How a McNeese manager became a centerpiece in its March moment - ESPN

Editor's note: This article was originally published on March 19 ahead of McNeese's first-round NCAA tournament matchup against Clemson. It was updated on March 20 to reflect the Cowboys' upset victory.

From their coach with the second-best winning percentage in the sport over the past two years to their 21-1 record against conference foes, the McNeese Cowboys aren't your average mid-major Cinderella hopeful.

To find the face of the team, look no further than who leads it out of the locker room before games.

It isn't dynamic guard Javohn Garcia, who earlier this month earned Southland Conference Player of the Year honors. Nor is it shot-blocking forward Christian Shumate, who recently was named conference Defensive Player of the Year. A reasonable guess might be Will Wade, the resurgent coach who has gone from federal wiretaps and a firing at LSU to a 49-8 record in two years with his new team.

But it's not him either.

Rather, the face of the Cowboys is a 5-foot-7, bespectacled, boom box-toting team manager.

IT ALL STARTED with a routine home game for the Cowboys against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in late February. Like Amir Khan has done for every game since joining the team's manager staff, he hoisted a boom box and led McNeese down the Legacy Center's locker room tunnel. The opening bars of Lud Foe's «In & Out,» the chosen soundtrack for that night's walkout, began to play.

Then something new happened. Khan realized he had the lyrics down pat and instinctively started rapping along. Word for word, bar for bar.

«It's usually a song that I don't know,» Khan told ESPN. «This time, it was a little different because I knew the song. [The players] didn't know that.»

It showed in their reaction. Slowly but surely the players