December 14, 2010
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Alternative Sports Talk
Prodigies and Tangents at the Knapp Center
For Des Moines, last weekend’s big game was played in the promotional borderlands between TV commercials, where the local stations relentlessly touted their weather men. The first big blizzard of winter was coming and all Storm Teams were on 24 hour alert.
Unduly frightened, I drove to Miller Hardware to update my winter pantry with snow blower oil and weather stripping. On the way I listened to “Keith & Andy” on sports talk radio KXNO (http://www.kxno.com/main.html). They wandered from the talking points (NFL, Hawkeye, Cyclone, Cam Newton) that usually dominate that medium in this market to consider whether Sylvester Stallone deserved induction into the Boxing Hall of Fame. These sports casters drifted deeply into a tangential wilderness where only skilled comedians can hold an audience. One person after another entered and later exited the hardware store as I continued listening in the parking lot, unable to pull away. I was laughing so hard that one passerby knocked on my window to ask if I was OK.
At its best (Jim Rome‘s annual Smack-off), sports talk radio is as funny as any comedy. Those are rare incidences though, almost all of which involve voices that wander in tangential wilderness. Keith & Andy often hang their hats there. They are the sports radio equivalence of “Seinfeld,” which was famously advertised as “a TV show about nothing.“ Keith & Andy can talk for two segments about caroms, or tourist wardrobes, or Christmas trees and still keep their audience. Their Stallone routine worked so well that I determined to apply a new tangential point of view to my own sports observations.
With the exception of a single championship season the last four decades, Drake men’s basketball has been tangential to local sports talk. All women’s sports are tangential at best. Yet Drake fans, of both men’s and women’s programs, are as loyal as any. Bulldog sports resemble a short lived cable TV drama that critics (and somewhere south of 1.2 million viewers per week) adore but poor Nielsen ratings doom.
“Terriers” was that show this autumn and it had just been canceled leaving a void in my life. Could the Bulldogs become my new “Terriers?” I set out on a blizzard weekend watching Drake basketball in the Knapp Center.
Actually I’d been thinking about going to Drake games for a while. An enlightened observer had told me that the women had the “best pair of freshmen since Lisa Bluder’s day” (a decade ago) and that the men had “the best freshman player in memory.“ I like prodigies. They give a fan a chance to watch special children growing up.
Both Drake teams headed into rarely scheduled afternoon games in desperate straits. The women had been humiliated by both Iowa State and St. Mary’s. The only two BCS (major major conference) teams that the men had played had more than doubled the score against them. The men had also been wandering the continent for a month and needed a homecoming victory to maintain hope for a decent season.
Both teams played teams that were, on paper, superior to them. Fans sensed their urgency. The women’s game attracted 1600 of them with a blizzard warning in place. The only students attending though were those in Drake’s marvelous pep band.
Officials appeared to be as wary of the weather as the student body. They determined not to exhale into their whistles in order to speed up the game and preserve their lungs for their race against the storm. At halftime, one of the photographers in the media room assembled a montage of “no-calls” that amused him. Drake freshman star Angela Christianson was the primary victim of the officiating oblivion. One photo showed her being kicked hard in the chest, a red card in soccer but a no call during a blizzard warning. Another showed her being held with two hands as a ball escaped her reach out of bounds.
Drake’s opponent, Tennessee Tech, was better equipped for blizzard warning rules. The Cookeville team’s roster included the Cook twins who looked exactly as I have always pictured the Colfax twins who terrorized author Doug Bauer (http://www.uiowapress.org/books/2008-fall/bauer.htm) in his memoirs about dating a girl’s basketball player in high school. The Cook twins had SHOULDERS. Drake players‘ shoulders were all lower case. Tech’s Brittany Darling, who also had SHOULDERS, muscled the entire Drake team off the ball to rebound the winning basket in the final second of the game. That was the only time Tech led in the last 30 minutes of the game. Darling and the Cook twins scored 36 of Tech’s 56 points. Doug Bauer would have run to his therapist had he seen the game.
Christianson and fellow freshman prodigy Morgan Reid did not thrive in the rough house but both showed shooting touches, grace and court vision that testified to lofty potential. I asked Paul Morrison if he thought they were as good as I had been told. He is Drake’s legendary historian and has seen every game for seven decades. He agreed they were the best freshmen pair since Bluder days.
I had more trouble confirming my second tangential urgency. To my naked eye, Tech coach Sytia Messer had tied Cheryl Burnett’s infamous Knapp Center record for coaching in the highest high heels. No one on the Tech bench could confirm how many inches Messer’s heels measured though. They didn’t even take my question seriously even after celebrating their victory. I asked long time women’s basketball writer Dan Johnson about this. He reminded me that former Drake coach Lisa Stone not only coached in very high heels but also earned bonus points for jumping up and down without ever breaking one.
The next day, Drake’s men played a good Boise State team. Their month on the road wore on non basketball aspects of this production. The singer of the national anthem messed up the words, twice. Students attended the men’s game in good number but did not appear to be in good taunting form yet. A time-out promotion was rather bogus. One lucky row of fans won “free Buffalo Wild Wings.” When they read their prize certificates and learned that they had to purchase a dozen wings and only on certain nights of the week, before receiving a free half dozen, the entire lucky row became littered with the “prizes.”
The blizzard warning had expired by tip-off time. Over 3400 folks showed up to watch and the referees were not rushed. One however lost patience with a Boise player who took too long tucking in the laces of his pants and demonstrably ordered off the floor. Boise started quickly as Drake changed defenses trying to match up against a team whose five starters looked like each other, right down to hair cuts and tattoos. Highly touted freshman Raymonte Rice got in foul trouble and Drake had trouble getting the ball up court in his absence. After a pair of long haired Boise subs entered the game, Drake settled down.
Late in the game, with the outcome in jeopardy, Rice took an inbounds outlet and raced all the way to the hoop where he dramatically dunked over a taller player. KCCI’s Scot Reister got that money shot (http://www.kcci.com/video/26112208/detail.html) which became KCCI‘s “Play of the Week.” The Register’s Justin Hayworth did too, and his paper ran it with three upper case headlines – “THE SITUATION… THE DECISION… THE OUTCOME…”
Rice delighted the house but Morrison wasn’t ready to proclaim him the best anything yet.
“He’s good and he’s really exciting,” was as far as he’d go.
Drake radio commentator Dolph Pulliam, who has watched most Drake games since the 1970’s was also cautious.
“He’s the best since Josh Young,” he said, going back just five years.
To my less experienced mind’s eye, Rice is better than Young at this stage of his career. He’s certainly more exciting. Maybe winning makes Drake observers more cautious than losing does.
Temperatures that hovered in single digits allowed me to test an important observation gleaned from shows about nothing: “Second hand smoke is better preserved on clothing when temperatures are below freezing.”
By the time the smoke scent dissipated from his jacket, the guy sitting behind me had to go back outdoors and smoke again. He only needed to do that three times in over two hours.
But that’s where he was when Rice dunked.
