My dad played forward for Drumright, my mom for Indianola, she in that era when half the team played on one end of the court and the other on the other. As if women could only cross certain lines.
So it only made sense that, when they married and moved to Tulsa in the early sixties, they’d buy season tickets to University of Tulsa basketball. (By 1965, they could have bought them to Oral Roberts University, which would have made no sense.) Then, TU was playing under coach Joe Swank. In 1969, Ken Hayes took over and the level of play improved due to the likes of Steve Bracey and Willie Biles, Ken “Grasshopper” Smith and Dana Lewis. (That Lewis began his college career at ORU before transferring across town was icing on the cake.)
The games were played at the Fairgrounds Pavilion, which also hosted rodeo and dressage competition, and livestock events in October. It was a weird place to watch basketball. (And an even weirder one to see a rock show, which is where I found myself during a Nine Inch Nails tour, standing at a urinal, sandwiched by Marilyn Manson and The Enigma, a walking puzzle piece in only a thong.) But, to a pre-teen, the spectacle was outrageous.
My parents liked to arrive early and had seats behind the bench, which they would keep until TU moved into the Reynolds Center. I would go stand in the empty space behind the goal and wait for the players to appear. Some of them wore great floor-length coats, platform shoes (in stark relief of the white Converse they’d soon lace up) and brimmed fedoras with peacock feathers stuck in them. The pep band played renditions of “Light My Fire” and “The Horse.” Cigarette smoke rose foglike into the rafters.
TU was good but the Missouri Valley was better. There was no conference tournament in those days. The March Madness bracket you bungle every year had slots for only 32 teams. Our season ended well before spring break.
The Golden Years
Meanwhile across town, the Oral Roberts Titans were playing lights out. The team that came to the Pavilion to take the first Mayor’s Cup in 1974 would make it as far as the Late Eight that year. I, a pencil-thin point guard, gazed with awe at the likes of Sam McCants, Al Boswell, Greg McDougald, Eddie Woods and Duane Fox, guys I would have idolized had they been Hurricane. Gone were Arnold Dugger and the great Richard Fuqua but, in his place, the arguably greater Anthony Roberts.
Fortunes would change, and dramatically, in 1980, my senior year at Memorial, with the arrival of Nolan Richardson and his fab five, four of them from the Texas junior college that he coached before coming to Tulsa. They opened the season with a home win over previous national champs Louisville. One of the Cardinals, 6’8” Wiley Brown as I remember it, got frustrated and took a swing at our Brown, “Downtown” David Brown, “Sweet D,” number 24. The facts committed to memory in the name of the game.
Watching that Tulsa team play in the Civic Center (now the Convention Center, where nearly twenty years ago they dug up the time capsule of a buried Plymouth) was an affront to the senses. You could more imagine political rallies being held there than you could the “forty minutes of hell” Richardson promised his opponents. It was perhaps more suited to ice hockey. It was totally in tune with the sort of shows then on my radar, and I collected ticket stubs from Styx, The Eagles, Supertramp, Yes (twice) and Head East, at least.
I did see Larry Bird, two years earlier, the season his Sycamores were felled by Magic’s Spartans. From my perch in the nosebleeds, he was little more than a blur of blond.
In spite of the surroundings, Nolan and club dominated at home, losing only to a Georgia Bulldog team that featured “Human Highlight Film” Dominique Wilkins and future Olympian Vern Fleming. He led them on a respectable tour of the conference (playing on the road in the Valley was like walking into the wrong bar on ladies-drink-free night) and thrilled a now-rabid home crowd that for once had something to cheer other than Senior Day. But, Tulsa lost to Creighton in the conference tournament, all but ensuring their omission from the NCAAs.
I’d never heard of the NIT at the time. National Invitation Tournament: Did an envelope appear in the mail, with a requisite RSVP?
TU entered a high seed, which means they got to stay home. Insult to injury, “home” ended up being the “Expect a Miracle” Mabee, presumably because not even the NIT could imagine hosting a tournament in the cinderblock Civic Center. My parents bit their lips and bought tickets.
The Mabee Center was still new then, the cushions firm and the carpets tight. I’d never seen a basketball arena with a catwalk. My dad took me to Howard Auditorium then a fieldhouse to watch the pre-Mabee Titans. Inside, that court had more in common with my high school gym. From the outside, though, it appeared aliens had landed.
Tulsa beat Pan American (now The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley).
Then beat UTEP, the University of Texas at El Paso. Apparently NIT stood for National Invitation Texas.
Then beat South Alabama.
A miracle indeed! Maybe the 900-foot Jesus sighting was real after all. The infamous Praying Hands were across 71st Street then, lording over the entrance to The City of Faith. But on the PA, the unofficial anthem of the Golden Hurricane rang supreme:
Ain’t no stoppin’ us now
We’re on the move.
And we were. My parents rode the wave all the way to Gotham and its legendary Garden. Tulsa edged West Virginia by a bucket, then beat Syracuse another in overtime. In Madison Square Garden, no less! Imagine beating Gordon Ramsay in a cookoff in his own kitchen. The East Coast basketball mafia was in shock. Notre Dame’s Digger Phelps had made demeaning comments about the Tulsa team. (Some TU fan wrote “N.I.T. Wit” on a sign and waved it in front of Phelps and America.)
The same shit would come down the drain in 1994, when Richardson’s Arkansas Razorbacks were written off against the Duke Blue Devils because they didn’t play “as smart,” meaning, “as white.” Richardson blew up at a press conference over the comments. Corliss Williamson scored 23 to lead the Hogs, flipping them all a big “Sooey!”
Tulsa would win another NIT in 2001 under Buzz Peterson, who then went to coach Tennessee. He took the Vols to two NITs, losing both times in the first round. He never did make the NCAAs.
The year before, Bill Self’s last year, we went to the Reynolds Center to watch on the scoreboard screen as the Golden Hurricane came oh so close to beating North Carolina and going to the Final Four. (David Shelton’s Hail Mary barely caught rim. Freshman Dante Swanson had the hot hand and probably should have taken the shot. If and buts, candy and nuts.) Just saying the words — TU … Final Four — made my stomach hurt, the way Vickie Flynn at Waite Phillips put me in knots.
It was all too good to be true. “Self is Gone,” read a headline in the World. It was so poignant, so … elegantly entendre, that Jacob Fred used it for an album title.
The Reynolds Center was about to fall on hard times. Not right away. John Phillips, riding Self’s coattails, took the team to back-to-back NCAA appearances, losing in the second round both times. His dancing days were done. Doug Wojcik followed and still holds the club record for most wins. His 2008 team won the nascent College Basketball Invitational, for teams who made neither the NCAA or the NIT.
“Due to circumstances beyond our control, the CBI will not be held this year,” the CBI announced in a social media post mid-March. “We will see you next year!”
Back To The Future
This year, Tulsa beat New Mexico in the semis of the NIT, playing in the legendary Hinkle Fieldhouse of Hoosiers fame. I watched half of that game at Marshall’s taphouse with other Hurricane hopeful before going home to cook dinner. Then Auburn pounded Illinois State — a team that gave TU fits in the Richardson era — setting up Sunday. Easter Sunday, no less.
The party had moved to Elgin Park. We found a couple of stools with a view of one of the, oh, hundred TVs in the place. On the screen above, I watched the Tigers tear us a new one, taking a 20-point lead in less than a half. I began consoling myself with sips of IPA. “Ride the Pine,” which is the story of my basketball career. Beat an SEC team? What was I thinking? I was thinking of 1981.
TU turned it around about midway through the second half. It was a team effort, I’m not just saying that, but David Green came unwound. Auburn couldn’t guard him. He was a kite with too much string let out. Other players made other plays, Barnstable, Popoola, Behrend. These will now and forever be the spirits that haunt. Charles Barkley, on the bench, began to rub his head, trying to get the genie back in the bottle.
Turns out, he was a good luck charm. With eight and some seconds to go and a three-point lead, TU failed to get the ball inbounds in the requisite five seconds. An Auburn three-pointer followed and we were in overtime. I went to pee, knowing all hope was lost. The cat was out of the bag. Auburn rode a second wind, and nothing could save us, not the little kid dressed as Hulk Hogan bringing his Tulsamania, not our beloved three-point barrage, not even the 6’3” Tylen Riley dunking over the 6’8” Elyjah Freeman in a way that will wake him in his sleep for years to come.
Now what. I don’t see Head Coach Eric Konkol making it to year five. There are only three seniors on this team but who knows who’ll return? With the revolving door of the portal and the gravy train of college coaching, the old college try only goes so far. “He’s so positive and upbeat,” Green told KOTV of Konkol. “There’s no doubt he’s going to have success.” As if he’d already expected it to be elsewhere.
Of course we’ll be here. Not in Brooklyn, not in Seattle. Nowhere, as in the middle of. I ran into my kid, a TU freshman, walking to his car. The lights of Archer were growing dim. “We never win,” he said. I patted him on the back. They won 30 times, and they won the NIT twice, but I knew what he meant. He’d entered the Neverland that comes in the aftermath of the near-miss. We all have an Uncle Rico, dreaming of state.
And at least one of us had a test the next morning.
