Storm in Norman

Oklahoma isn’t just OK anymore. The sprawling campus is dripping Ws and dollar signs, an institution of higher football suddenly flush with Final Fours and lavish sports facilities without hash marks.

For one week, anyway, basketball talk has nudged aside the relentless speculation on whether Jason White or Nate Hybl will play quarterback and who will replace graduated linebacker Rocky Calmus.

Fans lining the practice field to watch spring football aren’t forgetting the swift, brilliant resurrection conducted by Coach Bob Stoops. And no one needs reminding that the program is one season removed from its seventh national championship.

Yet this could become the greatest Sooner sports year ever, despite the blemish of an unspeakable gridiron loss to Oklahoma State and a ho-hum Cotton Bowl berth.

Oklahoma is only the third school to put its men’s and women’s basketball teams in the Final Four in the same season. Two championships would rival the school’s 1950-51 benchmark when national titles were won in football, baseball and wrestling.

“It really puts our program into an elite group of schools,” said associate athletic director Jeff Long. “It’s a statement about our program. We’re pretty darn good in men’s and women’s basketball.”

What a concept! Sooner story lines involving athletes without helmets.

Dynamic shooting guard Hollis Price rose from the poverty-stricken projects of New Orleans to lead the Sooners to a 31-4 record, while still finding time to date an Italian runway model.

The women’s program went from the brink of extinction to a 31-3 record under indomitable former high school coach Sherri Coale, who has seen average attendance increase from 65 (yes, sixty-five) to nearly 6,000 in only a few years. Oklahoma’s drug-and-gun scandals of yesteryear are long buried, presumably under the Barry Switzer Center, a Taj Ma-ball of weight rooms, offices and big screens that opened in 1999.

It was the first project completed in the Great Expectations campaign, a $100-million fund-raising drive that has already brought in $80 million. At many schools, facilities construction and renovation are forever on the back burner, something to address later.

At Oklahoma, they think “Sooner.”

In fact, the Switzer Center, swallowed in a swirl of dust, already looks dated. Hard hats are everywhere, yet it’s early morning, several hours before spring football practice is scheduled.

A $50-million renovation of Memorial Stadium is in full swing. Luxury suites and 8,000 more seats are being added. Bleachers are being replaced. There will be new administrative offices. New locker rooms were done first.

From the top of the stadium, blue skies and flat terrain boundless on all sides, the activity is stunning. And the wealth is spreading.

There’s the gleaming softball stadium, only 4 years old, home of Coach Patty Gasso’s 2000 national champions.

There’s the renovated baseball stadium, home of Coach Larry Cochell’s perennial top-25 team and 1994 national champions. Luxury suites and a press box were added in the fall.

There are bleachers for the track, a soccer complex, a wrestling facility, a tennis center. All new, new, new.

And in place of the old tennis courts, ground has been broken on a $3.5-million indoor football practice facility.

Superior complex, absolutely.

Superiority complex, apparently.

“I would say to be a student at the University of Oklahoma, or be faculty or staff, what great pride you can have in athletics,” Long said. “Not only winning on the court, but in the quality of young people here.”

If character indeed were measured by opulence, Oklahoma would be beyond reproach. And basketball, for so long considered a diversion during the months between football season and spring football practice, is getting its share of the spoils.

The Lloyd Noble Center has been renovated to the tune of $17 million. Coach Kelvin Sampson is only too happy to take a break from preparing his team for its national semifinal game against Indiana to lead a tour of the months-old, 63,000-square-foot add-on.

Through a glass wall, players are seen getting treatment in the spacious training room. Poke a head into the players’ lounge next to the locker room and there’s Price, cue stick in hand, eyeing an eight-ball across clean green felt, teammates watching from overstuffed leather sofas.

The coaches have new digs too, with a steam room and one shower for the assistants, another for Sampson. In a meeting room, chairs face a theater-sized projection screen.

The whole place smells of fresh paint. Sure enough, on the way down the hall to the new practice gym, Sampson passes a man on his knees, carefully applying crimson enamel to the baseboards. The coach pats him on the head: Keep up the good work.

The words also apply to Athletic Director Joe Castiglione.

“Administrators fall into two categories,” Sampson says, “inhibitors and facilitators. We’ve got a facilitator.”

Castiglione, 44, came from Missouri four years ago and adapted instantly, tapping into alumni wealth, treating all sports with respect and bringing new meaning to ‘70s pop psychology, pumping up his coaches by saying, “I’m OK, you’re OK. We’re all OK.”

He also hired Stoops, who not only brought the football team back to prominence but buys into the family concept.

When the basketball team left for Dallas before the first round of the NCAA tournament, Stoops slapped hands with players boarding the bus. And he wore a Final Four T-shirt and cap Monday during a news conference before the first spring football practice.

“Championship runs rub off on players [from other sports],” Stoops said. “You watch those [basketball] teams play defense? It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

Sampson marvels too. He is standing in his new practice gym. “This is the thing I always dreamed of, you kidding me?” he says.

The floor of the Noble Center is lifted after the season and the venue is used for concerts, leaving the team nowhere to practice. Now the problem is solved--for both teams. The women have a new practice gym too.

Only 12 years ago, the school dropped women’s basketball. But the Women’s Basketball Coaches’ convention happened to be underway, leading to an organized protest that prompted Oklahoma to reinstate the sport eight days later.

Coale heard the news while riffling through her mail in the teachers’ lounge at Norman High, where she was coaching. Six years later, Oklahoma hired her, leading to cries that the school again was trying to torpedo the program, this time by bringing in a high school coach.

Midway through her 5-22 first season, she came home after a one-sided loss to Texas Tech, opened the kitchen door and collapsed on the floor.

Her husband Dane helped her up.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said.

Consider it done. Oklahoma has been to the Sweet 16 three consecutive years, and blitzed Colorado, 94-60, in an Elite Eight game last week.

“You have to be part of it to really realize how far it’s come,” said senior Stacey Dales, the Big 12 player of the year.

Sampson sprang from similar humble roots. His first coaching job was at tiny Montana Tech, where he drove a dilapidated team bus over mountains and through blizzards to games. Then there were seven years at pitiable Washington State, where he escaped in 1994 with a .500 record.

So going to a football school reluctant to allow basketball out of the back seat fit nicely with his underdog mentality.

“I’m always best with causes,” he says. “Football will always be the heartbeat and that’s fine. But we have our own niche.”

He’s carved it by making the NCAA tournament in each of his eight seasons, joining Roy Williams of Kansas as the only coaches to do so. The first four years, though, the Sooners lost in the first round.

Oklahoma made it to the Sweet 16 seeded 13th in 1999, but was upset in the second round the following year and lost in the first round last season. This is the breakthrough, the school’s best season since making the final in 1988.

“Driving to church Sunday, I saw stands all over Norman selling Final Four T-shirts,” Sampson said. “People get out of their cars at stoplights, run to my window and give me high fives.”

Even so, he was able to find a cause and cast this team as unappreciated. The Sooners defeated Kansas for the Big 12 tournament title, yet were seeded second in the West, behind Cincinnati. He huddled with his team.

“That’s what we’re going to thrive on, not being a No. 1 seed,” Price said.

The theme continues because there is talk that the Kansas-Maryland semifinal is the de facto championship game. Conveniently overlooked is that Oklahoma has defeated both teams this season.

“We’ll use that as motivation too,” Price said.

Next season, it will be difficult for Sampson to play the underdog card. Four starters, Price among them, are due to return, and the recruiting class is considered the best in school history.

Not to mention, Oklahoma’s facilities will be the envy of every visiting team. Basketball might never be on the level of football here, but no-respect Montana Tech it isn’t.

Sampson laughs. “I’ll adjust. It’s not like I’m going to resign because of it.”