Patrick Reusse: Between the quotes

"I would never leave [Louisville] to go to another college. ... I had eight years in Camelot. It’s the Roman Empire of college basketball." -- Rick Pitino, both insisting he will stay at Louisville and recalling his eight seasons at Kentucky

Ticket sales or loyalty

The Timberwolves are working on season-ticket and suite renewals for the 2007-08 season. The early results are horrendous. A frequent response has been: "I'm not going to commit until I find out if Kevin McHale is going to remain the basketball boss."

His status has become such a hot-button issue that a number of the team's ticketholders were invited to a gathering in which McHale opened himself up to any questions the audience wanted to ask.

McHale's theme was familiar: He doesn't want to leave with the team in subpar condition.

Unfortunately for the Wolves, it's already clear that -- if McHale stays -- season-ticket and suite sales will continue to plummet.

A month ago, owner Glen Taylor sounded as if he was ready to convince McHale to resign, with the triumvirate of Fred Hoiberg, Rob Babcock and Jim Stack sharing power in the basketball operation.

Now, sources in the organization say that Taylor is wavering. The owner could wait a few weeks after the season and see how bad things are with ticket sales before making a McHale decision.

Long recovery for Dee

Mike Dee was John Anderson's pitching coach with the Gophers for 11 seasons (1988-98). In July 1998, he became the head coach at Illinois-Chicago.

The Flames were down-and-out then, but they have become a Horizon League contender, with two NCAA tournament appearances in the past three seasons. They play in a 1,000-seat ballpark -- Les Miller Field -- on the edge of downtown Chicago.

"You look out to center field and feel like you can reach out and touch the John Hancock Building," Dee said.

Last November, the Flames were working out in an indoor facility. A bat flew from the hands of a player and smashed into Dee's face. "I was 25 feet away and paying no attention," he said.

The bat struck Dee on the left side of his face. He suffered a blowout fracture from above his eye, through his cheekbone to his jaw.

"A blowout fracture means the bones are gone -- splintered," he said. "The doctors' primary concern right away was that shards of bone had penetrated my skull. The doctors also thought there was a chance I would lose the eye.

"I was fortunate. The UIC hospital has some of the best eye surgeons anywhere. I have a little loss of vision and some loss of function in the eyelid. Overall, my eye came out of it very well."

The rest of his face did not. Dee underwent reconstructive surgery. There are 11 titanium plates permanently placed in his face.

"I could give a [Titleist] Pro V a pretty good belt with my face," he said.

Dee has so much metal in him that when it's cold the titanium cools and his body temperature goes down.

"I'm coaching again ... doing OK," he said. "What gets to me is I've had a cold for six weeks. I can't remember what it's like not to feel sick."

Give Margaret the credit

Ellsworth, enrollment 71 in the top four grades, has played in the state Class 1A boys' basketball title game three times since 2003. The Panthers won it this time, 74-73 on Aaron Van Der Stoep's late (and 10th) three-pointer.

Clayton Schilling is the father of Curt, a junior star on the hamlet's first tournament team in '03, and of Cody, a junior star this season.

"People ask me when this started, and I say it was a game against Mountain Lake when Curt was an eighth-grader," Clayton said. "We were losing 26-2, and Margaret Larson, who's a cook at the school and has kept the scorebook forever, said to coach [Ken] Kvaale, 'I think your 'B' squad could do better than this.'

"So, he put in the freshmen and Curt, and we came back to win that game."

Kvaale flip-flopped jobs with Markus Okeson, his JV coach, after the 2005 season. The Panthers lost to Rushford-Peterson in the '06 final, before winning this title.

North Dakota State was the biggest program pursuing the 6-6 Schilling before the tournament. There are higher-profile D-I schools now interested, perhaps including Colorado State, where North Dakota State's Tim Miles was hired last week.

Van Der Stoep, a senior, was leaning toward Northwestern, an NAIA school in Orange City, Iowa (where Curt Schilling has a season remaining). He made 21 three-pointers in the tournament and now has area D-II schools interested.

Schilling and Van Der Stoep will be out of circulation for the next 10 days, on a trip to Puerto Rico with Ellsworth High's Spanish Club.

BOMBAST BY BTQ

The Twins might be forced to start the season with 12 pitchers and a four-player bench. It appears they are going to give one of these precious spots to infielder Luis Rodriguez, who spent the entire 2006 season on the roster, scored 11 runs, drove in six, batted .235 and didn't steal a base.

The Twins won 96 games last season. Rodriguez drove in the winning run against Kansas City on Sept. 26. Basically, that was it as far as making a memorable contribution to a Twins roster.

Can the Twins really afford to use 25 percent of their bench on a player who was significantly involved in 1.04 percent of their victories?

"Who would ever think that would happen to Winona State? A team that has fought through so many great victories and represented Division II so well." -- Barton coach Ron Lievense, after his team’s amazing comeback ended Winona State’s 57-game streak in the national title game