Joe Cravens Ready To Punt?

When Nick Nolte punted a basketball in a hokey Hollywood movie, it was pretty silly.

It didn’t play much better when Joe Cravens did it in real life the other night.

So we all looked at one another and joked about it - all except the guy who thought the University of Idaho should fire Cravens on the spot, which just proves going off half-cocked isn’t exclusive to basketball coaches.

We made cracks about hang time and how Barry Switzer should take a page out of Joe’s playbook.

What a relief it was that Cravens aimed his kick where it had no chance of hitting someone: the Kibbie Dome bleachers.

The punt, of course, was Cravens’ non-verbal editorial on the officiating in Idaho’s 68-59 loss to Washington State. Actually, Cravens gave referee Ken Krahn a very verbal earful, too - chasing him down the floor in the closing seconds of the game in ferocious pursuit of a technical foul.

Alas, Krahn wouldn’t give Cravens the satisfaction. Didn’t give him any all night.

But what else is new? This season, Joe Cravens and the Vandals can’t get no satisfaction.

They’re 9-12 and desperate to cinch a tourniquet on the open wound of a five-game losing streak, the kind which at this point in a season is generally fatal.

Cravens’ new motto: Death to Fatalism.

“We can talk about what this season has been or hasn’t been, but life’s tough all over,” he said bravely. “My dad said the bar he was at last night ran out of Miller Lite and that’s a pretty big deal to him. “We’re through being disappointed. We’re just playing now - playing together and playing hard. I don’t care what was, what could have been. This is where we’re at. I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself and my family and this team and I’m through doing that. Short of saying I don’t give a rat’s ass about anything else right now, I’m worried about my 12 guys and my coaches.”

You have to assume Joe made that decision during the long walk from the Kibbie court to the locker room, because doing a Ray Guy is not the M.O. of a man who has come to grips with disappointment and no longer gives a damn.

Joe Cravens’ third Idaho team - his team, his guys - gave every indication of being talented enough to hang a yewie in the Big Sky standings after the school’s first sub.500 season in a decade. But the Vandals have lost the same close ones they lost a year ago. Holdover players have plateaued; the newcomers have shown fitful growth. It’s been a fast break on a treadmill.

Better atmosphere in the Dome and some promotional elbow grease has goosed attendance slightly. But marketing alone isn’t enough, any more than winning alone was enough at the turn of the decade.

This is a tricky place now athletically. There’s an agenda. You don’t know whether they’ll settle for an old home cure for the hiccups or decide to operate.

And next year: the Big West. The heat goes up a few degrees.

But Joe Cravens already feels it.

“There’s not a whole lot of these jobs around,” he said, his innate candor taking over, “to be a Division I coach - especially someplace you like. You go through a rebuilding year like we did last year and I had very high expectations. We haven’t met those.”

Which leaves him where?

“You always want to be in a better position,” said Idaho athletic director Pete Liske. “We expected we’d be and hoped we’d be, but you don’t go beyond that until the season is done. As we know, things can change - hourly or daily or weekly. But to go through something like this extremely tough on a coach and we try to be supportive and understanding.

“Specifically about (the punted ball), yes, we’ve had a discussion about it and I know Joe feels as bad about it as anyone else does and understands it isn’t something he’d want to do again given the circumstances.”

But the shame of Tuesday night was not that Joe Cravens put his foot into a basketball or said a vulgarity on the radio. The shame was that - in between reminders to not put pressure on himself - he sounded like a man waiting to be fired.

That would be ugly, unfair, unnecessary.

That would be coaching.

“I see a scenario like the guy at USC who gets a four-year contract and 10 months later they fire him when he’s 11-10,” Cravens said. “You start worrying about what’s going to happen. I don’t think anything is going to happen, but you don’t know. Everybody wants to be successful. I didn’t get here by being unsuccessful.”

Nor do you stay being unsuccessful. You just give somebody an excuse to punt.

You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review