Adjacent News

Oh, hello there. I do hope I am not interrupting anyone by speaking up just a little bit, and goodness knows I certainly never wish to cause a stir in the press box, but it has been quite a remarkably quiet week here in Tulsa, hasn't it? The schedule, as you may have gently noticed if you happened to glance down at the laminated sheet by the coffee machine, is entirely blank. Absolutely vacant. Not a single opponent on the horizon, not even a traveling exhibition squad from a regional divinity school looking for a humble mid-week scrimmage.

I suppose, when the gym is this cavernous and empty on a Tuesday afternoon, a person's thoughts just naturally tend to drift toward eternity and whether we are all truly making the best possible use of our floor time. I was sitting up here in row twelve, right beside the ventilation duct that always rattles whenever the humidity shifts, and I found myself wondering if this scheduling void might be a very polite, subtle nudge from Upstairs. You know how it is. Sometimes the Big Scheduler clears the board just so we can sit quietly in the dark and reflect on our turnover rates, or perhaps contemplate why our perimeter shooting has been so terribly hesitant lately. It is never our place to question the rotation, of course. Who am I to suggest that the Almighty needs a different defensive scheme? But one cannot help feeling that perhaps, if we just lowered our voices and bowed our heads for a brief, unobtrusive moment of silent meditation, the basketball gods might look down upon the Golden Eagles with a little more favor once November finally arrives.

The floor looks so terribly lonely without the lines chalked over or the team running through their staggered screen drills. I walked down near the scorer's table earlier just to check if the horn still works—only very softly, you understand, so as not to disturb the gentlemen wiping down the seats—and the silence was just profound. It made me think about how fleeting our time in the mid-major bracket truly is. We are here for such a short span, running our motion offenses and trying our absolute best to box out on defensive rotations, and then suddenly the seniors graduate and move on to insurance sales or overseas leagues. It just makes you want to turn to the person sitting next to you—provided they are comfortable with it, naturally—and ask if they have accepted the designated free-throw shooter into their hearts as their personal savior from late-game collapses.

Of course, if anyone finds these spiritual inquiries the least bit bothersome or intrusive, please just let me know by making a tiny hand gesture or slipping a polite little note into my mailbox. I would hate to make anyone feel cornered or pressured about their eternal salvation during an open practice window. It is just that when you watch the way the dust motes settle on the center-court logo during a bye week, you realize that basketball is about so much more than just conference standings or net efficiency metrics. It is about fellowship, and gentle defense, and hoping beyond hope that someone brought enough sugar packets for the hospitality table in the back.

So if it's not too much trouble at all, and only if everyone feels completely at ease with the proposition, perhaps we could all just take a tiny, quiet second—maybe fifteen or twenty seconds, or even just a brief inward sigh—to consider where our program stands in the grander scheme of the cosmos. No pressure whatsoever, truly. If you'd rather just keep scrolling through your phone or checking the mid-major transfer portal, that is entirely fine by me. I only mention it in the softest possible whisper, just in case anyone was worried about the rebounds.