They Played It Smart Enough to Win It All

DALLAS —  Of the two, Louisville was supposed to have the basketball players who used their heads only for fakes. Duke had the brains. Duke had a lineup of political science and economics majors, and a coach named Krzyzewski who told Polish jokes on himself, proving in the process that he was too smart to be bothered by them. Louisville’s players? Suspicion existed that not only would they have trouble spelling the Duke coach’s name, but possibly the Louisville coach’s, as well.

A casual remark a couple of years ago by a dim-witted television broadcaster circulated the opinion that the Cardinal starting five had an IQ of 30. This galled Denny Crum, their coach. But occasionally his players did open their mouths and embarrass themselves, as senior Milt Wagner did recently when Louisville drew Drexel as an NCAA tournament opponent, whereupon Wagner asked: “Drexel? That’s one of them academic schools, isn’t it?”

So, when Louisville got a date with Duke, an institution of extremely high learning, in the national final, it almost seemed to revive the old social theory that opposites attract. Louisville had a lot of strapping jocks, to be sure, but perhaps when these young men were put to the test, they would find themselves outsmarted.

They were not. The Cardinals of Crum took the national championship Monday night, 72-69, because they were smart enough not to believe they were beaten.

They trailed Duke’s Blue Devils most of the night, only to rally behind an 18-year-old rubber band of a freshman, master Pervis Ellison III, a gawky kid with braces on his dentures who made Duke’s all-upperclassman lineup feel old, old, old. Ellison bounded with endless energy, as did most of the Cards, or as Duke guard Tommy Amaker said: “You play a team like Louisville, and they seem to run and run and run for days.”

If Duke was going to outlast them, it would have to play it smart. No sooner did Louisville leap to a 4-0 lead in the game than did Martin Nessley, a 7-2, non-playing sub, rise from the bench by himself, press his index fingers to his temples and yell at his friends on the floor: “Think!”

Milt Wagner had a thought processor of his own. His buddy from the recently eliminated Kansas team, Ron Kellogg, sat in the stands during the game giving similar advice. “Every time I looked up, he was pointing to his head and saying, ‘Be smart!’ ” Wagner said.

But Wagner’s attention span was a short one. The fifth-year guard did not score a basket in the first half and did not keep up at all with Duke’s Johnny Dawkins, who razzled and dazzled all over Dallas. Oh, oh, oh, Johnny be good. He hit from the plains and he took Wagner downtown, scoring 15 points and shaming the Louisville star with his coach.

Crum yanked Wagner from the game and scolded him that he might not go back if he did not play some defense. “He basically said, ‘Milt, you ain’t playing like nothin’ out there.’ He didn’t exactly mean it that way. It was like a motivator thing.”

By the time the game was over, Crum was embracing one of his favorite players because Wagner had helped quiet Dawkins and had made some game-preserving shots at the line. Deprecating himself cheerfully after the game, Wagner said: “If I can’t do anything else right, at least I can make free throws.”

Those free throws probably were the longest shots Louisville made all night. Perhaps no NCAA team ever has won a title game with so few jump shots. Time and again, the Cardinals lobbed the ball to Ellison, the long-armed kid in the black wristbands, or to Billy Thompson or Herbert Crook or somebody else, for shots of three feet or less. Sometimes they simply put the ball somewhere near the basket and kept batting at it, like a volleyball, until it got to the net.

Never Nervous Pervis had an explanation. “I guess I’m just taller than everybody else,” he said. And yet he is listed in game programs as only one inch taller than the tallest Duke starter, and one inch shorter than the best freshman the Blue Devils had to offer, 6-10 Danny Ferry. The truth is: Ellison played as if he was 6-11, pushing 7.

His father, Pervis Ellison Jr., stood on the sidecourt afterward and recollected how, after moving to Savannah, Ga., in 1973 to take a job in a sugar refinery, he allowed his son to spend summers with a great-aunt in the Bronx, N.Y., so he could play basketball with guys who could really play. “Never Nervous” is Pervis’ nickname, and papa said it applied. “I’m the one who gets nervous before a game. He don’t.”

Ellison was named outstanding player of the tournament, a rare feat for a freshman. Duke’s Dawkins, talking about him as if talking of a teammate, said: “Pervis Ellison is a great player in any classification. He has the whole package. I’m looking forward to great things from that guy.”

Said Louisville guard Jeff Hall: “He’s going to make some NBA team very happy.”

But not right away. First he will get to spend more time in school, time Ellison will spend looking at the golden championship wristwatch he waved merrily to his teammates at center-court after the game. He can sit around Louisville awhile longer and reminisce about the Hall airball he caught and popped into the basket in the final minute, putting the title game in the bag.

“Louisville just hung in there and hung in there,” Dawkins said.

It was the smart thing to do. The Blue Devils made them do it. No matter what Duke might have done to contain Ellison or to get the ball to Dawkins more often or to save the game in the final seconds, the fact of the matter is that Coach Mike Krzyzewski’s team played every bit as well as the winners, doing everything expected of them, pleasing him in every way except in the total points.

“I guess you could say the operation was a success, but the patient died,” Krzyzewski said.

The Louisville players might not know exactly what he meant, but for a night, at least, it scarcely mattered. They knew how to read a scoreboard. They knew how to count.