Wanted: Role model

College basketball coaches are about to find out whether their team has the discipline necessary to construct a winning season.

It’s an imperfect art, but students of the game would be wise not to look past the defending champion University of Connecticut and its coach, Kevin Ollie. The former NBA player emerged in March as the glue necessary to turn his talented but ragtag Huskies squad into title contenders. But he didn’t surprise those who knew him.

While Ollie the player appeared to be a benchwarmer, bouncing around 11 teams in his 13-year NBA career, legendary coach Larry Brown told the Connecticut Post he would ask his Philadelphia backup for advice during games. “Kevin, right from the beginning, I learned from him,” said Brown, now Ollie’s conference rival at Southern Methodist University. "Being around him, he was a really good coach from day one.”

Friends, coaches, and teammates say Ollie is a leader not because he demands it but because his quiet character invites people to put themselves under his leadership. He was leading a Bible study as a teenager, and several NBA teams viewed him as their spiritual leader. “People have to see Christ in us. … I want them to see me as an example of God—not only a role model, but a God model,” Ollie wrote for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in 2010.

As the season tips off, Duke University has the projected No. 1 NBA draft pick in freshman Jahlil Okafor. Kentucky is the overwhelming favorite to win it all, while Wisconsin and Arizona bring back nearly all their stars. UConn is the only Final Four team from last year ranked outside the AP Top 10.

But talent alone can’t win a championship. This decade, Duke has fallen victim to two of the nation’s biggest NCAA Tournament upsets in recent memory. Every winning team has to have a leader. And after winning the championship as a bracket seven seed, no one can count out a team led by Ollie.

Racer’s chase

NASCAR champion and commentator Darrell Waltrip won a different kind of race Nov. 4 after speaking out against abortion. The racer and his wife, Stevie, served as honorary campaign chairmen for Tennessee's “YES on 1” campaign.

Waltrip’s home state was the only state to pass a pro-life measure this election cycle, with roughly 53 percent of the vote. The constitutional amendment sought to reset a 2000 state Supreme Court ruling that gave women a right to abortion, leaving the industry largely unregulated. At least one in four women seeking abortions come from outside Tennessee.

“There are so many reasons we all love Tennessee and respect for God’s gift of life should be at the top of the list,” Waltrip and his wife said in a statement. He has been increasingly outspoken about his Christian faith since a 1983 wreck caused him to rethink his priorities. “We can prevent tax dollars from being used for abortion and we can insist that abortion facilities be licensed and inspected like any other surgical center.”

While some commentators have faced censorship over beliefs on sexuality, Waltrip’s stand received little attention outside the pro-life community as NASCAR prepared for its new winner-take-all championship race Nov. 16.

Pro-abortion activists—mostly abortion centers themselves—failed to win at the polls despite outspending Waltrip’s side by a 3-1 margin. But Planned Parenthood and other opponents filed a lawsuit demanding a recount. —A.B.