Crisis averted after assistant coach took over for unconscious bus driver
Dubuque women all safe after crash
A quick-thinking coach averted what could have been a terrible bus accident for the University of Dubuque women’s basketball team.
The Division III team from Iowa was driving back from a tournament in Nashville, Tenn., on Sunday morning. About 90 minutes into the trip, first-year assistant coach Justin Smith was jolted from his seat when the bus hit a guard rail on Interstate 24 in Kentucky.
The driver had passed out, with the bus going 70 mph. Smith leapt into action, hitting the brakes and stopping the bus. Apart from the driver, everyone on the bus was OK.
“We’re still a little in shock,” Smith said Monday. “I’m just thankful everyone’s OK. … I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time.”
After stopping the bus, Smith and the other coaches got the bus out of harm’s way. It was still on the highway and could have been hit from behind.
“I’ve been a high school coach and had a lot of late nights on yellow school buses,” he said. “For some reason, always had in the back of my mind, what if the bus driver fell asleep. It’s fight or flight mechanism and 99 percent of the people would have done the exact same thing.”
Emergency personnel arrived. The driver was conscious and taken to Lourdes Hospital in Paducah, Ky.
It was an unnerving day for Dubuque head coach Mark Noll. Later Sunday, he was told about one of his former players when he was an assistant at Wisconsin-Stout. Amanda Geissler died in a plane crash in Costa Rica .
TEXAS TECH: Coach Candi Whitaker has been fired. The Lady Raiders are 6-7 on the season. They started out Big 12 play with a 41-point loss to Oklahoma and a 97-49 defeat to No. 6 Baylor on Sunday.
POLL: One week after seeing its 17-year run in the poll end, Stanford is back in the Top 25. The Cardinal reentered the poll at No. 24 on Monday after beating then-No. 11 UCLA and Southern California. UConn remained the unanimous No. 1 choice. New Mexico (14-1) received seven points in the poll, good for 30th.