Shot Of Lemons To Cure The Blues

At the Longhorn Hall of Honor dinner, Lemons was introduced as "the man who's gonna turn us around." Abe started off with some commiserating humor about the physical wounds suffered by the Texas football team this year. Then he told about the night he asked a basketball official, "Is it a technical if I go on the court and punch my player in the nose?" He said the official replied, "If I was you, I'd lure him over to the sideline. But I'd sure do something to him."

Abe said college players had changed since he started coaching. "It's got to where now if you say hello to a player he's liable to show up the next day in your office with his feet on your desk. He's 19 years old and he says, 'Coach, I'm not happy.' I wave my hand at him like it's magic and say, 'Happiness to you.' This kid grew up on Walt Disney. He's looking for a shortcut. Sometimes it'll happen that a kid'll want to know why you're not playing him, and you'll have to say, 'Well, the truth is I don't like you, don't like your parents, don't like your hometown, thought I did but I don't.' "

After the banquet Royal was laughing about some of the things Abe had said. "I think Abe will bring us a winner," Darrell said. "Also he's the kind of person who can fill up those 17,000 basketball seats."

Lemons took a pay cut to move to Austin, but he smoothed that with a TV show that he hustled for himself. On the show he may be seen in an orange leisure suit and white necktie in a chair before a backdrop that says ABE in orange lights inside a circle of white lights. The show includes films and comment and an interview on the order of Lemons and USC Coach Bob Boyd discussing the way recruiting is conducted.

And Abe might tell about the time his player, James Washington, got a tooth knocked out in a game at Las Vegas. Abe ran onto the floor and picked up the tooth—first time he had seen a whole tooth, he said—and took it to the scorers' table and said, "Hey, some places this would be a foul." A dentist jumped down from the stands and said he could save Washington's tooth with immediate action at his office. As Abe tells it, the assistant coach replied, "We need him."

"Well, what it really means is it's tough to survive in the coaching business," Lemons says. "They call some guys great coaches who are great at scheduling and cheating. I'm no policeman, but I'm not going to let a hypocrite beat me if I can help it."

At 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 29, the public address announcer at Gregory Gym identified Abe Lemons to the crowd of 5,000 as the new basketball coach at Texas. Up in the stands, Darrell and Edith Royal clapped. In the opening minutes, Abe looked reluctant to watch the game, which was against Oklahoma State, but by the second half he was agitated and yelling amidst the cheering students and the boom and slish-slosh of the action.

Texas led early, lost the lead toward the end, tied the score in the final seconds and won 74-73 in overtime. Hoarse and trembling, Abe trooped upstairs with the players to their tiny dressing room. Royal came in and shook his hand. "I didn't know what to expect," Abe gasped. "Looking back, I guess they had to play better than I thought they would."

Well into the season, with a 4-5 record, most of the games close and two decided in overtime, Abe began to speak as if he were selling seats in the Super Drum. "We're our own worst enemy in the Southwest Conference," he said. "We keep telling people we're not as bad as they think. We act defensive. But those Eastern teams won't play 100 miles from home. If they'd play down here on a regular basis, you'd find they're not all that good. Sutton over at Arkansas says he's got 13 major-college prospects on his roster. Not many schools in the country can make that claim."

There has begun to be a hum in the Super Drum.