UH point guard an unlikely hero

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist

There was Mark Campbell flat on his back on the Stan Sheriff Center court last night and loving it, a smile as wide as the end line peeking out from under his sheepdog hair.

While the frenzied sellout crowd screamed and the University of Tulsa bench moaned about the foul on the layin attempt that put him there, Campbell just smiled.

With 2.9 seconds left in a game tied at 85, pressure so thick you couldn't blast a hole in it with the Bow-zooka, Campbell stared up at the clock and the crowd, savoring it.

For 28-plus minutes, Campbell, as the University of Hawai'i's point guard, had been a fringe player in the greatest game ever played on this court and now it was his stage and his game to win for the Rainbows.

Coolly this normally most reluctant of Rainbow shooters stepped to the free throw line and delivered, making the first of two free throws that would give the Rainbows their 86-85 victory.

Confidently this most unlikely of game-turners hit the shot that propelled the Rainbows into first place in the Western Athletic Conference and, you'd like to think, an NCAA Tournament berth no matter what might happen in the conference tournament.

So unexpected and out of character was the starring role that even Campbell would acknowledge that if somebody told him of the role he would play before the game, "I would have said they're crazy.

"I'm not a guy who is going to go out there and get you 30 points in a game," Campbell said all but snickering of the notion of himself as a scorer. "I'm not the one they have take the big shots."

No, his role as a 3.6 points per game performer is making the offense run, getting the ball to Predrag Savovic, Carl English, Mike McIntyre, the guys who do put up the big points and make the headlines.

For all his crisp passes and intuitive orchestration, Campbell is a guy you usually notice — if he sticks out at all — when he makes a rare errant pass or commits a once-in-a-blue-moon turnover.

So much so that afterward, after all the bows had been taken and backs slapped, UH coach Riley Wallace would pay a heartfelt tribute to what he called his long unsung "blue collar guys" in Campbell and center Haim Shimonovich.

"Guys," Wallace pointed out, "you don't write about a lot; you don't take a lot of pictures of or whatever."

Indeed, it was altogether fitting that one of Wallace's laborers would win the school's biggest ever WAC regular-season game. For this is a team that, for all its stars, has found the success of a 22-4 record in the sum of all its parts. It has gotten where it is because of who it is.

Once before in this season of growing wonder Campbell had stared at the opportunity to win a game in the waning seconds. In that one, as in last night's, the plan was for Campbell to bring the ball up court and pass it off. Campbell found Shimonovich with 4.4 seconds for the game winner against Northwestern State.

This time, as he picked himself up off the court and took stock of the situation, Campbell had ample reason to smile. "I knew the game was in my hands. It was mine to win and that doesn't happen very often," Campbell said.

And that was definitely something to smile about.