Reloading for History: Troy’s Incredible 1992 Turnaround
February 16, 1991. The Troy State basketball team woke up with its place in the record book secure. The 17-7 Trojans have four games left in the regular season, so their focus shifts to winning a conference title.
Troy had never won a Gulf South Conference title, but the process of moving to Division I meant this was the Trojans’ last year in the GSC. Fortunately, the conference cancelled its postseason tournament for the second year in a row.
Better still, Troy had already beaten the top-ten North Alabama Lions in overtime the week before the DeVry game. Winning out meant leaving the conference on top.
The Trojans didn’t slow down.
March 15, 1991. One month after the record-setting game, Troy State again shifted focus to its first postseason appearance in three years, and just its fourth ever.
The 21-7 conference champions were not only heading to the Division II tournament, for the first time Troy hosted a regional. The downside? They were hosting the No. 2 team in the country, the 24-4 runners-up in their own conference, North Alabama.
Both teams took care of first round business, but the rematch in Sartain the next day brought Troy’s record-breaking season to an end. The Lions went on to win their second national title.
March 17, 1991. With the season wrapped, eight players left the program, leaving two seniors for the 1991-92 season: Jack Smith and Andy Davis.
Here’s the two team photos from the respective yearbooks. Of the 13 players in the picture on the right, only 7 played for Troy the year before: Smith, Davis, Dandrea Evans, Paul Bryan, John Harrison, Tommy Davis and Terry McCord.
Half the team was made of brand new faces.
November 21, 1991. The new-look Trojans started the new season with a tall task: a 10-game road trip. Troy won back-to-back November invitationals in Valdosta, Georgia and Louisville, Kentucky (hometown of baseball coach Skylar Meade and internet writer Jon Bois) before taking a December tournament elsewhere in Georgia.
The stretch wrapped up with games against Georgia Southern, Auburn and Wyoming, the Trojans’ first Division I opponents since taking on Mississippi State in 1983. Troy lost those three games… but out of the first 10… that was it.
December 25, 1991. Troy hit the Christmas break with 3 losses, a streak that now stretched for six seasons and created a flicker of hope after the dark offseason. That light grew brighter when Troy played at home for the first time, kicking off another winning streak.
Troy beat Florida Tech at home, took down Florida Southern on the road, then swept a fourth invitational… also in Florida.
By the time the Trojans played their second home game, Troy was 11-3. Ten of those games saw the Trojans score in the triple digits.
January 6, 1992. Troy roasted Tuskegee, adding another 100+ game and capping a 12-3 record to start the season… for the fourth year in a row.
This was a completely new ball club, but the Trojans were reloading instead of rebuilding. It was an impressive turnaround after losing half of the team from its historic title run.
Coach Don Maestri literally said about the 1992 squad “I really didn’t think that this team would achieve as many different honors as it did.”
There’s a bit of dishonesty in that statement, because the game everyone circled was less than a week after Troy beat Tuskegee. The opponent from Troy’s record-breaking game the year before was returning to the Wiregrass.
January 12, 1992. A bus stops in Troy, Alabama, letting off seven members of DeVry’s basketball team.