After all, Kansas won six straight games to open its season. However, as I recall, Coach Williams had very little positive to say about most of those games. He talked about turnovers and silly fouls and ragged play and lack of focus. His only nearly unqualified praise came for the second half of the Xavier game.

What's up with that? They're winning and he's griping?

Then we lose. A big game, an important one, the first really tough game of the season. And the loss looks really humiliating from out here. The first half was just plain awful play, and then when we got so close we could taste a storybook come-from-behind victory, we gave it away.

And Coach Williams' post-game comments are positively gentle in comparison to earlier ones, focusing on that 19-2 run and the potential it showed.

What's up with that??

I think I know. Coach has a different perspective from the one we fans -- and even the players -- often have. He sees the big picture, not just the individual wins and losses. He isn't interested in solely the W, but whether this game made the team better for the next game.

Those first six wins, for the most part, came on talent alone. We outplayed lesser opponents -- no more than we should have -- and we did it with the kind of individual and team lapses that won't stand up to equal talent. Coach knew that, of course, and he did what he could to get his players past the headiness of the Ws to focus on the bigger picture.

He didn't, apparently, succeed.

The young men -- and they are young, all of them, many of them in experience as well as age and maturity -- just didn't get it. You can hardly blame them. Come on, Coach, we're winning. We're going up in the polls every week. Look at all the attention. I mean, Sports Illustrated is out here!

Not that I believe they were actually thinking that way. I'm sure they thought they were paying attention and doing what was required, because every one of them has complete respect for Coach Williams. But somewhere, somehow, the reality of the difference between their potential and their performance escaped them, despite Coach's efforts to drill it in.

Then they lost, big.

And Coach Williams saw a 19-2 run that told him they're starting to get it. No need to be harsh, no need to dwell on the obvious failures. Grab those ten minutes when they shone and make them see why -- and show them how to do it for forty minutes next time.<

We talk about heart and whether the guys have it or not. Sometimes we can tell, but Coach knows. He'll be merciless even when they win big if they win the wrong way. But he'll sound their praises in a heart-breaking loss if they show, even for a short time, that they've finally heard the message.

These thirteen young men that wear the crimson and blue are blessed to have a coach who cares that they achieve their best at all times. They're blessed to have a coach who won't let them ride on talent when they aren't getting the fundamentals of team and individual play. They're blessed to have a coach who knows better than to rub failure in their faces.

Whatever mistakes Coach Williams may make (and he'd be the first to tell you he makes them), I do trust him. I trust him to do his best at all times and to therefore inspire his players to do the same. I trust him to respect and care for them, and to know that respect and care means you never settle for less than potential met. I trust him to keep perspective even when his players lose it.

Yeah, where basketball is concerned, IRIT. And I plan to enjoy the journey!

Beth Impson
Dayton,TN

[Beth Impson is a Professor of English at Bryan College in Dayton, TN. She received all three of her degrees from KU: BA in Spanish & English in '74, MA in '85 and PhD in '88.  She used to live where Oliver Hall now stands and saw the first games played in Allen Fieldhouse.]