He’s Fired Up and Firing Back : Foes’ Shots Don’t Slow Tubbs and High-Scoring Sooners

Contrary to popular belief, Billy Tubbs doesn’t just roll the ball out and tell his team to play.

At practice one day this week, the Oklahoma basketball coach actually ran through a play for his team. To finish it off, he put up a 3-point shot. Air ball.

“Rebound that sumbitch,” he hollered with a grin. “Foul. Somebody hit my elbow.” Laughs all around.

Later he walked through another play and shot a layup. Stacey King, his All-American center, blocked it and told him, “Nice shot, coach.”

Tubbs rolled his eyes.

“Man, whose side you on?” he asked.

For a while now, it has been Tubbs and his Sooners against the world, living with charges of being out-coached in big games by guys with less talented teams, or of heartlessly running up the score and bragging about it.

It probably doesn’t help that Tubbs sounds uncannily like Jack Nicholson with a twang, and has been portrayed as having a feisty courtside demeanor not unlike Nicholson at Laker games.

Close your eyes and you can almost picture Tubbs in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” urging, “Put it in the basket, Chief. Grab the ball, Chief. Just stuff that sucker.”

Open your eyes and it’s Tubbs, irritated by a player’s defense in practice: “Get down court, Damon. C’mon Damon. Damon, haul . . . “

In the washroom next to the Sooner basketball offices, there are embroidered towels that read, “OU Basketball” and “OU Billy Tubbs.”

OU Billy Tubbs, indeed.

A lot of folks have said that since Tubbs took over the Oklahoma program for the 1980-81 season. He’s on Dick Vitale’s All-Wacko team. He’s also on some folks’ most-wanted lists.

And Tubbs, sometimes portrayed as a gunslinger who doesn’t mind being shot at but never misses a chance to fire back, says he’s just trying to get his team ready for the next game and keep the folks around Oklahoma City entertained.

The next game, in this case, is tonight’s matchup against Loyola Marymount, a pairing of the teams that were the highest-scoring in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. last season.

His Sooners are off to a 5-1 start, but Tubbs is still being taken to task by some critics, and he has had enough. In agreeing to an interview, the basketball office said Tubbs didn’t want to talk about “all the old, negative stuff.”

But in person, Tubbs, 53, seemed as amused as he was distressed about his image.

Said Mike Prusinski, Oklahoma basketball publicist: “He’s not brash and all that. If you’re just talking to him, he’s great to be around. When he’s interviewed, he’s always on the defensive.”

Tubbs said: “We’re humans. Nobody wants negative publicity. I think we do so many good things, we want the positive accentuated. We’re not gonna do something wacko just to get publicity.”

Of his sideline activity--sometimes called arrogant and intimidating--Tubbs used a recent game he saw on television as an example.

“I’m watching at home with my wife, and ‘a well-known coach’ is ranting and raving with a 20-point lead. The announcer says, ‘Just look at that intensity.’

“My wife wondered what he’d say if that was Billy Tubbs winning by 25. . . . ‘Why doesn’t Tubbs back off?’ The media can tag you.”

The scrappy kid who was born in Tulsa in the Dust Bowl days has rarely backed off in a career that began when he was a guard at highly successful Lon Morris Junior College in Texas, and later at Lamar University, where he eventually became coach.

By then, he had developed his affection for a high-scoring, pressure-defense game.

“As a player, teams I played on were most successful with this style,” he said.

“When I was in junior college, we averaged 100 points and won a lot of games. That kind of set the pace. I liked UCLA under John Wooden. I’d pull for ‘em. They had a lot of high-scoring games and they pressed. And Kentucky when I was growing up in the 1950s, I rooted for them.

“I was always an Oklahoma football fan. They scored a lot of points. Scoring a lot of points is conducive to winning.”

The wide-open game is beginning to catch coaches’ attention, bolstered by the recent success of Paul Westhead at Loyola. It’s also more entertaining than the four-corner style popularized by Dean Smith at North Carolina or the passing-control game under Bob Knight at Indiana. It was a consideration when Tubbs left Lamar for football-happy Oklahoma.

“There’s a difference in what a lot of people comprehend as control,” he said. “I feel in complete control. We run a high-risk defense. You put yourself at risk if they can get through your pressure. To me, it’s worth the risk because we come out on the best side most of the time. We’re gonna make something happen. It’s explosive.”

Because the Sooners, like Loyola, score more than 100 points a game, but also give up a lot of points, coaches of that style are often disparaged. It didn’t help Tubbs when his Sooners lost to underdog Kansas, a team they had beaten twice in conference play, in the NCAA final.

But aside from that game, Tubbs’ record at Oklahoma is a match for any in the nation, and it is certainly beyond what Oklahoma expected when he started. Tubbs replaced Dave Bliss, who was 15-12 in his last season there and reportedly didn’t like being in the considerable shadow of Barry Switzer’s football program.

“Right now, I think football and basketball at Oklahoma are on the same level,” Tubbs said. “Michigan, Oklahoma, UCLA, those places have proven you can have outstanding basketball and football together. I like it like that.”

When Tubbs signed on, after taking Lamar to its first two NCAA appearances, the Sooners had had two 20-win seasons in their history. Since his second season here, the Sooners have never won fewer than 22 and have won the Big Eight title 3 times. Since Wayman Tisdale came along in 1983-84, the Sooners have been to the NCAA round of eight twice, and they have reached regional finals 3 times.

The Sooners finished 35-4 last season and have averaged about 28 victories over the last 7 years--a record unmatched by Smith or Knight or any of the others in Vitale’s coaching pantheon.

“He’s better than people think,” Vitale said. “He always says the bottom line is to win, and he’s right. When you look what he’s done there, you can’t argue. X’s and O’s are not necessarily his strength, but that’s overrated. There’s so many coaches in the country who want to run everything, control every play. He lets his kids play.”

Mike Newell, a former assistant now running a successful program at Arkansas Little Rock, said Tubbs “is a heck of a coach.”

So why doesn’t he get more respect?

“Its a situation where his philosophy differs from a lot of people,” Newell said. “He’s proven his has been successful. He used to say we’re in the entertainment business. People would rather see a 115-100 game than 66-58. He understands that.”

Vitale said: “I’ve found him to be a fun-loving kind of guy, but he’s also a fierce competitor. His style aggravates some people--he’s his own man. He had to bring some excitement to that program to compete with football.”

Tubbs said: “Football gives us a lot of advantages here. I love it when the football team puts 75,000 in the seats, because it helps our budget. Football is our ally. We’re not in competition. Being against football around here is like being against motherhood.

“We don’t have to fight the Rams and Lakers. We’re No. 1 in the state when it’s basketball season. Besides, what would I do with 75,000 people if we didn’t have football? Keeps ‘em out of my hair, which I don’t have much of left anyway.”

Associates and players characterize Tubbs as an enjoyable guy to be around, yet a demanding workaholic as well. One day this week, he put the team through a 3 1/2-hour practice, left at 6:30 p.m. to scout a junior college game, watched a taped ESPN game when he got home, then looked at a Loyola game film. He was back the next morning for a 9 o’clock practice.

If a team is a reflection of its coach, this is no bunch of high-flying prima donnas without a game plan.

“I think our assets are, nobody will outwork us,” Tubbs said. “We’ll spend as many hours as we have to to get the job done. If it means the team’s a winner, then I hope that’s a reflection.”