The quiet hurricane: Tulsa wins with a regularity most of the storied programs can't match, but rarely it is mentioned among the nation's top teams. This year, though, Tulsa might be too good to ignore - College Basketball

John Phillips has more important things to do. The same goes for his players at Tulsa. They no longer ask such questions, though they are begging to be answered. How, for instance, can a team return four starters, five seniors and 80 percent of its scoring and rebounding--from a 27-7 squad--and start the season at No. 25 in the Associated Press poll?

And how can a program win more games than any but Duke since the start of the 1999-2000 season--86 and counting after a 5-1 start--and manage to land but once on ESPN'S college basketball schedule this season?

Senior forward Kevin Johnson thinks Tulsa's relatively low-profile league--the Western Athletic Conference--is one reason for the lack of attention. Junior guard Jason Parker says, "I think it's because we're a small-market team out here in the Midwest. But maybe it's our style of play. We don't have one guy putting up 50. Maybe we'd have more of a rep if we had that one superstar."

But the Golden Hurricane doesn't need that player. It wins just fine without him. Though big-name coaches have blown through Tulsa, the reason it keeps winning is a siring of athletic guards and wing players--from Eric Coley, Tony Heard and Greg Harrington in years past to Parker, Dante Swanson and Antonio Reed this season--who don't really star as much as they thrive in supporting roles.

Tulsa hoops? It's not about the coaches.

"The players make that program" says Buzz Peterson, who coached Tulsa in 2000-01 before moving on to Tennessee. "The one thing that stands out about those kids is their drive. They want to prove people wrong. And they believe they can."

Yet no one pays attention. If Tulsa achieves great success this season, which is a good bet, it will be called a surprise team, even though it has three WAC titles, an NIT championship and three NCAA Tournament appearances, including a trip to the Elite Eight in 2000, in the last five years.

That's a whole lot of consistency despite a whole lot of coaching instability. The seniors are playing for their third coach. Like Nolan Richardson in the 1980s and Tubby Smith in the '90s, Bill Self (1997-2000), who now is at Illinois, and Peterson made their mark at Tulsa before moving on to supposedly bigger and better things.

Though Phillips, 55, lacks the on-the-rise status Richardson, Smith, Self and Peterson wore during their time in Tulsa, his team this season is one of the best the program has seen. Even after last week's 89-80 loss to Kansas, in which the Hurricane led at halftime, this team looks like a March contender. Again.

"We know how good they are," SMU coach Mike Dement says. "They can do some serious damage in the NCAA Tournament."

Reed, who is from Tulsa, and Swanson are this year's team leaders. They are 5-10 sparkplugs who thrive despite their size. Reed is shooting 54.3 percent. Swanson, whose 49 percent 3-point shooting led the nation last season, is as dangerous a deep shooter as you'll find. But as with most Tulsa teams, it's never about the individual parts; the production is spread around. Parker, another local player, has gone from the sixth man a year ago to a mainstay who is second on the team in scoring and first in assists. Johnson is a WAC Player of the Year candidate. All of them boast a similar mentality.

"We're not going to let you down," Parker says. "We're not haughty, but we're confident, and we all have a chip on our shoulder."

That's because they all were overlooked somewhere along the way. Self says the program targets "fringe-type high-majors" who are looking to stick it to doubters.

"They might not be the so-called top 50 recruits in America," Phillips says. "But they come in, they go to school, and they get better as basketball players."

While programs like Arizona, Michigan State and Duke continue to lose early entrants to the NBA, Tulsa enjoys an uncommon, practically old-fashioned sort of stability.

Most of the team's players spend their summers in Tulsa to work out and play in nearby Bigsby in the local pro-am league with former Hurricane standouts. By the time they are seniors, these players have a certain moxie.

"Their players are very determined about what they want to be," Rice coach Willis Wilson says. "Their older guys tell their younger guys, `Hey, these are the standards, and this is what we expect.'"

What they expect, of course, is success. Phillips remembers his 1997-98 season at Tulsa, when he was a first-year assistant under Self.

"There was an underlying confidence in the program that the players just thought they were supposed to win," he says. "There's something there, a confidence that comes from the uniform they have on."

Phillips inspires confidence as well. He's different. He's a Tulsa native. He's here to stay. And the players like it that way. "With some of the other guys, you had the coach yelling at you to make the team better, but you kind of knew he wanted more wins so he could get out of here," Parker says. "That's not the case with coach Phillips. This is his team."

Phillips is a veteran of Oklahoma's high school ranks--17 years at five different schools--and that's where he learned how to win without size. His 1997 state title team at Broken Arrow? Guards galore. But he made it work--just like he's making it work now. Consider that part of the Tulsa job.

"We didn't choose to go small," Self says. "We chose to play our five best players." This year's five best players make up one of the country's most dangerous teams.

"You want to think you can post them up or take advantage of them with rebounding," SMU's Dement says. "But it ends up being countered by their defensive quickness and pressure. Your bigger guards have problems even putting it on the floor. It actually becomes more of a matchup problem for you."

Perimeter players who excel against Tulsa have to be extremely big and/or extremely good--think former Kentucky swingman 6-9 Tayshaun Prince, who scored 41 against the Hurricane in the second round of last year's NCAA Tournament. But usually a single star won't beat Tulsa.

On defense, opponents can't key on one player because of the Hurricane's balance. They can't put extra pressure on the point guard; Reed best fits that job description, but Swanson and Parker also can handle the bail and run the offense. They can't use zones because Tulsa shoots over the top of them.

"And most of the time our guards are a lot quicker than the other guards," Johnson says. "And most of the time I'm quicker than my guy."

Quickness is an equalizer for the lack of size, Keep up with Tulsa it you can. That chase could carry all the way into late March. Little guys, after all, don't have to have little dreams.

"It's all about thinking big," Parker says. "Our goal every year is to go deep into the tournament."

While maybe answering some questions along the way.

SCOUTING REPORT

Kevin Johnson, F, Tulsa

6-8, 2.22, Senior

Tulsa's backcourt gets most of the attention, but Johnson might be the most important player on the team because he is the primary post option on a guard-oriented team. His presence allows the team's three-guard lineup to work.

"I look at him as the glue of that team," Hawaii coach Riley Wallace says. "Kevin Johnson can run, he can jump, he shoots it, and he has good moves inside."

After averaging a team-best 14.5 points, 5.5 rebounds and 2.1 blocks last season, the two-time second-team all-WAC pick is leading Tulsa in scoring (17.8) and rebounding (8.8) average this season.

Strengths: His production stems from his versatility. "Kevin Johnson can be a perimeter guy, too," Rice coach Willis Wilson says. "He's matched up in most cases with a guy who has a tough time stepping away from the basket and guarding him." Johnson also scores effectively on the low block, and it's difficult to double-team him there because that would leave too much space for the Hurricane's excellent perimeter shooters to operate.

Weaknesses: Because Tulsa relies heavily on three players who are 6-2 or shorter, Johnson almost always is asked to guard players who are bigger than him. That can lead to fouls. Against Kansas, Johnson had 23 points and six rebounds, but he was limited to 27 minutes by foul trouble. That's what guarding Nick Collison and Wayne Simien, a pair of 6-9, 250-pound Jayhawks bookends, will do to a player.

Bottom line: Ask Johnson how he guards bigger opponents, and he shoots back with a question of his own: "How are they going to guard me?" Apparently, opponents still are trying to figure that out.--M.K.

Michael Kruse is a free-lance writer based in Boston.

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