Eastern’s basketball office is a small, neat space overlooking the Student Recreation Center. It is filled with plain wooden furniture and several simple plaques commemorating various occasions and awards hang from the white walls, with one exception.

A new picture frame sits by itself on the longest wall, filled with USA Today and Sports Illustrated clippings devoted to the men’s basketball team and its appearance in the NCAA Tournament.

This frame is gilded and ornate, a treasure amid the everyday humdrum.

And so is head coach Rick Samuels, The Daily Eastern News’ Person of the Year.

Samuels is only the second coach to be chosen for this honor, following Darrell Mudra, coach of the 1979 NCAA Division II champion football team.

It is important to note that Samuels thinks his team and staff deserve the award as much as he does, and if he could, he’d probably hand a trophy to each of the team’s fans as well. The Panthers’ charge onto the national scene was fueled by those who came out to see his team run the floor, Samuels said, and he and his team are more than grateful for the cheers.

“Good fan support lifts a team, without question,” he

said.

Expectations were relatively low for the team at the beginning of the season, especially with senior Merve Joseph injured. But it was a blessing in disguise, opening the door for others to blossom, Samuels said.

“You could see signs we would have great chemistry,” he said, but no one could foresee sophomore Henry Domercant’s stunning emergence as a scorer. Role players such as Jan Thompson and Todd Bergmann also got more playing time because of Joseph’s absence.

Samuels said when the team beat Arkansas State University and the University of Evansville back to back at the beginning of December, he began thinking that his team was capable of greatness, and by the end of January, Lantz Gym basketball games were the hottest ticket in town, a “rallying point” and a “source of pride” for Eastern, according to Samuels.

“We got excited coming to play for our fans,” he said. “The fans came because we were pretty good.”

Even after the regular season, Eastern didn’t generate much interest outside the Ohio Valley Conference, even though senior Kyle Hill and Domercant finished second and fourth, respectively, in scoring nationwide, making the Panthers the first team ever to have two of the NCAA’s top five scorers.

“Kyle and Henry were better than the rest of the country recognized,” Samuels said.

Then came the conference tournament. The team ripped through to the final game, where it staged the already-legendary 21-point comeback with nine minutes to go. Samuels thinks that’s when people woke up to the hoops squad from that small school in Illinois.

“First of all, you had Kyle and Henry,” he said. “We were fun to watch. People got caught up in watching us play, and then there was the comeback.

“People started seeing we had a good group of kids, and they enjoyed interviewing them.”

Domercant said Samuels’ encouragement was a big factor in his breakout year.

“He sets an example about hard work,” Domercant said. “He’s a great motivator. He knows a lot of basketball.”

The players were aware of the energized atmosphere around campus, he said, and it gave the players a little boost.

“It was good to give this campus something to cheer about,” he said.

Samuels agreed.

“Pride made them more determined,” he said.

By the conference tournament, Eastern was well aware it had something special. The bookstore couldn’t hold on to Eastern clothing, the once-unknown group of diehard fans known as the Blue Crew began to grow, and a buzz was starting to sweep across the campus.

When Thompson’s shot with 0.6 seconds left in the conference tournament was goaltended and Eastern was assured of a win, residence halls erupted and euphoric cheering spilled out of local watering holes. Students who were complete strangers hugged and high-fived, and everyone began telling everyone else that “Kyle sits right behind me in history” or “I rebounded for Henry one day in the Rec.”

For one moment, at least, Eastern was truly a community, and we were all proud of what our Panthers had done. Even the loss to Arizona in the first round of the NCAAs couldn’t diminish that.

Samuels said Eastern’s contingent of fans in Kansas City, Mo., the regional site of the NCAAs, was “as big as any of the eight teams there.”

“I don’t think they were ready for us,” he said. “My wife told me she went looking for Eastern T-shirts there and couldn’t find any because they were all sold out.”

The epilogue has yet to be written. Samuels said the team is getting interest from high school players the coaching staff didn’t think it could recruit, and requests are still being made for player autographs.

Although Eastern had gone to the “Big Dance” before, in 1992, it wasn’t quite the same.

“We had a good `welcome home’ party that year when we came back,” Samuels said, “but then it sort of died.”

In addition, the media attention was “overwhelming” this year. Eastern was featured as the lead story in USA Today, accompanied by a photo of Domercant and Hill celebrating the conference title. Domercant was the focus of a two-page photo in Sports Illustrated, and the team and coaches were interviewed from media outlets across the country.

“The team attracted a lot of attention,” Samuels said. “I think we rekindled alumni interest and gave people some hope for future success.”

He hopes Eastern can parlay that attention and all the

accolades into stronger enrollment numbers and better funding, and build the university along with the basketball program.

But for all his generosity and humility, Samuels has taken something from the experience for himself.

“It has been gratifying,” he said. “The team rejuvenated me. My passion wasn’t gone, but I don’t think it was where it was before this year. Now I’m really looking forward to next year.”