Vegas native wins with less

Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

The air smells good here. Clean. And pungent. Ponderosa pine at 7,000 feet above sea level emits a sweet fragrance, like when you hang one of those cardboard Christmas tree air fresheners from the rearview mirror of an old Buick. Only it lasts well beyond the next oil change.

This is a place you might go to get out of the heat, to get your head together, to write a book. But you'd better finish the chapter before the next Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train rumbles through town and the clickety-clack, clickety-clack of the steel wheels lulls you right to sleep.

Spend an afternoon here and it's easy to understand why Flagstaff was listed No. 2 among Men's Journal magazine's Best Places to Live. Spend an evening here and you'll see a million stars in the deep, dark sky.

Next to natural beauty, Flagstaff's most abundant resource is its motels. You can't really see them from the interstate, but trust me, they're there. They're there because Disneyland is only a day's drive west, the Grand Canyon an hour to the north, if you hustle. If you're headed east, enjoy Amarillo.

Or spend another day in Flagstaff.

Jacks are better

Flagstaff also is home to the Northern Arizona University Lumberjacks of the Big Sky Conference. NAU's claim to athletic fame is hosting the Arizona Cardinals' NFL training camp and scaring the dickens out of the likes of Cincinnati and St. John's as a No. 15 seed in the NCAA tournament.

Ben Howland was the NAU coach when the Lumberjacks narrowly lost to Cincinnati. That was his steppingstone to Pitt and then UCLA, his dream job. The Bruins were the top-ranked team in the land until last week.

Mike Adras, the Las Vegas native who won four state championships at Bishop Gorman, two as a player and two as coach, was the NAU coach when the Lumberjacks narrowly lost to St. John's. But he was just starting his head coaching career then. He didn't have Howland's experience, wasn't in quite such a hurry to leave.

He's still not in a great hurry to leave Flagstaff, which is good. Because now that he has the experience, and the success, and the respect of his peers, he's not that young. He's starting his ninth year as the NAU coach and realizes the small window of opportunity for successful coaches from midmajor schools to leap to the next level may be slamming shut.

Been there, done that

Win your conference championship, sneak into the NCAA tournament, beat somebody there, or at least scare the heck out of them. That's the ticket most midmajor coaches punch on their way to the Big Time.

In Adras' case, check, check and check.

He has been to the Big Dance, has been to the NIT, has won three Big Sky championships, including the past two, has had only one losing season despite playing a rugged nonconference schedule that includes Kansas and Arizona. His teams have led the NCAA in 3-point shooting four times. He can see the Big Time from where he is, but if he waits too much longer, he may need one of those telescopes up on the hill at the Lowell Observatory to assist him.

"The way it's been put to me is that these athletic directors need to sell tickets with their hires," Adras, 46, said after the Lumberjacks stormed back from a 20-point deficit before losing 83-74 to his hometown UNLV Rebels on Wednesday.

Coaching in a midmajor conference wouldn't be so bad, he said, if it weren't so difficult to attract players. Take Kendall Wallace, an Arizona kid who made his UNLV debut against the Lumberjacks. Adras had recruited him very hard, thought he had him. Then UNLV entered the picture and NAU was out of it. Adras said he can't recall how many times he has read "chose so and so over Northern Arizona" about a kid he had recruited.

"It's about convincing guys that this would be a great opportunity to come and play instead of being the ninth or 10th guy at a bigger program," Adras said.

You can talk about budgets, about tradition, about TV exposure. The bottom line is when you call the NAU basketball office, Adras is the guy who answers the phone.

"I don't have a secretary," he said. "I don't have 18 people to look after 18 players."

Home is where your pals are

There were 2,138 spectators at the Walkup Skydome, NAU's multipurpose minidomed arena, for the UNLV game. That's a big crowd in Flagstaff. A few hundred were cheering for the Rebels. The rest were cheering NAU. One was cheering louder than the others.

You can't help but notice Maureen Adras, Mike's wife. She marks her seat on the far baseline, opposite from where her husband stalks the sideline, with a piece of athletic tape. Not that she ever uses it. She's up and down more often than the prime lending rate, shouting at the officials, shouting at the Lumberjacks, shouting at her husband, shouting at Natalie and Rachel, their daughters, who have wandered off to play in the football part of the Skydome.

I like her immediately. Maybe it's because she's a Chicago girl. Maybe it's because she has invited me, a total stranger, to sit down and watch the second half with her.

Mike and Maureen Adras met at Bishop Gorman, where she taught English. They've been married for 19 years. When I asked her what it's like to be a coach's wife, she went back to the very beginning.

"He proposed to me on the court in Reno after the state championship game," she said before pointing out three guys who were shuffling down the rollaway bleachers, and that I should talk to them.

"Not the guy in the hat," she said, which didn't tell me much, because almost everybody wears a hat to an NAU game. "The other two."

Lance Shoen said he has known "The Ace" for 28 years, Mark "Begas" Romeo for longer than that. "Since he played with a headband," Romeo said in an obvious dig at his follicle-challenged pal.

"I was the shortstop, he was the third baseman. He had a great glove but he couldn't hit his way out of a paper bag. And you can quote me on that."

They kept telling stories about Adras, three or four of which might even have been true. But when I looked for Maureen Adras to bail me out, she was gone. She was off chasing her daughters, who had wandered to the football field again.

This could never happen at Duke, I thought.

And that was the beauty of it.