The road trip — something every college basketball team is used to. Even the holiday tournament circuit has become commonplace for teams to stay in shape during the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks.
Murray State men’s coach Mike Kelley has been on the circuit since he was a teenager.
“It’s really all I’ve ever known,” Kelley said of spending Thanksgiving at basketball tournaments. “I’ve been doing it since I was 18 years old.”
Rather than enjoying the luxuries of being at home, for the second year in a row, Kelley is with his team in Odessa, Texas, for the Odessa Thanksgiving Tournament. Murray State will tip off against nationally-ranked Odessa College in what Kelley touts as “one of the two best JUCO gyms in the nation.” The Aggies left Wednesday at noon on an 8-hour bus ride to west Texas.
“The drive is long but I’m a driver anyway,” Kelley said.
Kelley and his team will spend their holiday in the town best known as the home of the Permian Panthers, the fabled high school football team from “Friday Night Lights.” The Aggies will tip off at 8 p.m., after many of Odessa’s residents will be passed out from Thanksgiving dinner or planning their Black Friday spending.
What about the crowds, you ask? As expected, pigskin dominates the sports scene during Thanksgiving and the entire year. Despite the football allegiance, Kelley says that even at “off games” there are typically 400-500 people in the crowd. Kelley, however, recalls a day of holiday silence in Odessa when he was an assistant coach with Connors State in 1992.
“On Thursday and Friday we had really good crowds,” Kelley said. “On Saturday, we only had about 100 people in the gym.
“Turns out Permian was playing in the quarterfinals. It (the gym) was a ghost town — and that was the day we were playing Odessa.”
What about the Thanksgiving routine? Fortunately, Kelley said, Odessa traditionally provides the Aggies with a “really good” Thanksgiving meal. The players won’t be subjected to missing the Cowboys’ game, either. After a 10 a.m. practice, the team will get its football while Kelley and his assistant coach scout the Lee-Pima (Ariz.) game at 4 p.m. No rest for the weary, not even on Thanksgiving.
Kelley is used to it though. The day he quit playing basketball at Central Oklahoma, he started scouting for his alma mater. Nearly three decades later, Kelley is still a road warrior. In his fifth season at MSC, Kelley has carried on the Thanksgiving road trip tradition with the Aggies, This will mark the fourth time in five seasons Murray State has spent Thanksgiving in Odessa, with a stop in Hutchinson, Kan., the site of the JUCO national championship, in between.
“I’m glad we’re going,” Kelley said. “It should be a really good trip for the guys.
“I’m trying to get the girls team to go too.”
Erik K. Horne,
(580) 221-6522
erik.horne@ardmoreite.com
