Speaking at the day-off NCAA press conference at the University Park Hotel Friday, Louisville guard LaBradford Smith said it would be his team's intention in today's second-round game against Ball State to "jump on them early."
Coming from a Louisville player, that's no idle statement. When the Cardinals say "jump," your natural reaction is, "how high?" Their idea of a good shot is anytime they're looking down at the rim. They love playing at altitude. The thinner the air the better.They are the self-styled Doctors of Dunk II; the Sultans of Slam, the Dukes of Dunk, the Heirs of Mid-Air. Like the original Louisville Doctors of Dunk in the late '70s, led by Darrell Griffith, now of the Jazz - who wasn't the Golden Griff back then but rather Dr. Dunkenstein - these Cardinals thrive when they're airborne.
En route to their current 27-7 record and advancement to the second round of the national championship tournament, they have become the dunkingest team in Louisville history. That's no un-lofty statement since it's Louisville, Ky., that has been Mecca to the dunk since the shot was re-legalized in college in 1976.
These Cardinals have managed to shatter any previous high standards of dunking. Led by 7-foot-1 Felton Spencer's team-high 43 dunks, they have recorded 194 dunks to date, easily surpassing the old Louisville school record of 131 in a season, set last year. With another six dunks today against Ball State - that's their per-game average - the Cards can reach the 200 barrier. Spencer has already broken Griffith's single-season mark of 42, set in 1980.
It's hard to say if 194-plus dunks is an alltime NCAA record, since few other schools keep dunk stats and they are not official. (Louisville does keep such a stat - it goes in between steals and points on the statistical printout). But it probably is a record, unless Houston's notorious Phi Slamma Jamma fraternity of the mid-'80s would care to argue.
Those Houston teams had some great dunkers in Akeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, etc., but not as much depth as the '89-90 Doctors of Dunk II.
Even with his school-record 43 slams, Spencer is still barely ahead of teammates Jerome Harmon and Everick Sullivan, who have 38 dunks each. Cornelius Holden has another 31 and Smith 21. Slam in another 13 from Keith Williams and seven from Tony Kimbro and the Cards' dunking goes seven deep.
Dunking stats aren't officially kept in the NBA, either. But Harvey Pollack, the statistician of the Philadelphia 76ers, kept track of his team's dunks last year. The 76ers had a total of 265 for 82 games - for an average of just over three per game.
The Cardinals average almost twice that, and do it in 40-minute games versus the 48-minute games played in the NBA.
As Sullivan - a 6-foot-5 Louisville sophomore who has 53 career dunks - explained Friday, dunking is contagious at Louisville. "It's the school for jumpers," he said, "that's the first question on the application." He said one dunker tends to beget another dunker just as one dunk tends to beget another dunk.
"We don't name them," Sullivan added, indicating that the practice of personalizing dunks, made popular several years ago by Darryl Dawkins, is considered crass by the team-concept standards of the '90s.
"But we do rate them," he said. "We give style points."
On what criteria?
"Oh, you know, who got the highest, things like that."
Louisville Head Coach Denny Crum takes no credit for his team's dunks. "I didn't teach any of them how to dunk," he said. "It's just the result of being good athletes and playing hard. Really, most of the dunks come off good defense."
"You get the defensive steal, and then you've created the opportunity," said Sullivan, his eyes lighting up at the thought.
His personal favorite dunk is one he executed a year ago, during a Metro Conference game at Florida State. "I did a baseline reverse dunk over my head," he said, "and got the foul. I felt it turn the momentum."
That's of course the whole idea of the dunk, the ultimate statement shot - to make the other team think of itself as inferior, like it's out of place, in the way.
"You want to dunk, you do not want to be dunked upon," said Sullivan. Words to live by for the second edition of the Doctors of Dunk. And why not? They worked well enough the first time. When the original Doctors of Dunk came to earth in 1980, they'd pulled a national championship down with them.