After Middle Tennessee continued its sports mastery over Marshall with a 97-86 basketball victory Saturday, I can't stop marveling about the coaching stability at that school.
The Thundering Herd has had a rough time with the Blue Raiders in football and men's basketball, going 3-8 since MTSU came to Conference USA from the Sun Belt in 2013. (But hey, the baseball team is 5-4 in that all-time series, so it's not all painful for the kelly green.)
Marshall owns two no-doubt home wins in football, but has suffered two agonizing setbacks in Murfreesboro - both decided on the game's final play. Coach Dan D'Antoni's men's team won handily in January 2016, but has lost four times since.
As you should remember, the Blue Raiders' men and women won the Conference USA tournaments last March, with the men pulling off a historic upset of Michigan State in the NCAA tournament.
It's interesting that those two schools carry a rare distinction in this era: They are the only ones whose football and men's basketball head coaches have served more than 10 years.
Duke is about to join that list. You know Mike Krzyzewski, in his 37th season, but I didn't realize football coach David Cutcliffe is about to enter season No. 10 there, and he is 52-61 - at that school, that qualifies as a winning record.
At Michigan State, basketball coach Tom Izzo is in 22nd season and Mark D'Antonio just survived his 10th - the Spartans fell from 12-2 to 3-9, the biggest collapse in the major-college ranks.
At MTSU, hoops coach Kermit Davis is in his 15th season - the win Saturday over Marshall was his 300th - and football coach Rich Stockstill is entering his 12th.
You cannot put a price on such stability. Marshall has had exactly one football and one men's basketball coach to hang around for 10-plus seasons - and that was the same person, Cam Henderson.
Perhaps MTSU provides a lesson in patience. Then again, I don't think the pressure is quite as great in Murfreesboro, which is a reasonable commute from Nashville yet nothing like the Music City. Driving around Murfreesboro, you might not guess it's the home to Tennessee's second-largest university.
It's not Nashville, and that's not a bad thing.
Both Stockstill and Davis have had lulls that might make MU fans grouchy. Stockstill suffered four losing seasons in five years, capped by a 2-10 mess in 2011. The Raiders haven't won a conference title since, but contend each year.
Davis' teams contended in the Sun Belt for most of his first nine years, yet lost 12 to 17 games each season. The Raiders finally won that league's regular-season title, then went to the National Invitation Tournament quarterfinals, beating Marshall along the way.
Since 2011-12, the Raiders have won 147 games, nearly half his 300. He has a heart-warming side story - his adult daughter Ally, who has Down syndrome, is a diehard MTSU fan and by all accounts is immensely popular in Murfreesboro. A departure seems inconceivable.
Marshall coaching tenures have been shorter for several reasons. Some went on to bigger and better jobs (Carl Tacy, George Chaump, Jim Donnan, Donnie Jones), others simply didn't win (Dwight Freeman, Ron Jirsa), and the program took a dive under others (Bob Daniels, Tom Herrion). Fan impatience affected Bob Zuffelato and Greg White, and the departures of Rick Huckabay and Bob Pruett defy simple explanation.
Current football coach Doc Holliday enters his eighth year, but has to rebuild after a tumble to 3-9. Age could be a factor with basketball coach Dan D'Antoni, though he hardly looks like he's pushing 70.
Their road to success will always go through MTSU, and the league's most established coaches.
nnn
Last week, there were three strange plays I had never seen in a college game. Two came in Saturday's contest and came shortly after the Blue Raiders took their 39-13 lead.
MU's Terrence Thompson had two free throws to put an end to MTSU's 28-5 run. He sank the first but missed the first version of the second shot.
As the Herd often does, it did not have anybody lined up at the lane. The other four players were on the opposite end, ready to defend.
Still, at least one of the Blue Raiders jumped into the lane too soon. Given another chance after the lane violation, Thompson hit that second free throw.
A few possessions later, Stevie Browning missed a jumper, the Raiders rebounded and decided to walk the ball upcourt. Slowly walk the ball up.
So slowly that official Zelton Steed blew his whistle and halted the dribbler, who seemed a bit puzzled. Steed pointed to the 30-second clock, which by now read 20 - a 10-second violation, as unforced a turnover as one can imagine.
Two nights earlier, Marshall suffered a turnover I had never seen in college, but it wasn't unforced. The Herd had the ball to start the second half, which begins with a usually routine throw-in.
But Alabama-Birmingham's defense went into full-press mode and surprised Marshall into a five-second call. The game was tied at the moment, so the Blazers could have used the momentum to pull ahead.
That didn't happen and the Herd won easily. With the mood relaxed in the postgame, I couldn't resist needling coach Dan D'Antoni. He was jokingly taking credit for the Herd's opening basket of the game, a Browning dunk off Jon Elmore's alley-oop pass.
So I asked: Will you take "credit" for the first play of the second half?
He replied, tongue in cheek: "Now see, there's fake media, see? I can't even remember what happened - obviously, it wasn't good."
He told a relevant story about his playing days, a yarn too long to repeat here, and finished, "You never point out, you always point back. You're right, I screwed that up - you daggone media type."
There wouldn't be such an exchange at a Bob Knight postgame, that's for sure.
Contact Doug Smock at 304-348-5130 or dougsmock@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @dougsmock and read his blog at http://blogs.wvgazettemail.com/dougsmock/.