AFA hoops teams hope for fresh starts at tournament
Remember in the movie "Men in Black," when the special agents played by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones would erase the short-term memory of people who had seen an alien by using that flashing device?
The Air Force men's and women's basketball teams are hoping the start of the postseason acts like that device. And that it erases the memory of a combined 0-32 record in Mountain West Conference play - the worst mark in league competition of any school in the nation.
The women face New Mexico at 3 this afternoon in the first round of the MWC Tournament at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas, and the men play Colorado State at 3 p.m. Wednesday.
"Everyone in the conference tournament is 0-0," senior guard Anwar Johnson said. "Records don't matter."
"You have to wipe it clean and say, ‘New day, new game, new season,'" women's coach Ardie McInelly said.
The women have done it in the past. Two seasons ago, after posting a 1-15 conference mark, the Falcons upended Colorado State in the play-in game 47-46 to give Air Force its first (and still only) victory in the women's or men's MWC Tournaments.
It will be much more difficult this time as the women's tournament has been restructured. Instead of having a "pigtail" game between the eighth- and ninth-place teams for a spot in the quarterfinals - a format the men's tournament employs - the women's tournament gives the top two seeds byes to the semifinals. The No. 3 seed has a bye to the quarterfinals, and the other six teams face off for the other three quarterfinal spots.
So instead of drawing No. 8 seed Colorado State, which Air Force lost to by five and 11 points this season, the Falcons will play a New Mexico team that beat them by 34 and 46.
Air Force's men went winless in league play for the first time in 29 seasons in the Mountain West and Western Athletic Conferences, and they've lost 17 straight - the worst skid ever for the program. But the tournament gives the Falcons a chance to make some positive history. Air Force never has won a game in the MWC Tournament - not even during its four-season run of prosperity from 2003 to 2007.
"We talked about that after our loss to BYU" on Saturday, senior forward Matt Holland said. "We have an opportunity to do something that no Air Force team has done."
What's heartening for the men is they've clearly improved though there are no victories to show for it. Air Force's past four losses (Colorado State, Wyoming, UNLV and BYU) have come by a combined 16 points. In the first half of league play, those teams beat Air Force by a combined 66.
"Ton of confidence," said senior guard/forward Andrew Henke, who garnered honorable mention in conference, the only Falcon so honored. "We could be a Georgia from last year or be any of those Cinderella teams and win three or four straight games."
