Hurray!
We’re headed back to the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament! And though we’ve made
it quite a few times in the last years, it feels like the first in a very long
time. I went to the OSU-Kansas game with hub last week. The first time in many
years. While we did lose, it felt like we won. The arena was packed; my ears
were buzzing; and at the end of the game my throat was so sore I couldn’t talk.
It
took me right back to the days when we didn’t always win, but always seemed to
get significantly better. Back to feeling that we always had a shot to make it
all the way. Back to the frenzy of being
on the sidelines when Big Country made his infamous half-court shot against
Missouri (Jason Sutherland is still the player I most despise, though at this
point I couldn’t even tell you why). Back to the excitement of camping out all
night to get tickets to the Final Four in Seattle (and later learning that the
ticket office wasn’t supposed to sell us those tickets and wanted them back!).
Back
to the deafening roars of the Cincinnati game in the new arena (probably I
remember this one so clearly not so much because it was the very loudest time
I’ve ever been in GIA, but because everyone who attended got sparkly silver
pom-poms). Back to those Sunday afternoons, driving home from Kansas City,
listening to the tournament selection show, hoping superstitiously to get put
into an East Rutherford, NJ, region.
And
that is what watching this team feels like—hopeful. If you want to brush up on
the historic Cowboy Basketball tradition, come by for these titles:
·
“Oklahoma State University: history-making basketball” by Michael McKenzie. Read about the events and people who
created the tradition of Cowboy basketball. The book starts pre-Iba and follows
the program through Kurland, Haskins, Hartman, Hansen, Hamilton, Starks and
Houston up to the beginning of the Sutton era.
·
“Mr. Iba: Basketball's Aggie Iron Duke” by John Paula Bischoff. Bischoff relays Iba’s career in
Stillwater as a national championship winning coach and athletic director.
Included are discussions of his innovative basketball plays that are still in
use today.
·
Track 8 of “Voices of Oklahoma” where you can hear a 1972 interview of Coach
Iba discussing Olympic strategy. He sounds tough, just like his teams were.
A
few titles have either been retired due to condition or not ordered for the
library, so if you have a copy of the following books, please consider donating
them to the library:
·
“He Got It! My
Life with Bill Teegins” by Janis Teegins and Bob Burke
·
“Living My
Dreams: 1965 OSU Cowboy’s Big Eight Basketball Champions” by Gene Johnson
·
“Tournament Town
Kansas City: Where the Basketball Madness Began” by Blair Kerkhoff
See
you in Phoenix! (I have just knocked on both a piece of real wood and my head,
so I am allowed to say that. However, this does also take me back to the one downside
of OSU basketball fanaticism—the rigorous and detailed actions hub and I had to
take during each and every game and the words we were and were not allowed to say
during the season, so as not to tempt fate. OH! And the hoarding! Didn’t like
my frenetic hoarding of every scrap of OSU basketball memorabilia. This hopeful
feeling is still worth it, though!
