Just a few Easter weekend notes from last week's Southland Conference Tournament basketball experience ...
... former Potpourri editor and Current Sauce writer (boy, it's been a long while since that's how he was introduced) Mike Gallien treated me to my first Houston Rodeo experience. Mike's wife and he had four tickets to the March 12 Rodeo. She was overseas working in Russia, and the couple they were going to join couldn't make it, so Mike shook off the disappointment of the Lady Demons' first-round exit (albeit at the hands of tourney champ UTSA) and I joined my friend at the rodeo.
The rodeo - at Reliant Stadium. Not quite the same thing I used to attend as a kid in Jonesboro or on my first trip to a rodeo when I was a tyke in Virginia.
In fact, by the time I was done with my work at the SLC Tournament, I missed all but the vapors of the actual rodeo. I did arrive in plenty of time to settle into our seats for the feature performance by John Fogerty. It was a pretty cool way to spend an evening. Thanks, Mike! ...
... finally had a chance to watch the ESPN2 telecast of the championship game. Kudos to analyst Bucky Waters and play by play man Dave Barnett for their work. Barnett was ill and unable to leave the hotel for Friday night's semifinals. In fact, I don't think he met anybody from NSU but you could not tell it on air - his preparation was outstanding, even down to pronunciations.
Waters, whose spotlight on TV was brightest when he was one of NBC's national analysts along with Al Maguire back before CBS took control of the NCAA Tournament, worked hard to prepare and it showed. He joined the Demons on the team bus to attend their Saturday morning practice at Houston Baptist, then had a grilled chicken sandwich as the team stopped at Popeye's Fried Chicken on the way back to the hotel. He sat with Coach Mike McConathy and gathered a lot of material while sharing a ton of stories about his days as a player at North Carolina State and basketball coach at West Virginia and Duke.
His assistant at WVU was Hubie Brown. They were both from the big city - Waters is from Camden, N.J., and Brown is a Big Apple product. They almost landed a huge recruit for the Mountaineers, but failed to LSU's benefit. Pistol Pete Maravich really wanted to play for Waters at WVU, near a lot of family in nearby Western Pennsylvania, but LSU made a very good offer to Press Maravich to become head coach and that swung the decision south. Pete loved the idea of trying to play where Jerry West did collegiately -- you might not remember that West was almost as slick and flashy as it got in those days in the NBA in the late 1960s.
During the Sunday telecast -- the 11th national television appearance for the Demons since 2000 -- Waters repeatedly expressed his admiration for McConathy and for the deep rotation system the Demons have used to tremendous success in nine seasons with Coach Mike ...
... the practice session at Houston Baptist was made possible through Barbara Tolar, wife of the late Demon football All-America and AFL star Charlie Tolar. Barbara works in the HBU athletic department after four decades of helping run the show at Rice. She is a very proud Northwestern graduate, as was Charlie ...
... one of her former colleagues at Rice, Bill Cousins, helped out at the SLC Tournament as moderator for the press conferences after each game. "Cuz" left Rice about the same time Barbara did, when there was a regime change coinciding with the arrival of erstwhile football coach Todd Graham, who promptly left himself to go to Tulsa a year after taking the Rice job. Well, read between the lines there, but there is no question that Houston Baptist has benefitted from Barbara coming on board and having Cousins involved, too. GREAT people -- expect HBU to continue to rise. The Demons visit the Huskies in hoops next December ...
... Speaking of Huskies, I guess that was a Northeastern Huskies logo that some intern in Bristol, Conn., built into graphics for the ESPN2 telecast, in lieu of the Demons' trademark flaming N logo. The "Sports Leader" did not seem so in that respect, especially considering the big splash the Demons made just two years earlier in March Madness -- and the fact that it was the fourth straight ESPN2 telecast in four straight SLC Tournament finals. Credit to Jared Florreich of the SLC media relations staff for noticing the bad logo on a courtside monitor about 75 minutes before tip time Sunday, and letting the local producer know that a change was required. The local crew did get most of the graphics fixed but there were some -- including the university bio graphic -- still displayed using the wrong logo. Arrrrrrrrrgggghhh.
... One reason I was rooting for UTA last night vs. Memphis: Anthony Vereen. The SLC Tournament MVP is a class act. In the moments after the Mavs' 82-79 win over the Demons, after enjoying a celebration with teammates, family and friends, Vereen left that group and went over to the NSU bench, consoling and congratulating NSU players. Sportsmanship is not a thing of the past, and in some cases, it's not acknowledged often enough. Well done, Anthony!
Doug Ireland, SID
Doug Ireland, SID
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