As all those taxpayers’ envelopes have been dropped in the mail on the way to fund Uncle Sam’s coffers, I extend my belated congratulations to the Loyalsock Lady Lancers on their well-earned run to the PIAA AAA state championship. The team’s historic triumph is a testament to the dividends that can be accrued via hard work, dedication to one’s craft, and commitment to achieving a lofty goal that may be deemed unattainable.
In the competitive world of athletics, it is a sad fact of life that only the team that captures the ultimate championship will win its last game of the season. Along the way, everyone else, regardless of how good they are, will experience that ‘agony of defeat’ moment as their opponent holds shiny hardware skyward as a shower of confetti falls upon their heads.
One fan base is ecstatic, while the other wipes away tears, consoles one another, and ponders those what-if moments that could have changed the game’s outcome in their favor. To my chagrin, count me among the latter.
As a graduate of the University of Houston, I’m probably an alumni association of one in this neck of the woods. Unlike the legion of Penn State fans that can commiserate with one another following a gut-wrenching loss, the aftermath of my Cougars’ last-second 65-63 loss to the Florida Gators in the NCAA title game was shared with me, myself & I and a glass of diet Pepsi in the solitude of my living room.
The silence of the moment was broken only by Jean’s attempted uplifting comment, “It’s too bad they lost, but that was a good game.”
Some of the old guard out there may remember President Clinton’s attempted choice of the words, “It depends what your definition of it is’” when trying to explain away his troubles. At that moment, Jean’s utterance of the word good was not a match for how I felt in this moment of defeat.
While attending Houston in those long-ago days, I was a first-hand witness to the University’s transformation from an all-white college to an integrated institution; one of the first in the south to do so, and it was peacefully achieved via the basketball program.
The book Cougars of Any Color, authored by UH graduate Katherine Lopez, details the historic undertaking the school experienced.
“After years of playing sub-par teams in weak athletic conferences, the University of Houston athletic program sought to overcome its underdog reputation by integrating its football and basketball programs in 1964. Cougar coaches Bill Yeoman and Guy V. Lewis knew the radical move would grant them access to a wealth of talented athletes untouched by segregated Southern programs and brought on several talented black athletes in the fall semester, including Don Chaney, Elvin Hayes, and Warren McVea. By 1968, the Cougars had transformed into an athletic powerhouse and revolutionized the nature of collegiate athletics in the South.
“This book gives the Cougar athletes and coaches the recognition long denied them. It outlines the athletic department’s handling of the integration, the experience of the school’s first black athletes, and the impact that the University of Houston’s integration had on other programs.”
In the years that followed, although the University of Houston had some powerhouse teams, including reaching the NCAA championship games in 1983 & 84, bounced around with various conference affiliations and experienced some national disregard. That began to change in 2014 with the hiring of Kelvin Sampson, the first Native American to head coach an NCAA men’s basketball team to the Final Four, as head coach.
Sampson was well-traveled, with previous coaching stops at Michigan State, Montana State, Washington State, Oklahoma, Indiana, and the NBA. His influence was immediate. $25 million was raised for a new practice facility, another $60 million to renovate its current Fertitta Center and in 2018 led the team to its first NCAA tournament game since 1984.
Entering the Big Twelve Conference during the 2023-24 season, the Cougars have dominated the league twice, winning regular-season titles and capturing the Tournament championship this year. In the process, they have compiled a league record of 34-4 and have won more than 30 games in each of the past four seasons.
Oh yeah, some say statistics are for losers. The Cougars dropped a few, which led to their ultimate defeat. It is hard to win a national championship when you make just 30% of your shots, 50% from the foul line, and commit turnovers on the last four possessions of the game.
It would have been nice, and that diet Pepsi would have tasted sweeter, but my beloved Cougars have now reached seven Final Fours, including three title games, and are 0-7 for their efforts. The win would have been number 800 in Sampson’s stellar coaching career.
With appreciation to those reaching out to soothe my consternation, many anti-Duke fans among them. Wait until next year – it’s my only consolation.
