(Editor’s note: This story ran in the American-Statesman on April 1)
Brent Buckman knows what it’s like to help win an NCAA championship for the University of Texas. But now that his son is trying to do the same thing, the local golf pro now known as Brad Buckman’s dad is vicariously reliving those emotions of more than 30 years ago.
Only more so.
“This is far more nerve-wracking than that,” Brad’s dad said Monday.
“This” is the Longhorns’ quest for a men’s basketball title, which took a step closer to fruition Sunday with their South Regional victory over Michigan State that put them in the Final Four for the first time since 1947.
“That” was the consecutive NCAA golf titles that Buckman’s UT teams — featuring Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw — won in 1971 and ’72.
“You don’t have a hand in this, which is what makes it so hard,” said Brent, now the pro at Spanish Oaks Golf Club.
Buckman, his wife Tammy and their kids are as burnt orange as it gets. So when Texas celebrated Sunday’s victory, their little pocket at the Alamodome was awash in happy tears.
After all, it wasn’t that long ago that a mop-haired little boy used to chase down basketballs for the Longhorns as a team ballboy around 1990. Now, Brad Buckman — having sprouted up to 6 feet, 8 inches — shoots and rebounds them. His 11 points against the Spartans, nine coming in the second half, helped Texas hold on for a trip to New Orleans and a Saturday semifinal date against Syracuse.
“To grow up watching their games and to be part of a Final Four team now is just unbelievable,” said the big freshman from Westlake, who still sports a blond mop of hair. “When I was a kid and hanging around those guys — Travis Mays and Lance Blanks were two of my favorite players — I never dreamed anything like this would happen.”
But now that it has, “Bradley’s taking my wife and I on a ride like we’ve never been on before,” said Brent. His wife, Tammy, a local real estate agentrealtor and a 1980 UT graduate, agreed.
“This is almost hard to believe,” she croaked Monday in a voice still hoarse from screaming the day before Brent said he, “lives and dies with every kid on that team.”
He’ll get no argument about that from Clifton McNeely, the Westlake High basketball coach who ran into the Buckmans at a hotel before Sunday’s game.
“He was so nervous he couldn’t even talk,” McNeely said with a grin. “I’m glad Bradley was playing the game and not Brent. That was one nervous dad.”
After the horn signaled the end of Sunday’s game, Buckman was one of several players wading into the stands to hug family members. Brent and Tammy have made it to nearly every Texas game this year, home and away.
While Brent usually is outwardly calm, his wife often is waving something burnt orange. In the Longhorns’ come-from-behind victory at Oklahoma in the regular-season finale, she was the blonde waving the big foam fingers in the shape of the “Hook ’em” gesture.
“Dad acts like he’s cool, but mom’s a nut,” Brad said with a hearty laugh.
Despite his Longhorn upbringing and the family’s close relationship with Texas and Coach Rick Barnes — “I love the guy like a brother,” Brent said — it wasn’t a given that Brad, a McDonald’s All-American, would pick UT. He was heavily courted by Kansas, UCLA and especially North Carolina.
“People didn’t think Texas was a good choice, but I knew in my heart that it was,” Brad said. “I don’t get it much anymore, but every time someone told me I should have gone to North Carolina, I say look where they are and look where we are.”
