College Station, Texas, Jan. 29 — Even the children’s books have to be rewritten.
In the gift shop for the Texas State History Museum in Austin, I noticed a book about a baby Longhorn who grows up to be Bevo. Along the way, the Longhorn comes across a man driving a prairie schooner, a bear with green socks, a masked raider, and a cyclone (but not a Cyclone). His greatest antagonist is a maroon collie. All, of course, are allegorical to Texas’ long-time opponents.
It’s the little things like this, or the fact that Kansas’ fight song is obsolete again, that show just how much is being thrown away in the upheavals of college athletics. The mileage signs on TX 6 are the only places College Station and Waco will be together now.
It’s with these things in mind that I went from Houston to College Station to see the last women’s basketball game Iowa State will ever play there. (Much more after the jump.)
Reed Arena at Texas A&M University. Look, another logo with a lone star.
The defending national champions have more relaxed (i.e. no) parking rules compared with some permit-only areas at ISU. It was free, and it was close. It was also a beautiful day, the first basketball game I can think of where I didn’t have a coat. In fact, the A&M men’s tennis team played nearby right afterward. It’s a decided climatic advantage.
I got a pretty good ticket, about 15 rows behind the front, and for a time I thought I was the only ISU fan not in the row behind the team bench. Later I saw a handful. The upper tier is not used for women’s games.
Texas A&M’s Texas is somewhat bigger than Texas’ Texas, and 100° West on the map is flush with half-court here.
“Did you come all the way from Ah-wa?” an A&M fan asked after seeing my red Pinstripe Bowl shirt. “Enjoy your time at College Station.” I was grateful for her courtesy. On the surface, A&M and ISU share some characteristics, just on vastly different scales. There’s no reason we couldn’t have stayed friends — except for the recent unpleasantness.
Right before tipoff, I was reminded that Aggies are … Aggies. The crowd dutifully bent over for part of the fight song/war hymn sequence, then locked their arms, swayed, and sang “Saw Varsity’s hooo-oorns off!” Six thousand people sang about how much they hate the University of Texas — an entity not otherwise present in any way, shape, or form.
Iowan Chelsea Poppens and the ISU women take the court. Notice Big 12 logo.
Then the game started. The Cyclones fell behind and gave up the ball a lot, and I thought, “Here we go again.” But then a surprising thing happened — they didn’t keep falling behind. The women were hot from 3-point range and got a couple of stops on defense. The Cyclones even led at the half. This was likely to be the second-toughest game in this two-year, multiple-sport series against Big 12 Benedict Arnolds, and just like the football team against Nebraska in 2010, Iowa State was putting up a fight.
No, I didn’t quite believe it either.
However, an eight-point lead early in the second half fell apart, which brought the crowd to life. Throw in a batch of non-calls, missed layups, and disallowed layups, and it was seesawing at the end. Finally, two free throws by A&M sealed it.
It was a much better effort than the previous match this season, and I was proud of how the Cyclones stepped up their game and, for a while at least, were outplaying the defending champions in their own house.
Right after the game, the team and cheerleaders lined up on the court to sing the war hymn with the crowd. I tried to get out as quickly as possible after the game to get to another destination, but unlike ISU, A&M has no postgame traffic management.
There was one sign later that A&M knows what it means to be SEC: My hotel was demanding a two-night stay with doubled prices on home football weekends.
In all likelihood, only Baylor stands in the way of stopping the A&M women from walking out the door with a title in their hands, and the Missouri men may do the same. With all the anguish and real threat of athletics oblivion all too fresh in the mind of this Iowa State alumnus, if any Texas A&M, Missouri, Nebraska, or Colorado team wins any championship again it will be too soon.
The rest of the day will be covered in a separate post.
NOTE: Spencer Hall of SBNation had a well-written piece about his experience at the last Texas-Texas A&M football game. I encourage you to read it.
POSTSCRIPT: In the intervening week between the game and this post, the ISU women went 2-0 and Chelsea Poppens won Big 12 Player of the Week again.