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A savant shares Hamilton, Self stories
Posted: Friday March 24, 2000 02:32 PM
By Alexander Wolff, Sports Illustrated AUSTIN -- You know you're in Austin when the sign at the shoeshine stand in the airport concourse reads SHOES $4, BOOTS $6, and honky-tonks and live oaks sit haunch-by-paunch on downtown city blocks. And you know you're in the midst of March Madness when an out-of-work-but-looking coach from Minneapolis parachutes in on short notice for a game, as Mike McCollow did yesterday. McCollow has a particular interest in the first of Friday's semifinals in the South Region, which will feature Miami, coached by Leonard Hamilton, and Tulsa, coached by Bill Self. Fourteen years ago, shortly after landing his first head coaching job, at Oklahoma State, Hamilton hired Self as his assistant. A year later, McCollow joined the Cowboys staff as an aide to both. McCollow would go on to push a clipboard at North Texas, in the CBA, even in the badlands of Poland, before returning to his home in the Twin Cities. Nobody has a more illuminating perspective on these two teams -- which have virtually identical nicknames and styles of play -- and the coaches who guide them. So I schlepped out to McCollow's hotel and, in front of the big screen TV in the bar, took in last night's games and doped out tonight's. "Nice Mummenschanz look," McCollow said in greeting me. This was a snarky reference to the mock Calipari pullovers that I, along with the rest of SI's college baskets brain trust, had been photographed wearing in a studio shot for our tournament preview issue. (Those who trusted in our brains for their office pools lost a substantial amount of money -- reason enough to detest us even if we didn't look like mimes, who are a widely detested class of people in their own right.) Soon Mike was sharing Leonard and Bill stories, the best of which took place during the 1986-87 season. That's when, after Hamilton had already picked up two technicals in a game against Missouri, Self leaped up to object to a call. The referee whistled another T, the third on the OSU bench, which meant that Hamilton was gone for the evening. Self expected his desk to be out in the hallway when he returned to work the next day. It wasn't, of course. Self went on to become a head coach, first at Oral Roberts, then across town with the Hurricane, which won more games this season than any team in the land. Hamilton made his way to Coral Gables, where the Hurricanes have broken through to join the Big East's elite for the past two seasons. Nebraska is said to be after Self to fill its vacancy; Georgia Tech is reportedly sniffing around Hamilton. Tulsa and Miami, it hardly needs be said, are keen to keep both. "The thing about Leonard is, his players absolutely love him," McCollow told me. "And Bill, when Leonard called him to see if he was interested in the Oklahoma State assistant's job, he showed up at Coach Ham's house at 7 a.m." The jukebox in the bar began to play Layla, the old Derek and the Dominoes song, and that got McCollow telling another story about a former boss, Tim Jankovich , for whom he worked at North Texas: "Tim plays a mean guitar, and when he was an assistant at Baylor, he thought it would have been great to have their marketing department adapt the song. Imagine it: The Bears taking the floor and the p.a. blaring, "Bay-la . . . ya got me on my knees . . .?" What a wasted opportunity. With Jankovich now an assistant at Vanderbilt, the best we can hope for at Memorial Gym, I suppose, is something by the Commodores. Several Corona Extras later, CBS cut from Purdue vs. Gonzaga to one of those exasperating "look-ins" that tease but never satisfy. It was early in the second half of the Michigan State-Syracuse game. Morris Peterson threw in a three that left the Spartans still trailing the Orange by eight. Even so, McCollow picked up my notebook and wrote, "MSU will win." By this he meant not only the game at hand, but the entire tourney. The first came to pass; that the other will, too, I was more firmly convinced than ever. Here at least was a brain you could trust. Alexander Wolff is a Sports Illustrated senior writer. The opinions expressed
here are solely those of the writer.
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