Big-Time Braves

When the Scalping Braves of Alcorn State University take the floor Friday night against the University of South Alabama, they--like five other teams--will be playing in their first NCAA basketball tournament game.

But Alcorn State is different from the other five schools, and from the rest of the schools in the tournament. Every one of Alcorn's 2300 undergraduates is black.

Since the NCAA began its post-season basketball tournament in 1950, it has never issued an invitation to an all-black school. Until this season, Alcorn State wasn't even eligible to get one. Playing Division 2 basketball, the Braves compiled a 181-42 record in the last seven years winning several national scoring titles along the way, but little recognition.

The squad finally hit the big time last year. An undefeated season brought an NIT berth, where it lost to eventual champion Indiana. Shortly afterwards, Alcorn and the rest of the Southwest Athletic Conference became Division I schools.

Not that it changed anything. This year, the Braves are the nation's number one scoring and rebounding team, and boast the top scoring margin and winning percentage of all Division 1 schools. And--get this--their coach says their real strength is team defense.

The basketball team from this tiny school in Lorman, Miss., is now in the biggest show of all. With 47 other schools, it is competing for the college basketball championship of the country.

Predictably, the school has gone mad. But, not so predictably in racially-tense Mississippi, the entire state has embraced Alcorn as its own.

"The whole state is enthusiastic," coach Davey Whitney said by phone from Lorman. "We've been having a lot of problems down here in Mississippi, but the entire state is excited. We've had calls from the senators and the governor. "You know," he added, "we don't just represent Alcorn State anymore but the whole state of Mississippi. It's a thrilling time for all of us."

"It's a pleasure and an honor," agrees Marvin Washington, a 6-foot, 5-inch forward. "It's up to us now."

But if its fans have gone bananas, the team has kept cool, practicing as usual and preparing for Friday night as if it were just another game.

"We're going to do the same things that got us here," Whitney said. "We'll run, and pass, and try to play good team defense." Naming South Alabama as the team to beat because "the team to beat is the team you've got to play first," Whitney says that a national championship isn't just a dream. "We've got to believe we can do it, or we wouldn't be here."

Kentucky has been in 24 NCAA tournaments; UCLA in 20, and both will no doubt bus fans to regional sites and beyond. But to one small, all-black southern school, the NCAA tournament means more than pennant-waving and selling a few commemorative T-shirts. It has become a unifying force in a polarized state, a focal point for the emotion and loyalty of two and a half million people.

And this is just the top 48. What if they make it to the regionals... the quarterfinals...the final four?

"I'm very excited," Arnold Medlay, a 6-foot, 4-inch swingman says. "This is our first chance to really get exposed to big-time basketball. And, who knows, if we play up to our capabilities, we might go all the way."