By the time the leftover turkey in your household is gone, the buzz surrounding the Ducks’ biggest non-conference challenge should be boiling over.
The Oregon men’s basketball team plays Kansas State next Thursday in one of its biggest tests of the 2007-08 season.
You’ll come back to school and read about Oregon’s perennially weak non-conference schedule. USC and Arizona decided to actually challenge themselves before the daunting Pacific-10 Conference season begins, scheduling games against Memphis and Kansas.
The Ducks, meanwhile, decided they’d play a San Francisco team that could actually improve at the center position by adding Bill Russell, a Malik and Tajuan-less Oakland and – gulp – Mount St. Mary’s, a school where bishops, archbishops and priests cut their teeth and basketball players participate in the illustrious Northeast Conference.
Next week, you’ll see 6-foot-10, 235-pound freshman Michael Beasley, a prepackaged NBA lottery pick whose human-highlight-reel athleticism alone makes him a hot commodity in next year’s draft. He’s terrorizing defenders to the tune of 30 points a game.
Keep your eyes on another McDonald’s All-American, Bill Walker. Walker played in six games last season before rupturing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Now, he’s back and probably as hungry as ever.
It will be big game for Oregon coach Ernie Kent, and a good challenge for K-State coach Frank Martin.
Unfortunately, you won’t hear a thing about another coach: Fred “Tex” Winter.
Apparently, Winter’s achievements are too old, his roles too insignificant, for a spot in the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.
Sixty years of coaching, two Final Four appearances, and nine NBA titles later, Winter’s name remains absent from the most important list.
That makes me wonder just how important a list it actually is.
In fact, Winter’s been passed over each of the six times he was nominated for induction.
And before he helped guide the Bulls and Lakers to nine collective titles as Phil Jackson’s assistant, Winter was a coach at, among other places, KSU.
During his 15 years as the Wildcats’ head coach, Winter pushed his teams to eight Big Eight Conference titles, piecing together squads that played hard and smart while molding his athletes into both successful basketball players and good men. He led the team to two Final Fours and, in 1958, he earned Coach of the Years honors.
Winter’s 262 wins, the second most in school history, include victories over Wilt Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson. Every victory he’s earned at every school and pro team he’s coach at is a testament to the power of his system.
And behind all of it, is a simple, humble man who deserves to be a Hall of Famer.
Kansas State University and the state of Kansas know he should be. They found him special enough to honor him with awards.
In 1998, the Hall of Fame’s Board of Trustees gave Winter the John Bunn Award, which they say is second only to actually making it into the Hall.
The award may have been a decent consolation prize midway through Winter’s career, but after so many years of coaching, he deserves a spot in what we understand to be basketball’s most hallowed grounds.
Winter, now in his 80s, should have never had to wonder if he’d be tabbed as a basketball great.
And though his name may not be recognized formally in Springfield it doesn’t mean it’s forgettable.
Let’s not forget.
After all, Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks – hey, mom and dad had to cook the meal after all, right?
So today, I give thanks for big games like Thursday’s, and to the man who’s been involved in hundreds of them without much recognition at all.
Thank you, Tex.
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