College basketball fans rejoice this time of year because conference tournaments begin. The bracketologists have already planned all-nighters for Sunday. Then it's time for March Madness, which is why basketball Web sites at Northern Iowa and Utah State will have thousands of unique visitors during the next week. It should be an exciting time around Dallas-Fort Worth – and not just because this is Big 12 country, where some of the nation's best basketball is played. We live in a basketball hotbed that forces every Division I coach with Final Four aspirations to spend at least a few days here checking out our high school hoops or AAU competition. Remember, our area produced two players – Lincoln's Chris Bosh and The Colony's Deron Williams – in last month's NBA All-Star game. Common sense says our two local Division I programs should be pretty good. Who couldn't build a quality program with Dallas-Fort Worth as its main hub? Apparently, SMU and TCU can't. Neither program is awful. Each, however, is irrelevant. Trust me, that's worse. And it's sad, but it's not like this is a new problem. SMU hasn't been to the NCAA Tournament since 1993. TCU hasn't been since 1998. SMU hasn't had a first-round draft pick since Kimball's Jeryl Sasser in 2001, while TCU hasn't had a first-round draft choice since Hillcrest's Kurt Thomas in 1995. Notice a trend? It's hard to feel sorry for any coach who can't or won't recruit quality players within a 100-mile radius. Two of SMU's players are from Arlington and one is from Southlake. TCU has one player from Duncanville and one from Fort Worth on its roster. That makes no sense. It's just not that hard to turn around a basketball program when you hire the right guy. We've all seen it time and time again over the years whether we're talking about what Billy Clyde Gillispie did at Texas A&M or what Scott Drew has done at Baylor. TCU, which has been to the NCAA Tournament three times since 1971, has a RPI rating of 188. SMU has a RPI of 200. Each school is behind such noted basketball powerhouses such as North Texas (120), Stephen F. Austin (163), Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (176) and UT-San Antonio (181). You can't convince me it takes five years to turn a program. A program just needs the right style of play or the right recruiter or, preferably, a combination of the two. It's a heck of a lot more difficult to turn around a football program because you need more than one or two players to be difference-makers. Gary Patterson has made TCU a respected football program that can compete with any of the nation's big boys. SMU isn't nearly at that level, but two years after he took over a floundering program, June Jones had SMU playing in a bowl game for the first time since 1984. Jim Christian is just finishing his second season at TCU, so we're still trying to determine if he can get the job done. At SMU, Matt Doherty is about to finish under .500 for the fourth consecutive season unless the Mustangs win three games in the Conference USA tournament. SMU has definitely improved, and it finally provided Doherty with a signature victory last month when it beat Memphis, but the Mustangs failed to sustain that momentum. Anything less than a winning record next season should end Doherty's tenure at SMU. There are always a plethora of excuses or reasons why any coach hasn't won enough games. College athletics is a bottom-line business for players and coach. Players who don't produce can have their scholarships revoked. Coaches who don't win get fired. It's not always fair. It's reality. And it might ultimately be the price to make the basketball programs at SMU and TCU relevant.
