Badlands Basketball

Jimmy Dowkens, a journeyman basketball coach, has just been given the chance he's waited ten years for: an NCAA Division I head coaching position. That's the good news. The downside is the job happens to be at South Dakota Tech, where the Badlanders are historically the worst program in college basketball's topflight. And if that wasn't enough his marriage is on the rocks, he's feeling increasingly alienated from his 8-year-old son, and after a blowout in his home opener, he discovers...
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Jimmy Dowkens, a journeyman basketball coach, has just been given the chance he's waited ten years for: an NCAA Division I head coaching position. That's the good news. The downside is the job happens to be at South Dakota Tech, where the Badlanders are historically the worst program in college basketball's topflight. And if that wasn't enough his marriage is on the rocks, he's feeling increasingly alienated from his 8-year-old son, and after a blowout in his home opener, he discovers the local sports reporter is pursuing a vendetta against him.It's not all gloomy, though. Coach Dowkens does have Anthony King, a player with star-quality potential. The team also includes freshman point guard Danny Ross, a dribbling and passing wizard, who can't shoot. And the biggest ace up his sleeve is that while visiting his wife and son in Minneapolis, Dowkens befriends Hadrian Woods, the top-rated high school recruit in the country.Despite winning only one of their first four games, the Badlanders show improvement. It's the off-court issues with which Dowkens struggles most, though. His wife finally hits him with divorce papers and his involvement in a past scandal continues to haunt him. Plus his local sports reporting nemesis informs him that his own athletic department views him as merely a temporary replacement for his predecessor, who resigned unexpectedly after suffering a nervous breakdown. If Dowkens wants to keep his job, he needs to succeed at a place no other coach has--and he needs to do it quickly.Things get even more complicated when he starts dating a hip, young English professor, his assistant coach suffers a heart attack during practice, and his son, Jason, arrives to visit for the holidays. Balancing his coaching duties and audacious plan to bring the top recruiting class in the country to the little-known basketball school with the wave of uncertainty surrounding his personal life and job security, Dowkens takes his Badlanders to play the eighth-ranked UNLV Runnin' Rebels on national TV in a game that seems certain to define his career.