It Doesn’t Get Any Bigger Than This

This was supposed to be an upbeat week.

No. 4 North Carolina plays at No. 2 Duke tonight, the annual rocket boost propelling us from slumber toward spring.

You can argue whether Duke-Carolina is the most revered rivalry in sports, but there is no doubting its relevance as a signpost.

In the context of winter, and scratching off days until March Madness, the game is the hoops equivalent of an appearance from Punxsutawney Phil.

Duke versus North Carolina, really, is the only regular-season game you have to watch.

It is more than the four national titles, 27 Final Four appearances and 25 Atlantic Coast Conference titles the schools have amassed.

If you were required by law to boil the essence of the sport down to a calendar date and a court, it would be North Carolina and Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

This year’s game comes to you fully loaded, Duke one Casey Jacobsen bank shot removed from being No. 1 and North Carolina surging under first-year Coach Matt Doherty, the former Tar Heel player, whose buzzer-beater against Duke in 1984 forced overtime and led to a Tar Heel win.

Doherty expects Duke fans to take their best shot.

“I think they’re going to get on me,” Doherty said of the “Cameron Crazies.”

“Someone said they got some T-shirts printed up saying, basically, the list of who said no to Coach [Dean] Smith. Roy Williams, Larry Brown. In other words, the point is, I was their fifth or sixth choice here.

“That’s all in fun. I enjoy that kind of interaction with the students.”

AT BAY

This was supposed to be a week you could suggest losses in the Bay Area would be “catastrophic” to USC and UCLA’s Pacific 10 Conference hopes.

But that word has no place in stories also discussing misfortunes at Oklahoma State.

This is only an important week for the locals, an inventory check.

USC (15-4, 5-2) plays at No. 1 Stanford (19-0, 7-0) tonight; UCLA (12-5, 6-1) is at California (14-5, 5-2).

On Saturday, UCLA and USC swap opponents.

Do USC and UCLA have the ways and means to knock off No. 1 and unbeaten Stanford?

USC’s stand-up starting five should be able to hang with Stanford, and Jeff Trepagnier might be able to slow Cardinal shooter Jacobsen, but Stanford’s size and depth will ultimately prevail.

With news seeping out of Boston that Rick Pitino might no longer be interested in Nevada Las Vegas, and Pitino later denying the report, and Butch Davis unavailable to sort out the truth, this might prove to be yet another ambulance-chase weekend on the Steve Lavin watch.

If not UNLV, gee, where might Pitino end up?

With UCLA administrators piecing together the off-court case against Lavin with the fine-toothed-comb care of a forensics investigation, the Bruin coach might want to drop another Bay Area bombshell.

Last year, a win at California, coupled with a stunning, JaRon Rush-led, 94-93 victory at Stanford, extended a UCLA winning streak that would last eight games and not end until a third-round NCAA tournament loss to Iowa State.

It’s always day to day with Lavin, isn’t it?

SOMBER NOTES

This, in fact, has been a lousy week, the worst, but there are no “do-overs” in life.

Friday, the basketball world lost Al McGuire, the ex-coach, philosopher, mentor and commentator.

His death was sad but not unexpected, not tragic. He squeezed 72 years out of life, never giving quarter.

Remembrances of McGuire provoked as many laughs as tears.

Only hours after McGuire’s passing, Fresno State Coach Jerry Tarkanian sat in his office, hands clasped behind his head.

Tark recalled taking one of his early Long Beach State teams on a three-game barnstorm which ended in a game at Marquette.

McGuire had scouted both Long Beach road games and felt guilty that Tarkanian had not yet seen Marquette.

“He invited me to practice,” Tarkanian recalled. “I never had a coach invite me to practice. We were playing them! He said it wasn’t fair that he’d scouted us twice and we haven’t seen them.”

Tarkanian remembers the most disorganized practice he’d ever seen. McGuire showed up 15 minutes late, arriving with Tark from a local pub.

McGuire loosened his tie. He screamed at players. They screamed at him--absolutely the most dysfunctional practice Tark had ever seen.

It was a set-up.

“We go out and play Saturday, and they played a perfect game,” Tarkanian said.

Tark recalled playing Marquette at the Long Beach Arena in 1972-73. Both teams were highly ranked.

“It was just an even game and I’m a nervous wreck before the game,” Tarkanian said. “I was as nervous as you can be. I walk in the arena and Al’s eating a hot dog. I couldn’t believe it.

“He comes up to me and says, ‘Tark, they want to interview us before the game. I told them they got to pay us.’

“I said ‘Al, I’m just happy to get interviewed,’ but he says, ‘Oh no, you can’t go unless they pay us.’ ”

Long after Tarkanian had moved on to Nevada Las Vegas, McGuire paid another visit.

“I spoke every place in town, never took a penny from anybody, because everybody in Vegas was comping me too,” Tarkanian said. “Al came in to town one day and said, ‘Tark, you got to knock that off, you’re killing the profession.’ He was the one who said you’ve got to get paid for everything.

“That was Al. He was unique.”

HEARTBREAK

Saturday was the worst. Oklahoma State lost a game at Colorado. Three chartered team planes took off from Denver, two landed.

Ten people died in the crash of the Beechcraft King Air 200 twin-engine plane; two pilots, two Oklahoma State players, the team’s trainer, publicist, student manager, director of basketball operations, team broadcaster and broadcast engineer.

“The games may go on,” Oklahoma Coach Kelvin Sampson said, “but I’m not sure the games will be the same.”

You see schools play, admire the competition, watch coaches quarrel and players scrape and forget that conferences are nothing more than extended families.

Peel back the exterior of the Big 12 and you find a connected fabric.

Bill Teegins, the Oklahoma State play-by-play man killed in the crash, also hosted Sampson’s weekly television show at Oklahoma.

Kevin Weiberg is Big 12 commissioner. His nephew, Jared, was the student manager killed in the crash.

Dan Lawson, one of two players who perished, lingered at Colorado after the game because he had been recruited by Coach Ricardo Patton.

The Texas entourage had just landed in Austin after a crushing defeat at Arizona on Saturday when Longhorn Coach Rick Barnes heard the news, which he broke to his players.

“It just took the life right out of them,” Barnes said. “It hit so close to home.”

A couple of Texas Tech assistant coaches were close to crash victim Pat Noyes, Oklahoma State’s director of basketball operations.

When Coach James Dickey broke the news to his coaches, he said, “They just turned and walked out of the room.”

Sampson spent time Sunday morning on the phone consoling Oklahoma State Coach Eddie Sutton.

“I don’t know how life prepares us for anything like this,” Sampson said. “This isn’t losing a ball game. This is death. I never had to go through anything like this. I think the more friends he can talk to, the more it helps him.”

The crash will alter the Big 12 for years.

It is a small-city conference--

Stillwater, Lubbock, Waco, College Station, Ames--outer reaches accessible only via small planes.

It is a bad-weather conference. Rock star Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash, in Iowa, in February.

Several conference players and coaches who were afraid to fly before the crash must now be coaxed into boarding planes required to complete appointed Big 12 rounds.

Iowa State Coach Larry Eustachy was so petrified of flying before the crash he drove separately to Big 12 games whenever possible. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about my personal fear of flying, under the circumstances,” he said this week.

Oklahoma players asked Sampson this week if they could take a bus to the team’s next game at Waco, Texas.

Sampson said it was not feasible.

Last year, the Missouri basketball charter, en route from Columbia to Waco, had a cabin pressure problem and had to make an emergency landing in Springfield, Mo.

Of the Oklahoma State crash, Missouri Coach Quin Snyder remarked this week, “Obviously, it could easily be us.”

In wake of the crash, Colorado announced it would take commercial flights for the remainder of the season to allay fears of its players.

What does a coach say to his players when he too is afraid?

“I’m not sure how you sell it,” Texas A&M; Coach Melvin Watkins said. “We have kids, even when we fly commercial, that are squeamish about it and, to be honest with you, I’m not a big fan of flying.”

The games will go on, the schedule will be played, players will step nervously up prop-plane steps.

But you can bet tough losses in the Big 12 will never again be referred to as “catastrophic.”

The good thing is that this week turns into next week.

It can’t get here soon enough.