March is now maddest for college basketball coaches. They’re now the victims of life’s inexorable principle. Action, reaction. Every overreaction creates an equally irrational overreaction.
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In one nerve-wracked, parity-plagued, ref-controlled March game they can go from savior to scapegoat. Many college coaches are only as good as their last world-ending game. This is why so many college football coaches fight a playoff tournament in which only one team survives.
The NCAA basketball tournament gets bigger every March. CBS tells us so. Dick Vitale says we should go ga-ga, and we do, baby. San Antonio’s River Walk overflowed Friday with orange-clad fans in search of divine madness.
The day was warm, the beer cold, the jalapenos hotter than Illini followers hoped Cory Bradford would be. What an unexpected vacation their student-athletes had provided them. Hail coach Bill Self.
Now, Billy boy, you’d better give these spring-breakers something to do Sunday afternoon besides get some sun. Better not ruin their trip with a Friday night loss to Kansas. Better not lose badly or people will start wondering exactly what Illinois accomplished in 2001, other than getting by Northwestern State and Charlotte.
For 50-odd coaches with highly regarded teams, the regular season is mostly about avoiding the NIT. Then, lose in the first or second round, and your season is a waste and your job in doubt. Fire him! Hire him! Hire the savior who can take you on an Alamo City vacation and advance your bragging rights deep into the office pool.
Schools get so desperate to please big-spender alums that they will even mortgage their soul for that bitter hypocrite, Bob Knight. How the mighty have fallen. Imagine new Texas Tech coach Knight taking shots Friday evening at Indiana from his lowly outpost in Lubbock, Texas.
Is this ever madness. A year ago North Carolina begged Kansas coach Roy Williams to come “home” to Chapel Hill and become the next Dean Smith. Williams stayed at Kansas because he’s not Dean Smith. He was afraid of the Michael Jordan-sized expectations and knew Kansas fans would give him a second honeymoon for staying.
A source close to the Kansas program says: “There were those in the hierarchy who hoped Roy would leave because they get tired of his whining and his teams with six or seven McDonald’s All-Americans typically playing so soft. Some were hoping to see what [former Kansas assistant] Self could do with this program.”
Self almost certainly would have replaced Williams. Self was the country’s Hottest Young Candidate. Self had the magic formula, motivating Tulsa within a game of the Final Four.
Meanwhile, Lon Kruger feared the expectations of coaching an Illinois team with Final Four potential. Kruger dreaded a season-long clash with his only true offensive talent, his best scorer and only ballhandler, Frank Williams. Kruger took the money and ran to Atlanta’s Hawks.
Illinois Athletic Director Ron Guenther first contacted Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson. Sampson said he backed off; Guenther said he did. If Sampson had become Illinois’ coach, Oklahoma State grad Self probably would have wound up coaching the school he grew up hating–Oklahoma.
But Guenther backed into a much better hire–Self. Friday night found Self matched against Roy Williams. Self tried to put pressure on his senior-laden team while Williams tried taking pressure off his. Self said, “Our guys have unfinished business.” Williams celebrated a second-round victory over an average Syracuse team by letting players pummel a stuffed monkey representing the one on Williams’ back. Kansas had been eliminated three straight years in the second round.
For the third straight tournament game, Self’s team proved it played the regular season as one long pace-itself practice game for March madness. Not once did it turn up the defensive heat the way it did on Charlotte and Kansas. Once more it was men against kids. Williams, Sergio McClain and Bradford intimidated the Kansas guards the way Jordan, Pippen and Harper did opponents during their final title run. The refs mostly looked the other way.
Defense and offensive rebounding canceled poor shots and turnovers.
Now Self’s growing reputation goes back on the line against the country’s most offensively talented team–Arizona. Another one-game season. More madness.