No shining moment!
The best thing about the NCAA Tournament, of course, is the games.
But the final stanza, the ending note is pretty darn good, too. Granted, I may be a little cheesy for thinking that the “One Shining Moment” montage at the end of the tourney is the best way to end things, but so be it. I’m willing to be a little cheesy. I always watch it at the end of every tournament.
Monday night, though, there was no montage.
At least not in Oklahoma City.
Severe weather and our good buddy Gary England kept us from seeing ”One Shining Moment.” Listen, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ll sit and watch hours of weather coverage on TV.
But keeping us from “One Shining Moment”?
Boo, Gary! Boo!
Fear not, though. YouTube to the rescue. This year’s “One Shining Moment” is not only on there, but you can also see the montage from 2002 when Oklahoma last went to the Final Four. Among the years not archived on YouTube is 2004, the year that Oklahoma State last went to the Final Four, and the Cowboys were front and center in that montage, everything from John Lucas’ shot to the Bobik Sisters’ dance.
If you like wasting time reflecting on college basketball seasons gone by, YouTube can help you do that.
And last I checked, there was no severe weather preempting anything there.
NCAA: Climbing to new heights
Just when you thought the NCAA couldn’t make any more money off the Madness of March …
Watch my latest video commentary or read below:
So, you think you know everything about tonight’s national championship game.
Kansas vs. Memphis. Bill Self vs. John Calipari. Mario Chalmers vs. Derrick Rose.
Who’s going to cut down the nets?
The better question is, how are they going to cut them down?
Fear not. The NCAA Tournament has an official ladder. You heard right — an official ladder. Werner Ladder is the “Official Ladder of the NCAA Basketball Championship.”
You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.
Check out this from the statement announcing the blessed union: “A longtime fixture on contractors’ trucks and construction job sites across the nation, Werner Ladder will now be able to honor the student-athletes and their coaches by helping them to celebrate their successes and reach the time-honored net cutting ceremony at the end of each championship game.”
I swear, this is serious stuff.
All of this got me wondering what other sponsorships the NCAA has. Did you know there’s an official mutual fund of the NCAA? Yep, The Hartford is the official supplier of mutual funds. No doubt that comes in handy when the good folks at the NCAA are trying to figure out how to invest the gazillions of dollars they make every year on the tournament.
What about home improvement? Yep, Lowe’s is the official home improvement retailer of the NCAA.
Then, there’s my favorite. DiGiorno. It is the official frozen and refrigerated pizza of the NCAA.
I repeat, I am not making this up.
Considering all of that, I’m a little surprised they don’t have official scissors for the net-cutting ceremony. What about an official tissue for all those tears? If there’s an official ladder, can those things be far behind?
I think not. After all, the NCAA has that official mutual fund to fill.
More from The Q&A: Mike de la Garza
When it comes to Bill Self, everyone wants to look ahead.
Will he and his Jayhawks win the national championship?
Will he be the next coach at Oklahoma State?
Instead of looking ahead, I wanted to look back a bit this week in “The Q&A.” No one better to help with that than former Edmond High boys basketball coach Mike de la Garza. Now the athletic director at Edmond Memorial, de la Garza coached Self as a prepster.
Here is The Q&A with de la Garza in its entirety:
Jenni Carlson: Admit it — you taught Bill everything he knows.
Mike de la Garza: No, the honest truth is Bill Self has done a whole lot more for me than I ever did for him.
JC: That’s not true, is it?
MD: That’s the truth. I was a brand new coach here in 1976. One of the first kids I met was Bill Self. He was in the eighth grade. People forget what a good player Bill was. We won 66 games while he played for us in high school. They went to the state tournament every year. Those three years, we got rolling, and his play was a really big part of that.
JC: What kind of player was he then?
MD: He had a sixth sense about where to pass the ball. He didn’t turn it over. He made timely free throws. Senior year, he led us in scoring, rebounding, assists and guarded everybody’s best player. And his senior year, he made six game-winners, you know where you go, “Three, two, one” to win the game? He did it six times in one year. We won 20, and six of ‘em were at the buzzer.
JC: So, that’s what you mean when you say he did more for you than you did for him.
MD: Oh, yeah.
JC: What’s your favorite memory of him as a player?
MD: That’s really easy. We were in the state tournament in the state semifinals playing Altus. We were down one and had the ball. We were going to run this play for Kelly Jobe. They doubled Kelly up, so Bill just took it, penetrated straight to the basket, dished the ball off to this guy named Eric Ford, who laid it up at the buzzer to win to go to the state finals. It was just the most unbelievable basketball play, and this heady sophomore goes in there and dishes it off. We were all so excited. I remember we were walking off the court, and Bill … he’s just trying to catch his breath. He’s just gasping because he’s so jacked about it.
JC: You’ve maintained a close relationship with Bill. Are headed to San Antonio for the games?
MD: I really want to go. I may not get down there Saturday, but if they get past that Saturday game, there’s no way I won’t be there Monday.
JC: That would mean Bill’s playing for a national title. What has watching all of this been like for you?
MD: It’s a tremendous amount of satisfaction for a high school basketball coach to watch their players play. But then, you get to chance to see them mature and develop not only as individuals but professionally. For Bill to choose coaching and to take his coaching to the level he has taken it is just an unbelievable sense of pride in him and what he does. He’s a big part of our family. My son and his son … we just live Kansas basketball. Sometimes you have to pinch yourself — is this really real? For us to watch him on television in these high-powered games with these high-powered teams, it’s just really fun.
JC: Is it nerve wracking, or do you just sit back and enjoy?
MD: Oh, I couldn’t watch the UNLV game. I’m not kidding. I don’t know why I was so worried about that game. And then Sunday when we’re watching … we’re all just on edge. When the referee makes a bad call, my son Scott — he’s a doctor now — he’s yellin’ at the TV. Yeah, we live and die with it.
JC: Any neighbors called the cops with all that screamin’ coming from the house?
MD: I don’t think so. It’s really been fun watching this. Of course, I love the Final Four, and I love basketball, and I’m always depressed when the season’s over, but having Bill in the mix of all this just makes it even better.
JC: Most important question of the day — how much have you won off Bill on the golf course?
MD: Uh, I’ve only gotten to play golf with Bill a couple times.
JC: Really?
MD: He doesn’t get to play golf much. He has a really busy job, but when he was coaching at OSU, that’s when we used to get out there and play some golf. Maybe a little bit when he was at ORU. Since he has gone to Tulsa, Illinois and
Kansas, he is just busy all the time.
JC: Do you ever miss coaching at all?
MD: Once you’re a basketball coach, you’re always a basketball coach. There’s just times in your life when you don’t have a team. I do miss coaching in the playoffs. But I was fortunate enough to coach basketball for 30 years, and that’s a long time to coach. At the end of it, my blood pressure resembled the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It was about time for me to quit. I haven’t missed it as much as I thought I would because I really think coaching for me ran its course.
JC: Since you don’t have your own team, have Bill’s teams become your surrogate team?
MD: I still live and die with the Edmond Bulldogs, but Bill’s teams … I root for them really, really hard. In fact, on my desk I have the picture of Bill Self in a baseball cap and a suit and tie and a net in his hand that he cut down last Sunday. I’ve already got it framed and on the back of my desk.
Holder hire: Huge
Everybody’s talking about who the next Oklahoma State men’s basketball coach will be.
Here’s guessing the one guy we don’t hear much from about the subject until the hire’s done is Mike Holder.
Watch my latest video commentary or read below:
When Mike Holder next steps behind the podium at a hastily called press conference, he’ll be joined by the next men’s basketball coach at Oklahoma State.
Who will it be?
That, of course, is the million dollar question. Or the five or six million dollar question, depending on how deep you believe Boone Pickens’ pockets are.
I don’t pretend to have any great insight on who Holder will hire. Heck, listening to him earlier this week, the OSU athletic director didn’t have any great insight on the subject either. That could make for some interesting days ahead.
Many Cowboy fans are frustrated by Sean Sutton’s ouster. Their emotions run from consternation to out-and-out infuriation. Their reasons are varied. Some say two years just wasn’t enough time. Others say Sutton was showing signs of promise. Still others say the Sutton family deserved better for all that it has done for the university.
Truth is, even the angriest Cowboy fans will soften their stance if Holder hires a slam dunk of a coach. Go get a name. Go get an established guy or even a bright up and comer that everyone knows. Go make a splash hire, a hire that makes people sit up and say, “Wow,” and many sore feelings well be soothed.
But hire a guy that makes people furrow their brow and say, “Who?” and the grumbling and the rumbling from the orange-clad faithful will surely intensify.
This isn’t to say that Holder has to go get Bill Self or Billy Gillespie. Those two guys hold top-five jobs in college basketball, so the chances of luring them away from Kansas and Kentucky to Stillwater are, well, pretty much zero.
There are plenty of other big-time coaches. USC’s Tim Floyd. Minnesota’s Tubby Smith. Drake’s Keno Davis. Xavier’s Sean Miller. A coach like that would be good for OSU and great for Holder.
Make a good hire, and many of those Cowboy fans who are frustrated now will start to mellow. They still might not agree with Sutton being shown the door, but they will start to come around. To think the change might be worth it. To get excited about their basketball program again.
But if Holder makes a shoulder-shrug hire, he might have a full-fledged revolt on his hands. The new guy might very well be a qualified coach, might very well make people forget their anger one day, but in the short term, all will not be well in the OSU family.
Holder had better go out and find somebody good to stand next to him at that next press conference.
Stop the shenanigans
I fully intended to post this earlier this week, but the goings-on at Oklahoma State and at the Ford Center foiled my plans.
So, here’s my latest video commentary, or you can just read below:
Andrea Riley and her Oklahoma State teammates might just have been the feel-good story in women’s college basketball this season.
Then, Riley started knocking people around.
And no, knocking people around isn’t some sort of metaphor for what the Cowgirl point guard does to opponents. No, she actually hit three opponents in the postseason.
First, a disclaimer. I wasn’t at any of the game at which Riley pulled her antics, but I believe the observations of my co-workers. Same goes for video.
The latest incident has been viewed almost 7,000 times already on YouTube – a quick note, I couldn’t find the video without the extra commentary that this one has; if you find one, let me know – and it only happened Saturday. The Cowgirls were playing LSU in the Sweet 16, another amazing step for this program that was 0-16 in conference play only two years ago. Riley dribbled into the lane with LSU guard Erica White on her hip. Riley pulled up for a jumper, and White turned to look at the rim. When she did, Riley turned toward White and smacked her in the back of her head. White pushed back a bit, but then, who wouldn’t when blindsided with a shot to the skull?
We don’t know, of course, what transpired before that between Riley and White. During that particular play, White didn’t seem to say anything to Riley or do anything out of the ordinary. Lots of things are said and done, though, during the course of a game.
Still, that doesn’t excuse what Riley did.
And unfortunately, these type of actions are becoming all too frequent with Riley. She smacked a gal from Texas in the Big 12 Tournament, then a couple nights later smacked another one from Texas A&M.
That’s three incidents in five games. Unacceptable.
Listen, I think Andrea Riley is the best point guard in the country. No one runs their team better. No one gets their shot better.
Talk to Riley off the court, and there’s no more charming and delightful a person.
But as much as there is to like about Riley, her actions cannot be ignored. The referees did not punish her. Neither has the conference. I say OSU coach Kurt Budke must step up. He has to let it be known that these types of things won’t be tolerated. Does that mean a stern talking to? More conditioning? A suspension?
I don’t know what will get the point across, but these sorts of things must stop. Budke has to understand that, and he must make sure Riley does, too.
