#Abilene Christian ‘enjoying the journey’ after stunning March Madness upset

These kids today, man. Joe Golding has been after them all year: Get off your cell. Live a little. Focus on taking mental pictures to sustain your memories, don’t worry about capturing them with a click of the iPhone.

“Enjoy the journey,” the coach of the Abilene Christian Widcats tells his players. “Take a look around.”

Yeah. Sure. Good luck getting that one across on the night the Wildcats arrived as a Division I basketball program, Saturday night in Indianapolis, the night the Wildcats from West Texas knocked off the big, bad Texas Longhorns, 53-52.

You couldn’t keep American doughboys on the farm after they’d seen Gay Paree back in the day. And you’re not going to keep 19-, 20-, and 21-year-old kids off their phones when they’ve just experienced the greatest athletic moments of their lives.

“It was like 5:15 in the morning,” Golding said. “And I had to tell ’em: Get off your phone! Go to sleep! We want them to have fun. We want them to enjoy everything about the NCAA Tournament. But we still have business to tend to.”

That business continues Monday with a most unexpected competitor for a Cinderella slipper, UCLA. The Bruins may have 11 championship banners hanging in the rafters in Pauley Pavilion back home in Westwood, Calif., but this version of the Bruins is an 11 seed that had to survive a play-in gauntlet with Michigan State and then knocked off No. 6 BYU on Saturday, and probably didn’t figure to need their home white uniforms at all in this tournament.

But they’ll wear them Monday against ACU, the 14 seed in the East. So right away the Wildcats know that business awaits, and so it pleased Golding that everyone was early for breakfast Sunday morning, despite burning the midnight oil.

“Hey, I had about 800 texts, but I didn’t respond to any of them,” he said. “I have to keep my focus on UCLA, and so do the kids. We owe that much to each other.”

Golding isn’t above enjoying himself, though. He was talking about Reggie Miller, his tough guard, who had seven points and seven rebounds against Texas and how “he’s not going to win any contests just stepping off the bus.”

Then someone pointed out the irony of having a player named Reggie Miller playing a big game in Indiana — and against UCLA, that other Reggie Miller’s college team no less — and Golding laughed.

“Maybe we can get him to shoot like the other Reggie Miller,” he said of his own Miller, who was 0-for-4 from 3 against the Longhorns. “We could use that.”

They could probably use a few other things to combat UCLA’s terrific trio of Johnny Juzang, Jules Bernard and Jaime Jaquez Jr., but they’ll take their chances. They already knocked off Texas, the biggest dog in the Lone Star State. What’s 11 dusty old championship banners compared to that?