Dear Kids,

I thought I’d mention a few things about the trip. Your mom and I arrived in the desert a couple of days ago at noon, and it was already 81degrees. I think it got up to 90-something, and Aunt Mary says it’s going to be 100 by the weekend.

Before flying out here, we thought about maybe going to the Greek Islands for a couple of weeks. Santorini and Mykonos are great in May, but we decided to come to Arizona because Aunt Mary isn’t feeling so well.

I brought the laptop, but plugged into Uncle Doug’s desktop a few minutes after he drove us to the house in Mesa. All three of you know how I like to check my e-mail. So I did a few minutes after our arrival.

I’ll be darned. A message from a guy I know was at the top of the list.

"Is this the most incompetent coaching search of all time?" the guy wrote.

And, no, it wasn’t from Larry Eustachy.

When I saw the e-mail, my immediate thought was:

Uh-oh.

When we left Des Moines, everybody in Cyclone Nation was saying that Jeff Lebo, a young guy who already had Johnny Orr’s kind of haircut and supposedly a bright future, was going to become Iowa State’s new coach.

Judging by the guy’s e-mail, I wondered if yet another strange thing had happened to Iowa State.

It had.

Andy knows his basketball and knows his coaches. I think he even sleeps in the gym.

Before I forget it, kids, let me mention one other thing about Uncle Doug’s computer.

The last time your mom and I were here—I guess it was in March—I turned on Uncle Doug’s computer to find the tragic news that Pete Taylor, the Iowa State play-by-play announcer and a good friend of mine, had died.

It’s a good thing I had the laptop with me on that trip, too. But it was a tough column to write.

"What’s the matter?" Uncle Doug asked. "Wasn’t Lebo going to pass the background check? Or didn’t he like something about Bruce Van De Velde?"

"Well, people are telling me that Van De Velde is an easy guy not to like," I said.

Van De Velde, of course, is the Iowa State athletic director who came across as a no good so-and-so to lots of Iowa State’s fans when he wouldn’t give Eustachy a second chance and fired him.

Uncle Doug and Aunt Mary moved from Iowa to Arizona at about the time Eric Heft and Mike Capobianco were playing for Iowa State, so they hadn’t heard about what Eustachy was doing on his road trips and what he might have been putting into his orange juice.

After I told them, they agreed that coaches sure don’t act like Glen Anderson and Bucky O’Connor anymore.

"By the way, maybe how Lebo felt about Van De Velde had nothing to do with his decision to kiss off Iowa State," I told Uncle Doug and Aunt Mary.

"Maybe his wife couldn’t tear herself away from her bridge club in Chattanooga. Maybe she didn’t like the price of butter and eggs in the supermarkets at Ames. Those kinds of things happen, you know. You’ve got to keep the wives happy."

Alive in Clive, not his real name, even got his blood pressure so high that he made some critical remarks about Van De Velde and Iowa State president Gregory Geoffroy—adding that he bets "both guys are due for nice salary increases."

Hey, kids, when Alive in Clive gets his dander up, it’s a big deal.

"I hope Iowa State can survive this saga," Alive in Clive said. "I think this is their great chance to succeed. I have always said, and you can quote me, ‘You can always make an operation that is on the bottom better, but you will have much harder time making one at the top better.’

"I have never been a big ISU fan, but have been trying to be the past few years because Dina, my daughter, is a graduate of the school."

When guys from Creighton, Fresno State and Chattanooga turn thumbs-down to the Cyclones—a couple of them even without interviewing--and when an Iowa native who is the Wyoming coach goes home without an offer, I’d say Iowa State’s program is reverting back to the days when the Cyclones played at the Armory

"Is Glen Anderson still available to coach?" Uncle Doug asked.

"Maybe," I said, "but Iowa State has already hired Wayne Morgan as its next coach. Or maybe it’s Larry Morgan. I’m not sure. Wayne, who had a 91-84 record in six seasons at Long Beach State, has been on Eustachy’s staff for one year.

"They’re going to send him against Kelvin Sampson of Oklahoma, Rick Barnes of Texas, Bill Self of Kansas, Bobby Knight of Texas Tech and the rest of the Big 12."

"That could get ugly," Uncle Doug said.

"Real ugly," I responded.

"Do you mean Steve Alford is suddenly licking his chops?" I asked.

"Let’s just say this," the guy said. "Morgan didn’t have much of a track record at Long Beach. They couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

"I’m told by a couple of writers who covered Long Beach that he’s not a very nice person on top of everything else. One writer was stunned that ISU was hiring the guy, saying, "They obviously didn’t talk to Robert Maxson, Long Beach State’s president.

"In a nutshell, he’s not a very good coach. So it appears to be a panic hire. Tell me that ISU couldn’t get better coach given the conference it plays in and the money they were offering.

"OK, so it wasn’t a million, but $800,000 ain’t bad change in Ames.….In his defense, Morgan did seem to graduate kids. But if you don’t win, who cares?"

That’s about it from the desert, kids. All of us are going to lunch. Aunt Mary says she knows of a nice Greek restaurant in Scottsdale.