This is what I remember from 11 years of covering OSU hoops
Published: 11/1/2012 4:01 PM
Last Modified: 11/1/2012 10:33 PM
A changing of the guard occurs tonight.
I have been Oklahoma State University’s basketball beat writer for 11 of the last 13 seasons. As newspapers are prone to do, they occasionally shake things up a bit. As of this fall, I became the OSU football beat writer. And, as of tonight, I will cover an exhibition game as the new Oral Roberts University basketball beat writer.
Kelly Hines takes over as the new OSU basketball beat writer with an exhibition game tonight and -- prediction -- she’ll do a heck of a job. Before her game and my game tip off, I wanted to glance at the OSU basketball media guide and see what jumped out of my head regarding my time as the person responsible for covering Cowboy hoops.
Before beats: Prior to the Tulsa World adopting a beat system, all our writers switched assignments on a game-by-game basis. Luck of the draw, I drew Bryant Reeves’ halfcourt shot against Missouri and was a helper in East Rutherford when the Cowboys clinched a “Toothless in Seattle” trip. I froze during a side trip to New York City. The sun was out and I didn’t bring a jacket. No one told me that the buildings were so tall that you were always in the shade.
Good timing: I inherited the OSU basketball beat during the 1999-2000 season, when the Cowboys had a senior team and flirted with a trip to the Final Four. It’s too bad OSU and TU lost in the Elite Eight. They would have met in a national semifinal. It’s still the greatest game we never saw.
Talking a great game: Doug Gottlieb was the go-to interview subject during that season. I wonder if he has ever considered talking for a career?
Respect gained: The most impressive person I met that season was Desmond Mason’s father. He made a mistake, served some time and emerged with a goal of being a good dad for his son. If Desmond wasn’t doing exactly the right thing, OSU’s coaches knew they could fix it by making one phone call to pops.
Filibuster: I suspect (I’m freestyling from memory) the 1999-2000 season was when OSU was sent to the same NCAA site as Indiana. News had just broken that Hoosiers coach Bob Knight had been accused of some sort of something. Of course, everyone attended Knight’s pre-tournament press conference to see how he would handle it. Knight did a masterful job of extending his opening statement through the duration of his time slot, minimizing the window of opportunity for folks to ask questions about stuff he didn’t want to talk about.
Warm towel: The flight (on short notice) to Syracuse for an NCAA regional semifinal was so expensive that I wound up in first class. A flight attendant handed me a steamed towel. I’m from Mayes County. I don’t need that. But let me know if you’re serving biscuits and gravy, or, better yet, fried okra.
New digs: OSU unveiled expanded Gallagher-Iba Arena during the 2000-01 season. And Jason “Big Dady” Keep shattered a backboard in the first game. Keep was a character. Sports writers love characters.
Bad scene: The plane crash happened the next season. I was among Tulsa World reporters who basically set up shop in Stillwater for a week after the crash to cover the aftermath. I went to Eskimo Joe’s for dinner on Super Bowl Sunday the day after the crash. I remember that the Ravens and Giants were playing. I also remember that I may have been the only person there. All of Stillwater was in mourning.
Stay busy: The key during the rest of that week was to stay so busy that you didn’t have time to dwell on the horrible thing that had happened. Andre Williams, accustomed to tragedy because he had already lost many people close to him, was chosen to speak at a memorial service. This is not someone who was new to hardship. A family member had beaten Andre with a tree branch when he was a kid. He lost his roommate in the crash.
Bouncing back: The first event at Gallagher-Iba Arena after the crash was an OSU-Baylor women’s game. Kim Mulkey didn’t like my question after the game, but I had to ask it. Then came a men’s game against Missouri. The emotion in the building was incredible.
Out of gas: Despite everything, the plane crash team -- Victor Williams, Mo Baker and Co. -- managed to get an NCAA Tournament invitation. The Cowboys were blown out by USC in a first-round game that was essentially over by halftime. A doctor left a voice mail on my office phone saying that it was clear that I had never lost anyone close to me or I would have known better than to write the game story that I wrote. Before that call, I viewed doctors as healers.
After 9-11: College football games were cancelled the first Saturday after 9-11. I’ll never forget driving to Stillwater on a football-less day and seeing Fredrik Jonzen collecting stuffed animals to send to children in New York. The dude’s from Sweden and he’s chipping in to help an adopted country? That’s Fred. Baylor’s Dave Bliss once described Jonzen as the kind of player who keeps the horses in the barn. I’m not sure what that means, but I’ll second the motion.
Faraway again: Continuing a tradition of sending OSU seemingly as far away as possible for a first-round NCAA Tournament game, I got on a plane bound for Greenville, S.C. (by way of Atlanta) and, in mid-flight, one of the engines went “boom.” We returned to Tulsa, emergency vehicles on standby just in case, and made arrangements to get another plane.
My daughter was two months old and in the hospital at the time. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to telling my bosses that AP can handle this game. OSU was beaten by Kent State and a future San Diego Chargers tight end named Antonio Gates. More scary than the plane engine that went boom? I was a passenger in a photographer-driven van from Atlanta to Greenville. The roads were wet. I wore out the imaginary brake on the passenger side of the vehicle.
Bad timing: I wasn’t on the OSU basketball beat during the 2002-03 and 2003-04 seasons. The Cowboys reached a Final Four in ‘04. I tagged along to San Antonio to help with coverage. Hotel workers were so frantic about not letting any media into OSU’s hotel that I snuck in (and left without talking to anyone) just to prove that I could. After a loss to Georgia Tech, Tony Allen didn’t quite to know what to say because losing was so foreign to him.
Back again: I returned to the OSU hoops beat for the 2004-05 season and that was good timing since the Cowboys seemed to be primed for another run at the Final Four. Sixth man Stephen Graham picked up three or four fouls in the first half of a road game against Texas Tech. Eddie Sutton left him in the game and the Cowboys won. My favorite Sutton sound bite from a practice: “You better run like the devil is chasing you!” OSU’s two games against Kansas that season were among the best college games I have ever seen in person. During that season, former Tulsa World photographer Kelly Kerr staged a sequential photo shoot of Joey Graham to make it appear he turned into the Incredible Hulk.
Pregnant pause: I forget which season it was, but a fracas was barely avoided at Gallagher-Iba Arena when a Texas player collided with a pregnant OSU fan in one of the lower rows. In any situation regarding Texas, you won’t find a more class guy than Rick Barnes.
Reloaded?: OSU had seemingly signed the kind of class that would allow for a quick rebuild after a Sweet Sixteen appearance in 2005, but Gerald Green declared for the NBA draft, Keith Brumbaugh never played a lick and McDonald’s All-America point guard Byron Eaton endured early growing pains. OSU lost four nonconference games, including (gasp!) one at home. Gonzaga’s Adam Morrison banked in a prayer to steal victory away from the Cowboys in Seattle. I was on my way to a road game at Texas A&M when I got a call that Sutton had been in a car accident. And, just like that, the Eddie era was over. Sean Sutton took over before anyone expected and his father resigned during the offseason.
First of three: OSU ended that season with the first of three consecutive first-round NIT defeats. The Cowboys were sent to Miami, Fla., for the inaugural NIT trip. I booked my hotel sight unseen and it had outside doors with zombie-looking fellows roaming around the perimeter. I immediately logged onto the wireless internet and switched to a better hotel (read: inside doors) that I could see in the distance. I’m not a Miami fan, unless we’re talking about the Ottawa County hometown of Larry Reece.
Instant classic: OSU started the 2006-07 season by winning 11 consecutive games en route to a 15-1 start. The Cowboys were all over NCAA Tournament mock brackets. Then came the high point of the season. OSU’s Mario Boggan and Texas’ Kevin Durant put on a triple-overtime fireworks show. But the Cowboys subsequently played their way into the NIT, losing a first-round home game to Marist. I missed two OSU basketball games, ever, due to sickness. One of them was the Marist game. While recuperating, I gained an admiration for “Rockford Files” reruns on the Sleuth channel. Now I have every season on DVD. FYI, after the Texas game, Sean Sutton was ready to declare Durant as the best player in Big 12 history. Durant seems to be doing OK as a pro.
Big win, bad ending: During the 2007-08 season, folks in the media were convinced Sean Sutton saved his job with an upset of fourth-ranked Kansas (it was part of five-game winning streak). But the Cowboys lost four of their last five games, including a first-round NIT game at Southern Illinois. Mainly I remember this: It rained so hard and long that there was street flooding in Carbondale, Ill. And the wireless internet got zonked after the game, which complicated getting a story into the newspaper.
Travis Ford’s first year: Because Eaton and Terrel Harris -- the lone survivors of their recruiting class -- endured three consecutive first-round NIT defeats, they had reason to smile when they finally reached the NCAA Tournament as seniors. They beat Tennesseee (Philip Jurick was redshirting for the Vols) in the first round and gave Pittsburgh fits in the second round.
Big game James: James Anderson was such a good guy that I wondered if he was mean enough to scald somebody, if necessary. Then Anderson produced one of the best seasons by a player in OSU history as a junior and took the Cowboys back to the NCAA Tournament before declaring himself eligible for the NBA draft.
Little big man: OSU settled for the NIT in Keiton Page’s junior season and the Cowboys suffered a losing season in his senior season, but it was fun to watch him rise to big man on campus status. A 40-point performance against Texas last season was his Mona Lisa.
Last chapter: After the 2012 season ended, I covered the Oklahoma State women’s team during their run to a WNIT championship. There weren’t many dry eyes in the house when Shelley Budke cut down the net in a postgame ceremony. I have covered hundreds of sporting events that didn’t really mean anything. This game meant something, or else tears wouldn’t have been streaming down faces.
Written by
Jimmie Tramel
Sports Writer
