"I pretty much told people we were going to go to the NCAA Tournament. Maybe I was delusional, [but] we were older. We believed in ourselves and believed it was our time. We led the conference in threes that year, and we should have shot more. We were playing that game before it was analytically driven, before people understood it. We really did embody that kind of swagger and aggressiveness and ‘we don’t know what’s coming next’ mentality—for good and for ill, at times. We wanted to win. Any conflict that came up, anything that happened, we at least knew we were all after the same thing. I was driven to win, maybe too much, but that’s how [we] were wired.
“Going into the first-round game against Providence, [assistant coach] Christian Appleman was telling me about this great defender Providence had. I told him, ‘I see the best defenders in the country every night, and I’m gonna get buckets no matter what.’ Three minutes into the game, I looked at Titus Ivory ’00 H&HD and said, ‘I’m not messing with this guy. You handle the ball, and I’ll run around screens for 25 minutes.’ It’s a cool story, because we just adjusted. Different guys stepped up in that game. Everybody remembers the North Carolina game, but Providence was a good team.
“Before the UNC game, North Carolina was hooting and hollering in their circle, so our guys start hooting and hollering. We were sending a message that we don’t care who you are, we’re coming at you today. We all were playing for something bigger than ourselves. We wanted to win for our people, and we took pride in that. That experience of playing for a place you love is the greatest experience in sports. We exceeded everyone’s expectations but our own. It took me years to realize how hard it is to get to a Sweet 16. Now I understand how special this is and how thankful I should be for it.”
Joe Crispin ’07 Com ranks fourth on the Nittany Lions’ career scoring list with 1,986 points and was a first-team All-Big Ten selection in 2001. He is currently an assistant coach on the men’s basketball team.
