xii · basketball
A Warrant for the Immediate Roundup and Remanded Custody of All Hesitant Half-Court Sets Across the Open Prairie
An audit of the dusty silence hanging over Stillwater as the program stares down a wide-open horizon without a live outlaw in sight.
The dust has settled across the prairie, leaving the hitching posts outside Gallagher-Iba Arena completely undisturbed by the rumble of arriving wagon trains or the thunder of rival posses riding in from the horizon. This is the quiet stretch of the frontier calendar where the six-shooters stay holstered in oiled leather and the air smells less of gunsmoke and more of autumn pecans blowing down Monroe Street. October has settled over Stillwater with the heavy, unhurried weight of a midday sun baking an empty corral. There are no outlaws to trail across the county line, no stagecoaches loaded with non-conference victories to ambush at the creek bed, and certainly no quick-draw artists waiting by the water tower to test the trigger fingers of the backcourt rotation.
Down on the campus asphalt, the student body drifts between lecture halls with the slow-moving grace of cattle herds finding shade beneath the elms. The local radio stations play folk tunes between weather reports forecasting mild breezes and no chance of a sudden blizzard blowing down from the north to freeze the perimeter jump shots. Over at the Student Union, the cafeteria serves up chicken fried steak with a side of cream gravy that sits in the stomach like a lead weight dropped from a second-story balcony. It is honest, heavy grub meant to fuel men who spend their afternoons clearing brush or chasing strays, though the modern guard corps tends to eye the carbohydrate load with the wary suspicion of a scout checking a suspicious trail for horse droppings.
The band room down the hall from the hardwood echoes occasionally with the unmistakable brassy blast of fight songs that sound less like celebratory hymns and more like cavalry bugles sounding a charge across an open draw. They are practicing their formations for an imaginary cavalry charge that won't find a target until the schedule makers finally pin a name to the bulletin board. For now, the bulletin board remains as bare as a bleached steer skull found out in the panhandle. Coach keeps his cards close to his Stetson, pacing the sidelines during closed-door walkthroughs with the measured stride of a rancher checking fence lines for broken wire. There is no point in unlimbering the artillery when the only thing moving out on the range is a tumbleweed tumbling lazily past the south loading dock.
Down the road a ways, the smaller schools scattered across the state are tending to their own modest spreads, worrying over local hay yields and whether their junior varsity sharpshooters can hit the broad side of a barn from twenty feet out. They share our collective weariness of this middle-october lull, a strange purgatory where the leather feels good in the palm but there is no opposing sheriff's deputy to stare down across the painted circle. The officials are back in town, presumably sharpening their whistles and oiling their leather belt holsters, but for the next few days, their trigger fingers will have to find employment elsewhere. Until the smoke clears and a fresh trail opens up on the horizon, the Oklahoma State camp sits quiet and coiled, waiting for the sun to drop low enough to cast long shadows across the hardwood.