'where You Gonna Be Next Year, Larry?'

Six mornings a week, at 8:45, the silver bells jingle. The door to the Carol Lee doughnut shop is opening, and the 44-year-old grandson of the baker for the czar of Russia walks in.

He knows as well as anyone in Lawrence, Kans. that the strawberry butterflies and the blueberry fritters at Muncher's Bakery are better than anything behind the glass counter at Carol Lee. And yet, there's Larry Brown walking past the Kansas basketball schedule and the lost-cat advertisement thumbtacked to the Carol Lee bulletin board, looking at the pictures of the counter girl's new baby taped to the wall, getting a grin from the baby's grandma, who bakes the doughnuts each dawn, and trading "Mornin's" with the man in overalls refilling his coffee cup for a dime. The regulars look up and shout, "Hey, Coach Brown, great game last night!" and Larry kind of tucks his head into his shoulders and says "Thanks," real soft. A Kansas student claps him on the back and blurts, "We'll beat Oklahoma this week, won't we, Coach?" and Larry grins, knocks on wood—the counter—and says, "I don't know, we'll have to play together...."

Grandma picks him out a half dozen, and Larry asks her to give his best to her daughter and the baby. He walks out to a chorus of "See ya, Coach!" and the bells jingle as the door closes behind him.

Sometimes his wife, Barbara, will smile and ask why Larry doesn't go to Muncher's, even though deep down she knows the answer.

"Ah, I don't know," he'll say. "Carol Lee is a family place."

And when you've been looking for that through one divorce and 12 jobs and 16 towns and 32 apartments, dormitories or houses, you take it in any doughnut shop that has it.

With 25 seconds left and Kansas up by one point in last year's Big Eight Conference playoff final against Oklahoma, Larry Brown turned to his three assistants and said two words.

"The Power."

With that, the four men reached down and squeezed their left testicles, and the Jayhawks squeezed their one-point lead. Of all his superstitions, this was the ultimate bid to coax the cosmos by a man who still fears he must win tonight in order to get six glazed and a grin from Grandma at Carol Lee tomorrow.

Kansas won 79-78, and Brown had done it again. He had turned a 13-16 slow-footed collection of individuals into a 21-9 NCAA tournament team and conference playoff champion, boosted ticket sales by more than 2,200 per home game and completed his 14th consecutive season of coaching without ever having a losing record.