Troy State's Coach Manages Smile Despite Worst Season

TROY, Ala. - Troy State Coach Don Maestri stopped reading newspapers in December. That's when he glanced at the scoreboard page and saw his team was rated the worst of 309 teams in Division I basketball.

The Trojans have moved up three spots since then and seem assured of not finishing last when their season ends this weekend. But for a team that has built a tradition of succeeding under difficult circumstances, moving up to No. 306 is little consolation.

Troy State used to revel in the challenge of what it is doing now - trying to succeed after moving up from Division II, a change that brought with it an eight-year ban on postseason play.

But suddenly, a team that used to set scoring records and compete for national titles can't shoot 40 percent in most games. A team that once scored 258 points in a single game has nobody averaging more than 14 points. And a team that won 16 games last season was 6-19 with the season almost over.

Maestri claims it's not as bad as it appears, but sometimes even he can't believe what has happened this year.

"You hear about these kinds of things happening to other people, where anything that can go wrong goes wrong," he said. "I've been coaching for quite a few years, and I've never been through a season like this."

Having won at least 11 games every year since the move in 1993, and coming off a surprising 16-11 season in 1996-97, most people couldn't see a disaster coming.

"He's got a gymnasium that's a wreck and not a lot else to work with," said Tom Ensey, the school's former longtime sports-information director. "I don't think Dean Smith could have won more games there than Don has."

Still, even though the Trojans lost five seniors, Maestri thought his team would be good for at least 14 wins this year.

As he sits in his modest office, buried in the basement of the arena - due for a renovation this summer - the coach keeps smiling while describing the awful season.

"I don't know if this couldn't have happened to a lot of teams at our level," Maestri said.

The season began with an injury to 6-foot-7 sophomore Brad Grant, a key figure in Troy State's 10-1 finish last season. It continued with a car accident that diminished the effectiveness of junior Eric Neal in some winnable games early on. Add in 54-, 24-and 38-point losses at Baylor, Colorado State and Northwestern, and Troy State had a demoralizing eight-game losing streak before it had played a home game against an NCAA opponent.

It has hurt nobody worse than shooting guard Donshea Mayfield. After playing a bit role his junior year, Mayfield stayed on campus last summer to work on basketball. He was going to be the focal point of Maestri's up-tempo offense.

Through 25 games, Mayfield was averaging eight points and shooting 19 percent from three-point range.

"It's hard for me to sleep," Mayfield said. "I didn't go home this summer. I stayed in the gym and the weight room every day. Then to come out and shoot 19 percent? That's had me down the whole season."

The coach has always depended on good shooters and - especially with no postseason prospects - has promised players they would have fun playing at Troy State if nothing else.

In his office, he features bumper stickers that were printed after Troy State's 258-point performance in 1992. They read "Believe It," as in the amazing 258-141 win over DeVry that set the NCAA record for scoring.

In the season before Troy moved up, Maestri took his team to the Division II finals.

But the focus changed when the school's administration decided the football team was ready to move up a level.

It came at the expense of every other sport, but especially men's basketball, the only sport where an eight-year exemption from the postseason tournament exists for newcomers.

"Either way it hurts," Maestri said. "If you have a strong finish, you never have a chance to see what would happen if you had a chance to play for the automatic bid in your conference tournament. On the other end, if you're going through a year like this, you would still have something to play for. The situation we're in, we just play for pride."

That had been enough for Troy State to keep it together - until this year. Maestri says he's looking forward to this summer's NCAA meetings, where a change in the eight-year rule appears possible. But he knows it will take more to overcome all the losses.

"I don't think we're going to take this season and reverse it overnight," he said. "After something like this, it's going to take two seasons, two good recruiting seasons, to get us back where we want to be."