Be Careful What You Wish For

Reports indicate that Loyola basketball coach Porter Moser has accepted the job at Oklahoma. How the North Side of Chicago by way of the western suburbs translates into a place called Norman is beyond me. All the media reports I’ve seen have been very supportive of Moser’s decision, a bigger challenge and all. But all I see is a bigger ego. Moser plays a brand of college basketball—team-oriented defense—that’s out-of-fashion most places, big schools most of all. Oklahoma in the Big 12 is a big school. I could be wrong, but the Sooners have been the kind of program that attracts players who see college and think NBA, ASAP. I’m not saying this as a put-down. The more NBA talents on a college roster, the better the chance to go deep in the March tournament and generate strong draft buzz. The challenge for a coach is to get his players to stay focused on where they are now, not where they want to be next November. Yes, getting players in a big program to think defense before offense—which is not how you become a first-round draft choice in the NBA, by the way—will be one heck of a challenge for Moser. But so would winning on a regular basis at a mid-major school. NCAA tourney bids don’t exactly reign down on Missouri Valley Conference runners-up. But that’s not Porter Moser’s worry anymore. He may wish it were before long.