CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- The late start time might have made me a little crazy, but I couldn't stop thinking about Bum Phillips in the second half of Boston College's 18-point win over Vanderbilt on Wednesday night.
At a surface level, it makes no sense. Bum Phillips is about as far from Boston-based college basketball as anyone can get. He coached the Houston Oilers as a real-life caricature of a Texas-based football coach. He wore a giant cowboy hat on the sidelines unless he was at the Astrodome or some other domed stadium because his mother taught him to take his hat off indoors, and he walked the sidelines in jeans and cowboy boots with the occasional fur-lined coat.