SUFFOLK COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

MEN'S BASKETBALL

Not much glamour,

but Suffolk CC's 42 in a row is one ...

Mean Streak

By Tom Rock
NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER
February 12, 2004

Rich Wrase was understandably wary. He'd been to the wrong place before, such as two years ago when he took the men's basketball team from Suffolk Community College's Selden campus to Manhattan for a game against Pace. His team marched through the main door of the building only to find it buzzing with businessmen and women. Wrase, the head coach, had to get directions. The game was in a building next door.

So when the team arrived at Mount St. Michael High School in the Bronx on a chilly Saturday late last month to play Monroe College and the doors were locked and the only soul in the building was sweeping in the far corner of the gym, Wrase had reason for concern. The man with the broom opened the door and confirmed that the team had come to the right place.

"We play in some pretty strange places," Wrase said.

Not the least of which is the National Junior College Athletic Association, which serves two-year schools in both the public and private realms. There are 431 men's basketball programs divided into three divisions in the NJCAA and right now - with a 42-game winning streak that is tops in the country, a seasonlong No. 1 ranking in Division III, a national title in its pocket and another one within sight - Suffolk CC-Selden is at the top of that heap.

Shocking when one sees how casually the team treats its status. Most teams travel in silence; the vans Suffolk rides in are filled with chatter and laughter and hip-hop music and cell phone rings. Rarely does the talk turn to basketball, and it never touches on the streak, almost twice as long as any men's program at any level in the country yet not even halfway to the all-time record of 89.

It's been a rough few days for substantial winning trends. Six teams with streaks of more than 15 games have lost since Friday, and three times in the last 10 days, Suffolk has been confronted with the mortality of its own streak. The Clippers most recently survived overtime against sister- school Suffolk CC-Brentwood on Tuesday and will look to win a 43rd straight tonight at Hostos CC in the Bronx. One day, of course, the streak will end.

"If we lose, we lose," Wrase said. "It won't take away from all this team has accomplished just because we lose one game."

There are only a couple of things the NJCAA shares with the NCAA: four letters and a three-division structure. Suffolk, like the two other NJCAA programs on Long Island, plays in non-scholarship Division III.

Unlike the NCAA, however, a lack of free rides does not equate to diminished talent. Along the way to 42 in a row, Suffolk has beaten numerous Division I programs, including two in the past week, sticking it to the scholarship kids whenever it gets the chance.

The goal, however, is to get a scholarship from an NCAA program.

Maurice Manning, Suffolk's top player and a high school all-star at Bridgehampton, was out of the game for five years but returned to school last season. Now, at age 23 and with two years of eligibility left, he has received a three-year academic package to play at Division II Kentucky Wesleyan.

"I think the biggest advantage of coming to this level is that it is a great springboard to the NCAA," Suffolk CC athletic director Art Del Duca said. "You can come here, hopefully thrive academically, and put yourself in a position to finish out at a four-year university you might have wanted to go to from the beginning but for whatever reason could not."

That's what happened for Tamien Trent, who was on Suffolk's championship team last season and is now averaging 11.0 points at Division I Fairleigh Dickinson. He is one of four players from that Suffolk CC team now part of NCAA programs, along with Ronnie White at Southampton College, Darrin Miller at NYIT and Steve Murrer at Division III Christopher Newport.

"Suffolk turned me from a boy into a young man," said Trent, who went to Maine Central Prep School after a standout high school career at Center Moriches. "I always knew I had the talent, I just didn't understand why the schools weren't interested. My grades weren't very good, and I started taking academics more seriously when I realized you can't have one without the other. Coach Wrase gave me a chance to prove myself."

Unlike the players, Wrase, 52, is not using this position as a stepping-stone. He had already proven himself as a high school coach for 23 years, including an undefeated state championship season at Westhampton in 1998, when he arrived at Suffolk.

"Everybody thinks I'm going somewhere else, but I'm happy with what I'm doing," said Wrase, who teaches seventh grade American history at Eastport-South Manor High School. "It's pure. If you really love basketball, you can understand what I'm doing. It's just basketball, no show around it, no money around it. It's just what it is, a group of kids who go to college and play basketball."

When Wrase says "no money," he means it. He said the operating budget is not much more than $20,000, which includes uniforms, equipment, referee fees, travel expenses and the slice of salary afforded the coaching staff. There is also competition for gym time and facilities with the women's program, which also won a national championship last season and is 11-4 this year. Del Duca said there is little ambition to elevate the programs to Division II.

Then again, the school is planning a $2.5-million renovation of Brookhaven Gymnasium, the team's home court, with the bulk of the construction to be done next summer. That pales compared with the $54 million spent on a new sports and convention center at Suffolk CC-Brentwood three years ago.

The facelift in Selden has little to do with the team winning. Every building on campus is being upgraded, according to Del Duca, and Brookhaven Gymnasium's turn just happens to coincide with the most successful teams in school history.

"A lot of intangibles go into the streak," Wrase said. "How many games were kids sick, they come up with sprained ankles, get into foul trouble. Things you can't anticipate. And to go this long despite everything happening is kind of incredible."

If anyone knows how incredible Suffolk's run is it's Kelly Conrad, athletic director at Indian Hills CC in Ottumwa, Iowa. He was there during that school's 89-game winning streak that spanned three seasons (1996-99) and two coaches and is the longest by any men's college team at any level. Conrad said the three national championships the team won were able to overshadow the winning streak. At Suffolk, it seems to be just the opposite.

Conrad's advice for Suffolk: "Tell them the first 40 are the toughest."

Streakers:
A look at the longest current winning streaks in men's college basketball:

School	Affiliation	Streak
Suffolk CC-Selden	NJCAA Div. III	42
Columbus St. CC*	NJCAA Div. II	24
St. Joseph's (Pa.)	NCAA Div. I	21
Stanford	NCAA Div. I	20
Duke	NCAA Div. I	18
Utah State	NCAA Div. I	14
*-played last night

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