Heath Finds Out Hard Way Just How Good Big East Is

TAMPA - A visitor asked a direct question the other day to the new men's basketball coach at the University of South Florida. And he got a direct answer.

Question: Is it possible to win consistently at USF?

Answer: Yes.

Stan Heath spoke that word firmly, without hesitation, and with feeling.

Sure sounded good.

But then Saturday night at the Sun Dome, we saw the same ol' movie with the same ol' ending. The Bulls lost 72-58 to St. John's after leading by, gulp, 16 points with eight minutes left in the first half. But that's not even the worst of it. St. John's played the second half without its top scorer. The Bulls' bench was outscored 32-0.

And next to USF, St. John's is the worst team in the Big East.

"We are a struggling basketball team," Heath said.

The Bulls are also an overmatched basketball team in almost every sense of the word.

We could go on and on with negative statistics - fun fact: that was USF's eighth consecutive loss - but at a certain point it just gets repetitive. The only thing that matters any more is when this will end. Not this season, certainly.

This season will wind up like USF's first two in the Big East, with the Bulls staying home while the conference tournament is played. That's disappointing after a 10-4 start that included a win against Florida State, but not unexpected. They just don't have the depth to beat Big East teams.

"I've been on both ends. I took over a team Kent State that won 30 games the first year and I took over another one, Arkansas, that won nine games the first year I was there," Heath said. "It's not like this is my first taste of something like this. The thing I didn't know was how tough this league really is.

"It's different from what I thought. I knew there was talent here but the guard play is a lot stronger than I thought. Guys can shoot, handle the ball, things like that. We're not that far off. That's the part about our record that's deceptive. We're not as far away as it looks."

Must Recruit

Just about every other occupant of Heath's chair has complained about the lack of support, facilities, money, and, well, pretty much everything at USF.

Heath is a different cat. He is realistic without being defeated. Cool without being slick. He is relentless and focused. He is taking the most sensible approach yet from a head Bull and it is, frankly, refreshing.

"We can't live in the past. The only thing we can do with the past is to figure out what we can do better and what may have turned guys away from here before. We've got to do a better job with our facilities and a better job of letting guys see the vision of where we're going," he said.

"Being in the Big East is a major part of that vision."

Being in the Big East is also a major part of the problem right now.

Heath is reputed to be a great recruiter. He'd better be.

The answer now is the same as it has always been, to find better players. As anyone who follows USF basketball knows, though, those players tend to go to other schools. That problem is magnified now in the Big East, where the Bulls are 5-36 since joining almost three years ago.

"I'm not going to sleep until I get it done," Heath said. "We're going to get players and we're going to coach them and get better. I was able to do it at Kent, I can do it here."

Seen It Before

Most of the crowd, announced at 4,836 and including Jon Gruden and family, had left by the time the final buzzer sounded. Heath rose slowly from the bench, did the obligatory handshake, and walked off the court with a look that could loosely be translated, "What in the world just happened?"

The night simply should not have ended like this. The Bulls were playing well, ahead by a bunch at home against a team that isn't very good. You could call this a catastrophic loss, except there is no such thing right now for this program. The size of the building job for Heath is immense.

"I hate to lose, period," Heath said. "It's hard to swallow, especially at home. I hate to lose at home. You've got your fans here, cheering you on. You want to come through for them. You want to get the monkey off your back. It's been a tough stretch for the guys. It looked like early on it was going to happen."

But we've seen this before, haven't we? Way too many times. It's easy to get caught up in the history and think it will never end out here. You'd like to believe Heath when he says it will get better one day, but then you look at the schedule and see the next game is at Georgetown.

Stuff like that makes that better day seem awfully far away.