, Jackson, Novak and Merritt were Milwaukee Vincent’s Terry Sanders and walk-on Tony Gries from Kiel. Andy Freund, a walk-on who redshirted, was a former teammate of Merritt's at Tosa East.
The Golden Eagles opened 8-1 before suffering consecutive losses for what ended up being the only time during the season, at East Carolina and at Dayton in overtime.
With so much talent and the master motivator Crean running the show, there would be no panic.
“I hate sounding like one of those old guys. I know I am,” Townsend said with a laugh. “You didn’t know exactly what, but we had, like, the it. We had an it. And it wasn’t hype, which was a good thing.
“But we had something.”
Using that “something,” MU won its next 10 games before Madison native Reece Gaines’ buzzer-beating three-pointer lifted No. 2 Louisville over the No. 11 Golden Eagles at the Bradley Center.
MU exacted its revenge at Freedom Hall less than two weeks later and capped its regular season by beating Cincinnati at the Bradley Center. That victory left the Golden Eagles with a 14-2 Conference USA record, the league’s regular-season title and the top seed in the conference tournament.
Wade had lived up to the hype, earning Conference USA’s player of the year and defensive player of the year honors and performing like one of the top players in the country. Diener had proven to be a fiery and fearless floor general, while Townsend, Merritt and Jackson were consistently effective up front.
Novak was named Conference USA’s sixth man of the year.
The Golden Eagles were upset in their first game in the Conference USA tournament, however, committing 30 turnovers against a pesky and pressing UAB team. MU drew a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament four days later and a first-round matchup with Holy Cross in Indianapolis.
“From the coaching side of it, at the time obviously you’re extremely angry,” Diener said of the UAB loss. “Now they have our attention, like, ‘We’re not as good as maybe we think we are. We lost to an 8-9 seed and looked really bad doing it.’
“But it gave us a couple days of rest and it refocused us more on what our ultimate goal was, which was to make a deep run in the (NCAA) Tournament. That year, in that particular situation, it helped us. It refocused us and it re-energized us.”
MU had a week to prepare for the NCAA Tournament after the UAB loss, but needed 29 points from Diener to sneak past Holy Cross, 72-68, in a surprisingly tough game.
The Golden Eagles won an overtime shootout against No. 6 seed Missouri, 101-92, in the second round behind 26 points from Diener, 24 from Wade and 18 from Merritt. It was the freshman Novak who saved the day, though, with perfect 4-of-4 shooting from beyond the arc in the extra period.
MU moved to Minneapolis for the next round, and it was Wade’s 20 second-half points that helped the Golden Eagles get past second-seeded Pittsburgh in a 77-74 dogfight and set the stage for a showdown with overall top seed Kentucky.
That Elite Eight game became one of the most memorable in program history. Wade recorded an emphatic 29-point, 11-rebound, 11-assist triple-double to spark an 83-69 whitewashing of the Wildcats and lead MU to its first Final Four appearance since 1977.
“When they told me after the game that I had a triple-double, I couldn’t believe it because I was just playing the game,” Wade recalled during a Dec. 15 stop in Milwaukee with the Chicago Bulls. “It was just coming. It was just special to be in that moment and to live up to my own expectations.”
Lost a bit in Wade’s big game was the performance turned in by Jackson. Spurred on by some pregame trash talk by Kentucky big man Marquis Estill, Jackson was dominant with 24 points and 15 rebounds while helping hold Estill to a quiet 10 and six.
“Big game,” Wade said of Jackson. “I knew he had a big game, so afterward I’m thinking, ‘Big Rob, you carried us through this game,’ and then they come up to me and say, ‘Hey D-Wade, you had a triple-double,’ and I was like, ‘What? Wow.’
“But I said it at the time – the game ball went to him even though I had (accomplished) some history. I felt the game ball went to him.”
It was a whirlwind week for MU, as it returned to Milwaukee to all kinds of adulation while also preparing for its Final Four matchup with No. 2 seed Kansas in New Orleans.
But the matchup at the Superdome was not nearly as compelling. The Jayhawks ran the Golden Eagles off the floor, grabbing a 29-point lead by halftime and leading by as many as 43 in an eventual 94-61 victory.
It was a jarring way to end what was otherwise a memorable season that got MU back on the national radar and set the stage for a rebirth of the program under Crean and later Buzz Williams.
“Obviously Kansas gets all the credit; they kicked our butts,” Diener said. “It was a tale of two weeks for us – we went from playing our best 40 minutes to probably our worst. Personally I was awful against Kansas.
“But when you make the Final Four and there was such a long time between Final Fours at our school, and it was such a big deal that maybe there we subconsciously relaxed. Maybe that was the goal instead of winning the national championship.”
Added Townsend: “The only thing we did wrong that year was not talking about winning it all. We always talked about getting to the Final Four. We should have been talking about winning a national championship as opposed to getting to the Final Four.”
That game was the final time Wade suited up for MU, as he left school a year early for the NBA draft. He went on to be picked fifth overall by the Miami Heat after averaging 21.5 points, 6.3 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 2.2 steals per game and becoming a first-team All-American, MU’s first since 1978.
“We were a team that no one really knew about or gave a chance to,” Wade said, referring to the preseason expectations. “I thought Coach put together a great team. We had everything we needed and everyone played their role, man. We won when everyone played their role and just dove into it, and that made us successful.
“We just had fun, man. We all did it together and we’ll carry it together a lifetime.”