JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — It’s Wednesday morning and Joe Golding still has more than 24 hours to decide which boxer shorts he’ll wear when he coaches against Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. It will be no small decision. You see, the only pair of suit pants he owns has a hole in the seat. But first he needs to stop a burglary in progress. The crime is kind of his fault, after all, because he did tell his Abilene Christian players to put their phones down and collect real memories that they could carry for the rest of their lives. So, just following orders, upon arriving in their locker room at Veterans Memorial Arena for their first on-site practice, Golding’s guys started stuffing every item not nailed down into their bags.



Sports drinks, bottles of water and snacks, the kind of items athletes at programs that aren’t in just their second season as full-fledged Division I participants might take for granted. None of that stuff is...