OKLAHOMA CITY ? War in Iraq dominates the headlines. Jobs continue to disappear. Gasoline prices remain high.
And yet for five or six hours today, more than 18,000 people will cocoon themselves inside the Ford Center in downtown Oklahoma City and millions more will watch on television as four basketball teams strive to stay alive.
Officially, they’ll see a couple of second-round NCAA Tournament men’s basketball games.
Unofficially, they’ll witness the Big 12 vs. Pac-10 Challenge.
On the surface, Big 12 Conference schools Oklahoma and Kansas University will enjoy a decided home-court advantage against Pac-10 foes California and Arizona State.
At least that’s what Cal coach Ben Braun and ASU counterpart Rob Evans think. With a preponderance of Sooners in the seats, Braun’s players will no doubt face a road-like atmosphere.
“We played Pittsburgh last year in Pittsburgh,” Braun said Friday. “That’s the luck of the draw, or so they tell me. We will have to deal with it.”
Balderdash, countered OU coach Kelvin Sampson.
“Fans don’t block shots, they don’t play no defense,” Sampson said after Friday’s closed practice session. “So don’t make too much out of that stuff.”
After a pause for effect, Sampson then uttered with a smile: “That being said, I’m glad we’re here.”
Kansas is glad to be here, too, of course. The Jayhawks will have a sizable contingent in the Ford Center because of the geography factor and because KU’s students are on spring break this week. But Oklahoma boosters may outnumber the Kansas faithful four or five to one, and the jury is out on their second-game allegiances.
Will the OU fans toe the Big 12 party line and cheer for the Jayhawks? Or is rooting for Kansas, as big a rival as the Sooners have outside of Austin, Texas, and Stillwater, Okla., simply too foreign to their psyches?
“I don’t know,” KU senior Nick Collison said. “Hopefully, they’ll be for us. But I remember last year in (Madison) Wisconsin when the Texas fans up there were against us.”
On the flip side, KU sophomore Keith Langford expects no favors. “They’ll probably want us to lose,” Langford said.
And what reaction does Kansas coach Roy Williams expect from the Oklahomans in the crowd?
“I would hope we would have a pro-Kansas crowd tomorrow,” Williams said. “I know I’ve talked to a lot of people in the arena who said they were an OU guy or from Oklahoma State and that they were pulling for us.”
ASU coach Evans does not anticipate the OU fans will jump into the Sun Devils’ corner.
“I don’t expect it to be a neutral court,” Evans said. “It’ll be a hostile environment. But we’ve been to Mac Court (at Oregon) and we’ve played at Arizona and our kids are used to that. It’ll be a rabid crowd, but we’ve been to lots of places that are tough.”
Evans has his players believing the same thing.
“We’re so close to Kansas,” senior forward Tommy Smith said, “and this being a Big 12 state it’ll be like a road game.”
In the jargon of college athletics, describing any area as neutral is a misnomer. People pay their money to cheer somebody and, in the absence of the team they came to see, they inevitably hop onto the bandwagon of the underdog. Any team rallying from a deficit or challenging a favorite can count on crowd support whether at the NCAA Tournament or the West Junior High Invitational.
Kansas certainly doesn’t want to play come-from-behind basketball against Arizona State tonight, but it might enhance their chances if they can shift the crowd into a comeback mode.