By Keith McMillan
D3sports.com

Having to survive the graduation of the national player of the year, season-ending injuries to big men, academic ineligibility, disciplinary suspensions and a backlash over their 201-point outburst, you'd think third-year coach Garfield Yuille might be surprised his Lincoln Lions are back in the round of 16, on the same court where eventual champion Virginia Wesleyan knocked them out of last year's tournament with a three-pointer in the final seconds.

He isn't. In fact, Yuille sees Lincoln's season full of adversity another way: If his team hadn't had so many setbacks, it might be undefeated, or at least a favorite to advance past this weekend.

Instead, Yuille brings an unranked team to Virginia Beach, where they play 19th-ranked Guilford at 6 p.m. Friday. In the 8 p.m. game, No. 3 Mississippi takes on Virginia Wesleyan, ranked fourth.

The fast-breaking, full-court pressing Lions aren't a typical sleeper. According to the D3hoops.com preseason poll, this is where they belong -- they began the season ranked 16th.

"We would've still been ranked if we had the same team we started out with," says Yuille, 66-20 as Lincoln's coach. "But I'm glad we're the underdog."

That the Lions, 20-8 and winners of eight of their past nine, are still playing at all is a minor miracle. They return to the court where last year's 25-5 run ended, but the 2006-07 whirlwind has been nothing like last season's Kyle Myrick-led joyride.

Yuille, a former U.S. Marine, has stressed discipline, and benched players for a total of 55 games this season, including handing out 12- and 10-game suspensions. Injuries knocked out post players Fred Luke and Thomas Hickson. Academic infractions ended three more Lions' seasons early, including then-leading scorer Ja'Juan Robinson (17.6 points per game). Four games later, Tyreek Byard became academically eligible, and he's picked up the scoring slack, averaging 17.3 points per game.

In all, Yuille has used 24 players and 16 starting lineups.

There have been other mishaps and missteps, but Lincoln's season first went off track after the 201-78 win against Ohio State-Marion Dec. 2, something Yuille says "never should have happened."

Darryl White is a big presence down low on both ends of the floor for Lincoln.

The Lions, in their last season as independent members of Division III before joining Division II, signed up for the Joe Manchin Classic at Salem International, hoping for games against solid Division II competition. What the Lions got in their second game, to hear Yullie tell it, was not much more than a scrimmage. Ohio State-Marion replaced Wayne State, the team that was originally scheduled to appear in the tournament. Not pleased with how his team had been playing and coming off a 90-79 loss to Salem the night before, Yuille wanted to push his team with a tough game at Ramapo up next.

Yuille says the Lions got so focused on honing their pressing defense that he didn't realize how out of hand it was until Sami Wylie had made 19 three-pointers (on the way to 21 that day). He says Ohio State-Marion was too overmatched to have played that day.

"We didn't run it up," he said. "I know I'm not that kind of a coach, that kind of a person. That was a team that should never have been out there. I wish we never did that."

Yuille says he aims to run a classy program and was bothered by the backlash. His team's hangover, exacerbated by an ever-changing lineup, seemed to last. They lost at Ramapo and at Penn State-Altoona, a sub-.500 team, and lost three out of four in mid-January to fall to 12-7.

But they didn't pack it in.

"I kept ‘em focused," says Yuille, a '91 Lincoln graduate. "We talked about it every day in practice."

Some young players got minutes they might not normally have received. Others were forced to mature on the job.

"We had our mishaps along the way, our roadblocks," Yuille said. "I even switched our philosophy from pressing to zone for a couple of games (to compensate)."

Lincoln's normal style consists of the full-court pressure and an offense that doesn't rely on a lot of set plays.

"Basketball is an instinctive game," says Yuille. "I recruit a lot of guys from the inner city. The game they play a couple blocks from home is the same style we play, but it's disciplined and organized."

That could pose a problem for Guilford, which revolves around 6-11 center Ben Strong, who averages 23.9 points and 10.9 rebounds per game. The fact that Lincoln's barely had the same team together long enough for opposing scouts to get a read on them could be troublesome as well.

Only Lavine Grimes, who averages 13.1 minutes per game, has played in every Lincoln game this season. Only Wylie and Dwight Dean have more than 13 starts, with 21 each. Wylie, Dean, Byard and Darryl White each score in double figures.

"They all lead in different ways," says Yuille, who acknowledges he's done a lot of the leadership. "Nobody's like Kyle Myrick from last year, who just dominated."

In a way, that's allowed different players to flourish.

In a 91-76 win against Alvernia in the first round of the tournament, Byard and White led Lincoln with 18 points each. Dante Blanton added 17 and Thomas Lahart chipped in 15. In an 81-70 second-round win against host Catholic, eight Lions played 15 minutes or more and six scored at least eight points.

So as Lincoln tries to get past the Sweet Sixteen for the first time, despite a brutal draw, Yuille is confident.

After all, this is a Lions team with eight losses, but only four against Division III teams. It's one that went 2-0 at a tournament in Florida after a player missed the bus to the airport. And it's one whose returnees just might have a chip on their shoulder because of the way they were dispatched from the tournament last time they visited Virginia Wesleyan.

And it's one that's done a lot more than score 201 points in a game. The Lions have already done a remarkable amount of persevering.

After the Ohio State-Marion game, Yuille recalls a barrage of correspondence disapproving of the score.

"I got a lot of negative e-mail," he said. "People saying ‘You're the worst coach in the world. What are you teaching your kids?'"

"If they only knew," he says.