The Lone Star State used to feel like the Lone Sport State. That’s changing for college basketball.

AUSTIN — He has amassed a memory bank so extravagant that the stories seem to overflow as he tells them by phone while riding westbound on Interstate 10 through the reticent parts of Louisiana. He tells of the vivid Abe Lemons, the vivid Al McGuire, the vivid Red Auerbach in a convertible with a clogged ashtray and cigar smoke so thick that one might cough decades later just from listening. He tells of moving from Rhode Island to Texas in April 1988 for a weird pursuit coaching Longhorns at — get this — basketball.