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Never Forget 31-0
DDN
3/16/06
3/16/06
Second-generation Sylvester hits NCAAs
By Tom Archdeacon
Dayton Daily News
COLUMBUS | Not long after it was announced that Ohio State had a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament and a Friday game with Davidson at UD Arena, Mike Sylvester said he sent his son, Matt, an e-mail: "I told him you're at a great point in your life. Play hard, but keep it in perspective and enjoy it. These will be memories you'll cherish for a lifetime."
Mike was speaking from experience.
Selected a few years ago to the Dayton Flyers' All-Century team, he was the star in one of UD's greatest NCAA tournament efforts, a triple-overtime loss to UCLA in a 1974 Sweet Sixteen game in Tucson, Ariz.
He had 36 points that night against the Bill Walton-led Bruins, who had won nine straight national crowns. Five days before that game, the hard-nosed, 6-foot-5 Flyers forward scored 30 points in a tournament victory over Cal State-Los Angeles.
It's unlikely Matt — a court-savvy, 6-foot-7 senior forward for the Bucks — will equal Dad's debut, but he's already had some marquee moments of his own.
He toppled unbeaten Illinois with a game-ending 3-pointer last year and then did the same to LSU this season. And on Friday, he'll parallel his father on another front.
Matt's first-ever NCAA tournament game will come in the city and the same arena where his dad had so many big games. And actually Matt already has hit a game-winner at UD Arena. As a Cincinnati Moeller sophomore, he dumped previously unbeaten Beavercreek in the high school regional finals with a disputed tip-in with just 0.1 seconds left. The victory sent Moeller to the state tournament, which it won.
"It's neat because it's kind of come full circle." Mike said Wednesday from his office at Victory Wholesale Grocery in Springboro. "When you get a certain age, you start looking for symbolism and all that stuff."
The circle began when he arrived at UD in 1970, a lean, take-no-guff kid from Cincinnati. He'd end up with 1,248 points, the Flyers' 24th all-time scorer, but it was those 36 against the Bruins that everyone here remembers.
"You've got to understand the (NCAA) tournament was a lot different back then," he said. "We only had 32 teams, and there wasn't nearly the hoopla.
There was no ESPN that whips everyone into such a frenzy. In fact, that was the first time — the only time — in my four years in college that we were on national TV.
"Today, I can't even find a tape of the game. The only thing I have is the 16-millimeter game film Don Donoher copied for me. It looks like an old-time movie."
Conversely, he said UCLA had been on national television several times, and that, along with the titles, initially made for an aura of invincibility.
"We'd heard so much about those guys, and at first it was like, 'Holy mackerel, are we gonna get embarassed?'" he said. "But once we started to mix it up, we realized they put their jocks on the same way we did. We learned we could hold our own and maybe we were just as good."
For the intensely competitive Sylvester, the loss ate at him, and he admits his heart wasn't in the tournament consolation game the Flyers played two days later against New Mexico.
"Losing to UCLA was devastating, and the next game I just couldn't respond. I remember one of our guys, Jim Testerman, getting into a boxing match with one of their guys, and it became a bench-clearing brawl. Now I never ran from a fight — in fact, I used to look for them — but that day I just stood and watched."
Sylvester is not exaggerating when he talks about bare-knuckles ball. After UD, he played professionally 17 seasons in Italy, where his scraps were legend.
There was the time in Caserta when he waded into the other team's bench and sent five guys to the hospital. And then there was the game in Rieti, where some 300 opposing fans waited for him and his teammates outside the arena. He won that battle, too.
Matt, who said there was a basketball in his crib when he was born, spent his first eight years in Italy: "I'd go to the practices with my dad every day and run around the arenas. But I'll be truthful, he never pushed basketball on me. He had had his own moments, and he's never lived vicariously through me."
Mike agrees: "I told him I don't give a (darn) what you do. If you want to play the tuba in the band, I'll get you the best tuba."
But when his son embraced basketball, Mike made sure he learned the game "the way it should be played ... I was his fourth-grade coach, and he was the most talented kid on the team. He could have scored 50 points a game, but I wouldn't let him. I made him hit the open man closest to the basket, and if he didn't, I benched him. He'd complain, 'Dad, some of the guys can't even catch the ball.' But I just told him, 'One day they will be able to catch it.' And today I think he's become one of the better passers in the game."
When it was time for college, Matt narrowed his choices to a half dozen schools — UD included — but his heart was set on Ohio State.
Wednesday, OSU coach Thad Matta talked about the leadership Matt has provided, and Mike sees it, too, though he admits he and his boy are two different ballplayers:
"He's got twice the talent I had, and I probably have twice the competitive — the animal — nature," Mike said. "It's just the way I was brought up by my dad. You fought for everything. And that's why Matt and I couldn't really play one-on-one when he was growing up.
"Early on I realized he didn't react well to defeat. It just infuriated him to lose. So I made up my mind not to screw up our relationship. Instead I taught him how to play one-on-one, and we took the competitive side between us right out of it.
"I used to worry I might never see that competitive side, but that's changed. That's what I'm proudest of this year. He can take an elbow, throw an elbow, take a shot to the teeth and not come undone.
"He's become some of the glue of his team. That competitive side has shown itself."
And it did again Wednesday as Matt talked father-and-son ball before boarding the bus to Dayton.
"Yeah, when I was young I was a crybaby when we played, but now I'd love it," he said with a growing smile. "He's got gimpy knees and ankles, and I'd just kick his butt."
He was laughing now, and that's when you knew Dad was right.
This story has come full circle.
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you beat me to the butt jokes...
