Tubbs Still Running the 100 Dash

The 200-point game never came.

That was what Billy Tubbs used to talk about when Oklahoma, Loyola Marymount and U.S. International were trying to make scoreboards blow a fuse.

No Division I team ever pulled it off.

But four years after leaving Oklahoma for Texas Christian, Tubbs still strains the limits of the game--not to mention his relationships with the coaches he never lets up on.

“Basically, we moved the Oklahoma program south to Fort Worth, Texas,” Tubbs said.

In other words, his teams still run, press, and run it up, and, yep, Tubbs still sounds an awful lot like Jack Nicholson.

TCU scored 153 points against Texas Pan American earlier this season, 138 against Delaware State and 133 against Morgan State. The Horned Frogs hit the century mark 14 times--seven games in a row at one stretch--perhaps most impressively by scoring 126 against a pretty fair Hawaii team.

All that gets you is a trip to the National Invitation Tournament if you don’t do more than beat up on weaklings, and interestingly enough, 15th-ranked TCU (26-4) is hitting its peak in the polls just as its scoring average dips below triple-figures.

Tubbs’ team closed out its regular season Saturday on a 15-game winning streak that included a 31-point victory over New Mexico--and saw its nation-leading scoring average slip to 99.3 points after a trip that included an uncharacteristic 57-54 victory over Tulsa.

“It was a win,” Tubbs said. “It’s like they say, ‘It looks like a line drive in the box score.’ ”

So maybe TCU won’t become the 14th team to average 100 or more points a game. (Loyola Marymount did it four times and Oklahoma did it three, Nevada Las Vegas and Southern have managed it twice, and Oral Roberts and Jacksonville have done it once.)

Instead, TCU is headed for the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1987, and only the sixth time in its history.

The Western Athletic Conference tournament comes first, though, and although TCU compiled a 14-0 conference record, it was nevertheless marred: Because of the WAC’s wacky schedule, the Horned Frogs never played fifth-ranked Utah, the champion of the WAC’s other division.

The first meeting will come Saturday in the WAC tournament final in Las Vegas, if both teams make it that far. The 12-team tournament began Tuesday, with the top four teams given byes into Thursday’s quarterfinals.

“They’re very good. They’ve got firepower,” Utah Coach Rick Majerus said of TCU, which will play Southern Methodist on Thursday.

He also took note of the Tulsa score and an 86-73 victory over Rice in TCU’s last two games. “I called my assistant and said, ‘Make sure you get tapes of those games,’ ” Majerus said.

Utah beat TCU three times last season, but that was when the Utes had Keith Van Horn and before the Horned Frogs had junior Lee Nailon, a 6-foot-9 power forward whose TCU career could be very brief. Many people figure the two-time junior college transfer will jump to the NBA.

Nailon, who has strong, quick post moves and can put the ball on the floor but doesn’t display much defense, is the nation’s third-leading scorer behind Long Island’s Charles Jones and Eastern Michigan’s Earl Boykins. Nailon averages 25.3 points--he had a school-record 53 against Mississippi Valley State--and with senior guard Mike Jones averaging 21.8 points, that gives TCU two of the nation’s top 13 scorers. Malcolm Johnson, another senior guard, averages almost 19--enough to lead most teams.

To put it in Oklahoma terms, Nailon plays sort of a Stacey King-Harvey Grant-Wayman Tisdale role to Jones’ Mookie Blaylock.

Not that they’re that good. Blaylock played that ball-hawking guard role to near perfection in 1988, the year Oklahoma reached the NCAA title game, losing to a Kansas team led by Danny Manning and coached by Larry Brown.

“We’re not where we were at Oklahoma, but we’re close,” Tubbs said. “It’s harder to score now. People are more conservative offensively.”

That’s because in the inevitable cycles of the game, the high-scoring game has been almost out of fashion the last few years. With aggressive defenses and matchup zones having their day, only one team since 1991 has averaged triple-digits, Southern, which averaged 101 in 1994.

But from 1988 to ‘91, the heyday of run-and-gun, at least two teams averaged more than 100 points a game every season, with Oklahoma and Loyola Marymount the regulars. The schools met in a highly publicized series, with Oklahoma taking a 172-112 win in 1990.

“When they had good teams, we played them three or four times, and we always beat them something like 156-100,” Tubbs said.

Times change, but Tubbs hasn’t.

Maybe he doesn’t run his mouth as much, or maybe we just don’t hear about it anymore.

This is the guy who once cracked that the Oklahoma basketball team was a lot like Oklahoma football--”We like to run, and nobody likes to pass.”

He also rankled a few Big East colleagues once when he said that tapes of that conference’s games should carry a warning label: “Caution. May cause drowsiness.”

That’s the kind of devil-may-care wisecrack that makes people criticize TCU for scoring 130 points--but when Duke beats Mercer, 126-64, they talk about how the Blue Devils kept their focus against a lesser opponent.

That’s hardly enough to make Tubbs think of changing.

“I don’t know why people always jump on that,” he said. “We’re a nice team with pretty nice players. We just play hard every minute. We’re more into looking for respect against teams than running it up. But when we go over 100, for some reason people seem to like that.

“Offensively and defensively, the basics are the same as at Oklahoma. . . . Most coaches pretty much play the same style wherever they go. Take Eddie Sutton at Oklahoma State, playing like he did at Kentucky, Creighton. A lot of coaches coach just like they did in high school.”

In 1995--Tubbs’ first season at TCU after leaving Oklahoma amid the grumbling that followed a 15-13 season--the Horned Frogs led the nation with a 93.7-point average, and TCU’s Kurt Thomas led the nation in scoring.

Nobody much noticed, though. TCU went 16-11 and didn’t even play in the NIT. By last season, TCU was 22-13, but only 7-9 in the conference before winning three WAC tournament games, then losing to Utah in the final and ending up in the NIT anyway.

This season, TCU ran over a series of lesser-known teams and then ran into Tubbs’ old nemesis, Kansas, losing 94-78. The Horned Frogs lost a close one to Syracuse, 82-78, a one-point game to Oklahoma State and lost at New Mexico, 98-77.

Four losses, all between Dec. 20 and Jan. 5. That’s it.

So, is this as good as it gets? TCU is headed for the NCAA tournament, and there will be more talk about high scores and the actor/Laker fan Tubbs genuinely sounds like. Does the Nicholson business ever get old?

“Everything gets old. Even me,” said Tubbs, 62. “I’ve never talked with him. . . .

Maybe if we make it to the Final Four this year, I’ll invite him to a game.”

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KEEPING SCORE

Billy Tubbs has coached four of the top 16 all-time Division I leaders in scoring offense. A look (Tubbs’ teams are in bold type):

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TEAM, YEAR POINTS Loyola Marymount, 1990 122.4 Loyola Marymount, 1969 112.5 UNLV, 1976 110.5 Loyola Marymount, 1988 110.3 UNLV, 1977 107.1 Oral Roberts, 1972 105.1 Southern, 1991 104.4 Loyola Marymount, 1991 103.6 Oklahoma, 1988 102.9 Oklahoma, 1989 102.2 Oklahoma, 1990 101.3 Southern, 1994 101.0 Jacksonville, 1970 100.3 Jacksonville, 1971 99.9 Arkansas, 1991 99.6 Texas Christian, 1998 99.3

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