Remembering

I was going downtown to see a man about a horse. It was 9 a.m., which is pretty early for me these days, and I was driving like I wasn't completely awake. Naturally, I was in the wrong lane, so I couldn't get off the freeway at the correct exit. So I went further and got closer to Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Wells Fargo Arena and whatever other buildings are in that area of Des Moines. Being that close to the arenas got me thinking about this week's girls' state high school basketball tournament and next week's boys' tournament. Being that close to the Auditorium got me thinking about the Drake basketball games that used to be played there, but that's a column for another day. As I thought about the high school tournaments, I began thinking about guys like Chuck Burdick, Jim Moackler and my brother, Phil. Even Brad Wilson. I had covered my share of state tournament games with those sportswriters in the previous century. All of those great guys are gone now to the big arena and press box in the sky, but they remain in my mind. I remembered sitting through afternoon and night sessions of both the girls' and boys' tournaments, and I can still feel the hard, wooden benches we sat on. I remember Burdick, who wanted to be every high school coach's friend, sitting at the end of various' teams' benches so he could get to the interview area quickly after games. He was a classic. He lived hard and he wrote great stuff. I was on Grand Avenue, and drove past the street where Babe's restaurant used to be located. I remembered how the sportswriters would gather there before and after the games. I miss Babe, I miss his restaurant and I miss his pizzas. I remember Joe Tolan, the man we at first called Father Tolan and then Monsignor Tolan. Tolan was a Catholic priest in a number of northwest Iowa cities, and he was quite a guy. He was a friend of all the sportswriters and a lot of the state politicians, and was always ready to host a party. He'd have a bathtub filled with ice and anything anybody wanted to drink, alcoholic or otherwise, in his downtown hotel room during the high school tournaments. The conversations in that room sometimes went on all night. I remember Jack Ogden, the longtime high school writer for the Cedar Rapids Gazette and the man who was my mentor. Every time Jack came to Des Moines to cover the tournaments, I made sure we had at least one long talk. Jack, too, is now upstairs in the big arena. A tremendous man, that's what he was. I think of Wayne Cooley and Bernie Saggau, who ran the high school tournaments so efficiently. I remember Cooley lighting up one of his huge cigars. Lots of people were lighting up lots of things in the Auditorium in those days. Smoking was allowed, and there was always a cloud hanging over the arena late in the day. No wonder there's so much lung cancer in this state now. What a shame. I remember fighting the deadlines that weren't as bad then as they are now for the sportswriters. But the paper went to more places in those days, and we were always concerned about getting something in the first edition, which went to cities like Sioux City and Keokuk. Now I don't think the paper goes to either place, unless Uncle Bill sends a clipping to his nephews via the U. S. mail. I thought the freeway had been busy this morning, probably because people were coming to the tournament. I know there are two girls' 4-A semifinal round games this afternoon. I thought a little bit about going. But I talked myself out of it quickly. I knew finding a parking place would be difficult, and somehow I didn't think it would quite the same without Burdick, Moackler, Brad, Jack and Phil. Maybe next year. Thanks for letting me remember.

Cyclones, Iowa and UNI Are Going Nowhere In a Season When Drake Is the Only Division I Basketball Show In Not Just the Town, But the State, Too

I've purposely paid a lot of attention to Keno Davis and his Drake basketball players this winter because, frankly, they're the only team worth writing about.

I could use that old saying that the Bulldogs are "the only show in town," but there's much more to it than that.

They're the only show in the state.

Iowa State, Iowa and Northern Iowa still claim to be playing at the Division I level, but none of those teams is going anywhere -- except to their conference postseason tournaments, where their season will end quickly.

I had fun writing Ron Maly's NIT Watch a year ago, but none of our four major-college teams made the cut. There was no NIT for any of them.

And there's no need to even write about an NIT Watch this season because Iowa State, Iowa and UNI played themselves out of contention long ago.

Drake is going to the 65-team NCAA tournament and that, my friends, is going to be it for Division I postseason activity.

Iowa State and Iowa lost last night, and UNI won. So now Iowa State has a 14-14 record and is next-to-last in the Big 12 Conference standings at 4-9. Iowa is 12-17 overall and tied for eighth place at 5-11 in the Big Ten. UNI is 16-13 overall and tied for sixth place at 8-9 in the Missouri Valley Conference.

Drake has already won the Valley title. The Bulldogs are 14-3 in the league and 24-4 overall heading into their regular-season finale Saturday against Wichita State.

Iowa lost at Penn State, 65-64, last night in a game it should have won. The Hawkeyes can't hold onto leads and spend too much time bitching about the officiating to reporters and, I assume, to each other.

Iowa State lost, as expected to Kansas, 75-64, at Hilton Coliseum. It was further proof that there no longer is any Hilton Magic in Ames.

I know that there are people out there who think Todd Lickliter, who is in his first season at Iowa, will get things going, and that Greg McDermott, who is in his second season at Iowa State, will, at some point, show us that his program is moving in the right direction.

But it hasn't happened yet. Frankly, we don't know if either Lickliter or McDermott can coach and recruit at this level.

Lickliter did well at Butler and McDermott did well at UNI.

But, face it, Butler and UNI aren't Iowa and Iowa State.

Everybody is happy that Steve Alford left Iowa and took his circus act to New Mexico [where his record is 22-7, by the way]. I know it's unfair to judge any coach in his first season when he's in charge of the last guy's players, but let's hope things improve next season at Carver-Hawkeye Arena or there are going to be a lot of Iowa fans wondering why there wasn't a more ambitious effort to lure Kevin Stallings away from Vanderbilt.

Frankly, I'd like to see what Keno Davis, who is my national coach of the year, could do with the talent on Iowa's roster that people keep badmouthing. At Drake, he's proven he can win with players from the student body [Valley MVP Adam Emmenecker and standout forward Bucky Cox are walkons], so I wonder how he'd fare in the Big Ten with a full deck.

It'll never happen at Iowa, but it might happen somewhere else down the road.

I guess I wonder, too, if McDermott is spending too much time recruiting players who might fit in well at UNI, but don't fit in so well at Iowa State. Obviously, he doesn't have the players now who can compete in a very difficult Big 12 Conference.

Ben Jacobson keeps shuffling along in the Valley. He loses too many games he should be winning, and crowds are falling off dramatically at the McLeod Center. With the search on for a new athletic director, I'd suggest he start winning -- or it could be the new guy [or lady] doing the hiring might want to make a coaching change.

*

I've got further examples of how the newspaper business is hurting.

[And, while I'm on that subject, make sure you read the column below this one where I write about the Iowa City Press-Citizen telling its readers that the paper will soon be printed by the Des Moines Register].

The Cedar Rapids Gazette, Iowa City Press-Citizen and Quad-City Times didn't send reporters to State College, Pa., last night for the Iowa-Penn State game.

Unless the Des Moines Register faked the State College dateline and the reporter's byline, that paper did come up with enough from the cash drawer to get Randy Peterson to State College.

Penn State has never been the easiest place to get to, of course. When he was still in the Big Ten, Bobby Knight didn't even want Joe Paterno U. in the league. I've been to State College plenty of times. It might be easier to fly into Afghanistan.

And it costs a ton of money to get to State College -- more than most newspapers' budgets can stand in these difficult times in journalism.

During his postgame press conference, Lickliter must have thought nearly everyone has abandoned him.

Jim Ecker of the Cedar Rapids Gazette and Pat Harty of the Iowa City Press-Citizen wrote byline stories of the game, without State College datelines. I don't know who wrote the Quad-City Times story because it said "By Staff Report" at the top, but included a State College dateline.

Frankly, I don't agree with putting a reporter's byline on a newspaper story that's written by someone watching the game on TV or listening to it on the radio. USA Today does that a lot, and I think it's a phony way of doing things.

Ecker and Harty are hard-working guys, but I liked the Quad-City Times' "By Staff Report" idea better.

The Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and Davenport stories all credited the postgame radio show for the comments they got from Lickliter and his players.

All in all, I'd say those three papers proved it's possible to write stories about a a bad basketball team without going to the games.

I'm sure Carolyn Washburn in Des Moines is taking note of that.

*

Although Iowa's players complained about the officiating in last night's game, no newspaper stories mentioned who the officials were.

I watched part of the game on the Big Ten network, and I thought I heard one of the announcers say "Hartzell" late in the game.

That could only be our old buddy Rick Hartzell, who was shown the exit sign as UNI's athletic director Feb. 1.

I checked the box score I found on the Internet and, sure enough, Greg McDermott's friend Rick Hartzell was listed as one of the zebras, unless it was some other guy wearing Hartzell's stripes.

For the benefit of those Hawkeyes who continue complaining about the officiating, it's an old zebra policy that fouls are not called in the last 15 or 20 seconds that might decide the game.

By the way, not enough newspapers [including the one in Des Moines] use the names of the zebras in the box score these days. The zebras are just as much a part of the game as the coaches and players.

Indeed, at least one newspaper [again, the one in Des Moines] didn't even use a box score this morning.

I looked all over the place for the Iowa State-Kansas box score, and never found it. But the Iowa-Penn State box score was printed with the Iowa State story. Figure that out.

And you think your boss is the only guy who doesn't know what he's doing.

*

An underplayed story in today's paper: Drake won its 31st straight tennis meet by beating Iowa, 5-2. That should have been on the front page -- well, I mean page 3, or anything not labeled "State Hoops." By the way, is there anything dumber than something called "State Hoops?"...I wasn't exactly drooling about going to Felix & Oscar's for pizza, but now that I've read what D.V. Wagman wrote about it in Datebook, I'm definitely skipping the trip. "Unfortunately, item after item brought disappointment," Wagman wrote. "Most grievous was the venue's claim to fame: Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza. Missing was the aromatic, well-developed, yeasty, chewy-textured crust that I love. In its place was a pale, insipid and flavorless facsimile filled with low-quality cheeses, mystery meat and still-raw vegetables. Fried appetizers, served lukewarm, languished in puddles of grease. Sandwiches arrived on cheap, blindingly white bread. Baked Cavatelli, usually a winner in these parts, was overcooked and bland." Now, that's what I call telling it like it is. And what that'll likely get Wagman are instructions to go out the backdoor of the paper and never return, especially if Felix & Oscar's tells the publisher that it's canceling a $1,000 advertising order. After all, those food writers are people who have been hired off the street, like a lot of the rest of today's reporters. It's too bad Wagman isn't also writing the headlines. The Datebook headline on her story said "Felix & Oscar's fit for Iowa tastes"...What the hell does that mean? A better headline would've been "Stay away from disappointing Felix & Oscar's."

Another Reason To Be Having a Bad Day In Iowa City: The Press-Citizen Will Be Printed By the Des Moines Register, Starting June 2

The headline gets your attention right away:

P-C to be printed in Des Moines

P-C stands for Press-Citizen, the Gannett-owned daily newspaper in Iowa City.

Kathryn Fiegen wrote a story for today's Press-Citizen that said 11 fulltime people and 13 parttime people will lose their jobs when the printing of the paper starts June 2 at the Des Moines Register.

Indication is that people in Iowa City are generally pissed-off about what's happening between papers both owned by the Gannett Co.

Interesting, huh? And one reason it's interesting is that the Register is rumored to have a "For Sale" sign on it, and that Lee newspapers is planning to buy it. Maybe now the Press-Citizen will come along for the ride, too. Lee owns a bunch of other papers in Iowa already.

Following is Fiegen's story and some of the online responses the Press-Citizen has gotten from it so far.

Unfortunately, not available to me are those reader responses that aren't are full of vulgarity, including where the Press Citizen's bosses can shove their paper. Apparently, even Gannett has a few standards.

By the way, the Press-Citizen boss announcing the printing decision is Susan Patterson Plank [pictured], who was named the Press-Citizen's general manager Jan. 21 after being vice-president of marketing and digital development at the Register.

So I'd say she's swinging into action. We'll know soon if she's striking out more than scoring -- either at home or in the office.

Fiegen's story:

The Iowa City Press-Citizen will be printed at the Des Moines Register's printing facility effective June 2, Press-Citizen general manager Susan Patterson Plank told employees Wednesday.

Eleven fulltime staff and 13 parttime staff will lose their jobs and be offered severance packages based on experience, she said.

"We read in our newspaper, we watch on TV, we read on blogs that economic conditions are changing across the United States, and that's not something we can ignore," Patterson Plank said.

Newspapers are evolving to include different platforms as well, she said, including Web and video.

"We're going through a lot of changes at the same time these changes are going on," Patterson Plank said.

The move will make production more cost-effective and efficient, Patterson Plank said, and customers should not expect to see any changes.

"The things that make us local, we will continue to invest in," she said.

Some of the cost savings will be invested locally and some will go to "protecting for the future," Patterson Plank said.

The Press-Citizen's approximately 12 commercial printing customers were being notified of the change. They include the City High Little Hawk and West High's West Side Story.

"We will be working with them individually to find them a home for printing," Patterson Plank said. "For some, that might mean Des Moines, for others, Marengo, we don't know."

The Press-Citizen and the Register are owned by Gannett Co., which publishes about 85 U.S. newspapers, including USA Today. The Press-Citizen and Register are distributed together in this area on Sundays, and Patterson Plank said that has been successful. The paper also distributes the daily Register in this area.

"We have certainly had a relationship with the Register for a long time," she said.

Reader Comment Posted by: jw1984 on Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:13 am
"The things that make us local, we will continue to invest in," she said.

What a slap in the face to the community and those who will lose their jobs. Susan Patterson Plank: Gannett lackey extraordinaire!

And the P-C continues its march to irrelevance.

You want decent local news? Read the Gazette. Start a blog. It's clear that this newspaper is a lost vessel.
Like I said Last Night Posted by: iowahawkeye on Thu Feb 28, 2008 12:13 pm
In the article:
"The move will make production more cost-effective and efficient, Patterson Plank said, and customers should not expect to see any changes"
BOTTOM LINE: They WILL have to go to press almost 2 full hours earlier, to makeup for lost time to truck the paper from Des Moines to Iowa City. No more late night storys and scores.
Reader Comment Posted by: Curious George on Thu Feb 28, 2008 12:15 pm
Most newsprint is a "lost vessel."

Does this mean that the PC will change at all in appearance? I've never cared much for its layout or style.
Ah, the local ad sheet--I mean newspaper Posted by: T the G on Thu Feb 28, 2008 12:40 pm
Let's face it--there's no reason to read the paper edition of the P-C, anyway, unless you want to sift through pages and pages of useless ads.

You would think that Gannett would be embarrassed that a student newspaper is better than their "professional" one, but clearly that's not the case.
Reader Comment Posted by: jkspac on Thu Feb 28, 2008 1:23 pm
No reason to continue to read. I liked the PC for the ability to have late night scores. With this change the Friday night high school football scores will not make it in Saturday's paper and instead will be in the Sunday edition. What a scam. Sorry newspaper that is getting even worse.
Reader Comment Posted by: HerbBhang on Thu Feb 28, 2008 1:37 pm
It seems as if Ms. Plank is saying that print newspapers no longer matter, so it would be better to focus the P-C's resources towards non-print media.

I think the P-C is making a bad business decision here. There is no doubt this will hurt their circulation numbers. But, according to Ms. Plank, this may be exactly what they want.
So, basically, you are going to get USAToday with a Posted by: Pravda on Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:01 pm
different title on it for those stuck in the malaise of old habit. Canned, predictable stories that I could write by just transmuting my mentality into a Central Park West, cocktail party courtier journalist. Great. No Sex and the City.

Don't you all wish now that Gannet/Press Citizen would have sold that parcel of property to enlarge Hickory Hill Park instead of putting in another crappy, .24 acre lot/$500,000 mini-mansion subdivision overlooking the park with yapping dogs and forever blighting a large part of what would have been a peaceful corner of park. Was that thinking of the community?

I wonder what will save the planet better from Global Warming: the fact that fewer trees may be cut down for less paper circulation or not having another diesel tractor trailer screaming down I-80 burning fuel and emitting rubber tire particulates into the atmosphere for whitetail deer to breathe in and get terminal rubber lung?
I would consider a new career as a beat reporter in Johnson County.....I would be really do this if $compensation was adequate. I would love exposing some things.
Reader Comment Posted by: HerbBhang on Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:31 pm
I stopped buying the Press-Citizen paper after they sold off the land for Hickory Hill Heights. They cared little that Friends of Hickory Hill was interested in buying the land for park expansion. The P-C was so power hungry that they would rather have the money than do something for the community. The other bad thing is that the City owned the land the P-C and Hickory Heights sits on, but then sold it to Gannett instead of using it for the park.
Reader Comment Posted by: algibson on Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:36 pm
People have already started some good blogs in Iowa City. I read Nicholas Johnson and John Deeth every time they post something. I don't always agree with everything they write but it's at least thoughtful and not stupid stuff like whatever Bob Elliott writes.

Quit buying the paper and advertising in the paper and maybe it'll go away. It'll be replaced by something else. Something less corporate and uncaring. Something more local.
Reader Comment Posted by: FSM on Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:42 pm
Another good reason to drop the P-C and pick up a DI subscription I guess. It's too bad they don't print over the breaks though. Also, what ever happened to the Little Village? Something like that, but with daily/weekly circulation, would be nice.

I've Already Named Keno My National Coach Of the Year, So I'm Certain He'll Be Able To Figure Out What's Wrong With the Bulldogs; If He Can't, I Will

All right, so Drake's basketball team isn't playing the same way now as it did during a three-month, 21-game winning streak.

In their 86-83 loss last night at Missouri State, the Bulldogs surrendered more points than in any of their previous 27 games.

I didn't see the game, but evidently there wasn't much defense being played by either side.

The team Drake played went into the game with a 14-15 record. Opponents like that are what the Bulldogs specialized in beating from Nov. 14 through Feb. 9.

They've now lost three of their last five games, and they're looking a bit tired, if you ask me.

They'll make it to the NCAA tournament, but how high [or how low] they're seeded is being influenced by how they're closing the regular season schedule.

I'd hate to see it become a one-and-done deal for Drake in the Big Dance. What I mean is, I wouldn't want the Bulldogs to be taken down in their first-round game. I'd like 'em to win one or two to make it a nice wrapup to a wonderful season.

What happened last night in Springfield, Mo., reminded me of an incident that occurred more than a quarter-century ago at Hilton Coliseum in Ames.

Coach Keno Davis isn't old enough to know anything about it and, of course, his players weren't even born yet.

A strange man named Lynn Nance was coaching Iowa State in those days. He was a former FBI agent who always wore black shoes and stayed in his hotel room a lot on road trips.

Nance knew the drill. He knew FBI agents were always supposed to wear black shoes.

Maybe FBI agents stayed in their rooms a lot, too.

Nance's problem was that he couldn't coach -- at least at that point in his career. His record at Iowa State from 1977-1980 was 44-64. Attendance was bad, and people [especially the athletic director] wanted Nance out.

The Cyclones were playing a Big Eight Conference home game late in Nance's final season. Iowa State had a lead, and the opposing coach told his players, "They're getting ready to fire that guy on the other bench, and you're sending him out a winner!"

Keno could easily have told his players the same thing last night.

Barry Hinson [in the Springfield News-Leader photo at the right] is on his way out as Missouri State's coach, and Drake sent him out of the building a winner in his final home game.

A month ago, the Bulldogs would've won that game.

All I can say is they'd better get their act together because the Missouri Valley Conference tournament is coming up next week, and there are five teams that can win it -- Southern Illinois, Illinois State, Creighton, Bradley and Drake.

Notice, I'm eliminating Hinson's Missouri State team.

Before the Valley tournament, the Bulldogs play Wichita State at 1:05 p.m. Saturday in the Knapp Center in a game that'll be televised by ESPN2. They'll win that one, and I'd say Keno had better suggest that his players cut down the nets afterward to celebrate the Valley's regular season championship they've already salted away.

I wouldn't want anyone to forget that title. After all, they come around only every 37 years at Drake.

I've already named Keno my national coach of the year, so I'm sure he'll be able to get this all figured out. If he can't, I will.

*

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

Rev. David P. Mumm, formerly of Des Moines, writes:

"It is interesting, now that the season is drawing to its close, the DSM Register has finally decided to add a link on its main page entitled 'Bulldogs.' I guess, better late than never?"

David P. Mumm, M.Div.
Senior Pastor
Concordia Lutheran Church
Machesney Park, IL 61115

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: I'm very happy, Pastor, that the paper's editors seem to be recognizing Drake as having a full-fledged collegiate basketball team. They've even added a hard-hitting [well, maybe hard-hitting is too strong a term to use] "Bulldog Blog" to their pages when the team plays at the Knapp Center. It's what likely will happen next fall, though, that's starting to concern the powers-that-be at Drake. They know the results of the Bulldogs' football games will again be -- as Chuck Shelton, a former coach, used to say -- buried "back by the tire ads" in the Sunday paper. Some things, of course, never change.]

*

IDIOTS AND EDITORS

The paper writes about idiots all the time, and the latest is someone named Joe Sturgis of Davenport.

Jennifer Jacobs wrote that Sturgis, who owns a bar, "came to the Capitol to lobby for smoking rights, [saying] he doubts second-hand smoke is a serious factor in causing cancer. He sees no reason for a smoking ban...."

Like I said, Sturgis is an idiot.

All Sturgis [and Jacobs, for that matter] need to do is talk to any lung surgeon at any hospital in this state and visit with a relative of any of the many Iowans who have died of lung cancer. [The photo at the left is of neither Sturgis nor Jacobs; it's a cancerous lung]. Then they'll know that second-hand smoke is a terrible thing, and that first-hand smoke is worse yet.

By the way, unlike some of the movies making the rounds on TV these days, I'm issuing no warnings to young viewers on the photo of the cancerous lung. I want the photo to be seen by everyone, young and old. I want them to know what can happen to their lungs if they smoke.

I want both second-hand and first-hand smoke eliminated from the air I breathe.

The word "deadly" is overused by reporters these days, but second-hand smoke is just that -- deadly.

By the way, Jacobs needs an editor.

She started her story headlined "Future of state smoking ban grows hazy in Iowa Senate" with a question:

Will smokers be able to light up in bars and casinos in Iowa?

That tells me she didn't know what to write. Reporters should never -- repeat, never -- start a story with a question.

It's like those bloggers on the paper's website who, instead of taking a stand, start their blogs with a question so they can get reader participation -- and also so their bosses don't get pissed off and offer them buyouts if readers raise hell with what they write.

A good editor would have killed Jacobs' first paragraph and started the story with her second paragraph, which wasn't bad:

"The fate of a statewide ban on smoking in public places is as foggy as a basement barroom."

Or any barroom, for that matter.

*

MOTHERS, LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS

Alive In Clive seemed to be reinvigorated by the spicy tomato soup he consumed while watching the Academy Awards show the other night.

Or maybe it was what I wrote about Diablo Cody -- not her real name -- afterward. Anyway, Alive cranked up his computer and sent the following e-mail:

Maly, Our flat midwestern state seems to be in trouble. First the other lady in A-Rod's life turned out to be from Iowa, and now we have the stripper-tattoo Oscar winner. Please mothers, lock up your daughters.

On Saturday I watched the Drake game, the game-callers kept alluding to the student/athletes on their team. We now know the secret. Drake doesn't use dumb jocks.

What were you thinking. Putting Drake at number 7? Boy did the experts put you in your place. and explain to me what the Mid-Major Poll is, and is the a low-major poll?

This is all getting way too complicated for my old brain. And lastly who will be throwing chairs now the Bobby has decided to kick back?

I remain,

Alive in Clive

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Alive, you have a very good memory, bringing up the naked lady who was pictured in one of these columns last year after being spotted dining [while wearing a few clothes] with the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez. At the time the picture was taken, A-Rod was also wearing clothes. The stripper was Joslyn Morse of Cedar Rapids, who was taking her clothes off for a living at a place in Las Vegas. The New York Post reported the A-Rod/stripper connection, and immediately Internet reports surfaced that A-Rod "preferred she-maie, muscular types." I guess that's how some experts in that field classified Morse. Diablo Cody -- not her real -- name is the lady who attended the University of Iowa, then became a stripper in Minneapolis. She won the screenplay Oscar, and proudly displayed her tattoo on-stage. The mid-major poll is supposed to pay tribute to the Drakes, Creightons and Southern Illinois of the world. I don't think anyone refers to it as the low-major poll. At least not at Drake, Creighton and Southern Illinois. And, Alive, I ranked Drake No. 7 because that's where it belongs. I'm right and those dummies doing the other polls are wrong.]

*

EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE

Speaking of cranking up the computer, Jay Davidson is back after giving his keyboard another workout:


Hi, Ron,

A long time ago, when I was an educator, I tried to compile a list of things that I believed would lead to excellence. It went something like this: "Excellence is the product of principled leadership, high expectations, careful preparation, purposeful execution and the constant desire to improve, along with the ability to embrace and enjoy each day." While not comprehensive (certainly nothing like John Wooden's Pyramid of Success), I still believe this is a fairly good statement about what constitutes excellence.

And you know what? I think Keno Davis, his staff and the Drake team of 2007-08 greatly exemplify these qualities. So, much as I did on Oct. 31 (as written about in the Feb. 12 column, I think), I believe this team will do continue to do extraordinary things, because they are extraordinary people. Temporary setbacks like losses will just drive them to achieve more.

Anyone reading this who cares about excellence, as it is demonstrated on a basketball court but also in other facets of life, is encouraged to come out to the Drake Knapp Center on Saturday, 3/1, (game time 1:05 p.m.; it's been called a sellout for weeks, but there COULD be a few tickets available later this week) to see the Drake men end their regular season against Wichita State. Seniors on the Knapp Center floor for their last game are the just announced "National Academic All-American Player of the Year" (by ESPN the Magazine) Adam Emmenecker, Leonard Houston and Klayton Korver. They will be honored FOLLOWING THE GAME, which will be televised by ESPN2.

And then come back on Sunday, 3/2 at 2:30--note change in game time from 2:05--(plenty of tickets available for this one) to see the Drake women wind up their home season against league-leading Illinois State. Seniors are Jill Martin, Lindsay Whorton and the injured Brandy Dahir, all of whom have scored over 1,000 points in their Drake careers. This game will be televised by Fox Sports Net. It is Drake's custom to introduce the seniors and their parents before the tipoff and also to recognize them following the game. Drake women also play at 7:05 p.m. Friday, Feb. 29, hosting Indiana State.

[Also,] for the first time ever, Drake has both male and female first-team Academic All-Americans in basketball. Lindsay Whorton, senior guard on the women's team, has been announced as a D-I Academic All-American by ESPN the Magazine, a day after Adam Emmenecker was named Academic All-American Player of the Year in Division I by the same entity.

A quick check of the record books reveals that Emmenecker is the first Drake male basketball player to be named a first-team Academic All-American. Whorton, a four-year starter for the Bulldog women who was last year's most outstanding player in the MVC tournament, earlier this year became the all-time leader in 3-point goals for the Bulldogs. In her four years at Drake she's started 112 of the 116 games in which she's played and has averaged over 13 points a game during her Drake career. She's a perfect 4.0 student in English and education. Lindsay, who grew up in Independence, MO, (her parents Doug and Beth Whorton have missed exactly one game in Des Moines--because of weather--during Lindsay's Drake career, and have been present at a vast number of road games as well) will be a Rhodes Scholar candidate next year.

Lindsay lengthens a distinguished list of Bulldog basketball women to achieve first team All-American status. In 1990-91, Jan Jensen was Academic All-American National Player of the Year as named by GTE/CoSIDA. (Jan also led the nation in scoring that season.) Tricia Wakely was named Academic All-America Co-Player of the Year in 1996. Five other Drake women BB'ers--Connie Newlin, Jan Krieger, Laura Leonard, Kay Riek and Julie Fitzpatrick--have earned second team or honorable mention national academic accolades.

All the best,

Jay

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Good stuff, Jay. Thanks for writing].

E. Illinois Candidate Berger Says Drake Basketball Budget Rises From 10th To 6th In Valley, Talks Of T-Shirts That Could Say, 'Smart Guys Got Game'

Jean Berger, a veteran associate athletic director at Drake, is a candidate for the athletic director job at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. Berger is a talented administrator, and if she wants the job I hope she gets it. Drake would miss her, but athletic director Sandy Hatfield Clubb certainly wouldn't stand in the way of the university's No. 1 woman administrator getting a better job. That said, Berger [shown in the Daily Eastern News photo taken during her interview] would certainly get strong consideration at Drake if Clubb should ever leave. "When you're looking for your first athletic director's job, you want it to be the right fit," Berger said yesterday during a public forum on the Eastern Illinois campus. Her comments were reported by Brian Nielsen in the Charleston and Mattoon Journal-Gazette and Times-Courier. Berger spoke extensively about Drake's spectacular men's basketball season, which has produced a 24-3 record and consistent rankings in the top 25. I have Drake ranked No. 7 nationally this week, but the Bulldogs are being shortchanged again in the national polls. They're only No. 20 in the Associated Press and coaches' polls. "I wish I could tell we were very methodical," Berger said of the improvement in the men's basketball program under, first, Tom Davis and now his son, Keno. "I think in all honesty we had a plan, but there were curves in the road. We did stick to our values." Nielsen wrote that Drake "has no special admissions for any athletes, upholding the private university's high academic standards. "It takes time," Berger said. "There aren't a lot of shortcuts, but it sure is fun when you win." Berger said there was some talk at Drake about having T-shirts printed that say, "Smart guys got game." Nielsen wrote, "While not lowering academic sandards, Drake did increase its budget and start a separate booster club that funded basketball only. Berger said Drake has moved from 10th place to sixth in the Missouri Valley Conference with its basketball budget. Berger called basketball "the engine that drives our train. If our tennis team is going to do better, it has to be because of men's basketball, women's basketball, football and the Drake Relays. You have to put coal in the engine. There have to be sports that you invest in." Nielsen wrote, "While not promising a magic wand that could turn Eastern's 5-22 basketball program into a top 20 team immediately, Berger said there are similarities between the two universities. Berger said some of the athletic facilities at Eastern Illinois are better than those at Drake. "We don't have an indoor track at Drake," she said. "We have the Drake Relays and we don't have an indoor track. Eastern Illinois has a football program that awards scholarships, but Drake's is a non-scholarship program. But Berger said, "We don't like to think of ourselves at Drake playing an inferior brand of football. We play Division I-AA. There are not as many differences as you might think."

*

RATINGS SYSTEM IS SICK AND SO ARE SOME OF THE VOTERS

Drake fan Jay Davidson writes, "It's hard to figure how Drake could drop to No. 20 [in the national polls], but I've never put much stock in those polls anyway." I answered him this way: "As for the drop to No. 20, that's an embarrassment to the entire rankings idea. It's a case of complete no confidence in, and no respect for, a program that has reached heights this season that absolutely no one expected. The ratings system is sick." And some of the voters in the AP and coaches' polls are obviously sick, too. Fully expecting that Drake would get screwed in this week's rankings because of its 72-71 loss a week ago to Bradley, I made the Bulldogs the No. 7 team in my own rankings.

*

GIVE 'EM A ONE-WAY TICKET OUT OF TOWN

I was trying to think of something funny to write about the most recent University of Iowa football players who have gotten themselves in trouble with the law -- wide receiver James Cleveland and reserve quarterback Arvell Nelson. You know, something like, "Cleveland and Nelson began taking prescription drugs and painkillers so they could celebrate coach Kirk Ferentz getting another year added to his contract." Or, "Cleveland and Nelson grabbed some pills the minute they found out that the coach and the athletic director were cruising together on the high seas." Or maybe, "Blame all of it on Diablo Cody, the former Iowa writing student who just won an Oscar and has a big tattoo and wears Army boots." But there's nothing funny about what's going on in Iowa City these days. The athletes who are having charges filed against them are bums, thugs and drug addicts who should be given a one-way ticket out of town. They probably were taking pills other than multivitamins long before they showed up on the Iowa campus, but it's hard to believe that Iowa recruiters didn't do a better job of checking their backgrounds. Trash like that is ruining the Hawkeye program, and a serious housecleaning needs to be done. I for one minute don't believe there aren't others who are doing the same things as Cleveland and Nelson, but just haven't been caught yet. It's a damn good thing Nile Kinnick isn't around to see something like this. These jackoffs don't deserve to play in a stadium named in honor of Iowa's 1939 Heisman Trophy winner. This mess is an embarressment to the entire university and all of its students, past and present.

*

BLAME THE LOW OSCAR RATINGS ON BAD MOVIES

News reports out of Hollywood say the telecast of Sunday night's Academy Awards show sunk to a record-low 32 million viewers. I didn't think TV host Jon Stewart was anything special, but it's difficult to blame him for lousy viewership. Blame all the bad movies and the people who played the roles, I guess. Evidently not many people liked "There Will Be Blood." I hope they're not blaming Diablo Cody. I mean, she might look dirty, talk dirty and she's not exactly Elizabeth Taylor, but I haven't heard that she didn't take a bath before the show, either. By the way, I've seen all I need to see of Jack Nicholson, who again showed up wearing those stupid sunglasses. As far as I'm concerned, he's outworn his welcome and is ready for the funny farm. He's just another old guy looking goofy in public all the time.

Trash, Treasure and a Few Things In Between

I watched the televised Academy Awards show last night at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Alive In Clive, and came away with mixed feelings. Of course, I come away with mixed feelings whenever I watch much of anything these days. About the only times my feelings haven't been mixed lately was when I was watching Drake's very good basketball team pound away at Butler, and when I was dining on Mr. and Mrs. Alive In Clive's spicy tomato soup and the bread-with-olive-oil sidedish. My feelings were even more mixed after seeing a very large and very ugly tattoo on the right arm of Diablo Cody -- not her real name -- when she went on the stage to get her Oscar for the best original screenplay. I'm glad she won the award, but I thought she looked dumb with that ridiculous tattoo on her upper arm. And I thought she was dumb for wanting to display it to millions of TV viewers. I'm pretty sure my granddaughters were already asleep because I didn't want them to see that kind of trash. After all, Diablo could've covered it up -- the tattoo I mean -- with some clothes. But of course, Diablo knows all about not wearing clothes. After attending the University of Iowa, where she says she earned a degree in communications, Diablo was a stripper in Minneapolis. Diablo Cody's name is really Brook Busey-Hunt. I have no idea why Brook Busey-Hunt would want to change her name to Diablo Cody, and Diablo/Brook's parents probably don't know either. But, let's face it, Brook/Diablo is a little different. Maybe a lot different. Mike Kilen wrote a story about her in the paper the other day in which he said she kept her drawers on in Iowa City. I don't know if Kilen knows that for a fact or if he just assumed it. About keeping her drawers on in Iowa City, I mean. I was going to a lot of football and basketball games in Iowa City in those days, and now I'm wondering if Diablo/Brook was one of those wild and crazy students who ran onto the field at Kinnick Stadium after what they considered big victories. If I'm talking to her sometime in the future, I'll ask. Anyway, Diablo/Brook won her Oscar for her work on writing the screenplay for the movie "Juno." I'd say she now has Hollywood and the rest of the world at her feet. Or maybe there's some other part of the human anatomy involved. Quotes attributed to Diablo/Brook: "I've been told that I'm incompetent, socially retarded amd maladjusted. I still know that I couldn't function in reality. Los Angeles is a good place for me. If this whole writing thing doesn't work out, I'll be getting right back on the pole." I assume she's talking about the pole in strip joints. As far as I know, she plans to continue writing her Internet blog called "The Pussy Ranch." Something tells me that's not about kittens in Coralville. All I can say is maybe they can have her ride on an Army tank in the homecoming parade next fall in downtown Iowa City. After all, I hear she likes to wear Army boots.

*

BE HAPPY I RANKED THE BULLDOGS NO. 7. POLLS HAVE THEM NO. 20

Just what I figured. Two days after Drake's basketball team drilled No. 8-ranked Butler, 71-64, in Indianapolis, Keno Davis' Bulldogs dropped to No. 20 in both the Associated Press and coaches' polls today. That's a classic example of no respect. It's also exactly why I put Drake No. 7 in my rankings yesterday; I figured the Bulldogs would somehow get screwed in those other polls. So what did the voters do with Butler? The AP has the Bulldogs from Indy No. 14 and the coaches' have 'em No. 13. So Drake beats Butler and now is seven spots behind the Bulldogs from Indy in one poll and six spots behind them in another. Stupid. Absolutely stupid. There is some good news, though. Drake didn't get one vote in the preseason poll, but now the Bulldogs are ranked No. 1 in the collegeinsider.com Mid-Major top 25 poll released today. The Bulldogs received 27 of a possible 31 first-place votes. Drake collected 770 points. Butler was ranked second and Davidson, third with three-first place votes. Drake was No. 3 in the Feb. 18 collegeinsider.com poll.

*

DROPPING THE BOMB

Mark Robinson tells me this story:

Sunday was my birthday, so naturally I talked to all my family members, including my brother in Marshalltown. Gary is a Drake music graduate, circa 1980.

Wishing me a happy birthday, he was clueless about the Drake/Butler game Saturday. Don't get me wrong, he loves Drake and is a fan. Saturday, he drove to Dubuque to see a friend.

Nah, I didn't see the game and I didn't record it, he said.

Why not, I asked?

Well, hell, it was Butler and on TV. No need to pay any attention to that; Drake simply does not have the talent to compete.

"What was the score?" he asked?

"71-64," I said.

Well then, Drake kept it closer than I thought they would, my brother said.

And then I dropped the bomb.

He is now looking far and wide for a copy of that game.

Keep writing,

--Mark Robinson

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Suddenly, lots of people are looking for tapes and DVDs of the Drake-Butler game. I'll bet the public relations office at ESPN is busy this week responding to Drake fans].

*

NO WHISTLES FOR ALL OF THIS TRAVELING

Jay Davidson is back from some extensive basketball travels, and sent me this dispatch when he got back home:

Just a little about the weekend just past. Of the dozen or so Drake fans who made the trip to Peoria, Indianapolis and Cedar Falls this weekend, I think only my travel partner Mick Arndt and I did it exactly the way we did. We left Indianapolis about an hour after Drake's great win at Butler Saturday night, returned to our respective homes in central Iowa for a few hours sleep at 4 a.m. Sunday, then rode one of two buses from the Drake tennis center to UNI for the women's game yesterday afternoon. The previous day, after driving for several hours in fairly heavy snow and with the roads filling up, we stopped for the night an hour from Indianapolis in Crawfordsville, IN, where we kept meeting people who know new Drake football coach Chris Creighton, whose Wabash College teams were 63-15. They kept telling us how great a coach--and guy--Chris is. Having met him on a couple occasions, we told them we already know he's a terrific guy.

The game: What more can be said about the Drake-Butler game! And by the way, does anyone have tape or a DVD of the game?...I'd love to watch it again and see the replays! It was a game of big plays in which Drake came through every time it had to. In a game where the two teams were so evenly matched, the difference was free-throwing (as usual, Drake made more than its opponents attempted) and rebounding. The Butler crowd was loud and grew more hostile as Drake iced the win from the foul line in the waning seconds; but by the time the crowd thinned out and mostly Drake fans were left on the court 45 minutes later, Mick and I had enjoyed several gracious conversations with Butler folks who love their basketball as much as their Bulldogs.

Which brings me to The Place(s): We saw two of the historic venues in college basketball within 48 hours. Bradley is tearing down its A. J. Robertson Fieldhouse, erected in 1948-49 from two World War II airplane hangers, next month. It served the Braves' men's teams well for about 40 years and since then has been home to women's teams. The first Braves team to play there finished second to the City University of New York in both the NCAA and NIT tournaments, and Bradley teams compiled a better than .800 winning percentage there. Many teams in the 50's, 60's and again in the 80's, with Dick Versace coaching and Hersey Hawkins starring, were national basketball powers. Later this year it will be "replaced" on the same site by a university rec center which will also be the home of the volleyball and women's basketball teams. As yet unnamed, the new place will seat about 4,500.

Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler is in a class by itself, and it's on the National Register of Historic Places. Opened in 1928 with a Butler victory over Notre Dame, it was home to the team of 1928-29 which was voted national champions by Veterans Athletes of Philadelphia after those Bulldogs went 21-2. Originally holding 15,000, it now officially holds 10,114 after a remodeling in 1990 made many of the lower seats into chairbacks. In 1966, the Butler Fieldhouse was renamed Hinkle Fieldhouse in honor of three-sport coach and athletic director Paul D. 'Tony' Hinkle, whose "Hinkle system" was widely copied. Many tournaments at all levels have been played in Hinkle, and scenes in the movie "Hoosiers" were filmed there. It is on every list I've ever seen of "Best Places to Watch College Basketball," usually in the top five. And deserves to be...even with water bottle throwing fans.

Two men named Bob: Bob Netolicky, who played at Drake from 1963-66 and later starred on very good Indiana Pacers teams, has made his home in greater Indianapolis since those days. He was drawing attention from Drake fans behind the scorer's table before and after the game. Neto was sometimes listed at 6 feet 9 inches, but he's no more than 6-6 now, still has his sly smile and easygoing manner. A smaller man was with him most of the game and afterwards and I thought perhaps I should know him but didn't. He was drawing no attention from Drake fans. I stuck out my hand and said, "I'm not sure I know you; I'm Jay Davidson," as I have hundreds of times in my life. He smiled broadly and said "I'm Bobby Plump!"

Bobby Plump, at 70 (five years older than Netolicky), is still a legend in Indiana and I was glad my history is real and not from the movie "Hoosiers," as good as it is. For Bobby Plump is the real life star of "Hoosiers," the senior on the little Milan team whose 15 foot jumper as time expired gave his tiny school in southeastern Indiana the state title in 1954 over Muncie Central, a school more than 10 times its size, 32-30. As David Halberstam wrote in his excellent story of that team, and of that time, in his story "The Basket-Case State" which appeared in Esquire magazine and in the Esquire-published book, "The Soul of America," "...[Plump] knew instantly that the shot was true. The ball went in. Little Milan, with a total enrollment of 161, and just 73 boys in the entire school, had just lived the dream...." On its way to the title, all in the Butler (not yet Hinkle) Fieldhouse, tiny Milan had beaten Indianapolis Crispus Attucks and its talented sophomore Oscar Robertson, 65-52, and Terre Haute Gerstmeyer, 60-48. A half century later, Plump's shot remains the most famous in the history of Indiana basketball.

So it was indeed special to converse one-on-one with Bobby Plump, who was as effusive as Bob Netolicky was evasive. (Neto just grins when you ask him to compare the current Bulldogs (Drake, that is) with teams he played on. He says he's worked for a large auto auction company "for over 20 years," but declines to say what he does for them. He does say that every Pacers jersey sold by the gift shop at Conseco Fieldhouse (built to look somewhat like Hinkle) brings him $5) Earlier in the day Mick and I visited Conseco and were somewhat surprised to see Netolicky jerseys on sale there, considering Neto's basketball career ended nearly 30 years ago. Obviously, people still remember him -- and he (along with another Drake Bulldog, Willie Wise) is on the ABA all time team of 30 members.

The two men named Bob have been friends for over 40 years, because as both of them said in slightly different ways, in Indiana everyone in basketball knows each other. Bobby, who went on to play on some very good Butler teams and then with the Phillips Oilers of the old National Industrial Basketball League, went on to become a successful insurance salesman and it's easy to see why. He's a good listener and makes others feel good. He called the game "terrific" and the Drake players classy. When I told a friend who I was talking to, he autographed a program for him and not just his name either. He wrote "It was really nice talking with you."

So it was quite a weekend for Drake's Bulldogs, Drake fans and fans of college basketball. Great to be a part of it!

All the best to you, Ron!

--Jay Davidson

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: I'm sure glad my old friend Bob Netolicky is still doing well. And I hope his pet ocelot is getting along all right, too. By the way, that's an ocelot pictured on the left, not to be mistaken for Diablo Cody].

Who Wants To Wait for the AP and Coaches Basketball Polls? Not Me. I'm Ranking Drake No. 7 After Its Huge Victory At Butler

Unless you've been living the past 10 years on Venus, Jupiter or Mars -- or all three -- you know that newspapers and the news business in general are in a heap of trouble.

Even the New York Times, which likes to think of itself as the best newspaper in the world, is dumping 100 jobs.

The Des Moines Register, which was a very good paper until the Gannett Co. bought it, has been offering buyouts to people in the newsroom for so long that the editors are asking readers to pitch in and do movie reviews, restaurant reviews, write blogs and chat online with lonely reporters.

That's what brings to me to something that's been bothering me for a while.

I'm talking about the collegiate basketball polls.

There are two of them that amount to anything these days -- the Associated Press sportswriters' poll and the coaches' poll, which is run by a newspaper and a TV network.

The polls don't come out until Monday afternoon, and they should be coming out on Sunday.

After Saturday's monstrous number of games, everybody's ready for new polls on Sunday. Monday is too long a wait because people who read only newspapers and don't read stories on a computer won't see the new polls until Tuesday morning.

By that time, more games will have been played and the polls are already out of date.

The reason I'm bringing this up, of course, is because Drake's tremendous team has been a significant player in the polls this season.

The Bulldogs were 16th in last week's AP poll and 18th in the coaches' poll.

But yesterday they handed No. 8 Butler its first home loss, 71-64, at Indianapolis, and now they deserve a much higher ranking.

Because there won't be any AP or coaches' polls until tomorrow, I'm issuing my own today.

And I've got Drake No. 7.

Frankly, after seeing Butler on ESPN2 yesterday, I thought it was overrated. But as long as both polls had Butler No. 8, that's fine.

After winning the game, Drake should be at least as high as Butler was in the rankings. With No. 1 Memphis and No. 4 Kansas losing yesterday, I'm shaking up the rankings and making Keno Davis' Drake team No. 7.

So here are the Ron Maly Rankings:


1. Tennessee
2. North Carolina
3. UCLA
4. Memphis
5. Duke
6. Texas
7. Drake
8. Kansas
9. Stanford
10. Wisconsin
11. Xavier
12. Georgetown
13. Indiana
14. Purdue
15. Connecticut
16. Butler
17. Louisville
18. Washington State
19. Vanderbilt
20. Michigan State
21. St. Mary's
22. Southern Illinois
23. Marquette
24. Drake's second team
25. Pittsburgh

*

GOING BANANAS

Like a lot of other people around the country, Mark Robinson of Iowa City was impressed with Drake in its victory over Butler.

Here's his e-mail:

Hi, Ron;

What an outstanding, incredible, wonderful, magical game that was. I'm out of adjectives.

Drake is simply the real deal and they beat the Butler Way and in their house.

I found myself cheering, you know, like I used to for good Hawkeye teams. It's been a long time, Ron, since I went bananas over a televised basketball game.

I went bananas. I really did not believe it could be done, Drake over Butler on national television in Indianapolis. I would have bet against Drake 10 times out of 10.

I look forward to your writings,

Mark Robinson

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: The way the Bulldogs played against Butler was the way they've performed 99 percent of the time all season. Every time Drake has gone into a big game on the road -- like at Iowa early in the season and at places like Bradley, Illinois State, Creighton and Southern Illinois in the Missouri Valley Conference schedule -- I've thought it would have serious problems. But the Bulldogs survived all of those games except the one at Southern Illinois, which it lost, 65-62. I thought the Butler game would be trouble but, in my opinion, Drake was clearly the better team and certainly deserved to win. It's been a season that no one [other than maybe Drake's players] expected, and there are still some things I think this team can accomplish now that it's headed to the NCAA tournament].

*

DRAKE'S 'UNSELFISH STYLE'

Jeff Valadez of Bend, Ore., sent me a book, "City 'Scapes" by Craig J. Carrozzi , that I'm anxious to read.

After e-mailing my thanks for the book, Jeff sent this e-mail:


Hi Ron,

I was able to see the second half of the Drake-Butler game, the first time I'd been able to see the Bulldogs, living on the west coast.

Wow, these guys really have the fundamentals down, I was really impressed at the passing and the overall unselfish style of the team, they do so, and still have style when it counts. Butler and Drake had very similar styles, but fortunately Drake executed better at the end.

Yep, if they keep playing that way, they can do some damage in the tournament, I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Take care, Ron.

Jeff Valadez

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Don't forget, Drake is on ESPN2 again next Saturday in its 1 p.m. regular season finale against Wichita State at the Knapp Center. That'll give the rest of the nation another look at this outstanding team before it heads into the Missouri Valley Conference postseason tournament and then the Big Dance].

Don't Doubt This Drake Team Any Longer -- Big Dance-Bound Bulldogs Show They Belong On National Stage With 71-64 Victory Over No. 8-Ranked Butler

Drake's basketball players showed today that they know exactly how to act when they're on the national stage.

Get 'em on it and they turn in a big league performance.

This is Academy Award weekend in Hollywood.

Well, let the people wearing the makeup have that stage.

What Drake came away with in Indianapolis wasn't the result of any acting.

These 16th-ranked Bulldogs played their guts out just like they have all season and outfought No. 8 Butler, 71-64, for one of the biggest victories in school history.

Make no mistake about it, Drake was the better team and deserved to win.

Despite only three losses all season, there have still been those who have questioned Drake's strength.

The doubters have said the Missouri Valley Conference is down.

They've said, with Adam Emmenecker and Jonathan "Bucky" Cox in the starting lineup, there's no way the Bulldogs can match up with basketball's big boys.

They've wondered if rookie coach Keno Davis has been doing it with smoke and mirrors.

Forget it, folks.

I've been saying for a couple of months that Drake is for real.

I repeat it now.

These Bulldogs can play.

Fran Fraschilla, the TV commentator, issued a warning in the second half that teams around the nation won't want to play either Drake or Butler in the upcoming NCAA tournament.

I don't know about Butler.

But I do know that Drake is going to be a very, very dangerous opponent for any team in the Big Dance.

*

So it was yet another huge victory for our man Keno, the 36-year-old first-year head coach who learned the game from his dad, Tom.

When the season began, no one knew if Keno knew the first thing about coaching.

Now people are hoping Drake can keep him, and I'm one of them.

He's the best thing that's happened to the program since Maury John, who took three straight teams to the NCAA tournament nearly 40 years ago.

"With the NCAA tournament coming up, people are talking about signature wins," Keno told his postgame radio audience. "I don't know if it's a signature win for the NCAA tournament, but it sure is for our program."

*

The victory was Drake's first over a top 10 team since the 1982 squad beat No. 7 Tulsa in 1982.

*

Josh Young scored a career-high 25 points for Drake [24-3]. Leonard Houston had 16 and wowed everyone with his leaping ability with his rebounding and shooting ability around the basket.

Jonathan "Bucky" Cox [shown in the Associated Press photo] had 11 points and 11 rebounds for a Bulldog team that handed Butler [25-3] its first home loss of the season.

*

Drake got some great TV air time.

The camera stayed on athletic department historian Paul Morrison for a long time.

"He's a walking encyclopedia of Missouri Valley Conference and Drake basketball," play-by-play announcer Ron Franklin said.

Franklin and Fraschilla also talked about Dolph Pulliam, who played on Drake's 1969 Final Four team and now is the commentator on the Bulldogs' radio broadcasts.

Some old videotape was shown of Tom Davis in his coaching days. Also pictured was Bruce Pearl, the Tennessee coach who was one of Davis' assistants at Iowa.

Pearl's No. 2-ranked team will rise to No. 1 in Monday's voting after beating top-ranked Tennessee, 66-62, tonight.

So it turned out to be quite a day for Tom Davis, with his son winning a big BracketBusters game and one of his former assistants coaching Tennessee to a victory that will result in the nation's No. 1 ranking.

*

Butler's fans kept chanting, "Here we go, Bulldogs," but Drake's players probably thought they were cheering for them.

Both teams are the Bulldogs.

*

Pulliam has worn an $800 blue leather suit most of the season because Keno Davis regarded it as one of the team's good-luck charms.

But he wore a black suit today after the Bulldogs' 72-71 loss Tuesday night to Bradley.

*

Somebody woke up Digger Phelps on the ESPN Game Day set and told him Drake was playing Butler in a BracketBusters game.

As usual, Phelps said something at halftime that viewers already knew or that didn't make sense.

When asked which team would do better in the NCAA tournament, Davis said Butler. That destroyed his credibility.

I couldn't figure out what Jay Bilas was talking about.

*

It never ends.

The lack of respect for Drake, I mean.

I was watching something called "Midnight Madness" on ESPN late tonight when Doug Gottlieb, the loudmouth announcer, said, "I know Drake has won the Missouri Valley Conference's regular-season title, but I think Southern Illinois is in good position to win the league's postseason tournament."

ESPN.com Writer Lists Keno Davis In 'Backup' Spot As Next Indiana Coach

Here we go. The name of Drake's Keno Davis has already been included in a list of "backups" for the Indiana basketball coaching job. Kelvin Sampson was dumped today as the Hoosiers' coach, and assistant Dan Dakich has been installed as the interim coach for the rest of the season. It's my guess Dakich, a former Indiana player, can certainly get the permanent job with a strong finish this season. But ESPN.com writer Pat Forde thinks the Hoosier brass should forget Dakich and the rest of the "Bob Knight family" when it comes to naming a permanent coach. Part of the "Knight family" is former Hoosier standout Steve Alford, who was a flop as Iowa's coach and now is at New Mexico. Of Alford, Forde writes, "[He] didn't do enough at Iowa to prove he can win at the highest level in the Big Ten." Forde's No. 1 choice for the Indiana job is Tony Bennett of Washington State, and he also mentions Sean Miller of Xavier, Brad Brownell of Wright State, Mark Few of Gonzaga and Thad Matta of Ohio State as possibilities. On Forde's backup list are Lon Kruger of Nevada-Las Vegas, Kevin Stallings of Vanderbilt, Scott Drew of Baylor, our man Keno Davis of Drake and Chris Lowery of Southern Illinois. Davis [who is pictured] has a 23-3 record in his first season with the 16th-ranked Bulldogs, and right now is in -- of all places, Indianapolis, right up the road from Bloomington, where Indiana's campus is located -- for Drake's 4 p.m. game tomorrow at No. 8-ranked Butler. Davis has done a sensational job since succeeding his dad, Tom, as Drake's coach. Although he's in his rookie season as a head coach, his Bulldogs at one point had a 21-game winning streak and they've already clinched the Missouri Valley Conference championship. I've been writing that other schools could certainly be looking at Keno, and I've urged Drake officials to give him a bonus and/or a pay raise and extend his contract, which now runs through 2012. Personally, I feel Indiana would have to wade through a number of candidates before settling on Davis because he's in only his first season, but stranger things have happened. So my advice to Drake athletic director is this: Don't wait. Let Keno know how much you want him to stay and sweeten the pot. People are noticing.

The Night Loren Meyer Got Hit By a Freight Train

Loren Meyer's life would have been a heck of a lot simpler if he hadn't been hit by that damn freight train.

I mean, like Johnny Orr said at the time, nothing good happens after midnight.

I've heard other guys put it differently.

They say nothing good happens at 4:30 in the morning.

Especially when your 6-10 basketball player is in a pickup truck in the middle of Des Moines at that time, and he's supposed to be in bed at Ames.

I've been involved with more than a few unusual stories in my time as a writer -- none more bizarre than the one involving Loren Meyer.

I was reminded of the big donkey the other day while reading Rick Brown's "3 Questions" segment on him in the paper.

Meyer [pictured above in the red uniform, courtesy of eBay] and other former players had come back to Ames for Iowa State's centennial basketball celebration.

*

Rick didn't get into Meyer's Brush With Disaster On Some Train Tracks in 1994, and the one-time first-round NBA pick probably didn't want to be reminded of it.

But I vividly recall one of the strangest incidents in Iowa State basketball history.

I was spending a lot of time around the Cyclone program in those days.

It wasn't a particularly successful season on the court -- the Cyclones finished with only a 14-13 record, and the NIT didn't even want them -- but there was lots of emotion connected to it off the court.

Johnny Orr was trying to go into retirement with as much final-season success as possible, but his players wouldn't let him do it.

Meyer, Fred Hoiberg and Julius Michalik all had scoring averages of 20 points or more, but the team had only a 4-10 record in the Big Eight Conference. Yes, Big Eight. That was before Texas and the rest of those teams from the Southwest Conference came along and turned it into the Big 12.

It certainly didn't help matters that Meyer's season ended in January when he was hit by a train.

*

Meyer was in the truck with two other Iowa State students -- all of whom had attended Ruthven-Ayrshire High School.

The truck was hit by a 44-car freight train, and Meyer came out of it with a broken collarbone that ended his season.

Obviously, it could have been worse. There have been many truck-train collisions that resulted in more tragic things than broken collarbones.

Iowa State called a press conference after the incident.

Orr said Meyer was a lucky guy. In effect, Johnny said if the train had hit the truck's cab, they'd be calling his center the late Loren Meyer.

Meyer issued a statement after he found out he was still breathing, or someone wrote it for him.

"It was a mistake on my part," he said. "I feel lucky to be alive, and it will never happen again."

That came as good news to Orr, who thought coaching against Bobby Knight [photo at the lower left, courtesy of eBay] was enough of an adventure.

*

Ironically, the incident involving Meyer happened just a year after Iowa player Chris Street died when his car was struck by a snowplow in Iowa City.

And, yes, I was in the middle of that story, too.

In a very nice gesture, Iowa State decided to honor Street by having a player from the state of Iowa wear Chris's uniform No. 40 in future seasons.

Meyer was one of them. So were such Cyclones as Morgan Wheat, Fred Hoiberg, Klay Edwards, Brad Davis, Dave Braet and, now, Mark Currie.

Meyer was averaging 22.2 points and 9.5 rebounds when he was hit by the train. The broken collarbone caused him to miss the last 15 games of the season, and the Cyclones lost 10 of them.

*

Tim Floyd was hired to replace Orr, and Meyer averaged 15.7 points and 8.9 rebounds for a 1994-95 team that went 23-11.

I was in Ames on the day Floyd was hired, and Meyer was seated in the office of Ric Wesley, who was on Orr's staff.

Meyer was slouched in a chair with his head resting on a wall.

"How many times did we hear the word 'family' in that press conference?" Wesley asked me after Floyd's press conference.

Evidently he wasn't impressed with what he heard from Floyd.

It made no difference. Floyd wasn't impressed with Wesley either.

Floyd didn't keep him on the staff, but evidently he lit a fire under Meyer.

*

Indeed, NBA scouts were so impressed with him that he became a first round choice of the Dallas Mavericks and the 24th piok overall in the 1995 draft.

Meyer hung around in the NBA for a few years, but wasn't regarded as much more than just another big stiff who took up space on the bench.

He told Rick Brown he's now in the construction business in Spencer, and he lives on an acreage.

That's where he belongs.

*

Scanning the paper: Ken Fuson seems to be saying, "Screw 'em." Carolyn Washburn took away Fuson's humor column, so he's writing humor for page 1. He had a short and funny weather story in the paper today, and seems to be saying, "If they don't want my humor on the op-ed page, I'll write it for the front page." I wish he'd have kept No-Name Ballteam out of the story, but at least he left Ballteam's owner out of it...Hey, if Gary Barta wants to add another year to Kirk Ferentz's contract, I've got no problem with it. They're both good guys...I guess the Iowa women's basketball team isn't such a hot story after all. Ohio State took care of that...A story says the 38-year-old female teaching aide who had sex with a 17-year-old boy could be fined $1,500 and serve up to a year in jail if convicted. I'm sure all she'll have to do is perform 20 hours of community service, whatever that means. Let's see, if the roles were reversed and it was a 38-year-old male teacher who had sex a number of times with a 17-year-old female student, the guy would have his testicles cut off immediately and tossed into the Skunk River, his kidneys and liver would be removed and donated to Des Moines University, and he'd be put in the slammer for 200 years...I guess Valley High School has dropped basketball as a competitive sport.

Emmenecker Has Stitches In Hand, But Keno Expects Him To Play Saturday At No. 8 Butler On ESPN2 In What Will Be Drake's Toughest Game So Far

Adam Emmenecker is on the short list of players Drake's basketball team could least afford to lose as Saturday's nationally-televised game against Butler approaches.

At this stage, there's no reason to think Emmenecker -- the Bulldogs' impressive point guard -- won't play, despite injuring a hand Tuesday night in a 72-71 loss to Bradley.

In answer to Andrew Logue's question about Emmenecker [pictured at the top of this column with Willie McCarter, a Drake standout in the 1960s] on this morning's teleconference, Davis said Emmenecker has a cut on the hand.

Keno didn't say which hand was injured and no one on the teleconference asked him. So I called Drake sports information director Mike Mahon later, and he told me it's Emmenecker's right hand that's ailing.

"He had some stitches in the hand," Keno said. "I'm not sure how he cut it -- [someone] said he cut it on a shoe. That's the first time I've heard [something] like that.

"But I think he should be fine. I think he'll play. I don't even think it will affect him in practice today."

Sixteenth-ranked Drake plays No. 8 Butler at 4 p.m. Saturday at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis in the feature BrcketBusters game on ESPN2.

*

Emmenecker is my choice as the most valuable player in the Missouri Valley Conference.

If he doesn't get the honor, it will be a crime.

"He's really been able to run the team well this year," Davis said.

Emmenecker is quite a success story after averaging 4 points as a high school senior.

"He had no scholarship offers," Keno said. "He had some baseball looks, but kind of recruited us more than we recruited him. We were able to put him on scholarship for this, his senior year.

"Had we known he would be such a great player, maybe we would've redshirtd him in his first season. But, where the program was 4 1/2 years ago, we needed just about everybody."

*

I asked Keno about Butler, which obviously is the best team Drake will have played all season.

"I would have to agree with that," he said. "They're very worthy of their top-10 national ranking. Not only are they very talented, you look at their starting lineup and see senior, senior, senior, senior, senior....that really is a big reason why they're having the success they are.

"They're not in a unique situation, getting the national television coverage. We're going to need to play our best bssketball to have a chance."

*

When Tim Floyd used Iowa State as a stopover between coaching at the University of New Orleans and the Chicago Bulls, we'd often see his then-teenage daughter Shannon on the scene.

Shannon has now grown into a very attractive, 27-year-old actress. She's pictured at the lower right.

Shannon has eight films to her credit -- starting with "Home of Phobia" in 2004 and the most recent "Heartland" in 2007. In the 2006 basketball movie "Glory Road," she played the role of a Texas Western student.

Shannon was born Jan. 13, 1981 in El Paso, Texas.

I'm also betting she's a huge fan of the Chicago Bears. At least she's a fan of one of the team's linebackers.

Fred Mitchell of the Chicago Tribune reports that Shannon is engaged to Hunter Hillenmeyer [pictured at the lower left], a 6-4, 238-pound linebacker who was chosen by the Green Bay Packers in the fifth round of the 2003 NFL draft.

He was cut by the Packers in 2003, then signed with the Bears. Hillenmeyer, 28, now starts at strongside linebacker for Chicago.

*

Mitchell also reports that veteran baseball broadcaster Milo Hamilton, who was born in Fairfield, Ia., studied journalism at the University of Iowa and began his radio career at Davenport in 1953, has buried the hatchet as far as legendary Harry Caray is concerned.

This is the day the 10th anniversary of Caray's death is being observed by those who paid attention to a guy whose statue is outside Wrigley Field in Chicago. Caray wound up his broadcasting career with the Cubs, but also worked for the White Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and Oakland Athletics.

Mitchell writes that "Hamilton, 80, for decades resented the fan and media attention directed toward Caray, who was hired as the successor to Jack Brickhouse in 1982. At the conclusion of the '81 season Brickhouse announced on WGN-TV that Hamilton would succeed him as the play-by-play voice of the Cubs.

"That was before Tribune Co. stepped in to buy the Cubs and hired Caray away from the White Sox."

"In his book released two years ago, Hamilton referred to Caray as 'a miserable human being,' abd the two had a number of tiffs off the air when they worked together.

"'That's behind me, and I settled that in my book. I felt it was something I had to say.'"

Hamilton once told me about the large amounts of beer Caray would have in the broadcast booth at Wrigley Field. I think everyone knew ol' Harry liked his suds both during and before his days in Chicago.

Caray's name is just as big, if not bigger, 10 years after his death. There are a number of restaurants bearing his name in the Chicago area.

Then there's that statue. How sick is it that a 100-year-old baseball franchise places a statue of an announcer outside the ballpark instead of one [or more] of the players?

That reminds me of one thing: The baseball team has been lousy for most of an entire century.

*

I saw that headline in today's paper -- the one saying "Hawkeye women are the hottest team going in state now" -- and I immediately determined that a couple of the sports copy desk folks have been spending entirely too much time at whatever has replaced the Office Lounge.

I mean, cut that guy wearing the necktie and the green eyeshade off after his third Bud Light already.

If Iowa's women's basketball team is the hottest thing in the state right now, Drake's men's team hasn't already won the Valley title, hasn't consistently attracted overflow crowds at the Knapp Center throughout the league season and Keno Davis isn't the national coach of the year.

Good for Iowa's women. I'm glad their record is 18-8. I'm glad Lisa Bluder has saved her job.

And I hope they make it to the NCAA Regional in Des Moines so they can finally play in front of a crowd.

Of course, most of the fans sitting in Wells Fargo Arena will be Iowa State fans.

They could open the doors to Carver-Hawkeye Arena and let everybody in free, and nobody would show up for the women's games. Iowa has averaged a horrible 2,959 in the 15,500-seat building.

Dan Callahan and Charlie Spoonhour, 2 Guys Who Know Their Game, Get a Look At Keno's Bulldogs In a Knapp Center That's Been Rocking All Season

It was an hour before the game would start, and I was getting my priorities in order.

I handed the camera to Bill Thompson, Drake's director of corporate development.

"Hold the camera steady and be sure you get both Callahan and me in the viewfinder," I instructed Thompson.

"Then what do I do?" Thompson asked.

"Push the button at the top," I said.

Dan Callahan -- who once sold me a 1959 Volkswagen that both started and stopped -- did what he was supposed to do, and Thompson did what he was supposed to do.

All Callahan had to do was smile and all Thompson had to do was push the right button in a building where most of the right buttons have been pushed all year.

The photo Thompson took of Callahan, the last living member of Maury John's coaching staff, and a guy who's known him for more than 40 years is at the top of this column.

*

Callahan, a 73-year-old coaching retiree from Sioux City, was visiting the Knapp Center for the first time in a couple of years.

It was interesting that his appearance last night at the Drake-Bradley game came at about the same time in the season as the start of the Bulldogs' six-game winning streak that almost resulted in another trip to the NCAA Final Four in 1971.

Maury John's 1970-71 team won a tough game at Tulsa, 87-84, on Feb. 20, 1971, then didn't lose again until Kansas slipped past the Bulldogs, 73-71, in the Midwest Regional title game at Wichita.

That ended a string of three straight trips by Drake to the Big Dance. And the 1970-71 season, which produced a 21-8 record, was John's last in Des Moines. He became Iowa State's coach shortly thereafter.

Drake's Missouri Valley Conference championship this season is its first since that '71 season.

It was too bad Bradley came into the Knapp Center to ruin the Bulldogs' party in Keno Davis' rookie season as coach but, frankly, the Braves were a better team when it counted.

The championship team isn't supposed to go scoreless for nearly 5 minutes at the end of the game. Not when it's playing before in an absolutely frenzied atmosphere against an opponent that's quick, goes to the backboards so well and can shoot so accurately.

"Drake had two good shots at it," Callahan said of the finish that left the Bulldogs with records of 23-3 overall and 14-2 in the Valley.

Callahan was talking about the shots Klayton Korver and Josh Young missed in the final 4.3 seconds.

*

Despite Drake's first home loss in 14 games, Callahan said what Keno Davis' Drake team has done is amazing.

Callahan has done plenty of coaching. In addition to being John's No. 1 assistant from from 1966-1971 at Drake, he was the head coach at such places as Moberly (Mo.) Junior College, Morningside in Sioux City and Valley High School in West Des Moines.

So he knows what the game is all about.

I asked him if he's ever seen a first-year collegiate coach do the things Keno has done at Drake.

After all, I've already written a number of times that Keno is my national coach of the year.

Missouri Valley Conference coach of the year is a sure thing.

Not so fast, Ronnie, my boy.

"Well, you know, Keno is really not a first-year coach," Callahan said. "He's been with his dad [Tom, who was Drake's coach for four seasons and was the winningest coach at Iowa before that] ever since he was old enough to go to the gym. Keno knows basketball. He knows the players here.

"It's like Pat Knight at Texas Tech taking over recently for his dad, Bobby. He knew the system. Keno probably knows the system at Drake beter now because the players know it.

"If anything, Keno has improved on what Tom Davis did at Drake. It's a very exciting team, and Des Moines is excited about it."

Just then, Sandy Hatfield Clubb walked past us.

"There's the athletic director," I told Callahan.

"I thought she was older than that," he said. "She's young."

"Yes, she is," I said of the 44-year-old Sandy. "And she's a hell of a lot better-looking than Bob Karnes."

Callahan laughed when he heard that.

Karnes was the Drake athletic director who let Maury John get away so he could take the Iowa State job 37 years ago.

Shame on Karnes.

*

I also made it a point to talk with Charlie Spoonhour both before and after last night's game.

I go back a long time with Spoonhour [pictured at the lower right], who did the commentary on the telecast for Fox Sports Midwest.

Indeed, Charlie was coaching at Southeastern Community College in Burlington when he called me one day in the 1970s.

"I want you to be on my radio show," he said.

"How much are you paying?" I asked.

"It's a low-budget operation," he answered. "Just $5,000 and free admission to all Southeastern athletic events."

Just kidding.

I appeared free of charge on Charlie's show.

Anyway, Spoonhour went from the junior college job in Burlington to a two-year stint as an assistant coach at Nebraska, then later was the head coach at Southwest Missouri State [now Missouri State], St. Louis University and Nevada-Las Vegas.

He's living in Las Vegas now and keeping the manufacturers of turtleneck shirts rich.

That's the only kind of shirt he ever wears. Maybe that's where Larry Eustachy got the turtleneck idea when he was at Iowa State.

*

I asked Spoonhour what he thought of Drake, and he said he couldn't believe "the great atmosphere" at the Knapp Center.

"Did you think it would happen here?" I asked, considering Drake's program was at rock-bottom when he coached against the Bulldogs at Southwest Missouri.

"Since it happened here before [in the Maury John era], yes," Charlie said. "People here know what it takes.

"This was a great turnout [another overflow crowd of 7,152]. It's great to see this many students involved. That's the hard thing now [around the country]. It's too bad Drake had to lose, but give Bradley credit. They came in here and fought their way back in the second half."

I asked Spoonhour if he's ever seen a first-year coach have the success Keno Davis is having.

"Not at the Division I level," he answered. "I talked to Tom Davis after the game and asked him what it's like watching Keno coach. I know about it because I'm a nervous wreck when I watch my son, Jay, coach.

"Jay is an assistant at Texas-San Antonio."

Spoonhour said what Keno is accomplishing is "the culmination of what they started as a staff when Tom was in charge. I'm happy for Keno and happy for his father."

*

Charlie was heading back home to Las Vegas today.

"I like it out there because it's warm," he said. "People think we live on the strip, but that's not the case. We have a town like everybody else. We have a Wal-Mart, schools and churches.

"But if you want me over the weekend, I'll be in Cancun."

Spoonhour will work the Southern Illinois-Illinois State game at the end of the regular season, then will do commentary on a number of games in the Valley tournament in St. Louis.

He thinks as many as four teams could win the postseason championship. Drake obviously is one of them.

*

As usual, I sat next to Tom Davis on press row last night.

It was a tough one for him, and for me, too.

When neither of Drake's final two shots connected and the Bulldogs lost, 72-71. both of us sat there in stunned silence for a few seconds.

Tom kept his eyes on Keno, no doubt replaying the final seconds in his mind.

"Hard game to lose," I finally said.

He agreed, and mentioned the ill-advised shot Josh Young tried when Drake had the lead with 35 seconds to play.

Still, the smooth sophomore scored 23 points.

When I talked later to Callahan, however, he said he noticed that Young "didn't play the same way after taking a fall in the last half."

*

Tom Davis said he's been in the Knapp Center for all of Drake's home games, but hasn't been in an arena for a road game.

He'll watch Saturday's game against Butler in Indianapolis on TV.

*

Speaking of Butler, I hear Drake will open the season at home against that school next season.

*

Bill Thompson, the Drake administrator I mentioned at the top of this column, tells me he'll be retiring for the second time May 21.

"We're moving to Mesquite, Nev.," he said.

"Hayden Fry will be one of your neighbors," I pointed out.

The former Iowa football coach has lived in Mesquite for a number of years.

"I still feel good," Thompson said. "When I get out there, I'd like to work part-time at a golf course."

*

I asked Paul Morrison, Drake's 90-year-old historian, how he felt when Drake lost last night.

"Bad," he said. "I felt real sorry for the players. It would have been nice to keep the home winning streak going and beat Bradley a second time."

*

Seated at my left last night was Dolph Pulliam, Drake's radio commentator.

He again was wearing his $800 blue leather suit after sporting a different suit during last Saturday's victory at Northern Iowa.

Pulliam wore the blue leather during Drake's 21-game winning streak, and hoped to keep the home string alive by donning it again last night.

*
It was sure good to see the return of the hard-hitting "Bulldog Buzz" in today's paper.

Ex-Bulldog Dave Hansen Reminds Drake FollowersTo Not Forget the 1963-64 Team, Which Nobody Expected Anything From, But Went 21-7 Under Maury John

Among the long-suffering Drake basketball fans enjoying the Bulldogs' wonderful 2007-2008 season is Jay Davidson.

Davidson will go just about anywhere to watch Drake play, and rode the fan bus last Saturday to Cedar Falls, where the Bulldogs clinched the university's first Missouri Valley Conference championship since 1971.

After getting back to Des Moines, Davidson [who is pictured] wrote to me not only about this season's team, which takes a 23-2 record into tonight's game against Bradley, but also about Dave Hansen, a Bulldog from the Maury John coaching era.

Here's what Davidson wrote:

"Dave Hansen sat right behind me on the fan bus to UNI. Among other achievements, Dave, who played on notable Drake teams before his graduation in 1965, holds the record for most alumni games played (27) and he (probably) finished his career as a Drake alumni team member a year ago, when he recorded a double-double. He was 40-plus years older than the youngest member of that team (who did not record a double-double and neither did anyone else)!

"Dave says we should remember the Drake team of 1963-64, of which he was a member. That team, like this team, was able to fly under the radar 'because nobody expected anything of us,' he says. The previous year's team finished 3-9 in the Valley, in last place. After dissension on the team late in the year caused coach Maury John to essentially 'throw everyone off the team' at season's end, seven of the team members earned their way back in individual sessions with the coach.(It was not the first time Maury John gave players a second chance, either.)

"Things jelled for the 'Dogs the next year, when they took the MVC by surprise and became Drake's first post-season qualifiers. Senior McCoy McLemore led the team in scoring (15-point average) and rebounding (11.8 average), Billy Foster was the playmaking guard, the talented but erratic young Bob Netolicky could be dazzling or dreadful, and these Bulldogs beat Temple, Georgetown and Purdue early in the season, then reeled off close Valley wins over national powers Cincinnati and Bradley in Des Moines to go 10-2 in the Valley, good for a tie for the league race with Wichita State, then coming to prominence under dapper coach Ralph Miller. (McLemore and 'Neto' had long careers as pros.)

"Playing Wichita State in a league playoff game at Lawrence, KS, Drake dropped a 58-50 decision, which meant that WSU went to the NCAA tournament, which then was a 16-team tourney. The Bulldogs, however, went on to play on what was still considered college basketball's biggest stage, Madison Square Garden and the 12-team NIT. There, they proceeded to defeat Pittsburgh, 87-82, before falling to New Mexico, 65-60, in games that put Drake on the national basketball map. The team was the first ranked Drake team: 13th in the final UPI Poll.

"When Dave Hansen received the 'Double D' from Drake in 1995, he chose to talk about his coaches, Ev Cochrane at Marshalltown high, and Maury John at Drake, and the impact each of them had on his life. He called Maury John 'a man who gave me a second chance.' When Dave entered Drake as a freshman in 1959, he had just turned 18 a month earlier, and, he says, "I wasn't ready for the college life." He lasted just eight weeks before leaving and eventually joining the Navy. (He isn't sure now who it was, but someone made sure that he withdrew properly from his college courses, which were not the problem, so 'I got W's [withdrawal] and not F's,' he says.) After the death of his mother, and illness of his father, he was discharged from the Navy as a hardship separation, and arriving back in Des Moines, he called Maury John. 'Maury took me back,' says Hansen with a grin, recalling that he never gave the coach any reason to regret that decision. Hansen was on the all-Valley academic team 'a couple years,' graduated in four years (later earning an MBA from Drake as well), and this winter was honored as a 1960's choice on Drake's celebration of its MVC 'All-Centennial Team.'

"In addition, I suspect that Hansen has made hundreds, if not thousands, of friends for himself -- and for Drake -- over the 43 years since his graduation. He's traveled the world as a human resources manager and consultant, presided over both the Drake National Alumni Association and Drake National 'D Club' boards, and now in his 'retirement,' continues to teach, consult and manage to fulfill about four jobs! He's amazed as any of us by this Drake team's fantastic run, and thinks back to his team of 1963-64 as he marvels on hardcourt magic!

"Dave and Deb Hansen live in Urbandale. Their son, Chris, is a kicker on the Drake football team and is a broadcast journalism major who can often be seen operating a camera under the west basket at the Knapp Center this winter."

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: I've written about Jay Davidson several times previously this season. Indeed, he gave me some information a while back that I had never heard and was surprising to a number of my readers. Davidson told me that both he and 6-8 Bulldog basketball player Rick Wanamaker played the clarinet in the Drake marching band. Davidson and Wanamaker, both smalltown kids, were roommates at Drake. Wanamaker, of course, was the guy from tiny Marengo, Ia., who made the famous block of Lew Alcindor's shot in Drake's 85-82 loss to UCLA in the 1969 Final Four at Louisville. When I asked Rick about playing the clarinet in Drake's marching band, he said he was able to stay in the band for only one game because of his responsibilities with Maury John's basketball program. Now back to Jay Davidson. "As a high school sophomore growing up near Stanwood in eastern Iowa, my first attention to Drake University was drawn by the success of the 1963-64 Bulldog basketball team," he wrote. "I liked what I found out, landed in Des Moines in 1966, and despite living elsewhere during most of the 70s and 80s, Drake has never since been out of my head or heart. Many of my fondest friendships (some of which have been chronicled this winter) and memories involve Drake and Bulldogs past and present."]

Of Drake's 23-2 Title Year, Athletic Director Says, 'This Is Not a Fluke. There's No Reason We Can't Compete Regularly for the Championship'

People who attended Drake's Tipoff Club lunch today at Christopher's gave both basketball coach Keno Davis and athletic director Sandy Hatfield Clubb standing ovations before they spoke. There was an easy explanation for that, of course. The Bulldogs clinched the Missouri Valley Conference championship Saturday by beating Northern Iowa, 65-55, and they now have records of 23-2 overall and 14-1 in the league. They're ranked No. 16 and No. 18 in the national polls. "I appreciate it. You guys touch my heart," said Clubb [pictured at the right] when the applause quieted. "I'm supposed to be here to talk -- you can't get me emotional before I talk." Clubb went on to say, "People ask me all the time, 'Did you ever believe things could be this great at Drake?' I answer, 'Absolutely, but I didn't put that part in there about 21 straight, so that was pretty cool.' The second thing people always ask is, 'Keno Davis is just in the first year of his head coaching tenure and I'm in my second year of my athletic director tenure. Haven't you guys set the bar pretty high?' I say, 'Absolutely not.' I mean, I expect to be in this position every year, don't you, Keno? But the truth is, we've catapulted from the bottom of the league to the top of the league. We're staying there, guys. This is not a fluke. This isn't something where we just happened to go from ninth to first. There's absolutely no reason we're not staying at the top and competing regularly for the championship." Davis, a head coaching rookie who is my choice as the national coach of the year, said he's often asked if he expected this kind of season. "'No, not at all," said Keno. "To go from a projection of ninth place [in the Valley's preseason voting] and have this kind of season is something special."

*

PLAYERS HAVING 'MORE FUN THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE'

Drake's players were still enjoying themselves today -- two days after winning the school's first Valley men's regular-season title since 1971. At least 6-8, 225-pound forward Brent Heemskerk [pictured at the left] continued to be in an upbeat mood while speaking to the overflow crowd at the Tipoff Club. "The No. 1 question people ask me lately is, 'Brent, you guys look like you're having so much fun out there. Are you having as much fun as it looks?' The answer is, 'No.' That brought a laugh from the paying customers. "We're having way more fun than you can imagine," said Heemskerk, a junior from Grand Rapids, Mich. "That's not to say we're not focused and that we're not taking things seriously, but our coach hss done a great job all year. Keno has talked about this all year....Every win we get and every record we break, we have to really enjoy it. Things haven't always been like this in the past, so you have to enjoy the good times....This is a special year for us, and we're having a lot of fun and enjoying every step of it." Drake's 21-game winning streak ended with a 65-62 loss last Wednesday at Southern Illinois, but the Bulldogs wrapped up the Valley title and extended their records to 23-2 overall and 14-1 in the conference with a 65-55 victory Saturday at Northern Iowa. "We're looking forward to keeping this thing going," Heemskerk said. "We have a very tough game against Bradley [tomorrow night at the Knapp Center], then we play [Saturday] at Butler, which is going to be a big game in which we can get some national attention [on ESPN2 against the nation's No. 8 team with a 24-2 record]. It's a chance to beat a very good team on the road." Drake slipped to No. 16 in today's Associated Press sportswriters' poll and to No 18 in the coaches' poll. The Bulldogs were No. 14 in the AP poll and No. 15 in the coaches' poll last week.

*

ALL ABOARD FOR ST. LOUIS

Here's information, courtesy of Jay Davidson, on Drake's travel package for fans who want to attend the Missouri Valley Conference postseason tournament at St. Louis:

"The package includes game tickets (all session tickets, $100 for each person; bus transportation, $60 per person, and hotel room at the Millennium Hotel, 200 South 4th Street, St. Louis, $250 for two nights (Friday, March 7 and Saturday, March 8) lodging. Lodging is by room, not per person. Each room has two double beds.

"The bus will leave the Drake Tennis Center lot on Friday, March 7 at 5 a.m. (possibly earlier) and returns on Sunday, March 9 after the championship game. Drake's quarterfinal game is scheduled for 12:05 p.m., March 7. Semifinal games are at 1:35 and 4:05 p.m., Saturday, March 8, and the championship game is at 1:05 p.m., Sunday, March 9.

"Further information may be had by calling Monica Lihs at (515) 271-3894, or by e-mailing monica.lihs@drake.edu. Reservations may be made by check (payable to Drake University) or major credit card."

*

SAME COACH, DIFFERENT TEAM

A guy who pays attention to such things tells me he thinks the photo of Maury John that was in the package of Drake stories in the paper yesterday was taken when John was coaching at Iowa State, not when he was coaching the Bulldogs.

"I think the picture in the paper was taken the night of the Drake-Iowa State game in 1973, which Drake won," the guy said.

John had been told by doctors a short time earlier that he had terminal cancer. He coached at Drake from 1959-1971 and was at Iowa State from 1972-1974.

Another reader tells me, "The Register was just a little off in its sidebar "Other MVC titles" yesterday. It rightly noted that the 1963-64 team lost a one-game playoff (to Wichita State), and thus that team can't be considered a Valley champion even though it tied WSU for best regular season record. In 1968-69, the reverse happened: Drake tied Louisville for best regular-season record, then defeated the Cardinals, 77-73, to win the Valley title in a playoff game in the Roundhouse at Wichita. So the Bulldogs were champs that year, not co-champs as reported by the Register in that column...."

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Thanks to my sharp-eyed readers for correcting the paper's errors. With everybody's help, we'll get 'em squared away down there pretty soon. Actually, it's probably been a case of the boss adjusting his green eyeshade so he could write snappy (to say nothing of hard-hitting) headlines like "Hawkeyes sock marauding Minnesota late" that have caused him to screw up so many things pertaining to Drake at the paper].

*

DRAKE HAS NATION'S-BEST 27 STRAIGHT TENNIS VICTORIES

There's some big tennis news at Drake, too, Mike Mahon tells me.

Mahon's office writes, "Drake continues to break down barriers. The Intercollegiate Tennis Association today confirmed that the Bulldogs have assumed the nation’s longest regular-season winning streak at 27 following Georgia’s 4-1 loss Sunday to Ohio State.

"Drake has won 27 consecutive regular-season matches following its first-ever road victory at Nebraska. "The Bulldogs' last loss was Feb. 4, 2007 at Minnesota.

"'This is certainly an incredible achievement for the men's tennis program and Drake University,” Bulldog coach Chase Hodges said. 'It is very difficult to win 27 in a row and we have managed to win a lot of tight matches. Our guys simply believe in themselves and continue to play well and work extremely hard on the court. Our focus now shifts to three tough matches this weekend.'

"The Bulldogs also own the nation’s second-longest home-court winning streak at 38 straight, trailing only Ohio State, which has won 64.

"'Thirty-eight home wins in a row is also an incredible achievement,” Hodges commented. “We always play well at the Drake Tennis Center as the guys are very comfortable with our courts. The win streak is hard to believe....'

"Drake will put both streaks on the line this weekend when it hosts a trio of matches. The Bulldogs entertain Illinois-Chicago, DePaul and Missouri-Kansas City on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

"'Drake men's tennis is now recognized among the nation's best in college tennis,” Hodges said. 'The program has made enormous strides the past couple of years and you have to give all the credit to the student-athletes. We have an outstanding group of young men who represent Drake in a first class manner. I feel our kids do a lot for the university in that we bring much diversity to campus with players from nine different countries including the United States....'"

Some First Class Basketball, With More Than a Few Seasons In Between

I brought up the name of the late Maury John in yesterday's column after Drake won its first Missouri Valley Conference basketball championship since 1971. I'll probably bring up John's name a few more times while Keno Davis, the Bulldogs' first-year coach, keeps this marvelous 2007-2008 season continuing. Maury John's name, of course, is intertwined with an absolutely brilliant period in Drake basketball history. After many years of near-misses, John [pictured at the left] took his final three Bulldog teams to the NCAA tournament. That, my friends, was quite an accomplishment for a man coaching at a small private university where there were no such things as radio call-in shows, weekly TV highlights programs or even "loaner" cars for the staff that were provided by auto dealerships around town. I've gone on record as saying I doubt Drake will ever put three consecutive teams into the Big Dance again, but with Keno [pictured at the right] at the controls I'm starting to think it could happen. This young man is showing some brilliance and class beyond his years. Maury John was in his sixth season at Drake before one of his teams made it into a postseason tournament, and that was the NIT. When John's 1968-69 team went 26-5 and finished third in the Final Four at Louisville it was his 11th season at Drake. When Maury John was coaching at Drake from 1959 through 1971, it was the case of a small-time operation being managed by a first-class human being and a first-class coach who thought in a first-class manner. Including on airplanes. That's right, everyone went first class when Maury John's Drake teams made road trips. Me included. That was the boss's philosophy. Whenever the team you were covering went first class, so did you. Obviously, we had a good boss in those days. Maury John's reasoning about flying first class was that he had talented basketball players, many of whom stood 6 feet 5 inches or more and some of whom were wide-bodied. "So I want them being comfortable in the first class section of the airplanes," he'd tell me. Braniff was one of Drake's favorite airlines in those days, but we gave all of the companies our business -- United, American and something called Ozark included. And Maury John liked to fly. Because he didn't want his players getting sluggish on trips, the first leg of, say, a trip to Cincinnati consisted of a one-night stopover in Indianapolis. On a trip to Memphis, we'd probably spend a night in St. Louis. Braniff's planes came in all sorts of colors -- red, purple, yellow, green, you name it. Maybe even Drake blue. There seemed to be more first class seats than there are in today's airplanes because there were a lot of us in the section. One was Ben Mankowski, the trainer. Mankowski was a very smart guy. I know because I sat next to him on lots of flights. When the flight attendant [we called 'em stewardesses then] would come to our seat, Ben would say, "Most of these boys are too young to drink. I'm the trainer, so would you please put their bottles of alcohol into a bag and I'll take them off the plane when we land." Mankowski was referring to the small bottles of liquor that were provided free to first class passengers. In those days, each passenger in that section was given two of the small bottles shortly after the plane took off. When Mankowski got off the plane, he always had more than two dozen of the miniature bottles of liquor in his duffel bag. I don't think he and Maury John had any parties with mixed drinks on those road trips because John didn't drink alcohol. So Ben, bless his heart, took care of the alcohol at another time and another place. One time I decided to play a trick on Mankowski on a Braniff flight. He was dozing when the flight attendant reached our seat, so I gave the girl Ben's old line about "all these boys on the team are underage, so I'll take their alcohol." It worked, and I think Mankowski wondered on the entire rest of the trip what happened to his miniature bottles of vodka.

*

It was good to see that the paper was able to squeeze some space into today's Wrestling Unlimited section to include an item or two, plus photographs, about Drake winning the Missouri Valley Conference championship. Andrew Logue did his usual stellar job of writing the game story, and Harry Baumert's pictures were again outstanding. But it was too bad the boss couldn't take off his green eyeshade long enough so he could crank out another on-the-scene edition of Bulldog Buzz, or whatever it's been called. I don't know, maybe UNI wouldn't give the paper another credential on press row. It could be that Nancy Justice is working again. If Bulldog Buzz was ever needed, it was today on Championship Weekend. Drake celebrating a Valley title on UNI's court is big stuff, and would have anchored Bulldog Buzz nicely. There's some question about whether Iowa is still playing Division I basketball, but there was no Hawkeye game scheduled yesterday anyway. So that's 15 or so paragraphs that weren't needed. Actually, to keep circulation from sinking even further in northeast Iowa, the buzz could've been called Bulldog & Panther Buzz so readers wouldn't get the idea the paper has forgotten about UNI. It could have easily taken the place of "A Look Back," most of which might've been written a week ago, or a month ago. "A Look Back" would have fit nicely into tomorrow's paper or on the kill hook. "Reader Feedback" deserved to be on the same hook. By the way, back to Wrestling Unlimited. I think Dan McCool deserves a Pulitzer -- or at least a pay raise -- for the stuff he wrote all week. That said, all he'll probably get is a buyout offer, the way the paper is operating these days.

After 37 Years, Drake Wins Another Valley Title -- The Gracious Maury John Is Probably Up There Saying, 'Great Job, Keno. Welcome To the Club'

I've used this line so many times I think I'm getting tired of it myself.

It's the one that goes, "Enjoy this because it happens only every 40 years at Drake."

I mean it as a joke when I say it to Keno Davis, Drake's spectacular rookie coach.

I think he understands that.

Well, whatever. Keno's Bulldogs, who have done so many unbelievable things this season, reached another lofty goal today when they rolled past Northern Iowa, 65-55, and won the first Missouri Valley Conference championship at the school since 1971.

That's not quite 40 years, folks. But it's 37, and that's a whole lot of seasons at a place that hasn't this much fun since Maury John was taking his teams to three straight NCAA tournaments..

Well, move over, Maury.

Make way for this kid, Keno.

I knew Maury John well. He was a winner and he was a very gracious man. He's up in the big basketball arena in the sky now, but I figure he's saying something like, "Great job, Keno. Welcome to the club."

Yes, sir, it's been 37 years between conference titles at a place where I thought major-college basketball might be dead a while back when guys like Tom Abatemarco, Rudy Washington and Kurt Kanaskie were coaching.

It was no secret that Drake had difficult academic restrictions for its athletes, and not all of the aforementioned coaches agreed with the policies.

But the administration's stance was pretty much, "Take it or leave it."

Until Tom Davis showed up after Kanaskie's 10-20 season in 2002-2003, they all left it.

Or, rather they were told to leave.

Now here's Keno Davis, a 36-year-old head coaching novice who does and says all the right things -- putting a starting lineup out there that's got two guys [Adam Emmenecker and Jonathan "Bucky" Cox] who came to school without basketball scholarships and cruising to a No. 14 national ranking and records of 23-2 overall and 14-1 in the Valley in mid-February.

Pretty heady stuff at a university that's been prouder of its law and pharmacy schools than its athletic program.

Well, its men's athletic program anyway.

This gang of players has proved that it's possible for a basketball team to be both smart and good.

Just think, this Drake team was picked to finish ninth in a 10-team conference.

Now, as far as I'm concerned, Davis is coach of the year -- not just in the Valley, but in the nation.

And Emmenecker isn't just the MVP of his team, he's the MVP of his league.

Bulldog fans were fearful that the team might be emotionally down after a 65-62 loss Wednesday night at Southern Illinois.

Hardly.

Just as was the case in so many other games in this banner season, Drake took charge down the stretch -- outscoring UNI, 17-7, after the score had been 48-48.

Emmenenecker scored 13 points, had eight assists, seven rebounds and three steals in what was his best game of the season.

Leonard Houston scored 12 and so did Josh Young for a team that also displayed tremendous defense -- limiting UNI standout Eric Coleman to two shots and four points.

"We knew coming in that he was an all-conference type player," Davis said of Coleman on his KRNT postgame radio show. "We had to make sure when he touched the ball that he wasn't going to beat us."

Davis said his players had "a confidence" in the past week and a half that they would win the Valley title.

"It wasn't cockiness, but confidence," he explained. "The way the schedule came down, we knew we should be able to take care of business. Being able to do it now gives a chance to have a good finish to the season. This takes a little bit of the pressure off."

Drake plays Bradley before a sold-out Knapp Center in Des Moines on Tuesday. So put your blue T-shirts in the wash now.

*

[Adam Emmenecker (15) and Josh Young (20) walk off the floor after Drake clinched the Missouri Valley Conference championship at the McLeod Center in Cedar Falls. Photo for the Associated Press by Charlie Neibergall].

Keno Not Worried About How His Bulldogs Will Respond; And How About ESPN Classic Showing a Real Classic?--Drake vs. UCLA In 1969 Final Four

I was about 20 minutes from driving to my tax lady's office.

But, first, I wanted to hear what Keno Davis was going to say this morning about his 14th-ranked Drake basketball team.

I had a pretty good idea how his comments would go. Still, I wanted to participate in the teleconference Mike Mahon arranged the day before the Bulldogs' game at Northern Iowa.

Keno knows his team, and he doesn't expect one Missouri Valley Conference loss to produce anything resembling a late-season collapse.

Keno is confident his 14th-ranked team won't let the second defeat in 24 games in this unbelievable 2007-2008 season influence what happens at Northern Iowa or the rest of the way.

"I'm not worried about how we're going to respond," Davis said. "I think our team has had pretty much the same attitude after every game -- whether it was when we lost our first game in November to St. Mary's, whether we had a big road win at Creighton or whether had a tough loss at Southern Illinois.

"We seem to react the same way. We get back to practice and our guys seem to be pretty focused. We realize every game in the conference is going to be a tough test, whether we're at home or on the road."

*

When I asked Davis -- who, of course, is in his first season as a head coach -- what his personal feelings were after Wednesday's emotional 65-62 defeat at Southern Illinois, he said, "Any coach or any player, for that matter, isn't happy over a loss.

"But after I had a little time to reflect on the game, I was pretty proud of our team's effort. But there's still room for improvement, and I was anxious to get back to the practice court to address some areas we need to work on."

*

LET'S GET THE 1969 DRAKE-UCLA GAME ON ESPN CLASSIC NETWORK

Jeff Valadez has been following Drake basketball for a long time -- so long, in fact, that he'd like the ESPN Classic network carry a replay of the Bulldogs' 85-82 loss to John Wooden's UCLA team in the 1969 Final Four game at Louisville.

Here's his e-mail, titled, "Wake Up, ESPN":

Ron,

"I grew up in Des Moines and was in sixth grade when I watched the Bulldogs take on UCLA, what a triumph and heartbreaker at the same time.

"I have always wanted to rewatch that game as an adult, and now, given the newly found success of the Drake program, I was wondering if you could head up a lobby to have ESPN play the NCAA semifinal game as a classic broadcast, I would think that any basketball fan with some knowledge of that era would enjoy seeing it! After all, how many times did Alcindor/Jabbar have a shot blocked, by a white guy from Iowa after all!!!!

"Thanks for listening, hope it is a good idea.

"Regards,"

Jeff Valadez

PS -- By the way, I am an Iowa alum, but even there, I was silently pulling for the Bulldogs! AND always enjoyed your columns."

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: I'd like to see ESPN Classic show a replay of the game, too. Indeed, I've yet to see the Drake-UCLA game on videotape. I think fans everywhere -- not just in central Iowa -- would welcome seeing how Maury John's team attacked UCLA in the game at Louisville. A lot of us would like to see Willie McCarter [shown in the photo being honored at halftime of last week's Drake-Evansville game], Dolph Pulliam, Willie Wise and the other Drake players giving the Bruins all they could handle. I'm asking the network to show the game before or during this year's NCAA tournament. Another man who has followed Drake basketball for a long time is Jay Davidson, who was the roommate of center Rick Wanamaker when both were students at Drake. I e-mailed Davidson about Valadez's question regarding an ESPN Classic showing of the game against UCLA. "I've forwarded [your e-mail] to Wanamaker," Davidson told me. A few years ago (perhaps about the time of the 35-year reunion of the 1969 team) Drake sold a DVD which was highlights and profiles of that team. Could have been situational at the time, but I found it somewhat disappointing. So I'll see whether something better can be found. Rick will know, I think. Also, I remember someone telling me that ESPN Classic HAS shown the Drake-UCLA game." In their promotional material, officials of ESPN Classic say the network "is a 24-hour, all-sports network devoted to telecasting the greatest games, stories, heroes and memories in the history of sports. ESPN Classic presents programming from the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NASCAR, boxing (including the ESPN Big Fights Library), tennis, golf, college football and basketball, Olympics and others." The Drake-UCLA game would certainly qualify to be shown again. My research shows that, from Amazon.com, you can buy a 30-minute DVD of the 1969 tournament for $24.99. It supposedly covers the entire tournament, but how you can jam games played by Drake, UCLA, North Carolina and Purdue into a half-hour I'll never know. In fact, there's not much about Drake on the DVD. In the advertising for it on the Internet, a customer who bought the DVD wrote, "Well, this was fun remembering that game and that tournament. For decades I wished that, somehow, I could get a video of the game. Then I discovered this DVD and ordered before I realized that it covers the whole tournament and the 1969 all-American team in a mere 30 minutes. Still, it was worth the price to get the 5 or so minutes of Drake's brush with Cinderella. Merle Harmon narrates the video and the script is in the present tense ('He's a junior, so he'll be back next season.') There's some fantastic shots of the great Rick Mount as well as the greater Lew Alcindor (soon to become Kareem-Abdul Jabbar). It was the 6-8 Wanamaker, who came out of tiny Marengo, Ia., who blocked one of the 7-1 Alcindor's shots, and has been asked about it often ever since].

*

BEST PLACE IN THE COUNTRY TO WATCH A BASEBALL GAME


Bud Appleby writes:

Ron:

"So John O'Donnell Stadium has been renamed Modern Woodmen Park. That's a shame.

"I remember sitting in that stadium several times in the early 1960s and looking across the Mississippi River and seeing a large Modern Woodmen of America sign on a building on the Rock Island side. I figured it was their headquarters.

"The quality of baseball played there was never very good, but it's the best place in the country to watch a game."

[RON MALY'S COMMENT: Modern Woodmen Park isn't something that exactly rolls off your tongue, is it? I wonder what John O'Donnell would say about all of this.]

*

TOO BAD THIS GAME WAS ON ESPN. IT SHOULD'VE BEEN KEPT A SECRET

This is what I think about Iowa's loss last night to Michigan:

The Hawkeyes' second-half performance set the sport of basketball back 75 years. Possibly longer.

I'll bet Todd Lickliter, the Hawkeyes' coach, is wondering why he ever left the job at Butler.

Iowa's Seth Gorney was a stiff last season, and he's still a stiff.

Bring on spring football.

*

By the way, the tax lady said I owe Uncle Sam about $200.

But as Uncle Otto used to say, "It could be worse, Ronnie."

Bulldogs' 65-62 Loss At Southern Illinois Isn't the End Of the World, But They Could See It [The End Of the World, I Mean] From Handcheck Heaven

So what did you think, tnat this was basketball's version of the Ironmen or something?

Did you figure it was a 21st century version of UCLA and its 88-game winning streak?

I mean, Keno Davis never claimed to be John Wooden, did he?

Oh, all right, so Drake's string of consecutive victories ended tonight at 21 games.

Right where you might expect it to end -- in Carbondale, Ill., one of the armpits of the western hemisphere.

Hey, look at it this way: It's better that the Bulldogs' lost for the first time since Nov. 10 in February and not March.

At Southern Illinois -- against a team whose defense is predicated on handchecking [which, the last I heard, was supposed to be illegal] -- not Hampton [remember, Iowa State fans?] or some other scumbag team in the NCAA Regional at Little Rock.

Fourteenth-ranked Drake's record fell to 22-2 with a 65-62 loss to a Southern Illinois team that has records of only 13-12 overall and 8-6 in the Missouri Valley Conference, but always plays well at home.

Indeed, the Salukis now have won 60 of their last 61 home games in the Valley and haven't lost to Drake in Carbondale since 1996.

You knew a defeat -- whenever it came -- would be disappointing to Keno Davis and his Bulldogs.

But they're still going to win the Valley's regular-season championship. Count on it. They're 13-1 in the league now, and tonight's loss doesn't mean they they're not the best team.

They'll certainly be tested the rest of the regular season--starting Saturday at Northern Iowa--and they'll be challenged bigtime at the conference tournament in St. Louis.

But they belong in the NCAA tournament, and they'd have to go into sudden collapse to not get there.

This is a year when the Valley deserves to have only one team in the NCAA--and that team should be Drake.

However, if the Bulldogs don't win the tournament, there'll be two Valley teams in the Big Dance -- Drake and the team that wins the tournament.

After the game, coach Keno Davis sounded a little like he was auditioning for some time at the Comedy Club.

"Adam [Emmenecker] might have to get in the weight room," he told his KRNT-radio audience. "It's hard for him to make a 2-footer with that 250-pound guy wrapped around him."

Good job, Keno. Give 'em hell.

The zebras, I mean.

Something tells me the first-year coach had his tongue firmly implanted in his cheek when he made that comment about what happened to Emmenecker when he tried to score late in the game.

"It's not easy to officiate when you come to Carbondale," Davis said. "That official was right under the basket and I think he was right behind the play. You think you're in perfect position, but I'm not so sure he wasn't just blocked out....They just intentionally tried to stop him from getting to the basket. It's unfortunate, but....

"There are times when you get those calls and times you don't. We can't be worried about one play...."

Josh Young scored 17 points to lead Drake. Bucky Cox led the Bulldogs with 10 rebounds. Randall Falker had 13 points and 10 rebounds for Southern Illinois.

A Man Named Jay Who Turned Into a Prophet, And a Man Named Mark Who I Want To Thank

It's Drake all over the place again today.

The Bulldogs' 14th-ranked basketball team, that is.

An e-mail from Jay Davidson starts the column:

"Ron,

"Sometimes people give me credit I don't deserve. The other day a friend stopped me in a store and said, 'You predicted this!' (referring to what I'm calling the 'Frolic on Forest Avenue' this winter). I asked him what he meant and he added, 'You said this would be a great Bulldog team!' What I actually said, on Oct. 31, was 'I think this team will surprise a lot of people, including themselves...' If people want to remember that simple statement, which I repeated several times around Nov. 1, as being prophetic, I won't try to stop them!"

Jay Davidson

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: I join a lot of Bulldog fans, who had been frustrated for decades and decades with the team's misfortune, who suddenly have jumped on the bandwagon. People who thought the Knapp Center was one of Bill's real estate offices are coming out of the woodwork to toss their TigerHawk sweatshirts into the corner [at least for one winter] and call the Drake ticket office to see if Bradley and/or Wichita State have turned back any tickets for the Bulldogs' last two home games. I've written this before, but I certainly never expected Drake to have anything close to this type of season. Keno Davis, the coach, was a rookie and he had a starting lineup with two walkons. Or, as Leighton Housh used to tell me to say, players without basketball scholarships. I figured a .500 record in Keno's break-in season would be about what anyone could hope for, or expect. But here the Bulldogs are with a 22-1 record, 21 victories in succession and unbeaten in their 13 Missouri Valley Conference games. All I know, Jay, is that I plan to look you up every Oct. 31 so you can tell me how Drake and a few other teams are going to do in an upcoming season. Then I'll search for anyone who's taking bets].

*

Mark Robinson [pictured at the right], who stays on top of the local and national sports scene in a bigtime way, has this to say:

"Hi, Ron;

"I'm going to keep things to a minimum, or maybe not. Your Drake story on McCarter, Emmenecker...well, sir you nailed it and, as I see it, the rest of the local media have yet to catch up.

"You won't find that in your local paper any time soon. The photos were great as well.

"Oh, and shall I mention the Wanamaker story?

"I get to read your wonderful reports and it doesn't cost me a godamned nickel.

"Tell me how that works? However, I did pay dearly to get the Register while I lived in Boston in 1973-74 and in Dallas in 1978-79.

"Really, I need to at least buy you lunch at that Chinese place some afternoon, hopefully in the near future.

"Keep writing, Ron."

Mark Robinson

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Thanks for the very kind words, Mark. The sportswriting gang that gathers every Wednesday for the Oriental cuisine would welcome you. And the lunch is on me!]

From 300 Miles Away, the Pastor Asks About These Unbelievable Bulldogs

Rev. David Mumm is no longer the pastor at Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Des Moines, but now that he's moved east as far as Illinois, I do the best I can to keep him up to date with the goings-on in Des Moines and with Drake's unbelievable basketball team.

The pastor [pictured at the right] once sang the National Anthem before a baseball game at No-Name Ballpark [where the people who manage that place need plenty of religion and counseling]. He knows a lot about football, basketball, auto racing and other spectator sports, is an avid hunter and fisherman, and always has meaningful thoughts on what's good and what isn't-so-good about the sporting scene.

Here's his latest e-mail:

Hi, Ron,

"You have written quite a bit about Drake's winning streak, and about the fine job Keno is doing as coach. Here is a question for you. From 300 miles away, I can tell that they are a good team, doing a good job of flying under the radar. ESPN hasn't heard of them -- or at least doesn't believe they are worthy of SportsCenter coverage. So, tell me more about the style of ball they are playing. Are they primarily a transition team? Are they like Wisconsin, very deliberate, a clock management team? Do they have exceptional speed, height? How would they stack up against a Big Ten team (I know they played Iowa early in the season). Today, how would they fare against a Wisconsin, or Purdue? Obviously, the DSM Register does not care enough to tell its readers much about Drake basketball. So, I will count on you to fill in the blanks and provide a verbal picture of this team.

"Have a great week."

David Mumm
PO Box 15801
Loves Park, IL 61132

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: This Drake team is amazing. It's made up of a bunch of unselfish players who think pass-first and shoot-second. In my opinion, they either have no business being this good or college recruiters don't know what they're doing. Two of the starters--guard Adam Emmenecker and forward Jonathan "Bucky" Cox -- came to school without basketball scholarships and now are among the very best players in the Missouri Valley Conference, if not all of Division I basketball. It's difficult for me to believe that no Division I coaches thought enough of them to offer them scholarships. On offense, the Bulldogs prefer to run, but their opponents try to not let them run. Their foes hope to get Drake into a game in the 50s, and the Bulldogs can certainly play that way. But they can get into the 70s very easily, too. The team is not big and not bulky. That worries me a little when it has to go against a team with a talented, quick big man in the middle. To show how versatile Drake can be, scoring leader Josh Young missed three games because of an ankle sprain, but the Bulldogs won all of them. They can play transition basketball, they can shoot three-point baskets and they play decent defense. They don't have a Dolph Pulliam in the lineup who can hold the other team's best shooter to half his scoring average, but they know how valuable defense is. You asked about Drake against the Big Ten, this is what I think: These Bulldogs can beat any team in the Big Ten, and the people who figure the Ratings Percentage Index obviously feel the same way. Drake is No. 8 in the RPI -- ahead of every Big Ten team. Indeed, the only teams ranked ahead of the Bulldogs are Tennessee, Duke, North Carolina, Memphis, Kansas, Texas and Georgetown. Michigan State is No. 13, Wisconsin is No. 21. Drake beat Iowa, 56-51, early in the season, and the Hawkeyes are a lowly No. 144 in the RPI--below No. 112 Northern Iowa and No. 124 Iowa State. I certainly think Drake will have trouble tomorrow night at Southern Illinois, and also probably Saturday at Northern Iowa. I'm sure Butler, which is No. 19 in the RPI, will be favored at home against the Bulldogs in the BracketBusters game Feb. 23 at Indianapolis. But the odds don't worry Drake's players. Hey, they've won 21 straight games and they're 22-1 for the season. It's more than magic. It's a wonderful group of players and Keno Davis, a head coach who is having a spectacular break-in season].

My Dad Has Been Deceased for 30 Years, But I Get Mail for Him -- Even Though He Never Lived In W.D.M. Or Was Able to Visit Me At My Home Here

I'm fairly certain the last time I wrote about my mailman was the day I was worried about him busting his bag.

What I mean by that is that his bag [of mail, that is] was full of heavy college football press guides addressed to me. The mailman -- whose name I think is Tuffy [or should be] -- had to trudge up my hill while carrying that overflowing bag.

I joked that the guy had better start wearing a jockstrap and/or one of those belts that the workers at Home Depot wrap around their waists so he wouldn't have a problem that might send him to Iowa Methodist.

Actually, heavy press guides aren't unusual to either me or the Post Office.

But something I got in the mail the other day was.

It was an piece of mail -- an advertisement of some kind -- that was addressed to my dad.

What made that so unusual was that my dad has been deceased for 30 years.

There it was, Julius W. Maly's name on the envelope.

The fact that it was addressed to my dad wasn't the only thing unusual about it.

The fact that it was sent to my address in West Des Moines was.

Julius W. Maly never lived in West Des Moines, and never visited me in West Des Moines.

He visited me a couple of times when we lived in Des Moines, and that's all.

Go figure.

But this wasn't the first time Julius W. Maly's mail came to me after his death.

I also once got a piece of mail addressed to him at Clover Hills, Ia.

And it was sent to my West Des Moines address, too.

I think part of West Des Moines used to be called Clover Hills. There was even a Clover Hills Elementary School. The name was changed to Rex Mathes Elementary.

But why Julius W. Maly got a letter addressed to him in Clover Hills, Ia., was something I didn't know, and still don't, know.

The next time I see my mailman, I plan to ask him about all of this.

*

GREAT NEWS FOR JERRY SZUMSKI

Here's something else that's very unusual.

And it's a very dramatic thing. Especially for Jerry Szumski, a retired editor and writer at the paper.

This message was passed onto me by Bud Appleby:

"Charlie [Nettles] saw Szumski at Kiwanis Thursday morning and Jerry says he is cancer-free after his treatments. Doctors have repeated tests and they can find no cancer anywhere in his body."

Tremendously good news. The last I heard, Szumski was diagnosed with what people thought was terminal lung cancer.

Nice going, Jerry. We all knew you were a battler.

*

FRANK DI LEO GETS HIS FILL OF BASKETBALL IN CENTRAL IOWA

It was good seeing Frank DiLeo at the Drake-Evansville basketball game.

DiLeo was an assistant coach on Tom Davis' teams at Iowa from 1993-1999.

At Saturday night's game, he was on one side of Davis [photo at the top] and I was on the other side on press row.

DiLeo said he had attended the Texas-Iowa State game earlier in the day, so he got his fill of basketall.

The 76ers need all the help they can get. With a 21-30 record, they're in fourth place in the NBA's five-team Eastern Conference, 19 1/2 games out of first.

*

ANYTHING TO HELP 'EM OUT

After I wrote a couple of columns saying that Drake's administration needs to sweeten Keno Davis' coaching contract so he won't be tempted to leave after this one sensational season, it was good to see that the paper finally got something about it on the sports page. I'm glad they like my ideas. Anything to help 'em out down there.

*

BAD NEWS: JOHN O'DONNELL STADIUM OUT AT HOME

I heard from columnist Chuck Offenburger, who relayed some bad news:

"Hey Ron...

"I get e-mail updates and teasers from the Quad Cities River Bandits, the Class A pro baseball team from Davenport in the Midwest League. Tonight, I got the first update from the team since the end of last season (I'm forwarding it to you here below), and what ho! Grand ol' John O'Donnell Stadium there beneath Centennial Bridge, on the bank of the Mississippi River, has been renamed! Apparently this just happened in December, according to a report I found on Wikipedia. Here 'tis.:

"Modern Woodmen Park was built in 1931, and was originally known as Municipal Stadium. It is one of the oldest ballparks still in use in all of the minor leagues (Centennial Field, home of the Vermont Lake Monsters originally opened in 1906), although it underwent a major renovation before the 2004 season that brought the ballpark up to modern professional baseball standards and a seating capacity of 4,024. The only major league ballparks older than it still in use are Fenway Park, Wrigley Field and Yankee Stadium.

"In 1971 the stadium was renamed from Municipal Stadium to John O'Donnell Stadium in honor of the longtime sports editor of the Davenport Times-Democrat, shortly following his death. John O'Donnell Stadium was renamed Modern Woodmen Park on December 12, 2007, after Rock Island-based Modern Woodmen of America purchased the naming rights to the facility. O'Donnell's name remains on the ballpark's press box.[3]"

"I figure that now in that press box in the heavens, the gang of old sportswriters are probably kidding John O'Donnell about having his name removed from a ballpark, just like they kidded Sec Taylor a few years ago when his ballpark in Des Moines was renamed.

Chuck O.

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: I checked the River Bandits' website and, indeed, the name of the ballpark has been changed from John O'Donnell Stadium to Modern Woodmen Park. Actually, the name of the team has been changed, too. The team used to be called Swing of the Quad Cities. John O'Donnell worked, and was sports editor at, the Davenport Democrat from 1925-1967. Modern Woodmen Park is about as dumb a name as I can imagine. Well, the second-dumbest name. The absolute dumbest thing done was when money-hungry Mike Gartner changed the name of Sec Taylor Stadium in Des Moines to the name of some insurance company I'm not even going to mention in this column. I simply refer to the place as No-Name Ballpark and stay from it, and its ridiculously-high concession prices, as often as I can. Taking a walk around the block makes much more sense than going down there on a nice summer evening. Sec Taylor, of course, was the longtime sports editor of the Des Moines Register who spent many a day and night at the Des Moines ballpark, and deserved to have it named after him. Now that he's in the big ballpark in the sky, I hope he's following soccer instead of baseball after having his name removed so a cold-hearted owner can keep filling his pockets. More from Offenburger: "If you write something about this, I hope you'll tell us more about O'Donnell. I've always been curious about him, figuring he must've been a real legend in the Quad Cities for them to have named the ballpark after him. The setting of that stadium, by the way, is surely the most spectacular for any ballpark in Iowa, even though fans have to put up with it being flooded now and then." Well, here goes, Chuck. On July 17, 2006, I wrote in a column: "Bud Appleby sent me some interesting stuff about John O'Donnell, who became a sportswriting legend in Davenport and joined 19 others of us who were recently named to the University of Iowa press box Wall of Fame at newly dressed-up Kinnick Stadium. Appleby, now of Des Moines, worked at the Davenport newspapers early in his career -- where O'Donnell and, later, Wall of Famer Jerry Jurgens were sports editors. 'The mention of John O'Donnell on the Wall of Fame reminds me of a story he used to tell about the worst day of his career,' Appleby told me. 'Jack Fleck of Davenport beat Ben Hogan in a playoff for the U.S. Open championship in 1955 -- the ultimate local-boy-makes-good story for a sportswriter -- but the Davenport paper didn't send anyone to San Francisco to cover the tournament. John's first chance to interview Fleck was when he returned to Davenport. He went to meet Fleck's plane and was really upset when he saw Fleck get off, accompanied by Bert McGrane, who had been in San Francisco covering the event for the Des Moines Register. The Davenport paper doesn't have to worry about such things these days because the Register no longer sends reporters to the U.S. Open. Instead, the Register sends reporters to the 'Mickey Mouse' John Deere tournament in Silvis, Ill., and then blows that all out of proportion, as if it was some major event. But at least the baseball field in Davenport is still called John O'Donnell Stadium.' People who recall McGrane hurriedly flying to San Francisco to cover Fleck's playoff victory said it wasn't as smooth as it could have been. McGrane was evidently short on money [not unusual for a sportswriter, no matter what era it is or was] and had to borrow some cash so he could pay for his plane ticket. Hopefully, he got the money back when he filed an expense report after he returned to Des Moines. I can imagine O'Donnell's heart dropping when he saw McGrane getting off the plane with Fleck the day after the playoff. Obviously, there had been plenty of time for Bert to interview Fleck about the victory, leaving O'Donnell to pick up the scraps. Fleck had driven from Davenport to San Francisco for the Open, and the trip took him 49 hours. After Fleck's playoff victory over Hogan, a couple of Fleck's friends took care of his car while he and McGrane boarded a night-flight back to Iowa. After he returned, proud Davenport fans presented Fleck with a new Cadillac. As for the ballpark in Davenport being called John O'Donnell Stadium in 1971, let's hope it stays that way. Mike Gartner, part-owner of the Iowa Cubs, recently tried to buy the Davenport franchise in the Class A Midwest League. Fortunately for all of us, he didn't succeed then, and I hope he never succeeds in the future. After all, Gartner had already demonstrated how much he thought a ballpark being named in honor of a sportswriter meant to him when he dumped the name Sec Taylor Stadium in Des Moines favor of an insurance company that gave him money for the naming rights. That's why I refer to the ballpark as No-Name Ballpark -- Sorry About That, Sec. Or No-Name Ballpark for short. Sec Taylor was the longtime sports editor of the Des Moines Register, a newspaper where Gartner formerly worked and once tried to buy. Sec and those who remember him fondly as a class act deserved much better from the classless Gartner. Some people say jokingly [well, maybe they don't say it jokingly] that if Gartner got his hands on the Davenport franchise he'd name the stadium after a meat packing plant or even a corner grocery store if he could pocket a few extra bucks, and get rid of the name John O'Donnell Stadium. Back to Appleby and his memories of O'Donnell, the sportswriter.....'I think the [first paragraph] of every game involving the University of Iowa that John O'Donnell ever covered started out with the same four words: 'The Hawks of Iowa.....' he said. 'John would ride the train from Davenport to Iowa City for football games -- it stopped just outside the stadium -- then write his story on the way back, a portable typewriter on his knees -- all of his cronies gathered around and all of them getting mildly loaded. Dick Lamb, for some reason, always got a press pass to the Iowa games through the Davenport paper, then he would come into the newsroom on Sunday evenings and write the follow-up story for the Monday morning paper. Lamb would write the story, making up quotes, then he would call Ray Nagel and tell him, 'Ray, I quoted you as saying this.....is that OK?' I never read Lamb's book for that reason." [Lamb was a football historian and, obviously, a parttime sportswriter from Davenport. He co-authored the book "75 Years With the Fighting Hawkeyes" about Iowa football with McGrane]. Appleby said O'Donnell used to be a boxing referee and considered himself an expert on the sport. 'When Cassius Clay [who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali] knocked out Sonny Liston in the first round of their fight in 1965, John wrote a column that implied Liston took a dive. Someone, probably managing editor Forest Kilmer, killed the column. John was bitter about that for years.' I was too young to cover games at the same time O'Donnell did, but I recalled that he called everyone "Coach" -- including me -- when he met them or talked to them. I figured one reason was that he knew so many people he had a difficult time remembering names."]

*

6-8 RICK WANAMAKER CAN RIDE A BICYCLE, TOO

I realize this is turning into a long column, but I've got even more standout stuff from Offenburger:

"Ron, one more thing: Thanks for the great little vignette about Rick Wanamaker briefly being a member of the Drake U. Marching Band, as a clarinet player! I saw that in some reference a week or so ago, and I thought, 'Huh?' Glad you came back with the story. Among Rick's other accomplishments -- as about a well-rounded good athlete as we'll ever know -- is that he and his wife Marcia have been RAGBRAIers. The site of 6-foot 8-inch Rick Wanamaker on a bicycle is something you never forget. He surely rode the biggest bicycle ever to roll on Iowa's highways and byways."

Chuck O.

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: I was happy to see Wanamaker join Willie McCarter and a large number of other former Drake athletes in quite a few sports honored at halftime of Saturday's game at the Knapp Center. The athletes were all-Missouri Valley Conference and all-century in the league. Wanamaker, who was a very good track athlete and basketball player at Drake, was wearing his letter-sweater [pictured at the right] when he strode to mid-court to get his plaque from athletic director Sandy Hatfield Clubb. I hope Offenburger sends me a photo of Wanamaker, who now is a very successful Des Moines real estate salesman, on a bicycle sometime].

*

'OFFENDING AND EMBARRASSING'

My recent column on Digger Phelps produced this e-mail from R. H. of Des Moines:

"Ron,

"Leave it good ol' Digger to insert foot in mouth and show America just how lazy he is when it comes to offering analysis of college basketball.

"Billy Packer finds him offending and embarrassing.

"Those fools on ESPN should take note of what Keno said in the postgame presser after beating Illinois State on Tuesday:

"A lot of people around the country keep saying Drake is not that good. 'They just keep finding ways to win,' coach Keno Davis said. Well, that's what great teams do. They find ways to win.

"Wise words from Keno. He's a chip off the old block and it shows every time we watch him.

"Too bad Bilas, Davis, and Mr. 'I'll color coordinate my tie with the marker I'm holding while braying like a jackass' Phelps will keep putting down Drake.

"Morons."

R.H.
Des Moines

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: As I wrote the other day, Digger Phelps should be put out to pasture by ESPN. His best days, if there ever were any, are long-gone].

*

From Bud Appleby:

"According to the Register, the Northern Iowa Panthers beat the league-leading Redbirds in a women's basketball game Thursday. The story never bothers to say the name of the school. For the record, it is Illinois State."

The headline and story:

UNI women's basketball: Clausen's hot hand downs MVC leader

REGISTER STAFF REPORT • February 8, 2008

Cedar Falls, Ia. — Northern Iowa sophomore Nicole Clausen hit a 3-pointer with 34 seconds remaining to help the Panther women's basketball team to a 64-62 win at the McLeod Center on Thursday.

The Panthers (8-13 overall, 4-6 Missouri Valley Conference) trailed the league-leading Redbirds (18-3, 8-2) 62-60 when Clausen drained her fifth 3 of the night to put Northern Iowa in front for good. Freshman Erin Brocka hit a free throw with six seconds left to seal the win for the Panthers.
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Clausen finished 5-of-7 from 3-point range to lead all scorers with a career-high 21 points. Senior Traci Ollendieck finished with 15 points and seven rebounds for the Panthers.

Kristi Cirone led the Redbirds with 19 points, six rebounds and five assists. Ashleen Bracey added 15 points and 15 rebounds.

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Hey, be glad they got the dateline right. A number of Northern Iowa sports stories in recent months have used a Cedar Rapids dateline instead of Cedar Falls. Some readers were wondering if Brandon Cleaver, the sportswriter, was actually writing his stories on the Panthers from Cedar Rapids. Or if he even knew what town he was in].

*

[The photos of Tom Davis, Frank DiLeo, Rick Wanamaker and some of the other honorees at the Drake basketball game were shot by Ron Maly. The cartoon of the mailman is courtesy of the Internet].

Maybe the Pollsters Are Confusing Drake With Duke Again--Bulldogs Are Now 22-1, But Gain Just One Spot In AP Poll, Stay the Same In Coaches' Ranking

Maybe those goofy voters in the collegiate basketball polls are pulling a Curt Gowdy and mistaking Drake for Duke again. It was Gowdy, then a network TV announcer, who kept calling Drake by the name Duke in the 1969 NCAA tournament at Louisville. Now Drake has a 22-1 record and has won 21 straight games, but rose only one spot to No. 14 in today's Associated Press sportswriters' poll, and stayed in the same No. 15 spot in the coaches' poll. The Bulldogs won two more games last week, but didn't seem to impress the voters. There are lots of teams ranked ahead of the Bulldogs that have poorer records. Consider the AP poll, which has No. 4 Tennessee at 21-2, No. 5 North Carolina at 22-2, No. 6 UCLA at 21-3, No. 7 Stanford at 20-3, No. 8 Georgetown at 19-3, No. 9 Butler [Drake's opponent in the Feb. 23 BracketBusters game at Indianapolis, to be televised at 4 p.m. by ESPN2] at 21-2, No. 10 Michigan State [which has lost to second-division Big Ten teams Iowa and Penn State] at 20-3, No. 11 Texas at 19-4, No. 12 Xavier at 20-4 and No. 13 Indiana at 20-3. By the way. Duke is ranked No. 2 with a 21-1 record. Memphis remained first in both polls at 23-0. Drake's Mike Mahon said the No. 14 ranking is the highest since the Bulldogs were ranked No. 7 in the Dec. 29, 1970 AP poll. It also marked the first time Drake has been ranked in the AP poll four consecutive weeks since the 1970-71 season when the Bulldogs were ranked either No. 7 or 9 for five consecutive weeks from Dec. 8, 1970 through Jan. 5, 1971. Drake plays Wednesday night at Southern Illinois and Saturday at Northern Iowa.

39 Seasons Separate 2 Standout Drake Guards--1969 Shooting Ace Willie McCarter Tells 2008 Pointman Adam Emmenecker To 'Enjoy the Ride'

A very nice thing happened last night at the Knapp Center.

And I'm not talking just about the 21st straight victory that extended Drake's basketball record to 22-1.

I'm referring to when Adam Emmenecker -- still dressed in his white-and-blue [Bulldog blue, of course] uniform -- walked across the court and embraced Willie McCarter [top photo].

Talk about emotion on yet another night of wholesale emotion at the Basketball Palace That Rocks.

It was a case of Champion meeting Champion.

Team Leader meeting Team Leader.

Standout Guard meeting Standout Guard.

No. 15 meeting No. 15.

Michigan Resident meeting Michigan Resident.

Emmenecker was supposed to be in the interview room, talking to reporters about Drake's 73-65 victory over Evansville in front of Drake's sixth straight overflow crowd at the Knapp Center.

But he wanted to take the time to touch the flesh of the man who was the leading scorer with a 20.4 average on the Bulldogs' 26-5 team that finished third in the 1969 NCAA Final Four at Louisville.

McCarter has a broken body now. He's suffered three strokes and he wears a scar on the right side of his head that is the result of the surgery that he says "took out one-third of my brain."

But the spirit remains.

Oh, how it remains.

"You're the reason I'm here," McCarter told me when I talked to him before the game began. "And you made me the all-American that I was."

I had talked with McCarter earlier in the month by phone. He was at his home in Jackson, Mich., and I wondered if he was coming back to receive yet another honor at Drake.

He wasn't sure.

"I think you should be there," I told him.

This is a guy I had written so many words about in 1967, 1968 and 1969 when he was the standout shooting guard for Maury John's teams that then played their home games at Veterans Memorial Auditorium and competed in a very rugged Missouri Valley Conference that had such opponents as Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis State and St. Louis.

"Well, if you're going to be there, I'll be there," he said.

He kept his promise.

With Mary Sanders [pictured at the lower left], his fiance, doing most of the driving, McCarter made the Jackson-to-Des Moines journey so he could return to a Drake campus to again hear the crowd's roar.

Willie McCarter proudly walked to midcourt last night to get the plaque handed to him by athletic director Sandy Hatfield Clubb.

It was the plaque that says he's a member of the Missouri Valley Conference's all-century team.

It doesn't get much better than that.

"I got a little wobbly when I walked out there, and I get a little tired sometimes," he said.

When I asked why he had the surgery, McCarter said with a laugh, "I was bleeding in my head. I know my head is big, but there was too much blood in there and they had to get it out.

"Like Dale Teeter said, 'Hell, Willie, you've only used a third of your brain for 60 years anyway--so you've got a lot of years left.'"

Teeter was a McCarter teammate at Drake, and sat with him during last night's game. More on him later.

It was at that moment Emmenecker entered the conversation.

"Willie, meet No. 15," someone said to McCarter.

Willie grabbed Emmenecker and said, "Hey, you do my number proud, man! I just wanted to touch you guys' hands."

"I just want to follow in your footsteps," Emmenecker said.

"Do you know what 22-1 is?" McCarter said. "I'll put it into the proper perspective....Back in Michigan...."

"I'm from Michigan, too," Emmenecker broke in.

"Saginaw, right?" McCarter said. "What you guys have now, everybody will be trying to reach what you have. Enjoy this ride, because 40 years from now everybody will be shaking your hand."

"I appreciate it," Emmenecker said. "Thanks for coming tonight."

"You believe you can win," said McCarter, who was a first-round choice of the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1969 NBA draft. "And you believe in your coach."

"I hear some great stories about you from Dolph Pulliam [a McCarter teammate in 1969 who now is the commentator on Drake's radio broadcasts]," said Emmenecker.

Pulliam has been wearing a blue leather suit ever since Drake began its 21-game winning streak.

"Get him to dry-clean it, will you?" Emmenecker said with a laugh to McCarter.

"You might have to bury him in it now!" McCarter said. "You know what. Don't dry-clean the suit. Tell him to spray-paint it!"

Back to reality, McCarter said to Emmenecker, "You're a heck of a ballplayer."

"I appreciate it," the 6-1 senior point guard said. "We've got some great kids on this team. That makes it a lot of fun."

"Believe me, you're going to remember this the rest of your life," McCarter said. "It's an honor to shake your hand."

"It's all my honor," Emmenecker said.

"Keep that No. 15 going," McCarter said.

"I appreciate it, sir," Emmenecker said. "Are we going to see you again?"

"I'm coming to your game at Butler [Feb. 23] and I'm coming to St. Louis [for the Missouri Valley Conference's postseason tournament]," McCarter said. "You can't get rid of me now."

"We want to see you as much as we can," Emmenecker said.

*

Dale Teeter, who is pictured at the lower right, is a retired school counselor from Algona.

He was McCarter's road roommate in the Maury John days, and Willie was the best man at Teeter's wedding.

"He's been a close friend of mine for 40 years," Teeter said.

The kids on this Drake team are building friendships that last a lifetime, and that's what we did. You stay close to those people."

Three members of the 1969 team are deceased -- guards Gary Zeller and Al Sakys, and forward Al Williams.

The 40th reunion of that team will be held next year.

"That's one reason Teeter, as well as others, would like to see Drake retire McCarter's jersey number. Or somebody's number from 1969. Maybe the whole team's numbers.

Only two Drake men's players have had their numbers retired -- Red Murrell and Lewis Lloyd.

Lloyd had drug problems since leaving Drake. No one can recall that he has ever come back to the campus.

And it rankles a number of longtime Drake followers that no one from John's 1969, 1970 and 1971 teams that went to the NCAA tournament has had his number retired by the university.

*

Teeter's word for the 2008 Drake team is "amazing."

Just like a lot of the rest of us.

Think of a team that was picked to finish ninth in the 10-team Valley, he said, "and to be able to handle the pressure of keeping the winning streak going is impressive. What Willie and I are enjoying is that it brings people's memories back to our team."

*

A couple of final words [at least in this column] on comparing the 1969 and 2008 Drake teams.

Yes, this 15th-ranked team has a 22-1 record and has won 21 in a row. The 1969 team didn't do those things.

But until this team gets to the Final Four and plays the socks off the squad that wins the championship, I'm saying the 1969 team is the best in Drake history.

*

[Ron Maly writes about anything that interests him. He took all the photos included in this column, and he's always working on another book.]

Drake Needs To Lock Up Keno Davis, My National Coach Of the Year, So He's Not Tempted By Somebody Else's Million-Dollar Offer

The way I look at it, Keno Davis has outcoached the guys on the opposing teams' benches in the last 20 Drake basketball games.

The Bulldogs have won every one of those games.

That's why I think he deserves to be named the national coach of the year in this, his rookie season, as a head coach.

I also think people from Drake's administration had better sit down with Davis very soon -- like today or certainly before the season ends. They should give him a bonus, a pay raise, extend his contract and do whatever is necessary to keep him.

"Otherwise, somebody else is going to come along and offer him a million-dollar contract," said Rick Wanamaker, who played on Drake's 1969 NCAA Final Four team.

Davis has taken a huge step in advancing a Drake program that I thought was on life-support, or perhaps headed for Division III, a few years ago.

I have written in the past that I never thought anyone would ever equal Maury John's achievement of taking three consecutive Drake teams to the NCAA.

Now I'm not so sure it couldn't happen again if Keno sticks around.

The way he's coaching, I think anything is possible.

He's coaching a team that was picked to finish ninth in the 10-team Missouri Valley Conference.

Be truthful. You thought this Drake team would struggle to reach .500, right?

I know that's what I thought with a first-year coach and players who many felt were second-rate at a university known for its law and pharmacy schools instead of its men's basketball program.

Yet, now Keno's Bulldogs are in first place with a 12-0 record heading into Saturday's 7:05 p.m. game against Evansville at the Knapp Center.

Drake has a 21-1 record and has won 20 consecutive games.

It has a starting lineup that has two players -- guard Adam Emmenecker and forward Jonathan "Bucky" Cox who came to school without basketball scholarships.

In other words, nobody else wanted them -- unless it was a place that was interested in their tuition money.

Nobody knew what to expect from Davis, a 36-year-old coach who had studied under Bruce Pearl, Gary Garner and his dad, Tom Davis.

Nobody ever knew if he'd even get the chance to become a head coach. There are plenty of guys out there who never get the opportunity.

Let's face it, if Keno [shown at the top in the Charlie Neibergall/AP photo] hadn't come to Drake to coach on his dad's staff, and if his dad didn't finally coach Drake to a winning record [17-15] last season, the kid might have been a career assistant.

Or a used-car salesman.

Now he's going up against guys who have been in the business much longer, and he's succeeding.

He wins in front of overflow crowds at the Knapp Center, he wins on the road.

He wins games I keep thinking he's going to lose.

Like at Creighton, at Bradley and at Illinois State.

He coached Drake to its first victory in 40 years at Iowa. His Bulldogs absolutely destroyed Iowa State by 35 points in December.

Drake's only loss was to a very good St. Mary's team, 72-66, on Nov. 10 when the collegiate football season was still going on.

This guy never gets outcoached. He does the outcoaching.

When you've got players in the lineup who nobody else wanted to recruit, you must be outcoaching the other guy.

With all the money that teams like Iowa and Iowa State pour into recruiting, you will never convince me that their players wouldn't be rated above Drake's by recruiting analysts.

The same with most, if not all, the teams in the Valley.

It's turned into a magical season. Any honor given to the players and the young guy coaching them is well deserved.

*

Saturday is going to be a gala day and night at the Knapp Center.

Drake's women play Creighton in an 11 a.m. "Dollar Day" game [that will be televised by ESPNU], then the Drake men will try to improve their Valley record to 13-0 in the 7:05 p.m. game against Evansville that started out as another "Dollar Night" game.

That was before Keno Davis' team got everyone's attention. Now I hear that the $1 men's tickets are being sold for as much as $20 on eBay.

A bonus at the men's game will be the introduction of many of Drake's "Athletes of the Century" in a number of sports at halftime.

Both Willie McCarter and Rick Wanamaker, who were members of Drake's 1969 Final Four team, have told me they'll be at the game.

McCarter was the Los Angeles' Lakers' first round draft choice in 1969 after averaging 20.4 points for Maury John's 26-5 Bulldogs.

The 6-foot 8-inch Wanamaker was a standout reserve on that team and is best known for blocking a shot taken by 7-1 Lew Alcindor [later to be known as Kareem-Abdul Jabbar] of UCLA in Drake's 85-82 semifinal round loss at Louisville.

However, Wanamaker is being honored tomorrow night primarily for his track and field accomplishments.

"Rick's best event was the high jump," said Jay Davidson, who was his roommate a couple of their years at Drake. "I believe he was Iowa's first 7-foot high jumper. He was also a decathlete, and in June, 1970, won the NCAA decathlon title when the nationals were last held at Drake."

I mentioned in an earlier column this week that I ran into Wanamaker just after he'd finished his lunch at the Hy-Vee buffet on 35th Street in West Des Moines. He looks like he hasn't put on an ounce of weight since his track and basketball days.

"I was impressed that you wore your Drake letter-sweater when you introduced at an earlier game this year, and it still fits," I told Wanamaker.

"I may wear it again Saturday night," said Wanamaker, who is a Drake basketball season ticketholder.

*

There's more to the Wanamaker story.

I didn't realize until recently that he had a brief career as a member of the Drake marching band.

"One game," he told me.

That was before Wanamaker, who was from tiny Marengo, Ia., learned he wouldn't have time for responsibilities with the band because of what he had to do with the basketball and track and field programs.

"I can identify the game in which Rick marched, with the help of the Drake football media guide," said Davidson, who -- like Wanamaker -- played the clarinet.

"It would have been against Northwest Missouri on Sept. 17, 1966, a game which resulted in a 27-0 Drake win. This was the first of 25 games (I just counted) -- including a couple road games and a pro game each year -- in which I marched with the Drake band, which was quite renowned at the time, and, (as I also remember), Rick's one marching opportunity.

"As I recall, in 1966 classes actually began the following Monday after the football opener. Academic calendars were a bit different in those days!"

Adds Davidson:

"Rick and I, both eastern Iowans (he Marengo, I Stanwood), met in September, 1966, when we both matriculated at Drake as freshmen. We met in the Drake marching band and also in physical science I, where, in a Harvey Ingham Hall lecture room, Rick was seated in the tier directly behind my seat and draped his 6-7 [or taller] frame around my chair.

"We became good friends almost immediately and roomed together in Goodwin-Kirk residence hall during our junior and senior years (1968-70). In those days athletes on scholarship had to get permission from their coaches to room with non-athletes, and apparently Coach John thought I was acceptable.

"I remember on at least two occasions Coach John personally came to our room in G-K to make sure Rick was in at the designated time before a big game. (I think the time was 10:30, and he was--in fact one time we were both asleep.)

"Rick was our best man when Margie and I married in Boston (after a 2 1/2-month courtship!) in December 1978; and he was a player in our return here (after we lived in Charlottesville, VA for seven years) in 1989. He's one of my closest and most enduring friends."

Say It Already. Bill Fennelly Is the Magic At Hilton

Dan Johnson has always been one of my favorite sportswriters at the paper, and not just because he once gave me a ride home from the Knapp Center. I'm pretty sure the bosses like him, too, whether he gave them a ride in his car or not. I think he's good for the newsroom budget. He's Carolyn Washburn's poster child for "Newspapering, 2008." I don't know if it's true or not, but I used to hear that Johnson turned in expense accounts that showed 60-cent lunches and 75-cent suppers on a road trip. No breakfast, just a free apple out of the basket at the front desk in the hotel lobby. Johnson would drive the company car -- maybe even his own car -- on trips anywhere in the nation to cover whatever it was he was assigned to cover. None of that United, American or Delta crap for him. It could be a horserace or a women's basketball game, it didn't make any difference, Dan would gas up the old buggy and off he'd go. The boss likes that. He wishes more of the troops would drive. I say Johnson drove, and drives, to women's basketball games because he was, and still is, an expert on that sport. He didn't, and doesn't, cover men's games, just women's games. I think Dan [pictured at the right] invented women's basketball. And he covers the games well. He also talks to everybody who comes into the interview room. Dan also is, in my opinion, the best horseracing writer in the country. He knows everything about the ponies. He came to town to cover Prairie Meadows, and he quickly [as they say] made his mark. Every pony out there has liked Dan Johnson. I think all the nation's women's basketball coaches and players like Dan Johnson, too. I'm glad the boss assigned Johnson to write at least some of the story that was in the paper today about the attendance at women's basketball games in our state. Brandon Cleaver's name shared the byline with Johnson, but I've got to believe that Dan wrote most of the story. Cleaver is the guy who wrote several University of Northern Iowa football and/or basketball stories that listed Cedar Rapids as the site of the school. It took him -- or the copy editors -- quite a while to figure out that UNI is actually in Cedar Falls and not Cedar Rapids. Evidently the boss didn't know either because he didn't seem to notice that Cleaver couldn't get the right dateline on the stories. Because of that, I'm figuring Johnson did most of the work on the attendance story. However, I was disappointed that the paper didn't take a stand on why the Cyclones have such a strong fan following. The editors pulled that sorry old trick of asking a question in the headline, which read "Iowa State ranks fifth nationally in attendance. What is the secret to the Cyclones' success?" Give me a break. That's why the editors had two reporters assigned to the story -- to tell readers why Iowa State puts an average of 8,831 fans into an arena that seats more than 14,000. Maybe the boss wouldn't let Johnson say that the reason Iowa State draws so well is Bill Fennelly, the veteran coach who yells so much during every game that he has no voice left when he has to do the postgame radio show. After all, what Johnson/Cleaver wrote was supposed to be what used to be called a "feature." Lord help Johnson/Cleaver if they put some opinion into their story. But, since opinion is the name of my game, I'll tell you this: People come to Hilton Coliseum because of Fennelly. [By the way, that's Fennelly pictured at the left; In the event you were wondering, Fennelly is in the middle]. They know he'll give them a good show. He recruits clean-cut [whatever the hell that means these days] women who can run, jump, pass, shoot and shake hands with the fans after the game. Fennelly is the Hilton Magic. He's a good guy who some Cyclone fans wanted as Iowa State's athletic director when Bruce Van De Velde left the building a few years ago. Fennelly doesn't recruit enough good athletes to get into the upper tier of women's basketball -- the UConn/Tennessee/Rutgers category -- but he also probably doesn't get many calls at 2 a.m. from the Ames Police Department that tell him one of his players is being held at gunpoint at one of the town's bars. I made a joke a while back in one of these columns. I said I wanted to go to a game where Fennelly is coaching so I could compare it to the TV commercial that shows a guy stopping a car so he can get out of it and touch Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden. Fennelly is without a doubt the biggest name in women's basketball coaching in this state. It's still my goal to go to a press conference after a game and walk into the interview room. I'm not going to touch Fennelly because I'm not into that kind of stuff. But I just want to be in the same room to see where he gets his magic. Any guy who can lure almost 9,000 people into an arena for a women's basketball game should be able to sell more than scoring and rebounding. Of course, I could say that people flood Hilton Coliseum because women's basketball is all there is to do in Ames in the winter, but that's a column for another day. Besides, it's 3:20 in the afternoon and it's almost time for Giada De Laurtentiis to start cooking something Italian on the Food Channel. See you next time.

Digger Phelps Shovels Himself Another Hole -- He's Clueless About Drake

I haven't talked to Digger Phelps, the son of a mortician, in about 13 years. At the time, I'd been hearing the rumor that Phelps might be interested in the Iowa State basketball coaching job, so I was determined to ask him about it. Somebody gave me his telephone number, and he was very cordial when I reached him in at his home in South Bend, Ind. But he didn't give any indication that the Cyclone job was anything he was dying to get. [Sorry to use the word dying when it applies to the son of a gravedigger]. I guess he was more interested in doing a job nobody could explain -- serving on the President's Commission on Volunteeer Services -- than taking a job that guys stayed in for four or five years. I mean, the Iowa State basketball job wasn't the coaching graveyard that the Cyclone football job is, but it's never been one about which a guy might say, "I'd give my left arm to work for Jamie Pollard." A few guys have been able to win in basketball there, but it's never been a situation where a coach says, "My idea of a great retirement community is Ames, Ia." Ask Glen Anderson, Tim Floyd and Larry Eustachy about that. Hell, Johnny Orr didn't even stay there. Coach K had a chance to take the Iowa State once, but chose Duke instead. I don't blame him. Anyway, Phelps was being mentioned as a possible Cyclone coach just before Floyd was playing the game of whether he wanted do his offseason fishing in Iowa or in Louisiana. Floyd used the Iowa State job as a stopover between New Orleans and the Chicago Bulls. Phelps had coached at Notre Dame for 20 seasons, and had a 393-197 record there. I never thought he was much of a coaching giant. His Fighting Irish ended UCLA's 88-game winning streak Jan. 19, 1974, and I was in South Bend to see it. I covered him in some NCAA tournaments, too. He always wore a flower in his lapel, and I kind of wondered about that. The best thing about Digger was that every player who was on his teams for four years received a degree. I doubt Lute Olson can say that. Phelps now is a basketball analyst for ESPN, and not a very good one. He's been bullshitting listeners for longer than I care to remember. How he keeps his job is something I can't figure out. I don't think he does his homework, and it showed up again after Drake's 73-70 victory over Illinois State. This is the e-mail I received after the game from a friend of mine: "Ron, Another exciting win for Drake. I listened on the radio. I don't know if you happened to have ESPN on, but Digger Phelps, who thinks he knows everything, was talking with his cohorts and taking note that Drake was behind at halftime of their game. Digger said, "Well, we predicted that. Drake just hasn't played anyone". Someone else on the panel (I can't remember who else was on with him) said, "Yeah, Illinois State will win that conference". Wonder what they're saying now?" ESPN announcers claiming Drake hasn't played anyone is getting to be a bunch of crap with me and a lot of other people who know something about what's going on with this Bulldog program. This is the best basketball story in the nation right now. It's an insult to teams like Iowa State, Iowa, Southern Illinois, Creighton, Illinois State, Bradley and Indiana State -- teams the Bulldogs have beaten en route to a 21-1 record -- plus St. Mary's, the only team Drake has lost to -- to say Drake hasn't beaten anyone. Digger Phelps and some of the other clowns at ESPN who are clueless about Drake should be ashamed of themselves.

*

THE MORTICIANS' UNION CAN'T AFFORD DIGGER'S PRICES


The photo of Digger Phelps at the right is, I'm estimating, 20 to 25 years old. Guys who are aging do that a lot. He looks a lot older now. The picture is included on the website used by Phelps to advertise his moonlighting job of public speaking. Phelps likes to think of himself as a motivational speaker, although I can't imagine anyone he could motivate. For one thing, his prices are too high. He gets anywhere from $10,001 [where that $1 comes from I don't know] to $20,000 per speech. I guess that means he won't be talking at the Mt. Olive Lutheran Father/Son Banquet anytime soon.

*

DRAKE-WICHITA STATE GAME ON ESPN2

The Drake-Wichita State game March 1 will be televised by ESPN2 at 1 p.m. from the Knapp Center. Fifteenth-ranked Drake has records of 21-1 overall and 12-0 in the Missouri Valley Conference. The Bulldogs have won 20 straight games. The selection of this telecast marks the first time ESPN has used a “Wildcard Weekend” process to determine one of its Valley men’s telecasts.

*

I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THESE FOOTBALL 'RECRUITING HOSTS'

I was reading Randy Peterson's stories in the paper today about Blake Larsen, who was as big a flop as an Iowa football player as there's ever been. High in the sidebar on page 2 was a line that said, "[Larsen] married his recruiting host--the former Rachel Herman, who attended Eldora-New Providence High School. 'The first time we met was when I was on a recruiting trip when I was a high school junior,' Larsen said. 'She was assigned to my group, and then I didn't see her until two years later when I enrolled in school....'" That brings me to something I've been wondering about for a while. In game-day football programs that are sold throughout America on campuses [including Iowa and Iowa State] photos of "recruiting hosts" are included. I've always wondered what the responsibilities of those hosts are. Most of the so-called hosts are attractive women, and Larsen told Peterson that Rachel Herman was "assigned to my group." I wonder what that means. Do the women go out on the town with the players the schools are trying to recruit? What's expected of them? A smile? A peck [well, a kiss, I mean] on the cheek? Nothing? Anything that's mutually acceptable? A goodnight kiss that's more than a peck on the cheek? Sex? Does the recruit say to the girl, "You're my type. I'll call you on your cell phone during two-a-days in August, and we'll become an item." Do the women volunteer their services? Are they paid? When did women start being part of the recruiting game, which by and large is a trashy business anyway? And how about when women's collegiate basketball players are being recruited? Do they have male hosts? I know a lot of guys who'd be interested in that job. I'll look for the answers to all of those questions in the paper. Peterson is working his ass off again, so I don't expect him to investigate it. But I know the boss will assign someone to do a tell-all package of stories on it. You know, something headlined "My Weekend As a Recruiting Host -- The Good, The Bad & The Ugly." Maybe the hockey reporter can dig into it.

Even At the Buffet Line, Drake Is a Hot Topic--The Guy Who Blocked Alcindor/Jabbar Shot In '69 Final Four Is Just As Amazed About '08 Bulldogs As I Am

I ran into Rick Wanamaker at Hy-Vee on 35th Street in West Des Moines at noon today. He was buying his lunch from the $5.99 buffet [or maybe it was the $4.99 Tuesday buffet special] and I was buying a loaf of 9-grain bread, a gallon of skim milk and a half-dozen bananas at 48 cents a pound in the event we're snowed in the rest of the week. Wanamker stands 6-8 or so and looks like he hasn't put on an ounce of weight since he played basketball for Drake 39 years ago. I can't say this for a fact, but Wanamaker [pictured] sure seems like the tallest real estate salesman in central Iowa. He became a sort of Drake legend when he blocked a shot taken by a UCLA player who didn't know if he wanted to be called Lew Alcindor or Kareem-Abdul Jabbar. First he was Alcindor, then he was Jabbar. All I know is that he stood 7-1 whether he was Alcindor or Jabbar. Anyway, in the 1969 NCAA Final Four at Louisville, he was Alcindor -- and Wanamaker, who was from tiny Marengo, Ia., blocked his shot. I doubt UCLA coach John Wooden or Alcindor/Jabbar -- who went on to have a pretty decent pro basketball career -- knew who Wanamaker was when that game began or cared who he was when the game was over. After all, he wasn't even a starter. He made more of a mark at Drake in track and field [mostly field], but coach Maury John knew what he was doing when he put the tall drink of water into a basketball game. The guy could be a factor. A large factor. Around Drake, they still talk about Wanamaker's block of Alcindor's/Jabbar's shot when they finally quit raving about how well the 2007-2008 Bulldogs are doing. And these Dogs are doing pretty damn well, as we all know here. I talked with Wanamaker for a long time around the buffet line today. I said I didn't have a real good feeling about tonight's game at Illinois State, but I added that I didn't have a real good feeling about the game at Bradley, the game at Creighton and the game at Indiana State either. But the Bulldogs won them all. They stormed back from a 38-29 halftime deficit tonight to beat Illinois State, 73-70. Leonard Houston scored 22 points for Drake, and it's a good thing Josh Young is healthy now. He didn't play against the Redbirds when Drake beat them in Des Moines. He had a sprained ankle then, and scored only one point in the first half tonight. But he finished with 18. I also got the idea Wanamaker didn't exactly go into any of those other games I mentioned brimming with confidence. However, he's just as amazed about Keno Davis' team as I am. Neither one of us can quite figure how this team that has two players -- Bucky Cox and Adam Emmenecker -- who came to school without basketball scholarships can be starters on a team that's ranked 15th nationally, has a 21-1 record overall, is 12-0 in the Missouri Valley Conference, has won 20 straight games, will win the Valley regular-season title and is headed to the NCAA tournament. It must be the coaching. I told Rick what I thought about this season's team when it's compared with his 1969 squad that went 26-5. "Like I told Willie McCarter, I think you guys were better," I said. But, I'll tell you what, I think the gap is narrowing. I told Wanamaker that McCarter thought the difference in the two teams was that this Drake team doesn't have a premier defender like Dolph Pulliam. Wanamaker didn't seem to disagree. I also mentioned to Rick that McCarter said, "Coach John never went to me before a game and said I needed to score 20 points and he didn't go to Willie Wise and tell him he needed to get 14 rebounds. But he did go to Dolph Pulliam and tell him to hold the other team's best scorer to half his average. Dolph was the reason we were better than this team." Wanamaker said, "That was because Coach John was a man who thought defense was so important." Both Rick and I know this has turned into one hell of a good Drake team, and that's what matters now. The Bulldogs go after their 21st straight victory Saturday when Evansville comes to the Knapp Center. Wanamaker will be in the building and will be honored along with McCarter and a number of other former Bulldogs at halftime. Wanamaker would've been there with or without the honor. "I have season tickets," he told me.

'Shut Off the Mower. Bobby Knight Is On the Phone!' -- 'Sure, and Abraham Lincoln Is Calling From the White House In the Sky, Too!'

Before Bobby Knight changes his mind, ends his 24-hour retirement and decides to coach in the noon league at the downtown YMCA so he can say, "I always wanted to win my 903rd game and throw a chair across the court in Des Moines," let me write a few more things about him.

This goes back a few years.

I've told the story before, but when you're the boss you can keep telling the same stories whenever you want.

I was mowing my lawn one summer afternoon, and my college-age son was in the house.

Some people have questioned why I was sweating my ass off and the kid was indoors, but that's a column for another day.

Anyway, I was cutting the backyard and my son suddenly came out onto the deck.

"Shut off the mower," my son said. "Bobby Knight is on the phone. He wants to talk to you."

He could have told me Nikita Khrushchev was calling from the clubcar on a Trans-Siberian train trip. Or that Abraham Lincoln was on the line from the White House's Branch Office in the Sky.

"You got any other jokes?" I asked.

"No, it's really Knight," my son said. "At least it's somebody who says he's Knight."

That was before portable phones and cell phones were around, so I went into the house.

I thought it was my neighbor, Al Elder, calling. I figured he felt sorry for me working so hard with the mowing and wanted me to take a rest.

I picked up the phone and tried to act civil.

"Ron, this is Bob Knight," the caller said.

Pause.

"Hi, Bob. What's going on? Are you pissed off at me for something I wrote?" I said, or words to that effect.

It turned out I had written something nice about Knight a few days earlier, and somebody forwarded it to him.

It had to be my regular mail. That was before many people had computers and, if there was an Internet, it was in its infancy.

Besides, I don't think Knight would've known the first thing about a computer or what it's used for. I know I didn't.

Whatever, Knight used the phone to go on and on about liking what I had written about him.

I'm sure I had written something complimentary about him because everybody else was ripping on him.

I'm pretty sure it was after Knight hit a policeman in Puerto Rico.

I was like that in those days.

That phone-call-to-my-home incident is what led to Knight offering to write a guest column for me a while later.

Knight wanted to praise Johnny Orr, who had coached against him in the Big Ten. Knight was at Indiana, Orr was at Michigan.

Now Orr was moving to Iowa State, and Knight wanted to give him a written a send-off.

He did. Indeed, Knight liked being "Ron Maly For a Day" so much that he left a couple of tickets to an Indiana-Iowa game in Bloomington for my son one year.

He could be that way.

I also saw him be very gracious when he noticed the widow of former Iowa basketball coach Bucky O'Connor at The Lark restaurant in Tiffin one cold winter night.

I had joined Knight and his entourage at The Lark the night before an Iowa-Indiana game in Iowa City.

Knight bought all the food that night. I bought the next day when I met Knight for lunch the next day at the Highlander in Iowa City.

"I always wanted to eat a meal bought by the Des Moines Register," Knight said with a straight face as I picked up the check.

In later years, Knight didn't particularly like it that I interviewed John Feinstein of the Washington Post after he'd authored "Season On the Brink," -- a book Knight didn't particularly like -- and I wrote a story about it.

I couldn't win 'em all.

Neither could Knight.

After all, he lost 371 games in addition to winning 902.

*

'A PERFECT ASSHOLE'

Bo from Iowa City had Knight on his mind when he sent me an e-mail titled 902/Robert Montgomery Knight":

"The king is dead, or at least retired! Long live the king and his accomplishments, if not his personna! I've always liked the guy, if for no other reason than he reminds me a lot of me -- a 'perfect asshole!' Takes one to know one, as my dear sweet old mom used to say! And, besides, he once wrote me a letter -- woohoo! Not like him to be a quitter, or at least quit more than halfway into the season -- methinks HE thinks it will be easier for Pat to be the head coach for part of a season, or maybe he really is 'tired and worn out.' Who knows, beside the Shadow?! Being a perfect asshole isn't easy, don't ya know! I'm worn out, too, and wish I could retire 100 percent!!! You can argue or disagree with his methods and personality all you wish, but his stats speak for themselves! Who would you rather see on the bench at IU? A CHEATER like the Kelvinator, or the guy who ran one of the cleanest programs of all-time, with great results?! Being the a-hole, poor sport that I am, I guess I have to say the former. No, wait! Even I am not THAT big an a-hole! Does that then make me an imperfect a-hole?! DON'T ANSWER THAT! At least this will steal a little thunder from the G-men in the sports world.

"Cheers!

Bo"

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: The guy I feel sorry for is Pat Knight, Bobby's son and the guy who has to succeed him as Texas Tech's coach. There's no way in hell Pat or anyone else could take Bobby's place. By the way, that's Bobby and Pat pictured at the top of this column].

*

NOTHING NEW IN USA TODAY STORY

I mentioned last week that I sat next to a USA Today sportswriter [Marlen Garcia], who was in town to do a story on Drake's basketball team, at the Bulldogs' game against Creighton.

I wondered how she was going to get the full story of this magical Drake season into the four or five paragraphs that USA Today usually requires its reporters to use for features.

It turns out Garcia could've easily gotten what she wrote into four or five paragraphs. Maybe even three. She wrote much longer than that, but there was nothing in the story that people around here haven't already read.

It was a waste of the paper's money to send her to Des Moines.

*

LET'S MAKE DES MOINES SMOKE-FREE, TOO -- RIGHT NOW


The University of Iowa's president says the campus will be smoke-free by July, 2009.

My question: Why wait until 2009?

Make it happen now.

And make Des Moines and West Des Moines smoke-free, too.

Now.

That way, the 99 percent of the restaurants that still aren't smoke-free will have to be.

*

[Ron Maly writes about anything that interests him in these columns. And he's always working on another book].

Bulldog Battle: Drake, No. 15 In Both Polls, Plays At No. 10 Butler In Feb. 23 BracketBusters Game. D.M. Dogs No. 3 In Bracketology. Knight Retires

The climb continues. Drake's basketball team [20-1 overall and 11-0 in the Missouri Valley Conference] moved up two spots to No. 15 in the coaches' poll and one spot to No. 15 in the Associated Press sportswriters' poll today. The Bulldogs take a 19-game winning streak into a Valley game Tuesday night at Illinois State. Butler, which will be Drake's opponent Feb. 23 in a BracketBusters game at Indianapolis, Ind., is ranked No. 10 by the AP and No. 11 by the coaches. Butler [19-2] is where Todd Lickliter coached before taking the Iowa job following the 2006-2007 season. Brad Stevens, who was Lickliter's top assistant, is now Butler's coach. Drake's BracketBusters game will be televised by ESPN2. Officials from ESPN said today that the Missouri Valley Conference and the Horizon League will take center stage on the networks' sixth annual BracketBuster weekend. Both conferences will have five teams represented, including the marquee matchup of current Horizon League leader Butler and Valley leader Drake. Among the other big games that weekend, all three current Mid-American co-leaders are in action including Akron hosting CAA leader Virginia Commonwealth, Kent State traveling to face No. 23 St. Mary's [the only team that has beaten Drake] and Ohio entertaining the CAA's 2006 Final Four participant, George Mason. In other games, Winthrop hosts Davidson, the Southern Conference's top team, while Rider (10-2 in the MAAC) takes on Cal State Northridge (7-1 in the Big West). In total, 28 teams will square off on ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN360.com and ESPN Classic on Feb. 22-24. Even more ESPN recognition came Drake's way today. Joe Lunardi, who does the "Bracketology" feature for the network's website, improved the Bulldogs' seed to No. 3 in the NCAA Midwest Region. He's guessing Drake will play No. 14-seeded North Carolina-Asheville [14-4] at Little Rock, Ark. But, as Uncle Otto always said, "There's a long way to go, Baby!"

*

PAL JOEY'S WILL HAVE TV OF DRAKE-ILLINOIS STATE GAME

If you can't be in Normal, Ill., tomorrow night for the Drake-Illinois State game, Pal Joey's here is the place to be. Barry Crist tells me in an e-mail, "The game will not be on TV in Des Moines. But, with computer technology, Pal Joey's will have the game on its many flat-screen TV's. Tipoff is 7 p.m."

*

ILLINOIS-CHICAGO PLAYS AT NORTHERN IOWA IN BRACKETBUSTERS

Northern Iowa's BracketBusters opponent Feb. 23 will be Illinois-Chicago of the Horizon League at 7:05 p.m. in the McLeod Center at Cedar Falls. The game won't be televised by any of the ESPN stations. The Panthers have records of 14-6 overall and 6-5 in the Missouri Valley Conference. Illinois-Chicago is 12-10 overall and 6-5 in the Horizon League.

*

COLLEGIATE BASKETBALL WON'T BE THE SAME WITHOUT KNIGHT

I just heard that my old buddy, Bobby Knight, has retired from coaching. Obviously, collegiate basketball won't be the same now. All I've got to say, Bobby, is that if you want to write another guest column for me, jump aboard. The working conditions are great in this shop: Write as long as you want, there's no editing, don't worry about pissing anybody off because it happens every day when I'm running the show, call Mike Gartner any crappy names you choose because he deserves every one of them, and throw as many chairs as you can find. I'll miss seeing you on the bench but, hell, I've been missing you ever since you left the Big Ten and went to No Man's Land in Lubbock. Things got so bad around Iowa City that somebody burned down The Lark in Tiffin because you weren't around to keep it in business whenever you brought your Hoosiers in for games. Be well.

My Advice To Drake: Renegotiate Keno's Contract So He Stays a While

The more I think about it, Drake had better offer to renegotiate Keno Davis' basketball coaching contract soon.

Like this week.

Give the guy a bonus, too. A big bonus.

Offer to put his young son, Brady Keno Davis, through Drake with all expenses paid when the kid is of college age.

The way things are going, Keno might start getting job offers any day now.

I mean, the 36-year-old rookie has become the biggest coaching story in collegiate basketball with a 20-1 record and 19 straight victories at Drake.

The Bulldogs were ranked No. 16 in the most recent Associated Press sportswriters' poll, and will no doubt jump a spot or a few when the new rankings come out.

Keno's team leads the Missouri Valley Conference with an 11-0 record, plays in front of overflow crowds at the Knapp Center every night and continues doing things that no one in his or her right mind could have expected out of a first-year head coach.

Unless Drake's season collapses -- and I don't expect that to happen -- Keno is the national coach of the year.

Flat-out. Hands down.

I'm thinking athletic director Sandy Hatfield Clubb should put together a plan that would add more money and more seasons to the five-year contract with a rollover clause Keno signed after succeeding his dad, Tom, in the Drake job last spring.

When a guy wants he go, he'll go, but at least Drake should make sure Keno knows how badly he's wanted.

I thought Keno would need to have another strong season after this one before he'd start getting job offers from more high-profile universities.

After all, there were -- and might still be -- would-be employers out there who thought Keno was a one-year wonder.

But now college athletic directors and presidents see Drake in the top-25 rankings every week and they see the Bulldogs winning all the time.

This is no fluke, folks. Drake is for real and Keno is for real.

Face it.

It took a while, but even Maury John left, and he was the best coach Drake ever had. He came to the school in 1958 and stayed until 1971 before accepting a job offer at Iowa State -- the place so many people at Drake disliked.

Rob Ash, a longtime Bulldog football coach, operated in the shadow of Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa and some people figured he'd retire at Drake. Nope. Montana State hired him last summer.

So if a coach wins -- especially the way Keno Davis is winning -- prospective employers notice.

Now it's up to Drake to make sure Keno stays a while.

*

Most people who read sports books and sports stories know John Feinstein by now.

He wrote "Season On the Brink" and a number of other very good books.

Feinstein also writes basketball columns for the Washington Post, and the most recent is one about Keno Davis and Drake.

Here's the text, which was accompanied by the photo at the top that was shot by Charlie Neibergall of the Des Moines Associated Press staff:

The most remarkable story in college basketball this season actually began five years ago, when a son said something he thought his father already knew: "I've always wanted to coach with you."

It is the story of a school that went 20 years between winning seasons before going 17-15 a year ago. It is the story of a team picked to finish ninth in the Missouri Valley Conference that instead leads the league and is 20-1 after last night's win over Indiana State. It is the story of Drake University, a tiny, academic-minded school in Des Moines that last knew real basketball glory before man landed on the moon.

Keno Davis always had figured his father, Tom, understood how much he would enjoy working for him. Keno had grown up sitting on his dad's benches from Boston College to Stanford to Iowa -- all places where Tom Davis had known coaching success. Keno graduated from Iowa and got into coaching, working for Bruce Pearl at Southern Indiana and then for Gary Garner at Southeast Missouri State.

When Iowa decided it wanted someone younger to coach its team (Steve Alford was both hot and available at the time), Tom Davis was pushed into "retirement" in 1999 even after taking the Hawkeyes to the round of 16, where they lost to eventual national champion Connecticut.

"I told people then I was not retired," Tom Davis said. "I was only 60. I was willing to come back for the right job."

Not surprisingly, given his r¿sum¿, his name popped up often when jobs opened. Each time Keno would call and say, "What do you think, Dad?"

Davis finally asked his son why it seemed so important that he coach again.

"That's when he told me about wanting to coach with me," Tom Davis said. "I guess I should have known; we'd been so close through basketball for so long but I hadn't thought about it. When the Drake job came up, it seemed right for a lot of reasons, but knowing that Keno wanted to go there with me probably sealed the deal for me."

Exactly why the Drake job would seem right to any college basketball coach is tough to say. The school tasted real glory once, when it reached the Final Four in 1969 and played UCLA and Lew Alcindor tough for 40 minutes before losing, 85-82, in the semifinals. Since then, the highlight film wouldn't be much longer than a movie trailer.

The Bulldogs last reached the NCAA tournament in 1971 (that was also the last time they won 20 games), the NIT in 1986. A year later, they were 17-14. That was the last winning season for Drake until 2003, when then-athletic director David Blank called Davis on a golf vacation in Palm Springs, Calif.

"Logistically it worked because I was still living in Iowa City," Davis said. "I knew they'd had tough times, but the school reminded me a lot of Lafayette -- small school, good kids, the chance to build something. Also, I figured I couldn't possibly make things much worse."

Davis's first head coaching job had been at Lafayette, where his only assistant coach was an intense young Maryland graduate named Gary Williams. In fact, Keno had been born the same week Lafayette beat Virginia in the first round of the 1972 NIT, which remains the Leopards' only postseason victory.

"I was thrilled when Dad took it," said Keno, who is named after one of Davis's high school players. "I never thought about succeeding him, just working with him and learning from him."

By last season, Drake agreed that whenever Tom retired, Keno would succeed him. Tom, who won 598 games, decided last season was the right time.

"I did it for a couple reasons," he said. "I thought we'd laid a foundation, but I also thought with the four seniors gone, there wouldn't be quite as much pressure on Keno his first year even though I liked some of the kids we had stepping in. I didn't think they'd be picked ninth [in the MVC], but I also never dreamed they'd be 19-1."

Neither did Keno or anyone else. After all, who would have imagined that two former walk-ons would emerge not only as starters but true stars? Jonathan Cox, a junior, is averaging 12.2 points and a league-leading 8.8 rebounds a game, and his story isn't nearly as amazing as that of senior point guard Adam Emmenecker, whose lone Division I scholarship offer was to play baseball at Boston College.

The Davises told Emmenecker he could walk on at Drake largely because they liked his attitude and his 4.0 grade-point average. Emmenecker did and had a total of 55 points and 59 assists in his first three seasons.

"He was still an important guy on the team, though," Tom Davis said. "He was always one of our leaders, the go-to guy for our players for anything: personal advice, academics, you name it."

In his first three years at Drake, Emmenecker had one B (in an advanced marketing class last spring), which is why his GPA is only 3.97. "He was really upset with that B," Tom Davis said.

Keno Davis gave him a scholarship and the starting point guard spot this season, and Emmenecker, who is 6-1 and not much of an outside shooter, has provided a steady hand for the Bulldogs, who on Wednesday raised their conference record to 10-0 with a 75-65 victory over perennial MVC power Creighton before a capacity crowd of 7,152 at Knapp Center.

One of those fans packed into the building was Andy Pawlowski, a 1998 Drake grad who played on four teams that combined to go 29-80, including a 19-game losing streak his senior year. Pawlowski and his wife were driving from St. Louis to Portland, where he is about to start a new job with Nike, when he persuaded her to divert to Des Moines for the game.

"Feeling the electricity walking in was amazing," Pawlowski said. "It gave me chills. There were probably more people sitting in the student section than we used to have in the entire place when I played."

At one point in the second half, Creighton went on a three-point shooting binge and took the lead.

"I looked at Emmenecker at that point, and he was smiling," Pawlowski said. "The message to his team was, 'We're fine; we're going to do this.' These guys expect to win. When I played, we rarely felt that way."

Six of Drake's last eight conference games are on the road. There will also be a bracket-buster game at Butler, another one-loss team. All of which means there is still a lot of work to do.

"And now we're the hunted because we're in first place," Keno Davis said of his team's three-game lead in the MVC. "But the amazing thing about this team is that with each success, we seem to get a little calmer. We've never talked about goals; we've just practiced hard every day and played about as well as we can every game."

For now, everyone at Drake is trying to enjoy the ride. Tom Davis, who admits watching is harder than coaching, has enjoyed Keno's success as much as any he had himself. Keno misses his dad on the bench but talks to him almost daily about everything from practice schedules to pregame meals to the pressures of winning.

"I saw them play Wisconsin-Milwaukee on the road early in the season," Pawlowski said. "They blew them out. I noticed even in warmups how many guys they had who could really shoot. I told some of my friends at work, 'Watch out for Drake this year.' They laughed at me. Now I'm getting e-mails saying, 'Why aren't they ranked higher?'"

Every year since he graduated, Pawlowski has kept his calendar clear for the week the NCAA tournament begins just in case he needed to fly to a first-round site to watch Drake. He hasn't needed to make a plane reservation . . . yet.

"This may finally be the year," he said.

It might well be. And it all came about because a son wanted the chance to work for his dad.

Not To Diminish Anything Drake Has Accomplished In This Wonderful 20-1 Season, Maury John's 1969 Final Four Team That Went 26-5 Still Tops My List

I called Willie McCarter today, and told him I planned to write something comparing this season's storybook Drake basketball team with the phenomenal one he played on 39 years ago.

Willie and I both know it's dangerous to make comparisons of teams that performed in different eras -- especially when there's still nearly half of a Missouri Valley Conference schedule to play in 2008.

Players change. Coaches change. Basketball has changed.

"Willie, let me say this," I told McCarter. "This season's Drake team is outstanding. To have a 20-1 record and to win 19 straight games at any level of basketball is a tremendous achievement.

"I like Keno Davis' team very much. I look at his starting lineup and I see a team that plays like a machine. All the working parts move so well together. It's not the most talented team in the Missouri Valley Conference, but no team plays the game any harder than this one."

But....

"Willie, I'll tell you this," I said. "Your team was better. And that doesn't mean I'm taking anything away from Keno's team."

*

One of the reasons I called McCarter at his home in Michigan was to ask him if he's going to be in Des Moines a week from today.

Sandy Hatfield Clubb, Drake's superb athletic director, is bringing together a number of outstanding former Bulldog athletes to be honored at halftime of the Feb. 9 men's game against Evansville.

McCarter, a guard on Drake's 1968-69 team that had a 26-5 record and finished third in the Final Four at Louisville, was named to the Valley's all-century team.

That's about as good as it gets in a league that was one of college basketball's very best in 1969.

I told McCarter I plan to be there Saturday, and I added that he'd better make it.

There'd be no way I'd miss that night. I traveled to hell and back with that team in 1968-69 [hell being Denton, TX, where North Texas State stuck a 118-99 dagger into the Bulldogs on Jan. 30, 1969], so I'm not going to be MIA when the best shooter on the team is in the building.

Willie, of course, has had some serious health problems in recent years and isn't moving nearly as well as he did when he averaged 20.4 points and was a first-round NBA draft choice of the Los Angeles Lakers in '69.

He's had a couple of strokes, he's had surgery on his brain. He told me he'd already made funeral arrangements for himself when things were going very badly for him.

"Now that I know you're going to be there, I'm going to be there," McCarter said.

That's the Willie McCarter I've known for a long, long time.

*

"Coach John always told us that you'd get us on page 1 of the newspaper back in those years, and you did it," McCarter said. "You got us on page 1 after we'd been on page 3 for so long."

No problem, Willie. After all, Dolph Pulliam calls me "the team's unofficial coach" whenever I see him.

"I'll be talking to Dolph tomorrow, and I'll tell him I'll be there next Saturday," McCarter said.

Pulliam was a rugged forward -- a man among boys -- on that '69 team. He was a guy who averaged 13.2 points and 7.7 rebounds.

He's now the commentator on radio broacasts of Drake's games, and he's been wearing an $800 blue leather suit ever since Drake began winning game after game in November.

*

If McCarter had his way, he'd stay out of discussions that compare the 1969 and 2008 Drake teams.

Like me, he doesn't want to take anything away from this year's Bulldogs and the unbelievable coaching job Keno is doing in his first season.

He tries to be modest about his achievements as a player. Instead, he prefers to say that the guy who made the most significance in 1969 was Pulliam, who came to Drake with him out of high school in Gary, Ind.

"Before a game, Coach John never told me to go out and score 20 points and he never told Willie Wise to get 11 rebounds," McCarter said.

"But he told Dolph to hold the other team's best scorer to half his average -- and that's what Dolph did so many times."

McCarter doesn't think this year's Drake team has a player like Pulliam, and I don't either.

As much as I like this season's team, I don't think the starting lineup of Bucky Cox, Klayton Korver, Josh Young, Adam Emmenecker and Leonard Houston could possibly match up against Pulliam, McCarter, Wise, Al Williams and Don Draper.

Pulliam was not only one of the premier defensive players in collegiate basketball, he was the spiritual leader of the '69 team.

Wise, who played for a number of the years in the old American Basketball Association after his Drake seasons, averaged 14.6 points in addition to being the team's leading rebounder.

Williams, who averaged 8.8 points and 7.2 rebounds, could jump through the ceiling. Draper, who always took the first shot in every game, averaged 12.2 points. At times, he couldn't miss.

Maury John could go to his bench and bring in Rick Wanamaker, a center and a leaper, and guards Gary Zeller and Al Sakys.

Also, it was tougher for Drake to win games in those days.

The Valley had such nationally-recognized teams as Louisville, Cincinnati, Memphis State and St. Louis.

Again, I'm trying to be careful and not diminish in any way what this year's Bulldogs have accomplished.

*

Talk about balance and grit, this team has it.

"The word defeat is not in this team's vocabulary," said 90-year-old Paul Morrison, the Drake athletic department historian who has been following Bulldog basketball almost since the peach-basket days.

Young is averaging 15.9 points, Houston 14.3, Cox 11.7, Korver 10.2 and Emmenecker 6.6. Cox rebounds at an 8.8 clip.

Keno Davis has been brilliant, pushing all the right buttons at all the right times.

A national coach of the year if I ever saw one.

Among those who have been able to enjoy this magnificent Drake team and those of other eras is Jay Davidson of Des Moines.

Davidson and Wanamaker roomed together in their days at Drake, and both played the clarinet in the marching band.

"Rick played in the band only a short time before he found that time expectations for a Drake athlete conflicted with his musical desires," Davidson said.

"In thinking about the 1968-69 team and this one, these similarities come to mind: The great bond between the players. While each team had talented players, each team was greater than the sum of its parts, and anyone could be a star in a given game; and coaches who gave the players great confidence to do their best and for whom respect was truly a two-way street."

Davidson said he got to know Micah Parker well in recent years. Parker was an assistant coach on the Drake women's team, and since has moved to Houston to go into the education field.

"Micah said, 'Character wins ballgames.'" Davidson said.

There certainly was plenty of character on the 1969 Drake team and there's plenty of character on the 2008 team.

"While thinking about great Drake teams of the past, one must remember the great teams of 1969-70 and 1970-71. Both were regional runnersup in the NCAA tournament -- one win away from the Final Four, and the terrific retooling job that Maury John did each year," Davidson said.

I'll see you next Saturday, Willie.

*

Photos, top to bottom: Former Drake standout Willie McCarter, who was a first-round NBA draft choice of the Los Angeles Lakers in 1969; Josh Young, Drake's scoring leader in a 19-1 2008 season that's seen the Bulldogs win 18 straight games; Ron Maly with Dolph Pulliam, who was Drake's standout defensive player and spiritual leader in the 1968-69 season; coaches Maury John [left] and Keno Davis [right] of the Bulldogs.

Despite Getting Rid Of Alford, Hawkeye Basketball Fans Aren't Flocking To the Arena. This Could Be the Lowest Attendance Average Since It Opened

Evidently more than a few newspapers have missed a significant story in a collegiate basketball season that's seen Drake again be the best Division I team in the state and Iowa again be one of the worst, despite a coaching change.

An Associated Press story says Iowa is on a pace to have the lowest attendance average since Carver-Hawkeye Arena [pictured] opened in 1983.

The story:

It was Iowa's Big Ten opener and the Hawkeyes were hosting Indiana. The rival Hoosiers were ranked among the nation's elite and featured a scintillating freshman in Eric Gordon, widely seen as one of the game's brightest young stars.

So where the heck was everybody?

Only 9,890 fans attended the game, and the upper echelons behind the baskets at the 15,500-seat Carver-Hawkeye Arena were barren. The few who stuck around for Justin Johnson's late-game heroics were outnumbered by scores of seats that were empty long before Indiana took a late lead.

This was not an isolated incident.

The Hawkeyes are on pace to draw their lowest average attendance since Carver-Hawkeye Arena opened in 1983. Through 13 games, Iowa had drawn an average of just 10,131 fans. Even if they sell out their final five games, which is unlikely given that Iowa hadn't had one through Feb. 1, the Hawkeyes would fall nearly 300 short of the previous low of 11,901 set in 2004-05.

In fact, the five lowest attendance averages at Carver-Hawkeye Arena have come in each of the past five years. The numbers for other Big Ten schools have been consistent during that stretch, usually settling at around 12,600 fans per home game.

Iowa has drawn better for Big Ten games, averaging 11,802 for their first four conference home games.

"Attendance has been an issue that's on the table," Iowa athletic director Gary Barta said. "This isn't an issue that just emerged this year. It's been a deterioration over the last five years."

Among the reasons blamed for the dwindling Iowa crowds:

-- Season-ticket sales have dropped by nearly 3,000 in the past eight years.

-- Later 8 p.m. start times, dictated by television, have made it more difficult to draw fans.

-- The team's on-court struggles.

Many thought the departure of former coach Steve Alford -- a lighting rod for critics by the time he left for New Mexico last April -- and the arrival of Todd Lickliter would re-energize the fan base. Though the Hawkeyes saw a slight uptick in season-ticket sales, fans still aren't filling the arena.

Iowa officials are well aware of the attendance downturn, a situation they blame primarily on the drop in season tickets sales. Rick Klatt, the associate athletic director, said the number of season tickets has dropped by roughly 2,800 in the last eight years -- a timeline that coincided with Alford's tenure.

Season-ticketholders usually represent a program's staunchest fans, and luring them back can prove difficult. Iowa sold just 40 more season tickets this year than in 2006-07, Klatt said, despite the hiring of Lickliter, who took Butler to the round of 16 a year ago.

"We were losing loyal season ticketholders," Barta said. "To me, that's the single greatest challenge that we were looking at."

This year has also presented a unique set of problems. Two of the program's biggest draws, Northern Iowa and Iowa State, didn't visit Carver this year, and the newly formed Big Ten Network forced Iowa to start a number of games at 8 p.m. instead of the traditional 7 p.m. tipoff.

It's no secret that late start times discourage fans from making the trip out to the arena -- especially for a team with a significant number of fans across the state -- and Iowa officials estimate that they lose 500 to 600 fans every time they play at 8 p.m.

The late start times means someone who drives from Des Moines, for example, won't return from Iowa City until midnight. Even those who live near the arena won't get home until 10:30 p.m. at the earliest.

Barta intends the address the glut of 8 p.m. start times with the Big Ten Network and conference officials in the offseason.

"Eight (p.m.) starts hurt our attendance," Barta said. "My goal is to have far fewer, because for those fans across the state, there's no question that 8 o'clock is not our best time. Seven o'clock is a much more convenient time."

The team's on-court performance hasn't helped matters. Not much was expected of the Hawkeyes in the preseason, when fans pondered whether to buy tickets. So far they've performed as expected. Iowa (10-12, 3-6 Big Ten) will need a late-season turnaround to avoid just their third losing season since 1990.

"During a season like this when expectations aren't great, people are less willing to spend the money if they think there's little to no hope of winning," said Corey Phillips, a 2004 Iowa grad who attended the Jan. 26 game against Penn State.

Iowa officials are hopeful Lickliter will build the Hawkeyes into a consistent contender in the Big Ten, producing teams that the fan base can rally around.

"It's very obvious we've hired a coach that's gotten the team pointed in the right direction," Klatt said. "We think we're only moving forward and upward."

Ultimately, it's winning that draws fans. Just ask Drake, which has sold out six straight games at the Knapp Center as the team tries to build on an 18-game winning streak.

"Our approach is that we're going to put a team out there that people are going to love to watch, and the word will spread," Lickliter said. "Our goal is to fill every seat by having a team that Hawkeyes fans embrace."

Dick Dietl Lost His 1975 NCIT Watch At the Drake Relays Poker Party

My recent column on the 1975 National Commissioners Invitation Tournament brought back memories to Dick Dietl, who then was the sports information director at Drake.

"Ron, where is my watch?" Dietl asked me from his home in Oregon. "Thanks for adding a picture of it, so I could remember what I'm missing from that trip to Louisville when the Bulldogs were playing better than average ball.

"It wasn't too long after Maury John's great teams. I got in with the last two Bulldog trips to the NCAA Regional tournaments, but couldn't get past Kansas and somebody else. Anyway, it was good to hear of those days.

"I enjoy your blog very much. By the way, best wishes to Keno and the Dogs, but most of all to Paul Morrison, who lived through way too many bad seasons and he deserves this one is much is anyone.

"I still think I lost my watch in the annual Drake Relays poker party. I loved the poker party, but could never win."

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: The wrist-watch Dietl was talking about [mine is pictured] was the one Coach Bob Ortegel gave the players, his assistants and the rest of us hangers-on after Drake won the NCIT -- a postseason tournament for conference runnersup. By the way, the NCAA Regional tournaments Dietl was talking about were played in 1970 and 1971. Maury John's 1970 team lost to New Mexico State, 87-78, in 1970 at Lawrence, Kan., and his 1971 team lost to Kansas, 73-71, at Wichita. Those Drake Relays poker parties were dandies, and more than one participant was found sleeping in his car [sometimes even his own!] afterward. The parties are no longer held, and it's probably a good thing].

*

JAY DAVIDSON AND I BOTH WANT SANDY HATFIELD CLUBB HONORED

I've been writing for a few weeks that Drake's Keno Davis is my choice for national coach of the year, and added the other day that the university's Sandy Hatfield Clubb would deserve to be the athletic director of the year if there were such an award.

I heard from longtime Drake fan Jay Davidson, who wrote:

"Hi Ron,

"I enjoyed your blog today...The last I knew Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal selected an Athletic Director of the Year annually, as does their professional organization, the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA). If you want to spearhead a drive to nominate Sandy for such an award, count me in! Or better yet, I'll do a little research about it and get back to you... She's such a terrific person and such an authentic and dynamic leader -- the perfect combination of head and heart!"

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: As far as I'm concerned, Sandy [pictured at the right] is the ball of fire Drake needed in the athletic director's job. She's a big reason the Bulldogs have attracted five consecutive sellout crowds at the Knapp Center. Actually, the turnouts have been overflows, with people virtually hanging from the rafters during the Bulldogs' spectacular season. I look for the remainder of Drake's home games to be sellouts, too].

*

AGAIN, DON'T FORGET THAT 1974-75 SEASON

Davidson also wrote:

"Hi, Ron, I thought you might be interested in this e-mail I sent to Keith Murphy [sports director at WHO-TV]:

"Hello Keith,

"....You and your staff are doing a fine job reporting on the Bulldogs this winter. Each of your reporters is highlighting the truly important story -- that the Bulldogs are indeed winning (and doing it dramatically) with fine young men and women who are student-athletes in the finest sense of the word and great young people of high character and citizenship. The coaches who helped them find Drake and all the Drake leaders who now teach, coach and nurture them in reaching their great potential as persons, students and athletes are also each worthy of respect and inclusion. I think you and your staff are conveying these facts as well. Congratulations on covering this great story well and I trust you will continue to do so.

"In all this, a few mistakes are inevitable, and in some of these Drake has unintentionally shared in the confusion by having incomplete information in its media guides. The most recent misstatement was probably inadvertent. [The recent] excellent piece on the Drake men reported that the last Drake team to make postseason play was the team of 1970-71. That would be correct only if one counts just the NCAA tournament, which in those days took only 24 teams and required a team to win its conference title (only a couple conferences had tournaments in those days) to qualify. In fact, the Drake men's team of 1974-75 qualified for, and won, the National Commissioners Tournament, which was designed to put the NIT out of business, but itself only lasted one year. Drake teams of 1980-81 and 1985-86 qualified for the NIT, but lost in the first round each time.

"In attempting to tell how long it's been since Drake men's basketball has been a player on the national scene, it's easy to overlook some other Drake teams which represented the university well, as in fact many have. While such errors are minor and certainly forgiveable, it is unfair, especially to those who represented themselves and Drake so well in those years, to forget them or deny them their fair credit. They need to know that we remember them, too.

"Keep up the fine work. With all good wishes to you and all your staff."

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Every collegiate sports program needs watchdogs around like Davidson, who can straighten out the reporters -- some of whom weren't yet born when certain teams were winning. Continue your outstanding work, Jay].

*

UNCLE BOB'S UPDATE ON HIS NEPHEW, SCOTT CHANDLER

Uncle Bob -- sometimes known as Bob Nicholas -- writes about his 6-7, 265-pound nephew, former Iowa football player Scott Chandler, who now plays for the San Diego Chargers:

"Ron,

"Just a quick update on Scott.

"While Scott only suited up for one game in the season, he was on the roster and got paid well. Fifty-three players are on the roster, but only 45 suit up. I guess it isn't easy breaking in when Antonio Gates is in front of you. I think the Chargers had a really good season, especially in light of how it was going at the beginning.

"I did get to see Scott play in the preseason and was there for his NFL debut against the Lions. He played the forth quarter.

"I think his future with the Chargers is tied closely with Norv Turner. For a while Norv was the goat, but nobody's talking about Marty anymore. I think Norv is happy with Scott and I think he will get more of a shot next year. I think they really could have used him used him this year against the Pats in the red zone.

"Scott and his beautiful Iowan bride are on vacation in Texas and spending some time with his family, 'Big Nate,' his beautiful wife, and baby son.

"Life continues to speed by and be great for the Chandler boys!

"Go Hawks!!!"

Proud Uncle Bob

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Scott Chandler [pictured at the top] turned into an outstanding tight end at Iowa. The "Big Nate" referred to by Uncle Bob is Nathan Chandler, Scott's older brother. Big Nate was a Hawkeye quarterback, and a good one. It's good hearing from Uncle Bob, who has reason to be a strong Hawkeye fan].