"I can learn to hate Billy (Tubbs) just as much as I did BYU."
- Riley Wallace, Oct. 15, 1998
"Tell Riley that he’s got to learn how to beat us first."
- Billy Tubbs, Oct. 18, 1998.
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer
Fittingly, on a night when the Stan Sheriff Center crowd says a poignant aloha to four University of Hawai‘i seniors, tomorrow also comes an opportunity to shout a loud goodbye to one of its favorite arch-villains, Texas Christian basketball coach Billy Tubbs.
 |
| UH fans take a long look at the man you love to hate, for Billy Tubbs may not be back here soon.
Associated Press library photo • Nov. 9, 1998 |
For UH coach Riley Wallace, for whom victories against Tubbs have been few and losses embarrassingly one sided, it is perhaps the last chance to not only win a game but do it with a satisfying exclamation point.
Barring a chance meeting in the Western Athletic Conference tournament next month, this could be it for the Rainbows and the coach their fans love to hate.
TCU bolts to Conference USA next season and with conference ties no longer binding them, a lot of geography to separate them and certainly no love lost between them, there will be few opportunities for TCU and UH to meet again on the basketball court.
And that’s too bad because in a repackaged WAC, where the Rainbows and their fans have struggled to find new rivals and villains, Tubbs is one who has stood out on both fronts.
Where towel-chewing Jerry Tarkanian of Fresno State can project an almost grandfatherly demeanor despite the miscreants he has sometimes surrounded himself with, Tubbs has needed no supporting cast to be the target of boos.
If his propensity to run up scores to pinball-like totals with Billy Ball doesn’t set off the gallery, then his in-your-face courtside manner usually will.
The Rainbows have seen plenty of both in TCU’s short WAC stay. A 103-64 burial early last month — the second-worst loss in UH’s 22 years in the WAC — is but the latest reminder. The most points ever scored on a UH team, 126, came in a record-setting 42-point blowout at TCU three years ago.
But the one that really smarted was an 83-76 defeat here in 1998, when Tubbs used a heated face-to-face exchange to fire up his team and then made a point of sticking it in Wallace’s face afterward. Their sideline confrontation drew a double technical, and TCU fed off of it to go on a 9-0 run and upset the nationally ranked Rainbows on ESPN.
Then, on the way off the court, Tubbs thrust at Wallace the transcript of a radio show from which remarks by UH commentator Jeff Portnoy had angered him.
Over the years, getting in the last word on Tubbs hasn’t been any easier than beating him on the court or for recruits. In seven meetings combined over his tenure as head coach at Centenary and UH, Wallace’s teams are 1-6 against Tubbs.
That’s why tomorrow’s game looms as a rich opportunity for payback. The Horned Frogs, at 18-8, are struggling to stay in contention for an NCAA Tournament at-large bid should they not win the WAC Tournament. A loss like the one UH hung on Southern Methodist last week, would just about end those hopes.
And without two of their top four scorers, Greedy Daniels and Myron Anthony, who have been dismissed from the team in the past week, the Horned Frogs have little margin for error.
Tubbs will leave here as one of the most unforgettable characters to stomp a foot in the Stan Sheriff Center. It would be a disappointment if, in what portends to be their final meeting, the Rainbows left him without something to remember them by, too.
[back to top] |
