It Could Be a Field of Dreams

The faces in the wheat field are granite, frozen, smiling forever.

The faces at the Final Four are human and hurting.

“Winning is not going to bring back the people on that plane,” Ivan McFarlin said.

The faces in the wheat field, 10 photographs burned into stone, stare at the sky in a chorus of hope.

The faces at the Final Four stare at nothing.

“Healing is not the right word,” Terrence Crawford said. “That is life. This is basketball.”

It would be easy to say that two more victories and a national championship would give Oklahoma State the closure necessary to deal with the 2001 plane crash that killed 10 people associated with the program.

But these scars run as deep as the crash-site monument cut into a corner of the Colorado plains.

Some of the Oklahoma State players are still shaking off the sort of dust that the prairie wind blows over the monument’s joyful expressions.

The Cowboys are not trying to make us believe that silly notion that one can triumph over tragedy.

They are trying only to convince themselves that one can live with it.

It might not make for great headlines, but it has to be enough.

“I don’t believe there is such a thing as closure,” Coach Eddie Sutton said. “I think if it is, it’s when you die.”

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After one particularly lousy practice this winter, Crawford called his teammates together and reminded them to look at the calendar.

It was Jan. 27. It was the third anniversary of the plane crash.

“This is the day we lost 10 people, and you guys are arguing and fighting like this?” Crawford, a forward, reportedly told the team. “There’s 10 people out there that can’t live the life you have. You better start cherishing it.”

When the prop jet crashed while returning from a game at Colorado on that day in 2001, the victims included two players, the basketball sports information director, the basketball operations director, the trainer, a student assistant, a longtime radio announcer, the television-radio engineer, and two pilots.

“I heard it hit the ground and there was no big boom, just a crinkle, like the sound of a soda can being crushed,” said Larry Pearson, a dairy farmer who lives across the road from the crash site, about 40 miles outside Denver. “I rushed over and there was nothing left.”

Oh, but there was.

As clear as the sound of Crawford’s voice, memories of the dead are scattered throughout an Oklahoma State team that will play Georgia Tech today in the first semifinal at San Antonio’s Alamodome.

There is, of course, Sutton, the coach who still remembers the horror of the Saturday evening phone calls to the families of the deceased.

“There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about one of those 10 people that lost their lives,” he said.

There are also two players remaining from that 2001 team, Crawford and McFarlin.

“Every time I see a plane in the sky, I think to myself, ‘That’s our 10, and they’re coming home to see us,’ ” McFarlin said.

Also here are the team’s director of basketball operations and a radio announcer, both of whom could have been on that ill-fated plane but for a last-minute switch.

Then there is the man who is bearing more than most this weekend, longtime beloved NCAA consultant Bill Hancock.

He used to run the NCAA basketball tournament, until his son Will Hancock III, the team’s respected sports information director, died on that plane.

Bill Hancock retired soon thereafter, but he came back as the tournament’s media director. He was sitting on press row during Friday’s Oklahoma State practice, quietly watching and enduring during what should have been a triumphant family moment, a portrait of grace.

One of the Oklahoma State officials hugged him.

“I should have been hugging my son,” he said.

He was surrounded by old friends but acknowledged it was different.

“It’s like going around with one arm,” he said quietly.

Hancock is bringing his entire family to the tournament, as always, including daughter-in-law Karen and granddaughter Andie.

“It’s always been a family reunion, and we’ll keep it that way,” he said.

To the notion that an Oklahoma State championship would ease his pain, Hancock slowly shook his head.

“This doesn’t fix that,” he said. “But anything good that can happen to anybody after a tragedy like this, well, it shows you can still live.”

Some will say that the Cowboys’ best season in more than 50 years is some sort of payback, but the truth probably lies in Hancock’s simple philosophy.

Everything they have done has been done while just trying to show they can still live.

His players say the crash made the fiery Sutton calmer, more approachable.

“He started doing more things to show us how much he loved and cared for us,” Crawford said. “He started being not just a coach figure, but a father figure as well.”

Sutton began asking his players, every day, to phone their parents. He asked that, when they went out at night, they would go in groups. He asked them to start relying on each other.

“And we did,” McFarlin said. “We were always together, but not like now. We bond together. Any of us need something from somebody else, just call. We’re there.”

Fifteen years ago, Sutton might have never asked a player to give a speech after a victory. But when the Cowboys won the Big 12 tournament championship game against Texas, he opened the floor, and Crawford jumped in.

“I just said, ‘There’s 10 guys watching down on us,’ ” he recalled. “That was it.”

That was enough.

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The crash-site memorial is at the side of an unpaved road, which branches off another unpaved road, a couple of miles outside a tiny town with one main street and many metal silos.

Somehow, people find it.

“Every day, at least one person shows up, every day,” said Pearson, the neighbor farmer.

The memorial features photographs of the 10 victims in granite blocks surrounding a stone adorned with a horse being ridden by one of the Cowboys’ legendary Spirit Riders.

Under each photograph is a 30-word inscription portraying the deceased as father, husband, son or cousin.

Around the stones are signs, left by friends who have driven or flown 465 miles from Stillwater.

On one of two evergreen trees hangs a parking pass from this Oklahoma State season. On the other tree hangs a student parking pass.

The back fence is adorned with, among other things, an OSU cap, a black long-sleeved T-shirt, a team refrigerator magnet and a car flag.

“People leave all sorts of stuff -- ticket stubs, hats, scarves -- and we don’t touch a thing,” said Bob Matschke, fire chief for the Strasburg Volunteer Department, which maintains the site, free. “Everything stays there until nature takes it away.”

The only constant here is a roaring prairie wind. Some days, it sounds like death. These days, it sounds like cheering.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.