Coach's Corner

Late February is oneof the dreaded dead spots on the floor of the sports fan's year. In the NBA, rookies have already played three college seasons ... with three more to come. For much of the league, the final two months are just extended garbage time. The college season -- the real one, not the phony conference tournaments -- is still a few weeks away. February's why a non-event like spring training has the run of the sports section. It's when TV has to make stuff up to televise, explaining the so-called Match Play Championships. February is why the Winter Olympics are a hot item. It's figure skating's time to shine. Bowling appears on network television. Some sad folk watch. This is a bad time.

This is the time of year for my annual tennis column. Regular readers will be grateful not to read -- again -- about the, "rose-colored hue of the Santa Rosa Mountains." The Evert/Newsweek Cup will carry on, but without, alas, me. My "friend" Dunn, staying in character, was inconsiderate enough to move away from the desert paradise of Palm Springs, ruining my opportunity to write off four days of outstanding golf and a little tennis.

You might think my plate's empty, but you would be wrong. El Coach is a creative fellow. I looked no further than my column last week to find direction. Being my own favorite writer, I moved myself to tears re-reading about the excellence of high school basketball. The UIL has wisely picked these barren weeks for their basketball tournaments. The sports page is theirs. The state finals, boys and girls, are always right here in Austin. Here's my plan.

You're right in the middle -- though I didn't know it until just a second ago -- of my first trilogy. No groaning. This isn't exactly Solzhenitsyn. Last week I wrote about a first round girl's playoff game between Hays and Reagan. I was looking for a winner. I mean a real winner, one I could follow all the way to a state championship. In Hays I'd thought I'd found a sleeper: Big, quick, tough. I asked Olin Buchanan, the high school beat writer for the Statesman, about this epiphany. He was polite, but the gist was, "I don't think so." The next weekend Hays went out without a whimper.

On to Plan B, staged last weekend at St. Ed's. The Hilltoppers are hosting the regional finals for the Region 4- 2A schools. 2A schools are small places. Total enrollment can't exceed a couple hundred kids. But I knew from past experience not to roll my eyes: these kids can play. The Finals between Salado (30-5) and someplace called Goldthwaite (23-7) is played before a packed house. The demographics of the crowd are quite odd. There seem to be an inordinate number of toddlers and very old people. Old folks especially. The old folks were quite enthusiastic. One gnarly, sinewy cowboy, wearing his Stetson, a heavily starched white snap shirt and a string tie is, I'm quite certain, going to have a heart attack. I'm standing -- I had to stand the entire game because everybody on both sides never sat down -- right behind this old guy. I start reminding myself of the ABCs of CPR. Every time a Salado player does anything good he leaps up and whirls his right arm, with vigor, clockwise, like a third base coach frantically waving in the winning run in the World Series, almost clobbering his wife with every revolution.

The night before, I saw Salado dismantle a school called Poth. If you're from Poth I mean no offense, but can't locate Poth on my Texas map. The Lady Pirettes, with 12 losses, must have stumbled into this thing. There's no shot clock in high school. If you want, and the other team cooperates, a player can stand at mid-court with the ball held on hip and watch the clock run. Apparently this was Poth's strategy, because for much of the first half, as Salado ran a pretty sophisticated version of the four-corner offense, with all five players in a constant weave, Poth just watched, as if in a clinic. When Poth came out to chase, they never caught up.

But tonight, in a rematch of last year's final (won by Salado), Goldthwaite would not be Poth. The now politically incorrect Lady Eagles are tall and quick and do what Poth could not. Coach Wayne Johnson will not allow Salado to control the ball. They challenge Salado's spread offense, girl on girl as it were, with every touch contested, with devastating results, forcing 20 Salado turnovers.

This all-out blitz carries over to the offense, where Goldthwaite runs a Tom Penders-style, any-shot's-a-good-shot attack. This leads to a rather interesting, unconventional final five minutes when The Book says the leading team plays against the clock, not the other team. Goldthwaite completely eschews The Book and never stop shooting... quickly and from anyplace. Each shot takes conventional me by surprise, since the only chance Salado has is to get the ball back, which they do... repeatedly. Books can be wrong, especially when your shooters never miss, which Kharissa Kelly and Vanessa Auldridge never did. Final score: Goldthwaite 40, Salado 27. Next weekend Goldthwaite plays in the Erwin Center. They haven't reached this plateau since the first term of the Eisenhower Administration. I -- and the vacant town of Goldthwaite -- will be there.