When I walked in a few minutes late for Loyola's game against Cornell, it took me no time to spot Cornell head coach Steve Donohue.

Donohue was exactly where I expected to find him, in front of his bench shouting instructions at his players. On the other side of the court, Loyola coach Jimmy Patsos was nowhere to be found.

It was like a game of hide and seek.

Come out, come out wherever you are, Jimmy.

I couldn't find him anywhere.

Finally, I spotted the ex-Maryland assistant.

Patsos was sitting down the far end of his bench, basically all by himself, for the majority of the game.

Patsos didn't call timeouts and rarely went into his own huddle. Instead, he watched his assistant coaches run the team while he interacted with fans throughout the loss - even at one point walking into the crowd to talk to his athletic director, Joe Boylan.

Patsos did teach his players down the end of the bench when they came out of the game.

I had never seen anything like it before.

``We thought he was a manager," said one observer.

Patsos said he was instructed by the refs, after picking up the technical foul from John Gaffney, that "if he said one more word, he'd be thrown out of the game."

``I didn't even swear at them," Patsos said.

``I do what I'm told," he added. ``I didn't want to embarrass the school."

Maybe not, but he embarrassed himself on Tuesday night. I thought it was unusual to watch Arizona associate head coach Mike Dunlap a few weeks back sit down the end of the bench.

But this took it to a new level. Patsos is a head coach.

``He didn't want to get another technical," said Loyola starting point guard Brian Rudolph. "He felt it was the best thing for the team."

So he went down the end of the bench, glared at the referees and even yelled at MAAC conference commissioner Rich Ensor a few times from across the court.

After the loss, Patsos tried to be careful not to criticize the referees, but did say that the $1,200 or whatever the refs received to work the game was a little excessive with what's currently going on in our economy.

He was extremely upset with the fact that he feels as though coaches are unable to communicate with referees in this day and age - an opinion that is almost universally shared by coaches.

``Twelve hundred dollars is a lot of money," he said. "People should look at the system. Maybe it needs to be looked at since 52,000 people just got laid off at Citigroup."