A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  DeVoe heaved a huge sigh of relief and walked off with a win he knew he had to have. Still, the tension he was feeling showed through in the postgame press conference. When Ron Bliss of the Kingsport Times-News, a reporter who had been critical of DeVoe at times, asked about the switch to man-to-man that had turned the game around, DeVoe said to him, “Give me credit for that one, Ron, okay? You get on my ass enough times, give me credit when I do something right.”

  He stopped. “I’m just joking, Ron, you say what you want. I’m coaching this team right now and that’s something you’ll never have a chance to do.”

  This was not typical DeVoe. But these were not typical days. They were tough ones, with or without the Knoxville police.

  January 21 … El Paso, Texas

  In the annals of college basketball, among the thousands and thousands of games that have been played, one stands out as more meaningful, more important, more significant than all the rest.

  It was played on March 18, 1966, in Cole Field House on the campus of the University of Maryland. On that night, tiny Texas Western College defeated all-powerful Kentucky, 72–65, to win the NCAA basketball tournament. What made the game significant was not that Texas Western beat oh-so-lordly Kentucky. What made it important was that Texas Western did it with five black players in the starting lineup. It would be five more years before Kentucky Coach Adolph Rupp would recruit a black player.

  That game marked a turning point in the history of the game. Until then, very few southern schools had recruited black players. Most schools that did recruit had quotas. You could have only so many blacks on your team and you could put only so many on the floor at once.

  Texas Western changed all that. It didn’t happen overnight. In fact, even now, in 1988, there are southern coaches who will tell you they wouldn’t dare start five blacks. But it did happen.

  Adolph Rupp, who won four national championships, the last in 1958, never made it back to the Final Four. Kentucky forced him into retirement when he turned seventy in 1973 and he died several years later. The man who beat him that night, the man who profoundly changed college basketball, has never been back to the Final Four either.

  But Don Haskins still coaches. He hasn’t changed schools in twenty-seven years, although his school has changed names. Texas Western is now the University of Texas at El Paso, and the man they call “The Bear” is still churning out twenty-victory seasons and getting his team into the NCAA Tournament more often than not.

  If Haskins coached in the ACC or the Big East, he would probably have a building named after him by now. He would be a media star. But because he has done all his coaching just across the border from Mexico in a corner of West Texas, he remains almost anonymous to most people who follow his sport.

  Not here, though. Here he is just “The Bear” to most people, a legendary figure who really has little interest in being a legend. This is a man who wears a clip-on tie to games because he is so uncomfortable wearing a real one. He walks down the ramp to the floor wearing his tie, then simply pulls it off when the game begins.

  UTEP’s Special Events Center is a modern, handsome twelve thousand-seat arena. Like most arenas that house successful teams, it is full of banners ballyhooing various conference titles and tournament appearances. But one banner stands out. It is older and more worn than the others but it catches your eye as soon as you walk into the building. It reads: “Texas Western College, NCAA Champions, 1966.”

  This is, make no mistake about it, The Lair of the Bear, and very few teams come in here and win. UTEP plays in one of the most underpublicized conferences in America, the Western Athletic Conference, better known to one and all simply as the WAC.

  No conference has ever been as far-flung as the WAC. UTEP sits on one end and Hawaii sits on the other. In between are schools like New Mexico, Utah, Brigham Young, Wyoming, San Diego State, Colorado State, and Air Force. There is no such thing as an easy road trip in the WAC.

  Even if you didn’t need the Pony Express to help get you to many of the WAC locations, the road in the WAC would be difficult. No place in America is tougher to play in than New Mexico’s Pit. But the Special Events Center at UTEP is right up there, and so is the Marriott Center at Brigham Young. As for Wyoming, few people have lived to tell about how tough it is to play there.

  Into the Bear’s Lair on a windy, snowy night came Brigham Young. The Cougars are always one of the country’s more interesting teams, even when they aren’t one of the best. Because most of their players are Mormons, there are inevitably several who have gone on two-year Mormon missions overseas.

  Religious missions are the only exception to the NCAA’s rule that requires an athlete to use his four years of eligibility within five years. A player who goes on a religious mission is exempt from this rule. Other WAC schools cry quietly about the fact that BYU has an unfair advantage because it constantly has teams filled with older, more experienced players. New Mexico Coach Gary Colson refers to some of the Cougars as “those seven-year guys.”

  Brigham Young is also one of America’s whitest teams. There are very few blacks in the Mormon Church and very few non-Mormons at BYU. There are exceptions of course. Jim McMahon played quarterback there and Jeff Chatman, who is black, is one of the captains on this year’s team.

  “But they converted me,” said Chatman, who became a Mormon on December 6, 1987. “They were such nice guys, they made me one of them.”

  There is irony, of course, in a matchup between a team famous for being white and a team famous for having won with an all-black starting five. UTEP’s starting five this year is all-black too. Now though, it hardly matters.

  Very quietly, BYU has put together a 12–0 record. The Cougars have solid guards, an excellent post-up shooter in Chatman, a solid center in Jim Usevitch, and they have Michael Smith.

  To say that Smith is unique would be an understatement. He is, to begin with, a superb basketball player. At 6–10 he can shoot to twenty feet, is the best passer on his team, and a good rebounder. He plays a lot like Duke’s Danny Ferry. Ask him if he buys the comparison and he will smile and say, “There’s one difference. People have heard of Ferry.”

  People will hear about Smith, a junior, who went on a two-year mission two years ago. Smith is one of four Cougars fluent in Spanish; sometimes when they are all on the court they will call plays in that language to confuse the other team.

  Smith loves to play basketball. And, he loves to talk. About basketball. About his team. About the Mormon Church. You name it, Smith will talk about it. When you ask Smith if it bothers him that his undefeated team hasn’t gotten much national notoriety yet, he smiles and talks about football.

  “You know, in 1984 nobody talked all year about the Brigham Young football team. Well, they just kept winning and winning and people kept ignoring them and when the season was over, they were Number One.”

  Then, in the same breath, he will add: “I couldn’t believe it when everyone was making such a big thing about Wyoming before the season started. I mean, they finished tied for third in our conference last year and people were acting like they were the greatest thing going.”

  Right now, BYU is the best thing going in the WAC. The Cougars have already won in Wyoming but now they are in the Bear’s Lair. No visiting team has won here since BYU did it a year ago. As they leave their locker room to walk to the floor, the Cougars can be heard chanting: “Coogs, get ready to roll! Hey Coogs, get ready to roll!”

  The sight of eleven white guys and one black-guy-turned-Mormon walking into a basketball arena repeating a rap chant over and over is unusual to say the least. But BYU is an unusual team. “We picked it up last year from Alabama,” Smith says. “After we lost our first game in the NCAA Tournament, we were walking off and Alabama was going on. We heard them chanting, ‘Tide, get ready to roll! Hey Tide, get ready to roll.’ We liked it.”

  Smith smiles. “Of course, we don’t have a whole lot of soul on this team but Jeff has worked hard with us
. We’ve definitely gotten better.”

  Smith is the first Cougar introduced. He turns to each of his team mates, shakes their hand and says, “I love you.” Then he walks onto the court.

  “I say it every game,” he says later. “I say it because I mean it. I do love the guys on this team. We all love each other. Really, we do. Now, some people may get the wrong idea about a bunch of twenty-one- or twenty-two-year-old guys going around saying they love each other, but we’ve been through a lot together. A lot of us [six] have been on missions and come back. That brings us closer. We really do love each other.”

  The UTEP fans, 12,222 strong, do not love the Cougars. They love their Miners, who use their quickness to take a 30–27 lead late in the first half. But Smith hits a double-pump baseline jumper to put BYU back up 35–34 and the Cougars lead 37–35 at halftime.

  Smith goes out with his third foul five minutes into the second half and he sits on the bench fidgeting, begging Coach Ladell Anderson to let him back into the game. “Coach, I don’t want to sit here and watch us lose,” he keeps saying. Anderson has no interest in losing either. But as long as he has the lead he has the luxury of resting Smith. When third guard Nathan Call, a Radar O’Reilly lookalike, hits a three-pointer with 6:33 left, BYU leads 71–58 and looks safe.

  But UTEP charges back to within 73–67 with four minutes left. The Cougars spread their offense, the Miners have to foul, and BYU makes all its free throws for an 81–71 victory.

  “No one back east knows how hard it is to win on the road in the WAC,” Anderson says when it is over. “Sooner or later, people are going to have to start realizing this is a great league.”

  Michael Smith agrees. “We’ve only done half the job, though,” he says. “We’ve still got to go to The Pit.”

  January 23 … Albuquerque, New Mexico

  It is the most famous ramp in basketball. If you walk down it too quickly, you will lose your balance because it is so steep. If you walk up it too quickly, you will lose your breath for the same reason.

  One night in 1983, Jim Valvano walked down this ramp a basketball coach and walked back up a legend. Most visiting basketball teams walk down hopeful and walk back up beaten. Three weeks ago, Arizona walked down this ramp 12–0 and ranked No. 1 in the nation. Two hours later, the Wildcats walked back up the ramp 12–1.

  When you reach the bottom of the ramp and walk into a sea of red-clad fans, you can look up into the balcony and see a sign which proclaims, “Welcome to the Legendary Pit.” A few feet away is another sign. It reads: “Elevation, 5,200 feet.”

  The playing floor is not that high, however, because it is below ground. One enters The Pit at ground level, walks down to the floor, then looks up at more than seventeen thousand very loud New Mexico fans.

  Today, Brigham Young walked down the ramp, calmly rapping away—“Coogs, get ready to roll! Hey Coogs, get ready to roll.” They almost seemed glad to be here. “Games like this,” said Michael Smith, “are fun.”

  Certainly for a spectator. New Mexico has not been to the NCAA Tournament since 1978 and the Lobos are scrapping to put together enough victories to get a bid. Colson, once viewed as a savior when he took over what was left of the program after numerous NCAA violations put the school on probation for three years, is now being questioned. A year ago, New Mexico won twenty-five games and still only made the NIT.

  The natives are getting restless. In a crowd where the cheer of preference is “Eat em up, eat em up, wuf, wuf, wuf!” that can make you nervous.

  New Mexico has won thirteen straight here. Quickly, led by their two talented forwards, Hunter Greene and Charlie Thomas, the Lobos build a 17–10 lead. The Pit is rocking. But BYU is not a team that rattles easily. Chatman hits two straight jumpers, then Smith hits to cut the margin to 19–18. New Mexico builds the lead back to 30–22 and is still leading 37–31 with 3:44 left in the half. But Chatman hits a drive and center Jim Usevitch produces a three-point play and a post-up jumper; suddenly the Cougars are up 38–37. At intermission, just like at UTEP, they lead by two, 44–42.

  And, just like at UTEP, they slowly take command in the second half, even with Smith again fighting foul trouble. This is a day for Usevitch and Chatman to shine. Usevitch, the blue-collar center, scores 24 points while Chatman, shooting what Smith calls his “automatic All-American jump shot,” has 22. Smith, even on an off day, has twenty. New Mexico never gets the game even in the second half and the Cougars win, 89–82. They are now 14–0.

  The disappointed fans chant, “Social Security!” at the Cougars, a shot at their older players, and Colson can’t resist another shot when talking about Usevitch. “Hell, I got a freshman who can’t even say Usevitch, much less guard him,” he says. “Got to give the guy credit, though. You’d never know he was twenty-nine years old.”

  Usevitch is twenty-four. Despite the humor, this is a tough loss for Colson because it is at home. “It just means I have to do my shopping at six in the morning,” he says with a laugh. Sadly, this will turn out to be gallows humor. A month after the end of the season, Colson will resign under pressure, perhaps the first coach in history to build a program from rubble to twenty-plus victories a season and then get run out of town.

  Someone asks Colson if there is any way to fight the advantage he thinks Brigham Young has, the older players coming back from missions. Colson thinks for a minute. “The best thing to do,” he finally says, “would be to go out and get some Mormons.”

  It might not be a bad idea. One thing is for sure: Missions or no missions, age or no age, they can play. To survive in the WAC on the road, you have to be able to play.

  January 24 … Tucson, Arizona

  In a hectic basketball season, this has been a very hectic week for Steve Kerr. Once a year his mother comes to visit him during school and this has been the week.

  Ann Kerr arrived in Tucson on Monday and was greeted by a very tired son. Arizona had played the previous weekend at Oregon State and at Oregon, the roughest road trip of the season—travel-wise—and Steve was still recuperating.

  Ironically, Ann Kerr came to town on the fourth anniversary of the assassination of her husband. That weekend, mindful of that anniversary, CNN did a piece on Steve, focusing on the success he and Arizona were having this season. But in the middle of the piece was a tape of the first game Kerr had played after his father’s death, against Arizona State.

  Sitting in a hotel room in Eugene, Oregon, Kerr suddenly saw himself on his TV screen. Seeing himself on television isn’t unusual for Kerr, but this was different. There he was, breaking down during the moment of silence for his father and then hitting jump shots during the game.

  “It was weird,” he said, “sitting there realizing this was going out on national T.V. First of all I noticed that I looked like Shaun Cassidy or something. My hair was really weird. But then when they showed the moment of silence, I caught myself looking away from the TV. It was such a personal thing and there it was on television again.”

  Kerr and Arizona got home Sunday and Steve went home to bed to prepare for his mother’s visit. As usual, Ann Kerr would stay with Steve and even go to class with him. “If I was in high school it might be embarrassing having my mother go to class,” he said. “But this is different. I’m taking graduate courses and it’s kind of nice taking her along.”

  Shortly after the death of Malcolm Kerr, the Los Angeles Times ran a lengthy profile on the Kerr family. The writer spent a day with the Kerrs in their Pacific Palisades home and wrote that, in the aftermath of the tragedy, the Kerrs “seem to cling to one another.”

  This was in no way a put-down, but a commentary on the closeness of the family. One senses, however, that this closeness existed long before Malcolm Kerr’s death. To all of Tucson and much of America, Steve Kerr is the All-American boy. It is an image that makes Kerr laugh.

  “It’s nice that people like me the way they do,” he said. “But to tell you the truth, sometimes I get tired of it. I mean, if I hear or read
one more time that I’m Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer, I’ll throw up. I’m like any other guy my age. I like to have fun, I like to drink a few beers, and there are times when I’m an asshole. When my family reads all this stuff about how great I am, they think it’s really funny.”

  Not that they aren’t proud of him, but the other Kerrs don’t have quite as heroic an image of Steve as the rest of the world does. “He can be brutal,” said younger brother Andrew. “Sometimes he can get on people and really take them apart. But most of the time he’s funny about it, so he gets away with it.”

  Ann Kerr says that one of her children was never a very good traveler: Steve. And one of her children really hates getting out of bed in the morning: Steve. And one of her children can be quite lazy; Steve. “Really though, I think of him as special, just like everyone else does,” she said. “But I think of all my children as special.”

  Steve Kerr says he now thinks of his mother more like a trusted older sister than anything else, and there is reason for this. Like him, she is at a crossroads in her life. She has just started teaching at the American University in Cairo. It is all quite new to her. At the same time, Steve is winding up five years at Arizona and preparing to start a new life somewhere. His older sister and her husband have just moved to Oxford. His older brother is with his mother in Cairo. And Andrew is a freshman at Arizona. So, ironically, all the Kerrs are in some form of transition in their lives.

  “It does makes us closer,” Steve said, “because we all know that the people in our family are the ones who are going to be there for us no matter what happens.”

  That is why Kerr is delighted to have his mother in town, even if it means having to clean up his apartment. The season is at that point where things begin to drag a bit. It is not close enough to March to start thinking about postseason and yet there is little left for Arizona to do in the regular season. The Wildcats have dominated the Pac-10 from the start and, barring a collapse, are almost locked in as the No. 1 seed in the West Regional. But there are still a lot of games to be played.