Will he, or won’t he?

Retire after the Final Four, that is.

Even 68-year-old Eddie Sutton’s hairdresser doesn’t know for sure.

“I think coach will stay a few more years,” said Richard Danel, who first cut the Oklahoma State basketball coach’s hair 46 years ago when Sutton was still a student at the school. “But it could be a few weeks.”

Sutton has been a regular at Danel’s Varsity Barber Shop just off the Oklahoma State campus in Stillwater, Okla., since returning to the school in 1990.

Over the years, Danel has been the athletic department’s unofficial barber. He mowed football coach Bum Phillip’s signature crew cut and shaped Jimmy Johnson’s famous coif. But Sutton’s receding curls is Danel’s signature cut these days.

Like others coaches before him, Sutton has confided in Danel.

“I don’t like to talk about our private discussions,” Danel said under further questioning, “but coach told me he’d stay as long as he enjoys it.”

Certainly, this has been an enjoyable season for Sutton and Oklahoma State fans. The Cowboys, who were picked to finish in the middle of the Big 12 Conference pack, are 31-3 as they move into today’s national semifinal game against Georgia Tech (27-9).

Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton watches the Cowboys practice for the Final Four. Sutton, who hung out Friday at the Alamodome in San Antonio, will lead his squad against Georgia Tech in the national semifinals at 5:07 p.m. today. The venerable coach is seeking his first NCAA title.

He’ll be back

Sutton has said publicly he planned to return next season. He hasn’t said, however, just how many more years he would stick around.

“I probably won’t have that many more opportunities to get there again, because I’m not going to coach that long,” Sutton said in the wake of the Cowboys’ 64-62 victory March 27 over St. Joseph’s to earn the Final Four berth.

Sutton has a bad hip that may have to be replaced and a wife who wants him to slow down. He often has been quoted saying he wants to spend more time with his grandchildren. During halftime of the St. Joe’s game, he blew kisses to his grandchildren in the stands.

Ordinarily, Sutton’s age and status as coach would be a non-factor in the Final Four’s basket of stories. But circumstances make it a sidelight. Waiting in the wings to replace Eddie Sutton, is son, Sean, 35, the associate head coach.

How enjoyable would it be for a father to pass on to a son something they’ve built together? Sean is charge of the offense and scouting. He has been an integral part of his father’s success.

“Anybody around the Oklahoma State program knows how much Sean does,” said Doug Gottlieb, who played point guard for the Cowboys from 1997-2000 and now serves as an ESPN college basketball analyst. “He has been doing a great deal of coaching already. It would be an easy transition.”

Gottlieb said he had played “what if” with Sean Sutton as recently as early this week.

“I think they feel if they don’t win the title this season, Eddie can come back or Sean could step in,” Gottlieb said. “It could go either way.”

After winning last week’s regional in New Jersey, Sean Sutton said his father wouldn’t be influenced by the ultimate outcomes of the season.

“He’s reached a point where he’s at peace with the way his career went,” Sean Sutton said. “He got to the point when he thought, ‘It’s OK. I may not win a national championship.”‘

But what better way for Eddie Sutton to go out than with a trip to the Final Four, a possible national championship and leaving his son a team loaded with four returning starters?

Sean Sutton could be off and running next season.

Bill Self, who played and coached at Oklahoma State for 11 seasons before successful coaching stops at Oral Roberts, Tulsa and Illinois had been Sean Sutton’s No. 1 rival to replace Sutton. But he effectively removed himself as a candidate when he replaced Roy Williams at Kansas University after last season.

More milestones

The most famous father-son give-and-go has been at DePaul, where Ray Meyer handed the program off to his Joey after the 1983-84 season. Joey remained at DePaul for 13 seasons.

Also, should the Cowboys win their next two games, Eddie Sutton would be the oldest coach to win the NCAA Tournament. He could then follow John Wooden (1975), Al McGuire (1977) and Larry Brown (1988) and become the fourth coach to end a college career with a victory in the national-championship game.

“Winning a national championship would be a great way to end a career,” said ESPN college basketball analyst Dick Vitale, who believes Sutton will return for another season regardless of how his team finishes the 2004 season. “It’s a very special way to finish up.”

Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp was 65 when his Wildcats lost the national championship to Texas Western in 1966. It was his last Final Four. He coached six more seasons and never returned. North Carolina’s Dean Smith was 62 when his Tar Heels won the national title in 1993. His teams went to the NCAA Tournament each of the next four years but did not win.

Should Oklahoma State lose one of the next two games, the returning starters would give Eddie Sutton a potent nucleus to make another Final Four run in his 35th season as a Division One coach and another shot at winning his first national championship.

“It’s so hard for people to choose a perfect ending,” said CBS’ Jim Nantz, the play-by-play voice of the Final Four. “A championship on Monday night might be the perfect segue.”

It would also end Eddie Sutton’s dubious distinction of winning more games in the NCAA Tournament (37) than any other active coach without a championship.

This is Sutton’s second Final Four appearance at Oklahoma State and the school’s sixth overall. His Cowboys lost to UCLA in a semifinal of the 1995 Final Four. Sutton took Arkansas to the Final Four in 1978. That team also lost in the semifinals.

Back in Stillwater, Danel, the barber, wasn’t interested in such ancient history on Thursday morning. He didn’t have much time for chitchat. He was in a relative hurry He was closing his shop at 11 a.m. and heading to San Antonio for the Final Four.

He was optimistically planning to re-open for business Wednesday morning, two days after the national-championship game

“Who knows what can happen,” he said. “Everything could be different by then,”