DENVER -- Brian Burg says the first act that led the UALR men's basketball team to the Pepsi Center this week came in April, on the campus of a west Texas junior college.
Burg had just been hired as a Trojans assistant coach by first-year UALR Coach Chris Beard, and their first stop in filling out a depleted roster was to visit Howard College. Their target was a 6-11 center who started his playing career in Peje, Kosovo, and ended up as the first of 10 new additions who expedited Beard's building process.
"It was a whirlwind," said Burg, standing outside UALR's locker room Wednesday. "Our basic game plan was: We weren't going to try to build it and wait three years, two years. We wanted to build it immediately."
Beard, Burg and the rest of the staff signed Lis Shoshi to set off a three-month period in which 10 new players were added to the roster. The new team led UALR to a school-record 29 victories, the Sun Belt Conference regular-season and tournament titles, and the NCAA Tournament, where it will play as a No. 12 seed against No. 5 seed Purdue (26-8) at 3:20 p.m. Central in today's first round.
[GALLERY: Click here for photos of UALR preparing in Denver for the NCAA Tournament]
The building that began last spring was centered around Beard's philosophy of winning quick, fueled by players who traveled similar paths to that of their head coach. Beard coached at the junior college, Division II and Division I levels.
"He likes guys that are, maybe, well-traveled," Burg said, "but who love basketball and want to compete."
More than once in the past week Beard has called his team a "melting pot" and "should be America's team," considering the different types of backgrounds included. The Trojans are represented by three countries and seven states. Their players arrived at UALR from high school, junior college and other Division I and II teams.
"You've got to recruit talented players who can win their conference and can win games in this tournament," Beard said. "Equally important to talent is character. Every guy on our roster has character. They've got a story, they've got some backbone, and they're guys who want to play for each other."
Shoshi, who has started 32 games and is averaging 6.8 points and 5.3 rebounds per game, was the first piece.
Last summer's haul also included Marcus Johnson Jr., a guard Burg first recruited while an assistant at North Carolina Central. Johnson didn't qualify academically, so he had to go to Hill College in Texas.
It also included guard Jermaine Ruttley, who scored 17.4 points per game at Florida A&M last season and was set to go to Louisiana Tech before a coaching change there.
And it included guard Jalen Jackson, a native of West Memphis who started at Central Arkansas before transferring to Northwest Florida State College and helping that program earn a junior college national title. After averaging 18.3 points, Jackson was earning interest from Mississippi State until Wes Flanigan was hired as a UALR assistant and persuaded him to become a Trojan.
"They've all bought in," Burg said.
When the whole team finally assembled as one in the fall, one trait stuck out to senior forward Roger Woods, who is one of six holdovers.
"Everybody had success," Woods said. "We all just wanted to come together and get something going in Little Rock."
It started early, too. Beard first felt significant progress after a 49-43 victory at San Diego State on Nov. 21.
"I vividly remember that San Diego State locker room with the look in our guys' eyes that [said] 'the process works,' " Beard said.
Senior guard Josh Hagins said he felt it a couple of weeks later, when the Trojans beat DePaul 66-44 on Dec. 12 in Chicago.
"For us to come together in the seventh game of the season in that fashion, it kind of let us know that we have a chance," Hagins said. "But we didn't get complacent, we weren't satisfied. We kept working, and it led us to this point."
The Trojans kept adding program firsts and national bests, such as a 16-victory improvement over last season -- the best in Division I men's college basketball -- and 29 victories, which are tied for second nationally.
A victory today over Purdue, which at one time was ranked in the national top 10 and finished tied for third in the Big Ten, would produce more surprised onlookers. Beard wouldn't be included among them.
"We all have a little bit of an edge, and that's why I think we've been successful," Beard said. "We don't think we're better than anybody else; we respect everybody. But we certainly don't think anybody is better than us."
Sports on 03/17/2016