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Todd Phillips and the 草莓社区 men’s basketball team beat Division III’s No. 1 team, Randolph-Macon, 90-67 Wednesday – despite the school’s small $950,000 athletic budget. Photo by Michael Reilly

Even in the modest world of Division III basketball, 草莓社区 is an underdog. And that has nothing to do with points, rebounds or steals. It has mostly to do with dollars.

EMU has the smallest endowment of the 11 basketball-playing schools in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference by a large margin, at about $23 million a year. That’s about half of the next lowest school’s funds (Virginia Wesleyan is estimated at about $45 million).

That means less money for scholarships, coaches and recruiting budgets.

Even with those limitations, coach Kirby Dean has guided the men’s basketball team to a No. 18 ranking in this week’s D3hoops.com poll. Wednesday night, the Royals stunned the No. 1-ranked team in D-III, routing Randolph-Macon 90-67 at Yoder Arena in what was probably the biggest win in school history.

“I wouldn’t have bet any amount of money that we could have done what we did last night,” EMU President Loren Swartzendruber said Thursday.

Swartzendruber and has wife, as they normally do, attended the game, sitting in the front row at center court as 1,564 fans packed the stands and even lined the indoor track that overlooks the basketball court. They watched as the Royals forced turnovers, created breakaways and threw down vicious, crowd-pleasing jams.

“I couldn’t allow myself to even imagine what was happening until about seven minutes to go in the game,” Swartzendruber said. “And a lot of the credit does go to Kirby. He has energy. He has a great relationship with his players. He knows how to recruit at our level.”

The 39-year-old Dean also knows the community. He’s from Penn Laird, played his high school ball at Spotswood and is a 1992 EMU graduate.

He learned about recruiting to a hard-sell college as a D-I assistant at VMI before taking the head coaching job at Waynesboro High School in 2002. In 2003, Dean returned to his alma mater, hoping to turn around a program that hasn’t won an ODAC tournament game since 1983.

“It’s a big challenge, but I understood that on the front end,” Dean said Thursday as his team got back to practicing for Saturday’s game against Randolph College. “It’s easy to get hung up on the negatives, because there are numerous ones. The other side of the coin is, we have the best facility in the league. We have a great town. We have a good school that has a good education and good people.”

Dean doesn’t like to discuss the program’s shortcomings. He feels it gives his players an excuse not to succeed.

“We expect to win, regardless of all those things,” Dean said, as his players sprinted through an exhausting five-man weave drill less than 24 hours after their big victory. “We have to do the best we can with what we have.”

What the Royals have is three part-time assistants and a meager recruiting budget of $1,500 – but that’s better than it used to be. Through private donations, athletic director Dave King increased funding to allow assistants to spend more time on the road recruiting during the offseason last year.

King hopes to include similar increases again in the upcoming fiscal year for both the men’s and women’s programs.

EMUs athletic budget for the current school year is about $950,000, Swartzendruber said. By contrast, rival Bridgewater College’s athletic budget is $2.7 million, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

In the end, King said what makes Dean and women’s basketball coach Kevin Griffin successful recruiters has more to do with how much effort they put into the endeavor – including dipping into their own wallets.

“I know they put a lot of their own personal dollars in,” King said by phone from Atlanta, where he was attending an annual NCAA convention. “We have a recruiting vehicle available, but very rarely do I see Kirby or Kevin use it. Very rarely do I see an expense report come through.”

The men’s team is 12-1 overall and in first place in the ODAC at 6-0, while the women’s squad is 10-2.

“We love our school. Kirby and I are both products of this school and we believe in it,” said Griffin, a 1993 EMU graduate. “We sort of take it like, we know what we’ve got going into and we decide to fight against it.”

Even so, Eastern Mennonite’s administration realizes that money facilitates success in sports. Both Swartzendruber and King said increasing the financial resources of the two basketball programs would give their coaches a chance to sustain their current success.

And both men said that benefits the overall university.

“It certainly raises our profile,” Swartzendruber said. “There were a lot of community people at that game [against Randolph-Macon]. Any time we can get people on our campus to see who we are and what we’re about, that’s valuable.”

EMU also made a rare appearance at the top of the News-Record sports section Thursday morning, and Dean was a guest on a sports-radio talk show – hosted by Mac McDonald – that airs in much of central and western Virginia, including Richmond.

King said the on-court success helps attract both more student applicants and more potential donors.

“We have not done a real good job making connections. We’re not Notre Dame. We’re not U.Va. We don’t have football,” King said. “But everyone follows a winner.”

So will Eastern Mennonite expand its budget? King hopes so, but Swartzendruber said academics come first – making a major increase in sports funding iffy.

With extra funding, Dean said, EMU could go from having a great season to building a great program.

“I hope people realize, we kind of caught lightning in a bottle here,” Dean said. “I don’t want to say we can’t sustain it. But the way things are, I don’t know if, long-term, you can do the things we’re doing right now. If we were on par with everybody else in our league from a financial aid standpoint, we could be in the top two or three every year. Absolutely.”

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First Team All-ODAC the high-flying Runnin’ Royals open their season with a game at midnight on November 15.

When Kirby Dean was a child, his mother used to tell him that nothing good happens after midnight. Dean is hoping to change that.

His 草莓社区 men’s basketball team will tip off its season at the first minute possible – midnight, Nov. 15 – in a game against Lancaster Bible.

"There’s probably not another Division III team that can say they play before us," Dean said Wednesday.

The seventh-year coach said the NCAA calendar made Sunday, Nov. 15, the first date a team could play. Not wanting to schedule an extra Sunday game for religious regions, but hoping to start the season as soon as possible, Dean contacted Lancaster Bible coach Pete Beers.

And, after both men got approval from their school’s higher-ups, they scheduled the midnight meeting.

"I thought it was a unique opportunity to kick off the season," Beers said Wednesday by phone from Lancaster. "I think any time you’re in Division III, you’re trying to find creative ways to make the experience unique and special. This is unique and special."

What kind of crowd can EMU expect with a tip-off that Beers admitted is "past my bedtime"? While the Royals’ retirement-community fans – generally a big part of the attendance at Yoder Arena – probably won’t be keen on the late-night game, Dean and EMU athletic director Dave King said they hope the time does attract a large student crowd.

"I think it hypes the season," King said. "It creates a lot of excitement. Kids are going to be up and into it. They’re going to be up anyway."

What about the players?

"I can’t speak for everybody, I know I’m going to be up just like it’s 6 in the afternoon," said. "The excitement and the adrenaline … It’ll probably hurt the next day."

Beers, who said his team will probably make the nearly three-hour trip to Harrisonburg during the day Saturday, then take a nap, echoed that sentiment.

"I think the adrenaline from being the first game will probably keep us going," Beers said. "We’ll pay the price the next morning."

EMU went 15-11 last year but returns much of its lineup and has added a strong recruiting class, led by and .

The usually outspoken Johnson said there is excitement on campus for the Royals’ year, but he didn’t want to make any bold predictions Wednesday.

"Last year I ran into this problem where I said we were going to do this and do that," Johnson said. "Then we got down into the ODAC and I stunk it up. This year, we have the most talent we’ve had since I’ve been here. I think we’re going to be way better than last year. I’ll just leave it at that."

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EMU student athlete George Johnson

It’s easy to see. Just watch George Johnson smile, his mannerisms, his walk. He knows – or at least sells a convincing illusion that he knows – what’s happening.

“I’m just sure of myself,” the 草莓社区 point guard said. “Everyone who knows me just knows that I’m real sure of myself – not to the point where I am overly cocky, but I put the work in in the offseason and summer, and I feel like it should pay off.”

Maybe it’s not just an illusion.

Johnson, a sophomore who netted 10.1 points per game as a freshman, is the Royals’ leading scorer and the Old Dominion Athletic Conference’s fifth-leading scorer this season, averaging 17.7 points. That’s largely thanks to a spot-up 3-pointer that makes half-brother Lamar Taylor – a former point guard at Virginia Commonwealth, where he graduated in 2001 – envious.

“I was knocking down the 3 but not as consistently as he is,” said Taylor by cell phone from Richmond, where he is a school counselor and assistant basketball coach at his alma mater, John Marshall High School. “That right there has opened up so much for him.”

Johnson, also averaging 3.4 assists, is second on the team in 3-point percentage behind D.J. Hinson, making 37.9 percent (25-for-66). Hinson is hitting 42 percent (29-for-69). See Johnson’s stats in the men’s basketball roster.

In Saturday’s victory at Hampden-Sydney, the first EMU win there since the 1983-84 season, Johnson hit two 3s in the waning minutes to help keep the Royals (7-3 overall, 3-0 in the ODAC) undefeated in the league.

“He wants to the ball,” EMU coach Kirby Dean said. “The only way you can want the ball is if you’re not afraid to be the goat.”

Doubt that? Just ask him.

“If I’m going to be wrong, I’m going to be wrong strong,” said Johnson, who also drew interest from Division II schools. “If I’m going to be right, I’m going to be right strong.”

So far, it seems he’s earned that.

The 20-year-old Johnson, who’s from the north side of Richmond, spent his summer playing pickup games in what Taylor called “the best run” in Richmond – and he might be right. The games include Taylor, Ben Wallace (a Virginia Union alum and current Cleveland Cavalier), former Virginia standout and NBAer Cory Alexander and Boston College point guard Tyrese Rice, who is from the south side of Richmond. Current Virginia Commonwealth point guard and reigning Colonial Athletic Association Player of the Year Eric Maynor also stopped by once or twice.

When not in Richmond, Johnson is bothering Dean to open Yoder Arena, so he work on his game. Johnson constructs a full-court obstacle course of chairs and trash cans to improve his ball-handling. He even stayed over New Year’s for more individual practice sessions that, he said, can take two hours.

“I can’t keep him out of the gym,” Dean said. “On January 1, he was burning my phone up to get in the gym. … It’s a good problem to have.”

That’s why Johnson, a lean 5-foot-10, 160-pounder with $1,500 worth of tattoos on his upper arms and chest, isn’t afraid to look too bad – or too good.

“I think comes from playing with older guys,” said Taylor, who played professionally in Uruguay. “A lot of times in the summer, he’s playing with pros or ex-pros, playing with Ben Wallace and Cory and myself. We’re always telling him to take that shot. … It definitely helps your confidence when you’re playing with older guys, and they’re basically telling you: ‘You can do this.'”

Playing in pickup games brimming with pros and Division I stars also has made Johnson tough, Taylor said. Johnson has known Alexander through Taylor for years. Johnson said Alexander, who played at Waynesboro High School and now does radio color commentary for U.Va. basketball games, taught him how to shoot layups off the wrong foot to bewilder opponents.

During Johnson’s senior year of high school at The Miller School in Albemarle County, he played against two current Atlantic Coast Conference players: Maryland guard Adrian Bowie and North Carolina forward Ed Davis, who went to perennial prep powers Montrose Christian (Rockville, Md.) and Benedictine (Richmond), respectively.

Add them into his pickup partners, and that’s heady company for a Division III player.

All of that has sculpted his confidence, which is depicted in one particular tattoo: a left shoulder-enveloping “G” (for George) with flames curling off toward his scapula and bicep.

“I feel like that’s the role I’m supposed to take here,” Johnson said of his penchant for big shots. “Even though I’m a sophomore, I think my team trusts me to take that shot.”

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