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The NCAA News -- July 5, 1999

Championships Year in Review -- Perfect-0

Teams battle odds to post zeros on right side of won-lost ledger

BY GARY T. BROWN
STAFF WRITER

It takes a lot to be a champion. It takes even more to be a perfect champion.

But in 1998-99, eight NCAA teams did just that, beating the odds and any opponent thrown at them to post unblemished records on their way to the throne.

Three sports boasted two unbeatens each -- football, women's lacrosse and women's tennis. Women's basketball also sported a perfect squad.

It doesn't happen often. Long Beach State became the first Division I team and just the second team overall to do it in women's volleyball. To do so, coach Brian Gimmillaro's 49ers had to beat the odd that usually evens the field -- injuries.

Highly ranked in preseason, Gimmillaro's squad found itself minus two starters right out of the gate in the State Farm/National Association of Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators season-opening tournament. One of them was Veronica Walls, who ended up leading the nation in hitting percentage. But the 49ers sent themselves a message in a five-game win over Southern California -- that they could win going deeper than the starting six.

Tested again later in the year after an injury to a starting outside hitter, Long Beach State's bench again responded in wins over archrivals Pacific (California) and UC Santa Barbara.

"The only thing that frightened us throughout the year was injury, and we were fortunate to win without our starters," Gimmillaro said. "It's the kind of thing almost every coach every year has to face."

There weren't too many other close calls for the eventual national champions. Long Beach State won 31 of its 36 matches with perfect 3-0 sweeps. Perhaps the grittiest performance was saved until the championship match against Penn State, when after winning the first two games, the 49ers dropped the next two and faced not winning the title after spending an entire season dominating the division. Those two games were the only games the starters had lost all season, and it took a gut-check to save the team's perfect run.

Down by scores of 7-2 and 8-4 in the deciding fifth game, Long Beach State rallied to knot the score at eight on kills by Walls and Anja Grabovac. And after a 12-12 tie, the 49ers scored the final three points in succession on back-to-back kills by Jessica Alvarado and the match-winner from Walls.

"We actually talked about a perfect season," said Gimmillaro. "I think it's important for student-athletes to believe that they're going to win all the time. We talked about it that there wasn't any reason that we couldn't overcome anything to be successful against anyone."

Right ingredients

Many ingredients go into a perfect recipe -- chemistry, strategy, teamwork, perhaps a little luck -- but a team has to be talented first before it can entertain perfection.

That was the case in football this year at Northwest Missouri State, though it hadn't been as recently as five seasons ago. The Bearcats were 0-11 in 1994 in coach Mel Tjeerdsma's first campaign. But in 1998, the Bearcats moved the zero to the right side of the ledger -- in 15 games, no less, a Division II first.

Tjeerdsma's squad got comfortable with winning in a hurry, advancing to the Division II tournament in 1996 and 1997 only to lose in the quarterfinals each year to eventual champion Northern Colorado.

"You have to understand that our players really expected to (go unbeaten)," Tjeerdsma said. "Especially in 1997, we felt like we were a really good football team and just didn't get the job done. This year's team went into every game with very high expectations."

Like Long Beach State, Northwest Missouri State got its gut-check early on during the Bearcats' first Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association game against Missouri Southern.

"It was a Thursday night game, a TV game, and we had a little apprehension because they were supposed to be pretty good," Tjeerdsma said. "But we blew them out and that kind of set the tone for us."

The Bearcats' closest call also would be a rival game, against conference power Pittsburg State, but when the Gorillas tied the game at 16 late in the game, the Bearcats ran back the ensuing kickoff for a touchdown and never looked back.

Similarly, against Texas A&M-Kingsville in the Division II playoffs, the Bearcats fell behind in the second quarter. But two plays after the kickoff, Northwest Missouri State hit a long pass for a touchdown and then after a three-and-out defensive stand, blocked the punt for another touchdown.

"That was the kind of team we had," Tjeerdsma said. "They always responded, and in 15 games, they were ready to play in every game. They were really focused, they knew exactly what they wanted to accomplish and the two previous years had given them enough experience to know what they had to do to accomplish it."

Familiar turf

Perfection is a middle name at some schools that ran the table this year.

Mount Union went 14-0 on its way to a fourth Division III Football Championship in six years with its 44-24 victory over Rowan.

The Purple Raiders in fact have won 42 straight games, the longest active streak in college football and just five games shy of the NCAA all-divisions record set by Oklahoma in the 1950s.

The Purples Raiders have been so dominant that even the margins in the championship games have been wide. Rowan is a three-time victim, by a combined 116-72. And Mount Union's other title was a 61-12 romp over Lycoming last year.

Maryland has a similar lock in women's lacrosse. The Terrapins went unbeaten (21-0) for the third time in the last five years on their way to a fifth consecutive title.

The Terps' 16-6 championship-game win over Virginia set records for winning margin and goals scored and continued the longest current championship streak in any Division I women's sport.

And at Washington (Missouri), the Bears, who are used to perfection in women's volleyball, did so on the basketball court this year, mowing down 30 consecutive opponents on their way to their second straight Division III women's crown.

The Bears were just the third team in Division III women's basketball to go an entire season unscathed. In women's volleyball, the Bears are the only other women's volleyball team besides Long Beach State to have run the table, posting a 40-0 slate in 1992.

Champions with perfect records in 1998-99

Northwest Missouri State -- Division II Football -- 15-0

Mount Union -- Division III Football -- 14-0

Long Beach State -- Division I Women's Volleyball -- 36-0

Washington (Missouri) -- Division III Women's Basketball -- 30-0

Maryland -- National Collegiate Women's Lacrosse -- 21-0

Middlebury -- Division III Women's Lacrosse -- 17-0

Brigham Young-Hawaii -- Division II Women's Tennis -- 31-0

Amherst -- Division III Women's Tennis -- 20-0