EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - The old Cowboy ambled slowly across the floor, his back a little swayed, his hip a little stiff.
Eddie Sutton moved as if he had been too long in the saddle, as if he had swallowed too much dust along the trail. But a smile creased his weathered face, and the lines smoothed themselves out in his pleasure. He moved toward the stands, calling for the missus, and you might swear there was a star somewhere in his eye.
Well, mosey around the campfire and look at this:
Fast Eddie has one more roundup in him.
Sutton is 68 now, and it has been a long time since someone called him The Kid. As Cowboys go, he is one of Larry McMurtry's, straight out of Lonesome Dove, a little cantankerous and a little crotchety. His face is lined like aged leather, with every wayward bounced etched in there somewhere. He has ridden high, and he has been knocked off of his horse a time or two.
Yet, he rides again, heading toward San Antone with his gang, the Oklahoma State Cowboys. Oklahoma State outshot the wonderful Saint Joseph's Hawks Saturday night, winning a 64-62 game only when John Lucas hit his closing-seconds shot and Jameer Nelson missed his.
Then it was done, and Sutton was grinning and hoisting his grandson. The Cowboys are headed toward another Final Four in another NCAA Tournament.
This time, who knows? Maybe he'll make it all the way to the ranch.
Sutton has been in a few of these tournaments. Twenty-five, to be exact. And he's been close before. This is his third Final Four.
Never, however, has Sutton won a national championship. For all of his victories, and there are 755 of those, he is still chasing the big trophy. He will tell you that it doesn't mean that much, that he's fulfilled without it. Then you see him shuffle across the floor, the celebration going on around him, and it hits you: Believe what you hear, or believe what you see.
Of course Sutton wants to win this. Are you crazy? A man doesn't spend most of his life in a gym without counting the steps from the Final Four to the national title. "It's very special," Sutton finally allows in that Gary Cooper voice of his. "I probably won't have that many more opportunities, because I'm not going to coach that long.
"It goes back to when I came back to Oklahoma State. Coach (Hank) Iba said "one of my boys is coming back.' To take this program to two Final Fours, I guess, is a small way of saying thanks. I know how important it is to win. People talk about the pressure I had at Kentucky. But I've never felt more pressure than at Oklahoma State, because it's my alma mater."
Like most collections of Cowboys, these are a motley bunch. It is a team of transfers patched together from various places with various problems. The unifying force is Sutton. Even at 68, let's face it, the guy can coach a little bit.
Consider the win over Saint Joe's. It was Sutton's idea to guard All-America guard Nelson not with Lucas, as everyone thought, but with taller Daniel Bobick. It worked. Nelson ended up hitting only 6 of 18 shots.
And Lucas? Not having to chase Nelson all over the floor kept his legs fresh, fresh enough to hit the winning 3 with 6.9 seconds to play.
That was vintage Sutton. He seems to know when to growl at a player and point to the bench, and he seems to know when to tell them to relax and play the game. That was the case against Saint Joe's, too. He thought his team was too content to trade jump shots instead of running the floor.
Sutton could always coach. There is a line in college basketball that, if everything is even, hope Sutton isn't the guy on the other bench. These days, however, there seems to be a bit more wisdom to Sutton these days, a bit more perspective. He has been around for a while now, and he has seen some things. The joke going around is that when Sutton started coaching, the Mayans were still playing.
Along the way, Sutton has known success, and he has known scandal. He has been shamed, and he spent too much time in saloons. For the record, he was cleared of wrongdoing in the Kentucky scandal, but there are those who suggest that's still the reason the College Basketball Hall of Fame hasn't called.
That doesn't seem to faze Sutton, either. Sutton's son, Sean, an Oklahoma State assistant, will tell you his father has learned a lot about perspective. He appreciates small things. He enjoys the ride.
Maybe it took a real tragedy to teach Sutton about the things that are important. Every day, he looks out of his office window and sees a bronze statue dedicated to those killed when one of the three team planes crashed in January of 2001.
Regardless, he has banded these Cowboys together, and even Sutton has been amazed at the improvement he has seen on the way.
"If you would have told me back in October this was a Final Four team, that it was going to win 31 games, I'd have said you were nuts," he said. "I would have wondered if you had been drinking.
"This team has done things I didn't think were possible. It's gotten more out of its talent than any team I've ever had. That's why it will always be special to me."
At this stage of the coach, it should be special to the rest of us, too. It doesn't matter if you ever thought of Sutton as an outlaw. Now, he's a savvy old guy in worn-out boots, and he's headed to Texas.
On his way into the sunset, it seems like a nice trail to ride.
