Strong, silent types

WALTHAM -- Nobody's talking, at least openly, about an undefeated season around the gym, even though Bentley's men's basketball team is 22-0 and counting. Nobody's mentioning a national championship, even though the Falcons are ranked second to Winona (State, not Ryder) in the Division 2 polls.

Until dinnertime tomorrow, the subject of every sentence uttered inside the Dana Center had better start with an S. "We're focusing on Stonehill," declared coach Jay Lawson, whose squad takes on the defending conference cochampions on CSTV at noon. "I know that's like Bill Belichicking you, but . . ."

That is precisely how Bentley got to this point with a flawless record, by adopting tunnel vision. When Stonehill is in the rearview mirror, then you can talk about AIC. "Our goal from Day 1 was just winning the next game in front of us," said sophomore guard Lew Finnegan, whose teammates are off to the best start in the program's 44-year history.

Yet as the tower of W's has risen to dizzying heights, it has been difficult to avoid March fantasies. By now, only three NCAA teams in the country are unbeaten (Winona State and Amherst are the others). Why not daydream? Bentley already has clinched its third straight Northeast-10 crown and earned the top seed for the playoffs.

For Finnegan, a Lexington native and Cal Poly transfer whose last season ended up 5-22, it's already like hitting Megabucks. "This year has been incredible," he said. "We still have a lot to accomplish, but I'm just loving it."

So far, this has been the season the Falcons thought they'd have last season, when they were coming off a 30-victory campaign with a dozen players back. Then a staph infection swept through the team in December and the Falcons, after losing five straight, found themselves at .500 a week into the new year.

"To have a beginning like that and lose all those games was tough," said junior forward Nate Fritsch . "We all felt, no, this wasn't supposed to happen at all." Yet Bentley rebounded to run off 13 victories in a row, ended up 21-9, shared the conference title, and earned its third NCAA bid in five years.

Somehow, the Falcons always end up high on the plus side. That's been the story since Al Shields put his first team on the floor in 1963, when the school was still on Boylston Street in Boston and the schedule included Durfee Tech, the MIT JV, the Tufts Frosh, and the New Hampshire College of Accounting.

"The basketball reputation was built at Bentley in the '60 and '70s," said Lawson, whose record over 16 years is 294-162 with just one losing season, in 1994-95. "We've tried to sustain it."

Lawson and his staff have managed it by leaving bedrock principles intact. "We've stuck with the same system, the same foundation for years," he said. That means an aggressive and smart offense that feeds off the fast break and an inside-out defense that stresses paint work first.

The trick is to find players who can carry it off, while also meeting the college's rising academic standards. Division 2 is a mercurial middle world between 1 and 3 with an eclectic assortment of players. "They come in all sorts of packages," Lawson said. "You've got [6-foot-9-inch] guys who can only shoot threes and guards who post up. It's a unique level."

The play can roughly be described as Eurostyle, with movement and passing and freedom and flow. "It's more about athleticism," said Finnegan. "You have to be able to jump and run and be quick."

What the coaching staff looks for are "gym rats who love it like we do," said Lawson. The art of player assembly for most Division 2 schools is an imprecise combination of "exposure situations" like summer tournaments and camps, Internet research, scouting services, D-1 drop-downs, random tips, and happy chance. "You have to beat the bushes and keep looking," said Lawson.

You also have to bide your time for months, waiting as late as May to let the search-and-discovery process play out. "The best thing you can do is be patient," said Lawson. "We may get a kid late who won't look at us early."

Yusuf Abdul-Ali , who won a historic state title with Springfield's New Leadership Charter School, had never heard of Bentley until an assistant high school coach mentioned it.

Neither had Fritsch, who'd been pondering Stonehill and South Dakota before he hopped on a train from New Jersey on a day's notice and tried out. Andy Smith, who went to high school in Carolina after growing up in West Sussex, England, transferred from St. Bonaventure.

What recruits quickly find, after a tryout against the Bentley incumbents (permissible by NCAA rules), is that Div. 2 isn't that far from the big time. "They have no idea until they play against our guys in a pickup game," said Lawson. "They're humbled quickly, to a man."

Fritsch, who spent most of the day wrangling with an All-Conference forward, said his tryout was a wake-up call. "They were good," confirmed Abdul-Ali. "They were nasty, actually."

Coming to Bentley frequently means waiting your turn. "Coach didn't say anything about playing time," said Abdul-Ali, a junior guard who averaged fewer than half a dozen minutes a game for two years before becoming a starter this season. "He said I'd get a good education, that he'd give me a jersey, and that I'd have to compete for my minutes."

Finnegan, who averaged more than 16 minutes a game at Cal Poly as a freshman, encountered a logjam when he came here, and ended up being redshirted last year. "They'd had an unbelievable season and all the guys were returning," Finnegan said. "Coach said, 'Why don't you sit out and play for three years after that?' If I'd transferred to a Div. 1 school, I would have had to sit out anyway."

Even three-year veterans bide their time. The first four men off the bench this season, including Lawson's son, Danny, all are seniors. "They've all been role players their whole career," observed Lawson, who says their unselfishness and maturity have been this team's story line.

When they do get on the floor, the Falcons find themselves in playground heaven, if a bit more orderly and demanding. "Motion in its purest form," said Finnegan. "We do whatever we want." Everybody gets his hands on the ball, anybody is allowed to shoot. In Bentley's first five games, five different players were leading scorer. "We play offense the way kids like to play it," said Lawson.

But defense is the reason the Falcons have been winning by more than 16 points a game. They've kept six rivals under 50 and Merrimack (37) and Saint Anselm (45) were held to their lowest scores since the shot clock was installed. "Our defense brings it all together for us," said Abdul-Ali, whose mates rank third in scoring defense in Div. 2.

Not that every night is a gymboree. Saint Michael's had two chances at the go-ahead basket in the final 10 seconds of their December meeting here. Pace came within 3 points last month after going up, 10-0. And the Falcons had to pull off an astounding escape at Bryant last Saturday, coming from 17 points down with 8:51 left to win, 78-76, on Abdul-Ali's jumper with 1.5 seconds to play.

"It's an understatement to say it was special," said Fritsch. "There was a big crowd yelling at us the whole time and it didn't seem like we could catch a break. When we won the game, we ran upstairs feeling like we had just won the national title. It took a good day or two for it to wear off."

Three nights later, Bentley went up to Saint Mike's, where they'd been spanked last year, won by 24, and became the first team in 15 years to win or share three straight Northeast-10 titles. "You're over the hump," athletic director Bob DeFelice jokingly told Lawson the next day. "You have no excuses from here on out."

If only. There still are four conference games to play, "and they will be the hardest four," reckoned Fritsch. There's still a conference tournament to win and an Elite Eight to reach. "I'll never talk about a national title here," vowed Lawson, "unless there's one game to go."

Even if Bentley wins it, little will change on Falcon Way. The coach still will be beating the bushes for gym rats. (On Wednesday, the day after playing in Colchester, Vt., Lawson was back upcountry in Meriden, N.H., checking out a prep school prospect.) After nearly 300 victories, the man has no desire to be anywhere else. As he tells recruits and their parents, this is Disney World.

John Powers can be reached at jpowers@globe.com.