Across the Pond
A column by Terry Lyons

For an American, creating a list of the greatest sporting events is an interesting exercise.

The Super Bowl grabs the most attention and dominates the television ratings each and every year. The Kentucky Derby is touted as the best two minutes in sports. Some people prefer the annual World Series or the NBA Finals, and NASCAR’s Daytona 500 and the NHL’s Stanley Cup finals fall a little further down the list.

Major League Baseball’s Opening Day brings every sports fan in the USA a sense of renewal and marks the passage of winter to spring. The New York Marathon is a human endurance test that weaves its way through the five boroughs of rowdy city dwellers, each relishing the carnival atmosphere. The Boston Marathon is run on Patriot’s Day in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and it is so important to Bostonians that they mark the day as a holiday.

Hidden gems include the Masters golf tournament and the Breeders’ Cup horse races, the latter an event that is better defined to Americans as seven “world series games” all in one day. One event, college football’s Rose Bowl, is tabbed, “The Grandaddy of ‘em all.”

There’s one event that captures America for an entire month.

No, I’m not referring to your World Cup footy.

I am writing about the annual NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, an event that is known to most as “March Madness” or simply, “The Big Dance.”

There is no better time of the year.

I won’t bore you with the details of the NCAA selection show, and the mad scramble in every office in the land from the hours of 9:00 a.m. until noon on the first Thursday of the tournament, as everyone finalizes his or her ‘bracket’ for the office pool, and the growing number of on-line contests to predict the winners of every game.

Brackets are such a part of my life that I can offer this anecdote from the days before my children’s birth. I took blank brackets and wrote the names of my favorite 64 classic rock and roll songs, distributed copies to all of my friends and family members and asked them each to fill out the brackets to help decide the first song I would play to each child.

The eldest, born in 1997, had her dad hold her as he danced to two songs, as there was a tie between Lennon’s “Imagine” and Clapton’s “Layla.” The youngest, born in 1999, was brought into the music world with The Stones playing “Gimme Shelter.”

The marriage of sports and entertainment was never so good, and the brackets are the secret to unlocking your world.

Every March, the economists and human resource experts regale the lost hours of productivity. America stops at the water cooler and the big, flat screen to support their college team or ‘jump on the bus’ for a team they adopt for a month. Lost productivity? No. I come down on the other side of that argument. What better way is there to bring your family, friends or co-workers together?

And, every now and then, you get a story. You get a one and done love affair with a team that captures your heart, your imagination and reminds you why you love sports so much, even if they smashed your bracket predictions to pieces.

In 2008, that was Davidson.

I met Davidson Coach Bob McKillop in 1973 when I was a freshman at Holy Trinity High School in New York. Bob was a young history teacher and the coach of the JV basketball team. He would soon be promoted to the varsity level coach, and I would soon be cut from the freshman team. I was not talented enough to play basketball for Holy Trinity but thankfully I was lucky enough to establish a lifelong bond with Coach McKillop.

Bob McKillop

As the years passed by, Coach McKillop made his way to better basketball jobs and landed as the head coach of ‘tiny’ Davidson College, a small school with a rich tradition of academics and basketball not far from Charlotte, North Carolina. I knew Davidson quite well, as my oldest brother, Tim, bought extra tickets each year to see St. John’s play Davidson, Villanova and Notre Dame during a great era of St. John’s basketball in the ‘70s.

I kept in touch with Coach McKillop, speaking two or three times a month. He would always have a tidbit of information for me, usually about European basketball. Even as the Internet came along in the ‘90s, we chose to remain in touch by phone, rather than email, as I treasured the moments and loved to hear his voice.

One day, he told me that the next hotbed of European basketball was going to be the greater London area. It was a few years before Luol Deng made his way to prep school at Blair Academy in New Jersey, but Coach McKillop was already aware of the trend because he was the one helping basketball along as he conducted clinics and traveled about Europe each summer.

Of course, you all know Coach McKillop’s insight was right on the money, as we say. His insight brought Andrew Lovedale from Manchester, England to Davidson, North Carolina to March Madness and the “Big Dance.”

Lovedale complemented his two high-profile teammates, Stephen Curry and Jason Richards quite nicely. A lesser known fact is that Lovedale complemented a few other international teammates, like Boris Meno of Paris, Can Civi of Istanbul and Max Paulhus Gosselin and William Archambault of Quebec, Canada.

Curry, Lovedale & Allison

Lovedale even has a teammate, freshman Ben Allison of West Sussex, who might step into a more prominent role as Davidson tries to improve upon its Elite Eight dream season when Coach McKillop tosses out the basketballs for practice next fall.

No matter if you’re just learning about the sport of basketball or if you are an expert in the game, you have the blueprint for success right in front of you. Watch Davidson Basketball, watch Coach McKillop work his magic along the sidelines in a manner that exudes professionalism.

He will teach the game of basketball and you will learn the skills of life. Honesty, dedication, preparation, loyalty, hard-work, conditioning, confronting failure or loss and learning from the experience, and, if you keep reading my column, you will experience the friendship and all that we love about the game of basketball.

Thank you for your time.

T.L.

You can read Terry’s blog or find out a little bit more about him here -

TerryLyons.com

The Blog at TerryLyons.com

(Terry Lyons, a 25-year veteran of the NBA League Office who stepped down from his International communications post last April, will be contributing a column to Basketball 24/7 twice a month. Terry is now the Senior VP and Managing Director of Elevate Communications, a public relations firm in Boston, Massachusetts).