Coach's Corner

What with the nuisance of doing my job lately and writing about mostly sports, I have not shared the somewhat ironic news that I'm now a student at the University of Texas. When the letter arrived last fall informing me of my acceptance to the Big School, I was quite excited. I almost went out to my bookstore (Bevo's) and bought some kind of orange decal to put on the back window of my car ... but I came to my senses.

Anyway, it's my thoughtful impression that college has become more difficult since the Sixties. Perhaps professors are more cagey. Then there's the possibility that it's true what we've been told concerning the relationship between whiskey, pills, smoke, and the untimely death of brain cells.

My old college roommate The Whipp and I once worked out a pretty reliable system for pulling down B's on essay tests. We became adept at mixing in the odd date or historical reference with many nice sounding sentences and incongruent fragments, all signifying that we were clever lads indeed and B students for certain. Our system was the very embodiment of simplicity: Never miss a class, take good notes, and never ever do any of the silly, time-consuming readings. Professors of the day had egos and seemed to enjoy having their own favorite slogans and ideas spouted back to them. In fact, we were putting into practice a principle gleaned from Econ 101: Never waste a precious resource -- our time -- when we could be out drinking and offending sorority girls, for such a small return. This strategy, however, is no longer operative.

Going to class and taking plentiful notes is fine. A class hasn't passed when my hand isn't cramped from scribbling as fast as I can. My professor routinely covers 1,000 years a day. The "outside readings," as they're euphemistically called, take up my every free, waking minute and cannot, I quickly learned, be replaced with plentiful bullshit. The modern professor now phrases test questions so the best my old system will net is a low C. He unfairly asks questions that demand extensive references to the hated readings. His grader appears totally immune to my florid, excessive prose. They want facts, and lots of them. The immortal Sylvester T. Stone once said, "If it was good in the past, it's still good." Sly better not think about going back to college.

Now to dissect my school's chances in the NCAA tournament, starting with their exit from the Big 12 Tournament last weekend. The local reaction to the listless loss to Oklahoma leaned a little toward the hysterical side. Fans should keep in mind that these once-rare but now common-as-a-Starbucks-latte conference tournaments have the competitive integrity of the World Championship of Golf. Which is to say, their reason for being is the dollar sign. They're a cynical farce. Many players, exhausted at the end of a grueling basketball season -- and perhaps feeling content with a decent NCAA seeding -- don't emotionally buy into the coach's whip crackling in the air over their heads.

This is why so many big-name teams fall early. To be honest, I was rooting for UT to win a game and come home. They didn't need to play another game, risk a sprained ankle or much worse, to move up one seed. Conference tourney winners are often early flameouts, finding their emotional and physical tanks on empty when they have to turn around and start all over in a few days.

I give Texas only a 50-50 chance of advancing -- can you spell G-U-A-R-D-S? -- past the sub-regional in the barren Land of Nod (Salt Lake). Success in the 64-team field always features solid, steady guard play. It's no coincidence that the only legit UT performance in the NCAAs in my lifetime was their unexpected ride through the Midwest Regional in 1990, when Travis Mays, Joey Wright, and Lance Blanks -- guards one and all -- scored 275 points in four wild games, leaving Texas only three points short of a trip to the Final Four (yet another pill in the bitter medicine jar of unavenged losses to Arkansas). Though UT 2000 is stronger on the perimeter than conventional wisdom would indicate, their offensive production is consistently spotty. Travis Mays was a very steady hand. He didn't have many bad nights.

Though Chris Mihm will benefit from playing teams who aren't used to seeing him all the time, the tournament isn't about big men. The UT loss will come in the game when the guards careen wildly into the lane with no apparent purpose, when the jump shots don't fall, and free throws, another Texas weakness, miss as often as not. On a so-so night, Texas can lose to Indiana State. That Gabe Muoneke's a wild card isn't a good thing. Unlike a much better player like Eduardo Najera, big No. 3 frequently plays below his abilities. Judging Muoneke on his senior year -- full of sleepy performances (often in big games) -- can't give a Horn fan faith that he's going to suddenly wake up on Thursday and spark Texas on a pixie-dust-sprinkled journey to Indianapolis.

Of course, Dorothy did find those ruby slippers. The Rams won the Super Bowl. But these things must happen in their own irregular way. Counting on unlikely miracles is the path to a broken heart.