One day you are ordering your second helping of key lime pie and you look up and notice your old school is in the Final Four. You can’t remember the last time that was true. But there it is listed under the Final Four logo, a tropical conceit that makes the basketball appear to be a huge orange among palm trees.
What is more surprising, Ohio State in the Final Four, or the Final Four in sandals and a tank top? Finding college basketball in Florida is like discovering culture in a strip mall. Neither is apparent nor expected.
But they’ve put the Big Dance in air conditioning again, this time in a place big enough to play baseball, not that the expansion Devil Rays are often guilty of that. Size does matter to the NCAA, but the least they could have done is change the name of this year’s designated barn to Tropicana Fieldhouse.
No matter. Here they are, Duke, Connecticut, Michigan State–all No. 1 seeds–and the lesser-considered Buckeyes, which will have to do for the requisite Cinderella, if you like your Cinderella a little on the shabby side.
Ohio State has two stories, one noble and uplifting, the other grubby and distasteful. Do alums from Duke have my problem? I think not. Established program, reputable coach, loyal athletes. And a Final Four fixture.
Connecticut, a bit thuggish for my taste but still honest enough to admit what it is, a program of fierce ambition, clearly and without apology in the basketball business, is here at last and for the first time.
Michigan State whines too much but, like UConn, is a team structured and prodded to be exactly where it is by a coach who has only one obvious face.
What should you think about Ohio State coach Jim O’Brien? Is he the worst kind of carpetbagger, decimating one school’s program out of spite or appetite, or is he an honorable man, father of the decade and a survivor of a dingy business?
Here is what is obvious. O’Brien left Boston College, took all the coaches and practically anyone who had anything to do with that basketball program with him, found a place for BC’s star player–guard Scoonie Penn–at Ohio State and managed in a single year to go from the bottom of the Big Ten to the Final Four.
Ohio State would not be here without O’Brien, and O’Brien would not be here without Penn. Had he and Penn stayed at BC, as well as the 11 other players who have bailed out of BC since O’Brien did, maybe Boston College is Cinderella.
How could Ohio State be a party to ruining a fellow institution’s program by taking in its coach and its star player? How can your old school be proud of the way it got here?
This should be a swell, uplifting tale. But it is bothersome to someone who still has occasional warm thoughts of his undergraduate days. How to feel better about this? You get the rest of the story.
Ohio State’s road to the Final Four started in Chestnut Hill when Boston College football players were caught up in a gambling scandal. So eager was BC to change its image from a school that took in corrupt athletes (but didn’t kick them out of the record books as Northwestern did) that the admissions office took a stronger hand in whom its coaches recruited.
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O’Brien, who had played at BC, had come back to coach his alma mater and had built the program to respectability, taking it within a game of the Final Four in ’94 and beating Indiana in one of those opening-round losses that have become common for Bob Knight. Knight was so impressed he endorsed O’Brien out loud as a great future coach for somebody, even though O’Brien had a job. This opinion later would influence Ohio State to seek out O’Brien.
In 1997 O’Brien had two recruits who met NCAA admissions standards, but BC turned them back, embarrassing and infuriating O’Brien. Both players were black. O’Brien later would sue the school, accusing it of bigotry. The suit was settled.
Who is right, who is wrong? Should a school’s administration be able to control its admissions? Of course. Should Ohio State, or any school, take a coach who had a problem over an issue of academics?
The thing is, O’Brien finally left BC for an altogether less illustrious reason. His bosses saw a nuts-and-bolts newspaper item that O’Brien was going to sign a contract extension. They saw the news leak as O’Brien disloyalty, though the writer of the piece swore to them that O’Brien was not the source.
One more petty straw too many, O’Brien left BC for Ohio State. If none of this or only some of this happens, Ohio State is very likely still finishing 10th, 10th, ninth and 11th in the conference, which is where the Buckeyes were the last four years.
But my key lime pie tastes a whole lot better.