CINCINNATI -- Oscar Robertson is enormous, intimidating and possibly deaf.
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Top assistant Dan Peters left Cincy for Ohio State ... (Provided to SportsLine) |
The questions aren't all that difficult -- What will you do as Cincinnati's interim, interim coach? Why do all of your NBA highlights look to be in slow-motion? -- but the Big O is giving me the Big Blow-off.
He's standing outside the Bearcats' gym, the Fifth Third Arena. In a nice touch, he's wearing the No. 12 jersey he wore at Cincinnati from 1958-60, when he was a three-time national player of the year. He's stoic, the Bearcats' interim, interim coach.
Too stoic. Talk to me, Oscar. Say something.
He says nothing. He just stands there, eight feet tall and with a body sculpted from bronze. He's actually in mid-dribble, which must be a pretty difficult pose to hold. The basketball stays at his fingertips as if it were soldered there.
In the athletic offices nearby, Cincinnati deputy athletic director Dean Billick lets me in on a secret. That Oscar Robertson, the one outside the Fifth Third Arena? It's a statue.
The Cincinnati basketball program is now being run by a statue! At least it's being run by someone.
First Bob Huggins gets himself suspended indefinitely after being arrested on charges of drunken driving, and then interim coach Dan Peters -- Huggins' No. 1 assistant and best friend -- leaves the lurching coach in a bigger lurch by joining Thad Matta's staff at Ohio State.
(In an aside, would Thad Matta please stop demolishing basketball in the state of Ohio? First he toys with the Ohio State search, making it drag on a month longer than necessary. Then he leaves Xavier on the eve of the July recruiting period. Now he has hired away the interim coach from Cincinnati. For now Dayton and Cleveland State have avoided the wrath of Thad. For now.)
As for Peters, leaving Huggins at his best friend's lowest point was disloyal and disappointing ... and probably the exact same thing I would have done.
Peters, 49, has a wife and two sons, both about to enter (cha-ching!) college. Ohio State called with a job that would double his salary without uprooting him from his home state. What would you have done? What would any of us have done?
Peters dropped by his former UC office on Wednesday to clean out the last can of Who Hash. He was wearing a red Nike golf shirt -- Buckeye red, if not Buckeye apparel -- and pain in his eyes.
"It's tough," he said. "People are going to think what they want to think. On the one hand it's a business. On the other hand, it's my friend. It's ... tough."
That's Bearcats basketball in a nutshell. Right now, it's ... tough.
Athletic director Bob Goin sent an SOS to Robertson, the greatest player in school history and among the greatest players in basketball history.
Robertson, 65 and a successful businessman, answered the call. He has had courtside tickets for years but has been closer to the program than that, attending practice weekly and providing hands-on help, like showing similarly built Bearcats forward Eric Hicks how to get inside position.
When he became the interim, interim coach, Robertson was in San Antonio on non-Bearcats business. It kind of lets you know just how toothless the suspension of Huggins really was, coming as it does at a time of year when Oscar Robertson can run the program from San Antonio or wherever his business travels take him next.
Technically, until Huggins returns on Aug. 27 the real overseer of the Cincinnati basketball program will be Billick, a kindly sort who has been in college athletics for nearly 40 years but has never coached.
"Summer's not the busiest time, but we want to pick up the slack in any way we can," said Billick.
That means doing the things Peters had been doing -- organizing recruiting travel, overseeing the academic support staff, monitoring strength and conditioning issues. Not sexy stuff, but important stuff.
Robertson will handle the players -- meeting with them, reassuring them, keeping them in line. It's why he can do this job despite traveling on his other business interests. He'll be around Cincinnati enough to mentor the players.
Peters won't. Huggins can't. Billick shouldn't.
The Big O to the rescue, and given the current state of Cincinnati basketball, there is much to rescue. It's a job for a superhero, or a Hall of Famer.
Or a really cool statue.
