Coach's Corner

Obscure dots on a highway map. Lonesome places, conjuring up images of a Texas before the interstate highway. Where Hank Williams heard lonesome train whistles blow. Places where, even today, tumbleweed rolls down a main street, distinguished as main only because of the stop sign. Names reminding us we lived once, not that long ago, on a dangerous and isolated frontier. Ozona and Comanche and Zepher. Nazareth and Ponder and Karnack. Many of nature's most ferocious creatures were in Austin last week. There were two Lions, and one Lionette. Two Tigers, one Hornet, a Blackcat, a Ram, two Bulldogs, and a Bulldogette. Creatures of uncertain lineage: a Swiftette and a Don. A Pirate, a Raider, and two not-so-politically-correct Indians rounded out the contingent of tattered mascots, almost all in bad need of a new epidermis.

Every March, they come to Austin from all points on the vast geographic map of Texas. Girls' high school basketball is in the big time. If you don't believe it, try to find a hotel room within 20 miles of Austin during the three-day championships. Try to find anybody at Ponder High School. Try to find anybody - anyone at all - in Karnack. For these few days, the town is, for the most part, transported to Austin.

Today's schoolgirl basketball had its Texas birth in the distant, desolate Panhandle, a 500-mile drive from Austin. In a place without much else to do, basketball became a passion. It's a sport played in earnest year-round. As one player told me, "it's football for girls." The tradition was started in tiny Nazareth, a school with a student body of 106. Nazareth has more state championships - 12 - than any school, of any size, in the state. Dean Weese, the legendary coach at Levelland, piggybacked on the success of Nazareth, and an area dynasty was born. At every classification except for 5A (they didn't have any 5A schools in the past), a Panhandle high school holds the state record for most championships.

This year, as usual, the Panhandle is well-represented with three schools. They leave Austin with one state championship. That, from 4A Randell, is worthy of mention. An enduring basketball cliché goes like this: "The Knicks held the Suns to a season low..." This implies the opponent did something special to produce a low scoring output. In truth, this is rarely the case. The 5A championship, pitting another Panhandle team, Palo Duro, making their first-ever appearance in the state tournament, against two-time runner-up Houston Alsek is a perfect example.

The papers read Alsek held Palo Duro to a vise-like 25% shooting. And this, of course, is accurate. However, Alsek did almost nothing to make this happen. Palo Duro missed shots (many, many shots) from every imaginable angle and distance on the basketball floor. Lay-ups. Put backs. Uncontested threes. An astonishing assortment of airballs, including but not restricted to short jumpers from the key, the corner, and the baseline. Most of these shots were garden variety open looks. Palo Duro, on this night, would have played itself to a 0-0 tie in a five-man shooting drill. After a devastating overtime loss to Westlake in '96 and another to Duncanville in '97, Alsek finally had its title.

Then, there's the exception to the rule. In the afternoon 4A championship game, Randell, showcasing the classic Panhandle game - a tightly controlled, disciplined, fundamentally almost perfect brand of basketball - put on a frightening, textbook-perfect defensive exhibition. At the half, a high-scoring Bay City team from Houston, featuring an unstoppable sophomore (Chandi Jones) every college in the country will be drooling over in two years, was held, yes, held, to a fantastic, surreal, five points! Then, it got worse. Bay City managed 23 points for the game, a most dubious record for offensive futility. Even this was accomplished, with difficulty, against the Randell bench. When the nightmare finally concluded, the Houston team had managed to get off a grand total of only 30 shots - and each of those was bitterly contested - in the face of the nastiest, quickest zone this side of the L.A. Lakers. The Blackcats had exactly zero good looks the entire game. None. Zilch. Zippo. By the time the fourth period began, Bay City was so horribly beaten and demoralized, I wished for a running clock, so these girls, with the vacant stares of roadkill, could just get off the floor.

Unfortunately, blow-outs and noncompetitive games were too common in this year's tournament. Too many teams making first appearances, perhaps a year or two before they were ready. The tournament missed the big star programs: the Duncanvilles, Canyons, and Westlakes. As in an all-star game, new blood is always welcome, but the sterling pedigree of the old guard is needed to hold the game together.

I left the Erwin Center, after 10 games, with a bad headache. Freezing air conditioning, day-old, tepid coffee, cold pizza, peanut butter crackers, Coca-Cola, whistles, horns, and too many versions of the National Anthem had taken their toll. In three days, Austin treated its visitors to first spring, then summer, and finally, as the last bus pulled away into the night from the windblown tarmac, winter. It takes nine hours to cover the 500 miles to Amarillo. Someone said it was snowing up there.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

Support the Chronicle  

One click gets you all the newsletters listed below

Breaking news, arts coverage, and daily events

Keep up with happenings around town

Kevin Curtin's bimonthly cannabis musings

Austin's queerest news and events

Eric Goodman's Austin FC column, other soccer news

Information is power. Support the free press, so we can support Austin.   Support the Chronicle