xii · basketball
Wanted Poster for the Oklahoma State Backcourt’s Missing Holster-to-Release Velocity
An open prairie sits before the Oklahoma State Cowboys this week, with no stagecoach outlaws on the horizon to test the iron in our irons.
The dust of the open trail settles across Stillwater this week, leaving the arena floor as quiet as a deserted trading post at high noon. With no rival outfits riding into town for a Saturday shootout, the Oklahoma State Cowboys find themselves resting their six-shooters in grease-spotted leather rather than drawing steel against an opposing gang. Out in the press box, the air smells less of burnt black powder and more of stale kettle corn, a bitter draft for any gunfighter accustomed to smelling the sulfur of a fast-break transition before the defense can even clear leather from the holster.
A look at the regional ledger reveals a total vacuum of outlaws. The scheduling marshals have dealt this program a stretch of empty desert, leaving coaches and staff to pace the boardwalk with their thumbs hooked into their cartridge belts, wondering where the next cattle rustler might appear. Without a fast-break stagecoach robbery to break up or a perimeter gunfight to settle at twenty paces, the afternoon drags on with the monotony of a slow-moving freight wagon crossing the salt flats. The quick-draw shooting velocity metrics, usually tested to a fraction of a heartbeat against stubborn zone defenses, sit idle while the squad practices their draw in front of an empty saloon mirror.
Down on the parquet, the hardwood remains spotless, untouched by the scuff marks of high-speed perimeter showdowns. Assistants spend their hours oiling spare parts and checking the tension on the ball-handling harness, treating every basketball like a fresh cylinder of .44 caliber ammunition that may never find a target this week. It is a strange sort of purgatory for a program built on the philosophy of shooting first and asking questions of the official later. Every possession in modern college basketball is meant to be a rapid-fire exchange, a desperate race to clear the holster before the opposition can drop the hammer, yet here we sit in the middle of an unscheduled truce.
The saloon-clearance dominance percentage sits at zero, simply because there are no rival patrons left to clear out of the establishment. The players linger near the bench, tossing bounce passes with the weary nonchalance of drifters waiting out a flash flood under a warped porch awning. Even the officials have packed up their whistles and riding dusters, leaving the floor to the custodians and their push-brooms. It is an honest, if excruciating, stillness—the kind of quiet that follows a gunfight where every bullet missed its mark and nobody has the stomach to reload.
Until a new trail boss leads another outfit across the county line, the Cowboys must content themselves with shadow-boxing against imaginary rustlers in the practice corral. The holsters are buckled tight, the spurs are quiet, and the only target available for inspection is the empty stretch of highway leading out toward the county border.