Here's the striving-to-be-top-shelf imagery for Stony Brook men's basketball:
When Steve Pikiell arrived as coach six years ago, envisioning a unlikely leap to an NCAA Tournament berth for a school not far removed from Division III competition, he installed three small shelves in his office, one slightly higher than the other. On the lowest, he would place a basketball commemorating his first victory as coach. (Done Jan 2, 2006, in his 10th game.) On the second, a basketball marking Stony Brook's first league title in Division I. (Realized last spring.)
"And now we've got to get that NCAA ball," he said last week. "Every time the guys come in here and tell me how hard they're working, I just point to that [last empty] shelf and say, 'If you're working that hard, we'd have that ball up there already.' "
Given Stony Brook's America East regular-season championship in 2009-10 and its breakthrough NIT appearance against Illinois, this looked like the year. Except that Stony Brook's most influential player - demon rebounder/slick passer/gritty defender Tommy Brenton - is out with a dislocated knee suffered in an off-season pickup game. (On the shelf for injured players.)
Plus the team's leading scorer, Muhammed El-Amin, has graduated and gone off to play professionally in Hungary.
Pikiell acknowledged having to "take a little different approach" in terms of goals. "Now," he said, "we've got to have a good weekend" - meaning a run of victories through the conference postseason conference tournament.
That still would get Stony Brook into The Dance, no matter what in-season struggles it experiences, and that is enough hope for an energetic optimist such as Pikiell.
Freshmen Dave Coley, Anthony Mayo and Anthony Jackson and junior college transfer Al Rapier bring "a new talent level," Pikiell said. And that televised NIT game last March translated into more exposure this season - nine TV games - so that "when we make phone calls now," he said, "people have heard of us."
When he tells potential recruits, "We're going to compete for the league title and try to get to the NCAA Tournament," he said, "these things are realistic now; four years ago, I was selling that vision. We didn't have any tradition in Division I. We didn't have any track record.
"The biggest thing in our program's improvement is that my phone never rings for scheduling. Never rings. When I first got here, I'm not kidding, I would take four scheduling calls a day. 'We want to play you. We'll come to your place. We'll play you three times. We'll sign a six-year contract.' "
Teams no longer sure they can beat Stony Brook have stopped calling. "So we'll try to sell that now," Pikiell said. "We'll play anybody."
Starting, on Friday, at UConn.
