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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2008 > March
March 2008
LeBron As King Kong — All Wrong!
You know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words?
Well, sometimes a picture is just a picture.
As for Orlando Sentinel and ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill and radio talkmeister Screamin’ Stephen A. Smith, I think you two are seeing something that’s not there.
Then again, contrived controversy does get you noticed on the blogosphere and bump those on-air ratings. Or, is there something else going on here all together — some kind of jealousy by one P.O.’d black woman — as Skip Bayless, another over-blown, look-at-me talk show type, suggested to Hill.
The point of contention is the April cover of the fashion magazine, Vogue. It’s the Shape Issue: “Secrets of the Best Bodies” and it features Cleveland Cavs superstar LeBron James and supermodel Gisele Bundchen.
James — dressed in black workout gear and letting loose with that same mouth-open scream you’ve see him do so many times after a rim-bending dunk — is dribbling a basketball with his right hand and has his left arm draped loosely around the waist of the smiling Bundchen, who’s wearing a slinky, form-fitting green dress.
Hill called the cover “distasteful” and compared the image — shot by the much-acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz — to that of King Kong imposing his will on Faye Wray.
“Maybe the point was to show the contrast between brawn and beauty, masculinity versus femininity, strength versus grace,” Hill wrote. “But Vogue’s quest to highlight the differences between superstar athletes and supermodels only successfully reinforces the animalistic stereotypes frequently associated with black athletes.
“A black athlete being reduced to a savage is, sadly, nothing new. But this cover gave you the double-bonus of having LeBron and Gisele strike poses that others in the blogosphere have noted draw a striking resemblance to the racially charged image of King Kong enveloping his very fair-skinned lady love interest.”
I think this is a racist take by Hill herself — painting James as some big ape — but she found support from Dr. John Hoberman, a University of Texas professor and author of the controversial book “Darwin’s Athletes: How Sports Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race.”
“It’s a great, great issue that Vogue has made trivial,” Hoberman told Hill. “It’s exploitative. It’s going for the primitive, racial emotion as opposed to something tasteful and edifying.”
And Smith parroted some of those thoughts and more on his daily radio show Friday.
Maybe I’m a Neanderthal or simply naive — and I do realize that Hill as a young black woman and myself, a white Baby Boomer, probably see things differently — but I didn’t have the same initial thoughts she did when I first saw the cover.
This was before the firestorm hit, and to me it seemed pretty natural for a Shape Issue that both would be wearing the clothes they wear on the job.
James is a super-amped, in-your-face athlete and that’s how he looked. He doesn’t seem to be holding Bundchen against her will. In fact, she’s smiling as if she’s having a good time.
That’s what prompted Bayless to ask Hill on air whether she was bent out of shape because LeBron was on the cover with a white woman.
Hill denied that — said something like that could not be further from the truth. But you can’t deny that some black women — like some white men — have the same adverse reaction when they see a black man and white woman arm-in arm.
Now if you want to grill the folks at Vogue on why they haven’t had more black women on the cover of their magazine — something like three in 114 years — I’m all for that.
But to think that James was duped here — or to paint him, as Hill does, as a guy who is uneducated on the plight of blacks — is unfair and biased in its own assumptions. Few athletes control their image or associations more than he does .
He told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he was pleased with the cover: “Absolutely. It was good.”
As for the controversy, he slapped it aside the way he does a lazy lay-up by an under-sized, opposing guard:
“Everything my name is on is going to be criticized in a good way or a bad way. …Who cares what anybody says.”
The way I see it, things could have been worse.
He could have been in pinstripes and wearing a Yankees cap.
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Who Will Replace Brian Roberts?
COLUMBUS — For all the promise that next basketball season may have for the Dayton Flyers — a healthy Chris Wright, the continuing emergence of Marcus Johnson, who’s edge and athleticism, I think, will make him a real star, hopefully a bulked up Devin Searcy that could give more of a much-needed inside presence, and maybe even some help with the addition of Dunbar’s Josh Benson — one huge question looms:
How do the Flyers replace senior guard Brian Roberts?
Who’s going to be that steadying force? The guy to hit the big shot when the game’s on the line? The guy most other teams can’t stop unless they throw two or three players at a time at him?
Wednesday night — when the Flyers season ended with a 74-63 loss to Ohio State in an NIT quarter-final game at sold-out Value City Arena — Roberts was UD’s only game-long counter puncher.
“He did a hell of a job all game long,” Flyers coach Brian Gregory said. “He played 36 minutes and never had a turnover.”
Roberts finished with 20 points, including 4 for 9 shooting from three-point range. Those treys made him the school’s all-time leader with 293 three-pointers, two more than Tony Stanley.
Roberts also passed Jim Paxson Jr. and moved into fourth place among Dayton’s all-time scorers with 1,962 points, just six behind third-place Henry Finkel.
When Wright was hurt this year, Roberts often carried the team. Sure there were spans of a few games — especially late in the season — where he seemed to zone out for a little bit, but you try carrying a team an entire year. There had to be some weariness, physically and mentally. And when he was double and triple teamed, he needed other Flyers to step up. Sometimes they did, many times they did not.
So with Roberts gone — and guard Andres Sandoval graduating, too — the Flyers have error-apparent London Warren, back-up transfer Mickey Perry, rarely-used freshman Stephen Thomas and the incoming Paul Williams from Detroit.
There’s also been talk that the Flyers have been looking at a junior college guard in Kansas. They have no available scholarships left, but it seems as if they’re trying to get rid of Brazilian transfer Thiago Cordeiro.
Wednesday night was the sixth game in a row he didn’t get off the bench. And in the past two months — except for 19 minutes against Duquesne — he’s averaged less than three minutes a game when he did play.
Last year — for different reasons — Desmond Adedeji got the same freeze out until he moved on. I’m not sure that’s what’s happening here — if it is, and it happens everywhere, this is one side of the game I don’t like — but Cordeiro’s departure would open a spot for a more seasoned guard.
Still it’s hard to imagine any of these guys replacing Roberts.
After Wednesday’s game, UD coach Brian Gregory sang the praises of his senior:
“Those will be some pretty big shoes to fill…. (Without him) we’ll be a different team next year. …There’s not gonna be a lot of Brian Robertses coming down the pike. You don’t just take someone and plug him into Brian’s position.
“In a coach’s career, if you get three or four special guys. you’ve got to consider yourself lucky. I worked (as a Michigan State assistant) with Mateen Cleaves, Eric Snow, Jason Richardson and Andre Hutson. They’re special guys, as well as special people.
“Now I’ve gotten to coach Brian Roberts and he’s the same. He’ll go down as one of the greatest players of all time in the program’s rich basketball history…He’s a unique player because of his ability to score off the dribble and off the pass. He doesn’t have to dominate the ball in order to dominate the game. Not many players can do that.”
For all that promise to pay off next season, the Flyers need to find a guard who can do that at least some of the time.
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A Buzz Around Flyers Basketball Again
NORMAL, Ill. — All of a sudden the Dayton Flyers postseason is relevant again. There’s an excitement to it. A buzz. A reason to watch.
When UD missed the NCAA Tournament and fell into the NIT, that bid elicited yawns from a lot of folks. Ticket snafu or not, there were fewer people at UD Arena for the Flyers’ NIT opener against Cleveland State than there were the night before for the NCAA Tournament’s play-in game featuring two little-known teams from Maryland, neither with any Dayton connection.
As for the Flyers’ second-round game at Illinois State, nearly everybody from the Vegas bookmakers to the basketball junkies figured UD would lose. Illinois State was 16-1 at home this season. The Flyers were 7-point underdogs. A lot of folks thought the UD season would end on a whimper far from home
Instead Dayton pushed aside the Redbirds, 55-48, and in the process shut down Osiris Eldridge, he of the Mohawk dubbed O-Hawk hairdo, the first-team all-Missouri Valley Conference honors and Monday’s 4-for-20 effort from the field (he missed 13 of his first 14 shots) for 10 points, six below his average.
Meanwhile, it’s back to the good old times for the Flyers. Monday night they drubbed a quality opponent. Injured freshman sensation Chris Wright — out since Jan. 9 with a broken bone in his right foot — returned and gave flashes of his early-season brilliance.
The Flyers play Ohio State on Wednesday and the winner advances to the NIT’s version of the Final Four at fabled Madison Square Garden. UD not only has a glorious history there, but New York City would offer a bit of a national showcase that almost all thought had been lost for this season.
Last Wednesday I posted a “Through the Arch” blog that suggested — regardless of what so many of those folks in the know were claiming — that Wright may very well play against Illinois State.
I had stumbled into a closed workout at UD Arena — just Wright and assistant coach Anthony Solomon — and watched the freshman cut hard backward and forward, side to side, time after time after time. When told what I’d seen, a UD administrator admitted that Wright might play Monday night.
After that blog, I got several e-mails and calls debating the sanity of such a move. A lot of people thought UD should shut Wright down for the season. That a rush back to the court now could risk even worse injury and jeopardize a young career, not to mention next season as well.
I wondered about some of that, too, but Monday night I saw and heard differently.
Wright showed some of his old hops — swatting two shots, skying high for a few rebounds, even leading a fast break once. He defended well, gave UD a burst of energy like it hasn’t seen lately and finished with nine points in 10 minutes of play.
“Why not play tonight?” Wright’s uncle, J.D. Grigsby, and a former Flyer himself, asked Monday night. “Whenever he was going to play, he still was going to have to take that first step on the court, and they say he’s not at any more of a risk now than he would be next season.”
Ernestine Grigsby, Chris’ mom, said her son needed to play “for the mental side of it. He needed that reassurance in his mind. It was in his heart and he had to have it set in his mind, too.”
Maybe that’s why afterward Wright said “it felt like Christmas time out there on the court. This is what I’ve dreamed about, what I’ve lived for my whole life — to play in the postseason.”
UD coach Brian Gregory was like a proud father. After Wright finished talking at a post-game press conference and senior leader Brian Roberts began to address the media crowd, a glowing Gregory turned to Wright and quietly patted him on the back.
Gregory said his team is better with Wright on the floor. He talked about the pure burst of energy he brings, the physical gifts and the toughness. Plus the more minutes he plays, the more other starters can catch a breather, he said: “We were a lot fresher team in the second half.”
Roberts summed it up best when he said: “Chris is going to get better and better and now we are going to get better.”
With Wright back on the floor, Ohio State on the horizon and Madison Square Garden awaiting after that, the Flyers’ postseason is relevant.
Suddenly there’s a buzz around Flyers basketball again.
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Chris Wright’s Spirited Session
Chris Wright was moving forward and backward, then side to side in a spirited half-court workout with Dayton Flyers assistant coach Anthony Solomon some two hours before UD met Cleveland State in an opening round game of the NIT Wednesday night at UD Arena.
The Arena was nearly deserted — only Solomon and Wright were on the court — but it was an encouraging sign for the injured freshman stand-out, his team and Flyers fans everywhere.
Although some UD insiders have said the 6-foot-8 forward is done for the season, he may actually be close to returning to the court. In fact, before the game one UD administrator said he wouldn’t be surprised to see Wright get a little bit of playing time in the next game should the Flyers get by Cleveland State.
First though he needs to work out with the full team. He hasn’t fully practiced with the Flyers — much less played — since he fractured a bone in his right ankle during a Jan 9 game with Rhode Island. Previously he’d missed the Flyers Dec. 22 game against Loyola with a foot injury.
Wednesday night he participated in lay-up drills and stretched on the court before the game and at halftime.
During the earlier session with Solomon, he appeared to move pretty well.
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Blown Off the Charts by March Madness
More than just a reward for the players, coaches and fans, there’s an even weightier benefit for the school itself when a college’s basketball team makes a splash in the NCAA Tournament.
Just ask Tom O’Connor. Few people know the merits of March Madness as well as he does.
He’s not just the Chairman of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship Committee, he’s also the athletics director at George Mason University, the Fairfax, Va. school that much of America fell in love with two years ago when it made its Cinderella run from mid-major obscurity to Final Four fame.
“It’s just been phenomenal,” he said Tuesday night as he watched Mount St. Mary’s top Coppin State, 69-60, in the Opening Round game of the NCAA Tournament at UD Arena. “The amount of money we’ve gotten from media buys has just blown everything we knew off the charts.
“I don’t have the numbers right in front of me, but its something like $644 million.”
Actually, according to an item in USA Today, George Mason got $667 million in national, regional and local broadcast money. Admission inquiries also went up 350 percent, out-of-state applications surged 40 percent and alumni donations went up 25 percent.
In one year, basketball ticket sales doubled.
“The numbers have been unbelievable,” said O’Connor. “But the biggest thing is that it really builds a sense of community for your school.”
So it’s no wonder schools put so much emphasis on making the NCAA Tournament.
Of course, that can lead to abuses. The Ann Arbor News reported this week that athletes at the University of Michigan are often “dumped” into easy majors or take independent study courses with certain professors to whom many athletes gravitate.
That happens at many schools.
Remember Andy Katzenmoyer, an All-America linebacker for the Ohio State Buckeyes a decade ago? He stayed eligible by taking summer classes in music, golf and another course entitled “AIDS: What Every College Student Should Know.”
Here’s another thing every college student knows.
When March Madness sweeps over your school, there’s nothing like it — on the court or in the college coffers.
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A Choke, A Crotch, A Punk
When it comes to March Madness, everyone embraces the Cinderella stories. But if you remember that classic fairy tale, you know the glass-slipper girl also had some ugly stepsisters.
We’re now two weeks into March Madness. The Ohio High School basketball tournaments — both the girls and the boys — are done, as are the college conference tournaments.
Here are some of the ugly stepsisters I’ve seen or heard about at games I’ve been to already this month:
— There was one of the best-known prep coaches in the Miami Valley grabbing his throat in self-throttling fashion and yelling at a kid on the opposing team as he walked past on his way to attempt a pair of late-game free throws:
“Choke, you Son of a Bitch!!!”
— There was an Alter High guard — after his team had just lost the hard-fought regional final to Graham — acting like a real punk when he ran up to one of the game’s referees and clapped mockingly in the official’s face the whole way across the court as the ref headed to the dressing room.
— There was the University of Dayton backup player who took the pregame banter between his Flyers team and the Xavier players to the extreme before their Atlantic 10 tournament game in Atlantic City, Thursday.
As both teams went through their drills amidst some spirited, back-and-forth chatter, the UD reserve was near the middle floor when he turned to face the Muskies and — in front of the Boardwalk Hall crowd — grabbed his crotch and taunted Xavier.
— And Saturday night at the Division I state title game at Value City Arena — just as they had done in their semifinal game there Thursday night — students in Lakewood St. Edward’s cheering section repeatedly used vile and vulgar language in their full-throated chants aimed at the opposing team.
By halftime Saturday night, St. Ed principal Eugene Boyer had had just about enough of the embarrassing behavior and he took a seat in the front of his students’ section to try to put a stop to it.
Ironically, that was about the only distasteful incident from either the boys’ or girls’ state tournament games in Columbus the past two weeks. For the most part, the place was a bastion of good sportsmanship.
Before each tournament game this year, the Ohio High School Athletic Association had a star player from each team appear on the jumbo video screen overhead with a message for everyone — players, coaches and fans — at the game.
Senior point guard Tony Meyer appeared on the screen for New Knoxville before the Rangers met Worthington Christian for the Division IV crown, Saturday.
Meyer told the crowd: “Please remember sportsmanship is everyone’s responsibility.” He then reminded those at the game: “Speak with courtesy. Act with dignity. Play with pride.”
New Knoxville and Worthington Christian — as did most teams — did just that.
As for the ugly stepsisters, maybe there is such a thing as karma.
The four examples I gave of rude players, fans and a coach — each of their teams lost.
In Defense of Stanley Burrell
The only air ball I thought Xavier threw up at Thursday’s Atlantic 10 Tournament — where it sent the Dayton Flyers packing with a 74-65 victory — came in the post-game interview session.
That’s where X coach Sean Miller and his outspoken senior, Stanley Burrell, clarified — and more or less apologized — for some of Burrell’s pointed criticisms of the league for voting no Musketeer players to the A-10 first team.
I wish they wouldn’t have said a thing.
Except for calling a couple of rival players out by name, I think Burrell was right on the money. Xavier is 27-5, one of the best ball clubs in the nation. It truly plays as a team and it is led by Drew Lavender.
The 5-foot-7 senior belonged on the first team.
Miller emphasized Burrell’s respect for other players in the league and Burrell said he regretted calling out a couple of league honorees by name.
I think he was sincere about that.
As for Dayton folks thinking he’s dissed Brian Roberts, I think that’s mostly a tiff manufactured by some. I think his comments have been twisted to mean more than they actually did.
After Burrell left the postgame media session, he and I talked in private. I believe he was sincere when he commended Roberts. I also watched when the game ended. He sought Roberts out and embraced him for a long time.
As for the rest of his public mea culpas, I think he was “encouraged” to do that by those above him in the program.
Away from the cameras, he stuck to his guns and said he thought it was “kind of ridiculous” that Xavier didn’t get “at least one guy on the first team.”
“Being a leader of the team, I had to stand up for my guys,” he said. “If I came into the locker room and hadn’t said anything, that makes me a terrible leader.”
I think he’s a fiery leader and, for the most part, I think he was dead on in his criticism.
As for the Flyers fans who have made him Public Enemy No. 1 — especially some students who rode him throughout Thursday’s game with “Just shut-up, no one wants to hear you!” — I think they’re off base.
UD Flyers: A Bunch of Shaqs at the Line
Funny that a basketball program that has so much could be missing one such crucial thing.
The Dayton Flyers have a state-of-the-art facility in the Donoher Center. They have a strength and conditioning coach, a battery of enthusiastic assistant coaches and a workaholic head coach in Brian Gregory.
Except for maybe six weeks of the year, the players are around the UD campus honing their game in open-gym sessions, Cincinnati summer leagues, preseason conditioning drills.
And still they shoot free throws like Shaq.
They entered the Atlantic 10 Tournament here in Atlantic City as the league’s worst free throw shooting team. After the 29-game regular season, they were making an embarrassing 63.9 percent of their charity tosses.
In their tournament opener here Wednesday, they were even worse.
They shot 33.3 percent. They made 4 of 12 attempts and it nearly cost them the game against lowly St. Louis, whom they squeaked by in overtime, 63-62.
Shoot that pathetically from the line again Thursday against Xavier and they’ll be run out of the gym and likely knocked out of NCAA Tournament contention.
If I’d have been UD this season, I’d have had some kind of free throw guru working with these guys, specifically Charles Little, Kurt Huelsman, Andres Sandoval, London Warren, Thiago Cordeiro and Mickey Perry, none of whom shoot better than 58 percent.
Bring in somebody like Tom Amberry, the 85-year-old California guy who just 15 years ago made 2,750 consecutive free throws, then a Guinness world record.
In his book, “Free Throw: 7 Steps to Success at the Free Throw Line,” he tells about specific keys to the shot that he ultimately believes come down to concentration and focus.
On the other hand, Dallas Mavericks assistant coach Gary Boren, a banker who also serves as the only free-throw shooting coach in the NBA, believes free throw success isn’t so much cerebral as it is mechanical.
I heard him in a TV interview talking about how it’s a “coachable skill” and relates directly to how much time a coaching staff puts into it.
Under his guidance, the Mavericks have finished no lower than sixth in the NBA in his nine seasons as coach.
The Flyers aren’t alone in their free throw woes. Memphis, one of the best teams in college basketball this year, makes less than 60 percent of its free throws. UConn won the NCAA Tournament four years ago even though it made less than 65 percent of its free throws.
Last Sunday — as I watched Graham High edge Alter in overtime in the Division II regional final at the Nutter Center — I couldn’t help thinking about the futility of the Flyers at the line.
Graham made all eight of its overtime free throw attempts and 19 of its 20 free throws in the second half. Alter was nearly as deadly percentage-wise from the line.
Afterward, Graham coach Brook Cupps said his team’s success at the foul line all came down to mental toughness. Being able to shut everything else out and do what you have to do.
So maybe the Flyers aren’t mentally tough.
Maybe they have poor mechanics.
Maybe they have no focus.
Whatever it is, they’re lousy at the line.
Surgery for Charlie Coles
Miami University basketball coach Charlie Coles underwent a surgical procedure on his heart Tuesday evening, March 11, at Mercy Hospital Fairfield.
“I’ve heard from people there that everything went as expected,” said Miami athletics director Brad Bates.
The night before the surgery, the RedHawks basketball team — which will be coached by long-time Miami assistant Jermaine Henderson when it meets Buffalo tonight, March 12, in the first round of the Mid-American Conference Tournament in Cleveland — visited Coles at the hospital.
“Charlie got a little choked up when he saw us, but I think it was good for him and for us, too,” Henderson said by phone from Cleveland. “It was great to see him. He means so much to everyone of us. He’s just beloved by everybody who comes in contact with him.”
The 66-year-old Coles — who took a medical leave of absence earlier this month — missed the final three game of the regular season and was not scheduled to be on the bench for the MAC Tournament either.
Coles hadn’t been feeling well the past month. Stomach pains prompted a battery of tests to be run as a precaution. As for Tuesday’s surgery, neither the hospital, the university nor Coles family has released details of the extent of the procedure.
During his 17 seasons as a MAC head coach, he has suffered two heart attacks. The first one was in 1985 when he was at Central Michigan.
The other one came when he was coaching Miami to a victory in the MAC Tournament quarter-finals at Western Michigan University. That time he was revived on the court. Although he remained in the hospital after that, his team battled its way into the MAC title game before losing.
With a defibrillator installed, he was back with the team the following year and guided the RedHawks to a 24-8 record and Sweet Sixteen berth in the NCAA Tournament.
His past three teams have all earned post-season bids, as well. Last year’s team won the MAC Tournament on Doug Penno’s buzzer-beating three-point shot and then lost to Oregon by two points in its NCAA Tournament opener.
“I’ve felt just a multitude of emotions through all this,” said Henderson, who played for Coles and has been on the RedHawks staff for 11 seasons, the past three as Miami’s associate head coach.
“I know this is what Charlie’s been building me up for, but I’m not Charlie. The kids, though, they seem to accept my voice and that has made it a little easier. This bunch has responded just as well as those players did back in 1998.”
Bates said he was especially proud of the team for visiting Coles before it headed to Cleveland: “Its a class bunch, but then Charlie brings that out of people.”
Henderson said once the emotions calmed the other night, Coles was his old self:
“He told our guys, ‘Look, I don’t want to stand in the way of what you’re doing.’..Typical Charlie. He told them just to go up there, take it one possession at a time and knock off Buffalo.
“And right now we figure that’s the best thing we can do for him. The guys want to play the way he expects them to play and make him proud of all of us.
“That’s the best medicine we can give him.”
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Surgery for Charlie Coles
Miami University basketball coach Charlie Coles underwent a surgical procedure on his heart Tuesday evening, March 11, at Mercy Hospital Fairfield.
“I’ve heard from people there that everything went as expected,” said Miami athletics director Brad Bates.
The night before the surgery, the RedHawks basketball team — which will be coached by long-time Miami assistant Jermaine Henderson when it meets Buffalo tonight, March 12, in the first round of the Mid-American Conference Tournament in Cleveland — visited Coles at the hospital.
“Charlie got a little choked up when he saw us, but I think it was good for him and for us, too,” Henderson said by phone from Cleveland. “It was great to see him. He means so much to everyone of us. He’s just beloved by everybody who comes in contact with him.”
The 66-year-old Coles — who took a medical leave of absence earlier this month — missed the final three game of the regular season and was not scheduled to be on the bench for the MAC Tournament either.
Coles hadn’t been feeling well the past month. Stomach pains prompted a battery of tests to be run as a precaution. As for Tuesday’s surgery, neither the hospital, the university nor Coles family has released details of the extent of the procedure.
During his 17 seasons as a MAC head coach, he has suffered two heart attacks. The first one was in 1985 when he was at Central Michigan.
The other one came when he was coaching Miami to a victory in the MAC Tournament quarter-finals at Western Michigan University. That time he was revived on the court. Although he remained in the hospital after that, his team battled its way into the MAC title game before losing.
With a defibrillator installed, he was back with the team the following year and guided the RedHawks to a 24-8 record and Sweet Sixteen berth in the NCAA Tournament.
His past three teams have all earned post-season bids, as well. Last year’s team won the MAC Tournament on Doug Penno’s buzzer-beating three-point shot and then lost to Oregon by two points in its NCAA Tournament opener.
“I’ve felt just a multitude of emotions through all this,” said Henderson, who played for Coles and has been on the RedHawks staff for 11 seasons, the past three as Miami’s associate head coach.
“I know this is what Charlie’s been building me up for, but I’m not Charlie. The kids, though, they seem to accept my voice and that has made it a little easier. This bunch has responded just as well as those players did back in 1998.”
Bates said he was especially proud of the team for visiting Coles before it headed to Cleveland: “Its a class bunch, but then Charlie brings that out of people.”
Henderson said once the emotions calmed the other night, Coles was his old self:
“He told our guys, ‘Look, I don’t want to stand in the way of what you’re doing.’..Typical Charlie. He told them just to go up there, take it one possession at a time and knock off Buffalo.
“And right now we figure that’s the best thing we can do for him. The guys want to play the way he expects them to play and make him proud of all of us.
“That’s the best medicine we can give him.”
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White knuckles … and an Asian massage
By TOM ARCHDEACON
INDIANAPOLIS — I saw a car that had run into the back of a fire truck. A couple of miles further there was a delivery truck that had taken out two cars and a big chunk of guard rail.
Then there’s the guy on a bicycle who I watched wipe out into a stop sign.
And that’s before I left Dayton early this afternoon for Indianapolis and tonight’s Horizon League tournament quarterfinal game between Wright State and Valparaiso.
As white-knuckle rides go, this one was a little skitterish the first half of the trip. I saw a Jeep Cherokee crashed into that new airplane-embossed wall that flanks the sweeping ramp that takes you onto Interstate 70 from I-75.
Near Brookville there were a couple of cars skidded into the median and at Exit 149A in Richmond, a Hogan semi was jack-knifed across the road.
As I waited in the stopped traffic, I looked through the blowing snow at a big golden billboard that trumpeted Sunshine Tanning and Asian Massages two miles down the road. Both sounded pretty good right then.
(If my wife is reading this, I’m just kidding, sweetheart). If she’s not, forget that last sentence and tell me next time you see me if I look a little tanner … a little more relaxed.
Some 10 miles beyond Richmond, the trip got a lot easier. There were still some white-out snow squalls and a few patches of black ice, but the weather in Central Indiana was nowhere near the wintery wallop that was hitting the Miami Valley.
As I was making the drive I tried to think of some of the more teeth-grinding moments I’ve had going to assignments for the Dayton Daily News.
Back in 1992, I drove around South Dade County and all through Homestead soon after Hurricane Andrew had nearly wiped the place off the map. I got there at night, there was no electricity so everything was pitch black.
Power lines, downed trees, pieces of buildings and overturned cars littered the roadway. With no traffic lights, anarchy reigned. Now that was scary.
Earlier that same year, I was in the French Alps for the Albertville Olympics. A New York Daily News columnist was driving our tiny little rental car and I was frightened to death when we got caught in a blizzard that made the mountainous winding road — with no guard rails — impossible to see.
Finally, there was the 2000 Olympics in Australia. After the games I took an old prop plane flight some 1,000 miles to the Outback. Then I rented a car and drove to a distant ghost town. It was near dusk when I began the 90-minute drive back along a desolate road to the old boarding house I was staying at in a town called Broken Hill.
Suddenly, out of the shadows, three huge shapes ran across the road right in front of my car. I skidded off to the side, my heart pounding.
In the distance, the three shapes stopped.
Three emus, those ostrich-like birds, turned at looked at me.
As memorable moments go, that even beats an Asian massage.
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The Most “Beautiful-est” Sight
Dustin Carter was talking to me about when he dreams at night:
“Sometimes, yeah, I do have legs in them.. But when I wake up, I don’t usually remember a whole lot of what was going on.”
He will remember what went on this past wrestling season — which by the way began with a golden mohawk that his mom eventually made him grow out for senior pictures. And he’ll remember how it all turned into such a golden moment for almost everyone who saw him at the state wrestling tournament this past weekend in Columbus.
If you are a sports fan — better yet, a fan of the human race — you owe Dustin Carter a big vote of thanks.
The Hillsboro High senior — who wrestles with no hands or feet because of a deadly blood infection that forced the amputations when he was just five — pulled off quite a herculean task right in front of our eyes.
And I’m not just talking about his 40-4 record as a Division II 103- pound wrestler, his advancement to the state meet and his opening-round victory there.
I’m talking about the way he lifted us.
His arms are really little more than stubs yet they were long enough to lift the rest of us high above the sludge pit so much of sports has become recently thanks to the likes of Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, jettisoned Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson and former St. Louis Cardinals infielder Scott Spiezio, whose recent rap sheet includes six charges, everything from hit and run to assault and battery.
Even the local prep scene has had its sour situations, be it the Miami East girls basketball coach suspended for alleged inappropriate e-mails to a underage girl or the total ineptitude displayed by the Jefferson High sports administration which — in a 24-hour period — managed to have both its basketball team and its lone qualifier to the state wrestling tournament declared ineligible.
But Friday afternoon — after Carter finally bowed out of the state tournament with his second loss — there he sat in tears on the matted floor of the Schottenstein Center. Such a tiny figure about to grow before everyone’s eyes.
As the crowd stood and began to applaud, he suddenly raised those arms high, a salute to the fans to himself and to the glorious moment between them.
Carter exemplifies the best in the human spirit — will, dedication, honesty, appreciation … and a sense of humor.
And he brought out the best in most of the rest of us — respect, compassion, pride and utter delight.
As for those few naysayers who cropped up in the stands at the Schott, on the wrestling forum of the Yappi prep sports website and on WLW — how about joining Bill Cunningham on that wrong-headed boat to nowhere.
Carter’s teammate Greg Rhoads voiced his opinion to those fans in the stands grousing that Dustin had an unfair advantage because of his upper body strength.
Did they forget he has no hands to grab with? No legs with which to bridge? That he must rely almost solely on one small arm to squeeze?
What are they, nuts?
The same grousers showed up on the WLW airwaves the other night and that prompted Dustin’s dad, Russ, to call in and defend his son.
“I told Dustin he went way beyond his expectations and what we expected of him,” Russ told me Saturday night. ” I told him he was an inspiration to everyone who saw him or heard about his story.”
That’s why Wal-mart recently had him speak to some of its employees, why at least one small college in the area is said to be considering him for its wrestling program and why Katie Couric will feature him on her CBS evening newscast this coming Friday.
As Dustin told reporters after his final match in Columbus:
“I just thought everybody was proud of me. State championship, most beautiful-est gym I’ve ever been in my life, mats — 10 of ‘em on the floor — referees, wrestlers, wrestling…It’s beautiful… I’d rather see that than some mountain sight any day.”
With him on the mat, so would we.
Thanks for sharing your dream, young man.
