Phoenix, AZ --

Dear Kids,

Well, your mom and I are back in the desert. Just think, we could have been enjoying the cooler July climate in Prague instead of the 115-degree daytime heat in Phoenix and Mesa, but Aunt Mary still isn’t feeling up to par, so we knew it would be smarter to fly west to Arizona instead of east to the Czech Republic.

Prague can wait for another day.

Wayne Morgan has moved his basketball coaching act to Iowa State, but word comes that he’s still popular in the Big West Conference.

In a back-handed sort of way.

At least the Los Angeles Times says so.

In his Morning Briefing column, Times sportswriter Mike Hiserman writes:

"And finally: You think former Long Beach State basketball coach Wayne Morgan isn’t missed by his former peers in the Big West Conference?

The Doctor is sure he made the correct call.

In other words, no second thoughts.

The Doctor, of course, is Tom Davis. He’s the new basketball coach at Drake University, and he knows he did the right thing in coming back to major-college basketball after being out of it for four seasons.

Davis, the winningest coach in University of Iowa basketball history with a 13-year record of 269-140, was hired April 22 for the Drake job vacated by Kurt Kanaskie.

"So how’s it going?" I asked Davis the day he joined our gang of working sportswriters, retired sports writers and sports editors and columnists at lunch.

"I’m enjoying it. I’m enjoying it very much," Davis said. "I worried about it. I worried that, if I came back into coaching, what happens a month or two later?

"The only time I go there is when my kids and grandchildren invite me to go," he said. "They gave me a ticket to a game and a scorebook for Fathers Day, so I feel obligated to go when they call.

"But I actually dread the trip. I’d rather be with the kids at a Little League game. I always feel that I’m being held up the minute I get to Sec Taylor Stadium. It costs $4 to park the car, $6 for a ticket to the game and atrocious amounts of money for concessions. For instance, a beer costs 5 bucks."

Ames, Ia. – An Iowa State-Iowa men’s basketball game will be played in the 2003-2004 season, but fans will have to wait until January to see it.

"Our schedule (for next season) is not 100 percent set," new Cyclone Coach Wayne Morgan said today. "Bob Sundvold (the only holdover assistant from Larry Eustachy’s staff), has been handling scheduling."

"There were a lot of (teams) that I thought had an interest in playing us that have subsequently said they are not going to play us. It does look like we’re going to play the University of Iowa in January. And we will play the game."

Despite that comment, Morgan said, to his knowledge, there was never a possibility that the Iowa State-Iowa game wouldn’t be played.

A humble John Walters told me today that "nobody can really take Pete Taylor’s place."

But Walters, the 40-year-old sports director at WOI-TV, plans to do the best he can as he takes over as Iowa State’s new play-by-play radio announcer for football and men’s basketball.

Walters said he has "the opportunity of a lifetime," but he realizes he’s stepping into some huge shoes.

"In my opinion, I don’t think there ever will be another voice of the Cyclones other than Pete Taylor," Walters said on a cell phone as he drove to Ames late this afternoon."

"And I’m not going to try to imitate him. It would be a disservice to try to sound like him."

It’s Larry Eustachy’s call.

So said Tim Floyd today when asked if he’d hire Eustachy to be one of his assistant coaches with the New Orleans Hornets.

Floyd, who was named the Hornets’ head coach Monday, told Dan Patrick on ESPN Radio that he has visited with Eustachy about joining his staff, adding that he’d hire the former Iowa State head coach if he’s interested.

But Floyd, who preceded Eustachy as the Cyclones’ coach, stressed that it’s Larry’s call.

Mike Kopish made a comment that caught me off-guard.

"When people meet for the first time," he said, "you have 3 seconds to make an impression."

Uh-oh.

My 3 seconds were up.

Oh, well. I had done the best I could.

Headlines, stories and comments about some of the things that are going on in this crazy old world:

Just when Cyclone and Hawkeye fans were starting to wonder how network TV could possibly ignore the Sept. 13 football game at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames, I learned today that Fox Sports Net-Chicago plans to carry it.

Dan McCarney says he’s "not hearing real good stuff right now" about Sept. 13.

Not the football that will be played that day in Ames.

The television.

Sept. 13 is when McCarney’s Iowa State team goes searching for its sixth consecutive victory over Iowa at a yet-to-be-determined time at Jack Trice Stadium.

"Those final decisions haven’t been made, but I hear there’s a possibility the game may not be televised on a national or regional basis—which is hard to imagine," McCarney said.

It’s been about a month since Tom Davis moved into the head basketball coach’s office at Drake, and a number of things have already happened.

Davis has hired a staff, arranged a four-game, three-day trip to Cancun, Mexico, for his team over the Labor Day weekend and put together a non-conference schedule for the 2003-2004 season.

Because of the journey to Cancun, it’s going to be a short summer for the coaches and players.

"You’re allowed 10 days of practice prior to the trip," Davis explained, "so the tentative start to training camp will be Aug. 17."

Mesa, AZ --

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.

The news had the effect of being hit head-on by a truckload of concrete blocks.

I returned home tonight after attending a religious concert at a church in Johnston, turned on my computer and saw the story.

The AP reported that Ennis Haywood, the former standout running back at Iowa State who was trying to win a job with the Dallas Cowboys, had died.

At 23.

Yes, at 23, this athlete who ranks fifth in career rushing at Iowa State with 2,862 yards and sixth in touchdowns with 27, is dead.

Mysteriously, I might add.

Maybe you’ve been paying some attention to the Bob Ryan saga.

It’s certainly not the biggest thing going on in sports these days, but nonetheless it’s a subject worthy of discussion in press boxes, arenas and this column.

Ryan is the Boston Globe sports columnist who said on a TV show that he’d like to "smack" the wife of New Jersey Nets basketball player Jason Kidd.

Shame on you, Bob.

Nobody won. Everybody lost.

Larry Eustachy lost his pride and his job. Iowa State lost almost a million bucks. Cyclone fans lost their basketball coach.

So now Bruce Van De Velde, Iowa State’s athletic director, is making telephone calls and setting up appointments.

And it’s time for everyone involved to work together and get the Cyclone basketball ship afloat.

Like it or not, Larry Eustachy is history at Iowa State.

Forget about the appeals process. There may, indeed, be an appeal, but Eustachy’s bosses want him out. They’ve done their homework, they’ve checked with their lawyers.

Miracle, last-second rallies in these situations—even by a former National Coach of the Year—are few and far between.

Eustachy is suspended and soon will be gone. Another man (well, I’d better say person) will be sitting in the head coach’s office soon.

It will be interesting to see where athletic director Bruce Van De Velde—the guy who was given the assignment of pulling the trigger on Eustachy—turns to find a replacement.

I’m writing about Larry Eustachy today, and prefacing it by saying he’s a friend of mine.

So this is friend-to-friend or man-to-man, whatever you prefer.

I’m not saying the friendship Eustachy and I have is anything like the buddy-buddy deal he has with the guys who regularly show up at his practices and hang onto every word he says about his players and such rival coaches as Eddie Sutton, Quin Snyder and Steve Alford.

I got to know a little about Eustachy when I covered his team in his break-in season of 1998-99 at Iowa State. Even though he had such players as Marcus Fizer and Martin Rancik, it wasn’t a particularly good year.

A guy called to talk about the Tom Davis-to-Iowa coaching story that recently got so much attention.

"Are you going to take credit for Drake hiring him?" he asked.

"Why do you ask?" I said.

"Because you wrote that the athletic director should see if Davis would be interested in retiring from his golf career so he could pump some life into the Drake program," he explained.

On April 11, after Kurt Kanaskie quit or was fired after seven seasons of losing basketball at Drake, I wrote this in a column about who should succeed him:...

I applaud Drake for naming Tom Davis its new basketball coach, and not just because I’m totally in favor of a 64-year-old guy with enormous ability returning to the work force.

The decision by Drake athletic director Dave Blank to hire Davis is the best thing that’s happened in the university’s athletic department since Maury John took three consecutive teams to the NCAA tournament from 1969-1971.

Drake needed this. Des Moines needed this. Basketball in this state needed this. Tom Davis needed this.

I’m predicting that Davis will do the same thing at Drake that he did at Iowa. He’ll be a winner.

The time will soon come when Iowa State names a replacement for the late Pete Taylor, the university’s associate athletic director who served as the football and basketball radio play-by-play announcer.

As all of us would expect, there’s been lots of interest in the job because it’s a high-profile announcing position in the high-profile Big 12 Conference.

Ames, Ia. – I don’t generally feel sorry these days for most of the 200- and 300-pounders who get full-ride scholarships and play major-college football.

But I’ve got to admit it. I began feeling some sympathy this morning for the man named Hiawatha.

He was standing in the auditorium at the Jacobson Athletic Building on the Iowa State campus, taking on far too much responsibility for Iowa State’s 2002 football problems.

"I kind of got into a mild depression after I got hurt," tailback Hiawatha Rutland explained. "We started losing and I wasn’t playing. I started blaming myself for getting hurt."

Same old story.

Another men’s basketball coach has failed at Drake.

Another sad chapter has been written at a university that’s gone more than 30 years without finding another Maury John.

Kurt Kanaskie made it official today by announcing his resignation after seven consecutive losing seasons with the Bulldogs.

The vultures have been flying over Kanaskie’s program since his 2002-2003 team finished a 10-20 season.

It was just a matter of time before someone pulled the trigger. Maybe it was Kanaskie. Maybe it was someone else.

Stacy Dragila had a question.

"What else could you ask for?" she said this afternoon.

"I’m in shape and I travel the world. I’m a professional. I get paid for what I do."

And what Dragila does for a living is leap more than 15 feet into the air and over a bar.

She’s a pole vaulter and she’s coming to the Drake Relays later this month. She’ll compete in the women’s invitational pole vault at 1:30 p.m. April 26.

"I may not make NFL money, but I love what I do," the 32-year-old Dragila said. "Nike and Oakley sunglasses pay me to do what I do."

Maybe you recall the four-player quarterback battle that was taking place in Iowa State’s spring football practices.

Make it a three-player battle now.

"We got some bad news in practice Monday night," Coach Dan McCarney told me this afternoon. "Waye Terry broke the thumb on his throwing hand and will miss the rest of spring ball."

First of all, the April 19 spring game won’t be a spring game.

Then, there’s a certain bar in Iowa City that’s suddenly off-limits to Iowa’s football players.

Too many, as they say, off-the-field problems.

And forget about Aaron Greving of Ames, who quit the Hawkeyes last season, returning to the team to play running back.

At least that was the word over the Subway sandwiches.

People are telling Al McGuire stories this week, so let me mention a few of my own.

McGuire, of course, was the Marquette coach who had his own language. He used such terms as cupcakes, French pastry, elevator man, tap city and white-knuckler to describe things that happened in basketball.

McGuire died of leukemia Feb. 23, 2001, but his name is in huge neon lights again now because Marquette is back in the NCAA Final Four.

Iowa City, Ia.--No one appreciates an offensive line more than former Iowa quarterback Chuck Hartlieb.

After all, Hartlieb knows that a quarterback is only as strong as the big guys in front of him.

"With that offensive line Iowa had last season, the quarterback could have been my grandmother, and the team might have won seven or eight games," Hartlieb said to emphasize his point.

Hayden Fry graciously credited the "people of Iowa" today after named to the College Football Hall of Fame.

"This is, without question, the biggest honor I’ve been fortunate to attain during my career," the retired University of Iowa coach said.

"I’ve been very lucky at many junctures of my life, and this is a prime example of how blessed I’ve been.

"I’ve been associated with many good people at Southern Methodist, North Texas State and the University of Iowa. But, without question, my favorite place was and still is, Iowa."

Ames, Ia. – I’ve always said that Dan McCarney is the guy I want to talk with when I’m having a bad day.

McCarney, of course, is Iowa State’s football coach. In addition to doing a pretty fair job in recent years with the X’s and O’s part of major-college coaching, he’s one of the best at giving motivational speeches.

Oh, OK, so maybe his players weren’t paying much attention when McCarney tried to tell them that Connecticut was a dangerous team prior to the regular-season finale in the 2002 season.

You know how it goes with guys aged 19, 20 and 21. They don’t always listen when they’re supposed to be listening.

Ames, Ia. -- The crowd was ready. It’s too bad Iowa State’s basketball team wasn’t.

They tell me that Coach Larry Eustachy was giving away pizza to some of the fans who waited in line Thursday to buy tickets to the Cyclones’ NIT game Friday night against Iowa.

Hey, a slice of pepperoni wouldn’t have been nearly enough on this night.

The way Iowa State performed in its 54-53 loss to the Hawkeyes before a roaring sellout crowd of 14,020 at Hilton Coliseum, Eustachy and athletic director Bruce Van De Velde should consider giving $15 refunds to the Cyclone fans who paid $20 for their tickets.

Ames, Ia.—Wednesday night’s game was big. Friday night’s game will be bigger.

But, in the big picture, basketball is merely a tiny speck on the radar screen. You’ll have a difficult time finding it with the strongest microscope in the world.

I’m talking about collegiate postseason basketball—in this case something called the National Invitation Tournament—and how it applies to the war in Iraq.

Jake Sullivan, the son of a police chief and a very savvy young man, indicated he has a grasp on the situation.

Hey, who cares about the Big Dance anyway?

We all knew Iowa wouldn’t be dancing, didn’t we?

Who cares what Dick Vitale and Jim Nance think about the NCAA basketball pairings?

Since when did Vitale and Nance know anything about which teams should have been sent to Salt Lake City?

Who cares what Clark Kellogg thinks should have happened?

Get right down to it and Kellogg’s opinions don’t mean any more than your opinion and mine.

Forget all that stuff.

Iowa is going to the NIT.

Basketball is somewhat like life.

The goodbyes are never easy.

Unless the unexpected happens and Drake receives an invitation to the women’s NIT, Carla Bennett has played her last collegiate game. So has Ja’Nae Mosley.

They were the only seniors on a Bulldogs team that bowed out of the Missouri Valley Conference’s postseason tournament with a 61-59 loss to Southwest Missouri State.

I’m hoping those are the last goodbyes Drake’s fans have to endure.

Mesa, Ariz. -- I should probably head to Hi Corbett Field in Tucson today in honor of Pete Taylor.

Hi Corbett Field is where the San Diego Padres play the Colorado Rockies in an exhibition baseball game.

The Cactus League, that’s what they call it.

The reason I’m bringing up Pete Taylor’s name in connection with an exhibition baseball game isn’t because, as far as I know, Pete particularly liked baseball in March.

It’s because Pete liked San Diego.

The city, that is.

It’s really no surprise that Lisa Stone, the women’s basketball coach at Drake, will likely receive strong consideration for the soon-to-be-vacant job at Wisconsin.

People at Drake have been fearful the highly-successful Stone would be a candidate at Wisconsin the minute she accepted the Bulldogs’ job prior to the 2000-2001 season.

After all, she’s a native of Oregon, Wis., and coached at Wisconsin-Eau Claire for 12 seasons before coming to Drake.

Now that Jane Albright has resigned at Wisconsin, the fear that Stone might become a possible candidate for the Badgers’ job has become reality at Drake.

Gus Guydon knew what the big years of Drake basketball were all about.

And he knew them as both a player and an assistant coach.

Guydon, 64,died last week in Columbia, S.C., and his funeral was held today at the Edisto Fork United Methodist Church in Orangeburg, S.C. He had been hospitalized at the Dorn Veterans Administration Hospital in Columbia since December.

"There’s no question Gus is considered one of the top 10 basketball players in Drake history," said Drake historian Paul Morrison today.

It’s Saturday morning, and I really had no intention of writing anything else for a while about the mess masquerading as men’s collegiate basketball at Iowa State and Iowa.

After all, this season has turned into such a sorry state of affairs that Dr. James Naismith—the guy who invented the sport—would take one look at what’s going on in Ames and Iowa City, tear down the peach baskets and take up yoga.

But the e-mailers have been busy, so—in the interest of giving everyone a forum—I’m taking one more late-season look at what is loosely referred to as major-college basketball at Iowa State and Iowa.

Although this has been a frustrating basketball season for Drake, guard Luke McDonald can make some history Wednesday night.

Mike Mahon of Drake sends word that McDonald, a 6-6 junior guard who has been battling foot problems this season, will own Iowa’s all-time Division I record for three-point baskets all to himself if he makes one against Wichita State.

The Bulldogs (8-16 overall and 3-10 in the Missouri Valley Conference) play Wichita State (14-8 and 9-4) at 7:05 p.m. at the Knapp Center.

The "Larry Eustachy Cruiser" was headed south today at the same time contributors to CycloneNation.com were debating whether the Iowa State basketball coach had embarrassed himself, his team and his employer in the latest of a maddening bunch of Big 12 Conference losses.

Eustachy didn’t seem embarrassed as he chatted on the phone en route to Texas, where he planned to do some recruiting before winding up in College Station for Wednesday night’s Iowa State-Texas A&M game.

Indeed, Eustachy seemed pretty chipper while talking about the Cruiser, his newest form of transportation for road games.

Ames, Ia. – The more I think about it, the more I’m ready to say that Iowa State’s basketball fans are getting a bum rap.

Until now, I’ve been at the front of the line of those who’ve felt that the Cyclone faithful—or not-so-faithful--should be embarrassed because there hasn’t been a sellout at Hilton Coliseum all season.

Now I’m changing my mind.

After watching what happened in Wednesday night’s 88-73 loss to Texas Tech and after hearing Iowa State guard Jake Sullivan rip his teammates afterward, I think the fans are smarter than I give them credit for.

Bobby Knight, whose Texas Tech basketball team isn’t playing all that well these days, is getting ready to find out if Ames is any different than it was the last time he was there for a game.

I’ve got news for him.

It is.

The main reason, of course, is because Knight’s old buddy – Johnny Orr – is hitting golf balls in Florida instead of trying to win basketball games at Hilton Coliseum.

Kurt Kanaskie reminded me the other day of an old story that has several versions and has been making the rounds for years.

It concerns two anonymous people--a basketball coach and a talented prospect he was interested in recruiting.

"Do you think you can get him?" someone asked the coach.

"I don’t know," he answered. "But I may have an advantage"

"What’s that?" the other guy asked.

"I sleep with his mother," the coach explained.

Iowa basketball coach Steve Alford, always a very quotable guy, had some interesting things to say the other day to a reporter from the Indianapolis Star.

Writer Michael Pointer said Alford praised Hawkeye fans, but said "Iowa City is unlike any place he has ever lived."

Pointer quoted Alford this way:

"The one thing I’ve learned in the last five months is the liberalism of this community."

A crowd that will threaten the all-time attendance record at Drake’s 10-year-old Knapp Center will watch tonight’s Missouri Valley Conference basketball game between the Bulldogs and Iowa West.

Maybe the collegiate football season is still influencing me.

You know, the season that saw Iowa win all eight of its Big Ten games and share the title with Ohio State.

Anyway, for whatever reason, I’m starting to think the Hawkeyes can win the conference title in basketball, too.

And you know The Whistle I’m talking about.

The Whistle that belongs to Lisa Stone.

This is no ordinary whistle you buy at a sporting goods store. It’s The Whistle generated solely by Stone.

Stone, of course, is the Drake women’s basketball coach. She a 40-year-old bundle of constant motion. She’s obviously wired to some sort of high-powered rechargeable battery.

What a trip it was down amateur football’s 17-week marathon.

Iowa State thought it should have won, but didn’t, in the Eddie Robinson Classic at Kansas City.

Florida State won instead, 38-31.

Iowa thought it would win, but didn’t, in the Orange Bowl at Miami.

Southern California won instead, 38-17.

Let’s see, there’s still the rest of today, all of Tuesday, all of Wednesday and most of Thursday.

That means Fred Barr has four more days to make some people laugh, four more days to provide bulletin-board material for others.

The clock is ticking. I’m sitting here wondering what else Barr—the talented and outspoken linebacker—can talk about, what other outrageous thing he can say about an opponent, before he plays his final football game for Iowa.