PETE: Thanks for the memories, Drake basketball. It was one heck of a ride

I’ll speak for Drake graduates and Bulldogs basketball fans everywhere:

We’re proud of you, and way you performed each and every game. We didn’t get a chance to know you as well as we knew other Drake men’s teams, but that’s the way of the college basketball world these days, I guess.

We knew you well enough to know you’d hang with Texas Tech in the NCAA Tournament’s Round of 32. We knew you well enough that, when you trailed by seven points with 10 minutes to play – you’d stick with Bennie Ball, which in this case, isn’t jumping into a panic, push-the-pace mode.

You stayed with the same deliberate style that enabled you to win 31 games. You hung with what coach Ben McCollum has been teaching to you for all those years – even before you stepped foot on the campus we walked oh so many years ago.

Fans dressed up like your coach, sporting the white shirt and blue tie. The TV cameras couldn’t get enough of those adoring loyalists, their enthusiasm from beginning to the end of Saturday’s 77-64 loss against a very good Red Raiders team.

It’d have been nice if the TNT announcers would have recognized that one of them was Dolph Pulliam, the most popular Bulldog ever and one of the school’s all-time best, but that’s OK. All he did was star in the school’s 1969 Final Four run.

This was about the game. This was about Drake players trying to get a defensive stop – especially when Texas Tech wasn’t missing shots from within the free throw lane. The Red Raiders had a 50-20 advantage in there, so if you’re looking to pinpoint a reason for

The Bulldogs’ fourth loss – well, you can start there.

The guys put up quite a fight, and for that, we’re proud of you.

I don’t know what Bennett Stirtz, Daniel Abreu, Mitch Mascari and the othershave planned for the future, but you’ll gladly be welcomed, should you decide to stick around.

Ditto coach Ben McCollum, who I suspect if you’re placing odds on whether he’ll be back for a second season – the popular opinion would be he’s one-and-gone to Iowa.

"I don't really have much to say about it necessarily, outside of I put everything into these guys and stuff like that,” McCollum said after Saturday’s game.  “I've done it for eight years, and that's what I'll continue to do.

“But as far as the rumors -- I've already taken eight jobs already. So, it is what it is. But it floats around every year and that's what it is. It comes with success. That's what happens with success, and it's just one of those things that's tough. But it is what it is."

If you had major programs waving wads of cash at you – enough to establish financial security for the rest of your life – you’d be gone, too.

If that eventually becomes the case, all we Drake graduates and fans can do is say . . .

Thanks for a great winter.

(Award-winning columnist Randy Peterson can be, and has been, reached at randypete4846@gmail.com or at any Okoboji-area beverage/food establishment between the hours of open and close.)