The bus that would take the Iona Gaels dreamers to their hotel outside Dayton was waiting for them on the tarmac when they stepped off the Miami Air 737 charter that landed them on Hoop Heaven for this second chance tonight against BYU that not even they were truly expecting.
“It hit me today when I woke up and found out it wasn’t a dream,” point guard Scott Machado said last night from inside the UD Arena.
It hit him again a little after 2:15 p.m., when he looked down at the floor mat as he stepped off the plane and formally into The Dance.
“The carpet on the floor said, ‘First Four 2012,’ ” Machado said.
And when he saw First Four 2012, this is what he thought to himself: “We made it!”
Yes, Iona College made it, and now the Gaels want to be Cinderella.
Now they Dare to Dream the way the late Jim Valvano first did in New Rochelle.
“We got a bunch of people with big hearts and we want to prove to everybody we belong to be here,” Machado said.
There isn’t a point guard in America who distributes the basketball like Machado (9.9 assists per game), and there isn’t a team in America that scores like Tim Cluess’ Gaels (83.3 ppg).
Just because you lose to Fairfield in the MAAC tournament semifinal, and just because this is your school’s first NCAA Tournament bid in six years, doesn’t have to mean you will show up with NCAA jitters.
“I feel like everybody should feel like it’s just another game,” Machado said. “It’s a big stage … at the same time, it’s basketball. We’ve been doing this all our lives.”
A man with a white beard playing Irish music on bagpipes greeted the Gaels at the hotel. Machado was informed that this was the very hotel that housed VCU when it made its Final Four run last season. The Iona bus followed a police escort and dropped the Gaels off at 5:40 p.m. for their media session and shootaround.
“I think we can make a lot of noise,” Machado said. “I feel like the matchups we’ve got are good matchups. We’ve gotta take it one game at a time and stay focused.”
Asked where BYU might be vulnerable, Machado said: “I think they run, but they don’t run as much as we do. We’re still gonna have to do what we do and they’re gonna have to keep up.”
On the Miami Air flight to Hoop Heaven, Cluess and his staff had pored over video on their laptops. The Gaels deserved the MAAC’s first at-large bid since 1995 (Manhattan) in large part because Cluess was bold and courageous enough to play a daunting schedule.
“Hard work,” Machado said. “That’s what he preaches.”
Machado, a 6-foot-1 senior guard from Queens Village who toughened his game at Kissena Park, planned on giving his teammates an emotional speech last night.
“This is something we want,” he said. “I want everybody to be on the same page.”
It is Machado who keeps the Gaels on the same page on the court.
“A point guard is supposed to control and direct the game,” he said.
Machado and fellow guards MoMo Jones (Harlem), Sean Armand (Brooklyn) and Kyle Smyth (River Edge, N.J.) make senior forward Mike Glover all the more dangerous.
“We’re a bunch of aggressive guards,” Machado said. “That’s what New York is all about.”