Saved by the Dickey

Houston avoids disaster by hiring James Dickey over Billy Gillispie as newbasketball coach

Now that former Texas Tech coach James Dickey is set to be hired as the University of Houston's new basketball coach, there's one thing that can said about athletic director Mack Rhoades' decision.

At least it wasn't Billy Gillispie.

By turning away from Gillispie — by turning up his nose at the nearly-unhirable Gillispie's ridiculous demands — Rhoades saved the university from years of misery. Now, Rhoades may have still doomed the Cougars to many more years of mediocrity (Dickey hasn't coached a team to the NCAA Tournament in 14 years and he hasn't been a head coach period since 2001). It's funny, but in many ways Dickey's profile looks like Tom Penders' — the coach that Rhoades was so eager to push out the door.

The 55-year-old Dickey is a lifer like the 64-year-old Penders. Like Penders, his best coaching days are long behind him. The big difference is that Penders is a much more interesting, uncontrollable guy than Dickey.

But again, at least Dickey's not Gillispie.

It's not just that Gillispie way overplayed his hand in this coaching search, arrogantly giving out signals that the UH job might be beneath him. Sure, that was offensive enough — especially considering that no AD with a brain is going to put Gillispie on his short list.

But forget how Gillispie handled himself in the search, it's how he handles himself in life that's the crushing knock. This is a guy who managed to turn almost everyone in the basketball-mad state of Kentucky against him. Gillispie treated Wildcat fans — arguably the best fans in the country, somewhat annoying Ashley Judd chearleading aside — with an arrogant, near total disdain. How do you think he would have reacted to the reality of a near empty Hofheinz Pavilion game after game?

When Gillispie was fired at Kentucky after just two seasons, there wasn't any of the usual try-to-paint-a-pretty-picture effort from his bosses. Kentucky officials came out and blasted Gillispie publicly and made sure the world knew that his dismissal had little to do with on-court matters. Then, Billy really lost it.

He picked up his third DUI, sued the school and got into the kind of public war of words that one usually only sees on an episode of Jersey Shore. This power-hungry lunatic is the coach you wanted at a desperate program where he would have felt even more free to bully everyone around?

Houston hiring Billy Gillispie would have been similar to Seton Hall's decision to bring in Bobby Gonzalez (who had more red flags sticking out him than a bull in a Spanish coliseum) a few years ago. Gonzalez was recently fired after one of his players was arrested for holding up eight people at gunpoint. And that was just the latest incident in Gonzalez's short Seton Hall tenure. (Gonzalez's former athletic director at Manhattan also absolutely eviscerated him in a New York Times story before he was fired. And a former secretary compared Gonzalez to the worst pricks she'd worked for on Wall Street.)

Did you really want that type of questionable character at UH? Gillispie appears to be cut from the same type of intimidating, insecure, bullying cloth as Gonzalez.

Sure, the Dickey hire is about as exciting as a dinner date at McDonald's.

About the best thing that can be said about Dickey is that he'll probably actually attend a few Houston area high school games — unlike Penders. Dickey doesn't exactly bring a spotless record of integrity to the Hof either. After his 1996 team at Texas Tech went 30-2, losing in the Sweet 16, it was discovered that the Red Raiders used two academically ineligible players the following season. Dickey wasn't personally sanctioned, but the NCAA took away nine scholarships from Tech's basketball program over the next four years, dooming his tenure.

Dickey's also been trying to get back into head coaching for almost a decade — with no takers. Rhoades was the only AD in the country offering him this unexpected lifeline.

But when you're cursing this Dickey move, just remember: It could have been worse.

Much worse. Billy Ball worse.

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Movie Review

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya face pre-marriage jitters in The Drama

Photo courtesy of A24

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya in The Drama.

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya will be seen together a lot at the movies in 2026, with mega-films like The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three coming out later in the year. But fans can get a much more intimate look at the two stars in a film that offers a unique take on relationship struggles, The Drama.

Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) are a New York couple who are engaged to be married. After a quick-but-effective montage of their courtship, the story joins them as they are just days away from their wedding. As they get all the details like music, flowers, and food finalized, a visit to the caterer with married friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie) proves fateful.

A few too many drinks leads to each member of the group deciding to divulge the worst thing they’ve ever done. While each story is slightly shocking, Emma’s takes the cake, so much so that Charlie starts to question their relationship. As they get closer to the wedding date, Charlie finds it increasingly difficult to get beyond Emma’s revelation, with each real or imagined conversation threatening to derail their previously tight bond.

Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, the film is provocative, funny, and cringey as it tries to get to the center of human dynamics. Charlie, Rachel, and Mike have starkly different reactions to Emma’s story, and the way those play out over the course of the film provides, well, the drama. The harder Charlie tries to justify Emma’s past, the more his underlying feelings start to eat at him, causing friction not just between him and Emma, but in other parts of his life, as well.

Strangely, especially for a character played by Zendaya, Emma recedes more than expected. Her explanations for her previous actions are timid at best, and she mostly seems to be waiting for Charlie to forgive her instead of questioning why she needs forgiveness. Borgli favors the male side of the equation, and in so doing he doesn’t dig as deep into the root of the issue as he could have.

Still, the downward spiral at the center of the story has a propulsive nature to it, and each successive step proves to be both hard to watch and impossible to turn away from. It also helps that Borgli manages the tone well, keeping interactions between characters relatively light so that the film doesn’t turn into one like Marriage Story.

Pattinson, who gets to use his own British accent for once, put on an interesting performance that is much better than his last two roles in Mickey 17 and Die My Love. He has good chemistry with Zendaya, who manages to shine despite being laden with a role that doesn’t play entirely to her strengths. Haim and Athie do good work in small roles, while Hailey Grace and Hannah Gross make an impact in brief appearances.

The situation in which Emma and Charlie find themselves in The Drama is not one to be wished on anyone, but it’s presented well by Borgli, keeping tensions high for the bulk of the film. Despite the two main characters not given completely equal footing, the story finds a way to get to a satisfactory ending.

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The Drama opens in theaters on April 3.

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