Lone Star State No Longer Mediocre In Hoops

Coach · February 25, 2007

Lone Star State no longer mediocre in hoops

By Thomas Stinson / Cox News Service

February 25, 2007

The new coach over in Lubbock had barely unpacked when the phone rang at Don Haskins' house.

''Bob Knight is a very good friend of mine, and when he came to Texas Tech he called me,'' said Haskins, the legendary former coach at UTEP. ''In Indiana, he got all his players from the state or all around there. And I just told him, 'You're going to be astounded at the talent there is in this state.'''

Haskins had barely hung up when the phone rang again.

''He called me right back and said, 'Darn, you weren't kidding.'''

That was four years ago, though the moment might have been the cue for a renaissance of Lone Star basketball. Never have more Texas schools been committed to better basketball. Since Knight's arrival, Texas Tech has made the NCAA tournament three times in four seasons and could very well be there again next month. More impressive, Texas A&M, which hadn't made the Big Dance in 18 years, will do so for the second straight season, coach Billy Gillispie guiding the Aggies (23-4) to a No. 8 national ranking.

Throw in the University of Texas, which has endured as the state's only real power since the late 1980s. With a couple more possible conference champs - Texas A&M-Corpus Christi from the Southland and North Texas from the Sun Belt - the state of Texas could have five teams in the NCAA tournament.

''Mucho talent,'' Haskins said.

Talent was never the issue. Better Texas basketball has come only after a torrent of change. The demise of the hoop-challenged Southwest Conference and the rise of the hoop-happy Big 12 have almost shamed state schools into upgrading their programs.

At the high school level, overturning a ban on summer basketball camps has led to stronger programs at that level while attracting better coaches. And while it took Tom Penders' stint in Austin to actually show them - ''We kind of dragged them kicking and screaming,'' he said - schools began to understand there was revenue to generate in the season after football.

''You can talk around anything else, but Texans are the best in the world at understanding dollar bills,'' said Billy Tubbs, a successful coach at Lamar University in Beaumont before taking Oklahoma to national prominence in the 1980s. ''And they figured out you could make money off basketball.''

Is there another state that had done less with more than Texas? Over the NCAA's 68 national tournaments, the nation's second-most populous state has produced one champion: Haskins' historic 1966 team at then-named Texas Western. It has sent one team (Texas in 2003) to the Final Four in the past 22 years.

Home to 19 Division I programs (with 2,200 in-state high schools to recruit), Texas should spit out contenders just by the law of averages. But some colleges have simply gone to ground. Houston, which once went to the Final Four three straight years, hasn't won a tournament game since coach Guy V. Lewis retired in 1986.

TCU, Baylor and SMU have made the NCAAs only three times among them since the Reagan administration. Rice hasn't since 1970.

Penders gets the credit here. Hired away from Rhode Island in 1989, he arrived to find Texas had no practice facility, no weight room, no TV contract and virtually no public interest. The school didn't even assign ushers to games at the Erwin Center until after the football season.

''It was kind of shocking to me,'' Penders said. ''They just wanted to be respectable. They didn't have any grandiose plans to be a national contender.''

Convincing home-bred stars to stick around traditionally has been a problem. Since the McDonald's high school all-star team was established in 1977, just 33 percent of the state's All-Americans (nine of 27) enrolled in Texas schools before Texas' Rick Barnes signed Daniel Gibson, LaMarcus Aldridge, Calvin Miles and D.J. Augustin, all within the past three years.

''Trying to get a kid interested in basketball at the University of Texas, I mean, we were chasing kids in parking lots,'' Penders said of his early years in Austin. ''It was like we had subpoenas. Any of the good ones wanted out.''

All that is different now, though what it will mean in March is the mystery chalupa. Tech, which hasn't cracked the Top 25 all winter, was recently blasted by 29 points at Texas. The Longhorns have advanced at least to the Sweet 16 four times in the past five years but have lost in the first round three times since Barnes arrived in 1999.

That leaves A&M and the superb Acie Law best equipped to carry the Lone Star State's burden. In their seven trips to the NCAAs, the Aggies have made it out of the second round only once, and that was 26 years ago.

''We haven't gotten there yet but I do think we're on the right track,'' Gillispie said. ''I think our guys have really handled the expectations that have been placed upon them probably way too early.''

Better early than never.

Thomas Stinson writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: tstinson@ajc.com.

CMJ · February 25, 2007

Good article. :thumbsup:

greenminer · February 25, 2007

All that is different now, though what it will mean in March is the mystery chalupa.

"mystery chalupa"? Never heard that one before.

Puts an interesting spin on those .99 Taco Bell trips I used to love.

gksmith · February 26, 2007

Link
Lone Star State no longer mediocre in hoops
By Thomas Stinson / Cox News Service
February 25, 2007
Throw in the University of Texas, which has endured as the state's only real power since the late 1980s. With a couple more possible conference champs - Texas A&M-Corpus Christi from the Southland and North Texas from the Sun Belt - the state of Texas could have five teams in the NCAA tournament.
Thomas Stinson writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: tstinson@ajc.com.

Someone really likes our chances in the SBC tournament. As a fan I really want to see NT go to the NCAAs but the realist in me sees the end of the season after the SBC tournament.