By Evans Clinchy
D3sports.com

Glenn Robinson is a 38-year veteran coaching the Franklin and Marshall basketball team. He's won 756 games, more than any other Div. III coach of all time, and captured 14 conference titles. When his Diplomats take the floor at the Salem Civic Center to face Richard Stockton on Friday night, it will be his fifth Final Four.

And "this will sound odd to people," he says, "but I've never been motivated by winning a national championship."

Not at all. Clearly he'd enjoy it, he says, but it's just never been a big deal to him.

"I know the history of this program," he says. "I still remember when it was a very big deal to us just to have a winning season. I still deal with the admissions standards, the academic requirements, the amount of work that our students do, and how that all balances with basketball … It's not just 'Hey, we're happy to be here,' but you know -- we really are happy to be here."

"If we win on Friday, then we'll play for the national championship. But if Stockton is better than us, we'll shake their hands, and we'll congratulate them. Either way, we've had a great season."

It's easy to see how this year's F&M team has been playing with house money. With one of the youngest teams in this year's NCAA Tournament, it's a wonder the Diplomats have even made it this far. Their two leading scorers, James McNally and Georgio Milligan, are a sophomore and a freshman respectively, and their lone senior, Daniel Selig, is a valuable sixth man but has never started a game. But has their inexperience really been a problem?

"It hasn't so far," Robinson said. "They clearly have shown their age at times, and they've done things that we'd prefer they that not do. But mostly, they've done very well so far. The biggest thing is they've improved. They've improved constantly, throughout the season and now into the postseason."

It hasn't been easy. The old adage is that veteran guards lead great teams in the NCAA Tournament, but the Diplomats have instead been led by the rookie Milligan, who has played 1,044 minutes this season and is among the nation's top 100 in assists and steals, and McNally, their scoring machine inside. Mike Baker, Anthony Brooks and Clay Scovill -- two sophomores and a junior -- round out their starting five. All are double-digit scorers.

F&M started its season 11-0, most of its wins via blowouts, before suffering the season's first loss at McDaniel on Jan. 13. A week later, they fell to a Gettysburg team that would go on to win the Centennial Conference title. Gettysburg, as it turned out, was a thorn in the Diplomats' sides all year, beating them once in January, once in the final week of the season on Feb. 18, and a third time in the conference tournament on March 1.

"We had trouble with Gettysburg this season," Robinson said. "They're a very strong, very cohesive team. We were in position in all three to win or send it into overtime, but they ended up winning all three. They just had our number this year, and they had a lot more experience than we did."

But after a rough patch at the end of February and into March, losing three of four, the Diplomats stormed back and went on the run that's brought them to Salem this weekend. They thrashed Wesley in the first round, 93-69, and survived a second-half surge from Brandeis the following night to squeak out a 65-63 win.

F&M leapt out to a 37-24 halftime lead over the Judges and widened it to as much as 20, but a Brandeis run in the second half, capped off by three straight threes in the waning minutes, made it a one-possession game. Robinson was just happy to get the win.

"We were very, very pleased that we got the big lead," he said. "Brandeis is a very good team, and to get a nice lead against them, we played very well. At one point we were up 20 points, and I'm guessing that they had not been down 20 all season. We were very pleased with the way that we were playing defense, and the fact that it was close at the end was what we had expected all along."

From there the Diplomats got by Salem State in the Sweet 16, again surviving a second-half run to win 67-61, and beat DeSales the following night to punch their tickets to Salem. Now they're here, and everything else is just gravy.

"We've been talking about being a cat with nine lives," Robinson said. "We're just looking forward to getting another chance."