It’s game night for the Baker University men’s basketball team, and senior guard D.J. Watkins, who left the team for a stretch to visit friends in Panama during the Christmas break, is on his way into the locker room.

“I had a Bikram yoga class today,” Watkins said. “Trying to balance my body.”

That would be the type of yoga done in a room well over 100 degrees and with humidity close to 40 percent, a draining experience, certainly not the normal pregame preparation routine for a college basketball player.

“If you’re coming here and it’s Basketball 1, Basketball 2, and Basketball 3, and then you worry about your classes, I don’t think that’s going to work,” said Baker assistant coach Brandon Mellen, who earns $100 a season, before taxes, to supplement his teaching salary from South Junior High. “If you want the opportunity and freedom to experience life and not just be a 24/7 basketball factory, it can work.”

Rick Weaver, in his 22nd season as the head coach at the NAIA school that plays in the Heart of America Athletic Conference, sets that tone. You won’t find him wearing a T-shirt that reads: “Basketball is life.”

Watkins is one of three players from Lawrence on this year’s team, joined by junior Taylor Parker, former quarterback of the Lawrence High football team and current quarterback of the Baker basketball team, and sophomore Dain Dillingham, as athletic a player as there is on the team.

For those three players and the rest of the Wildcats, once the game starts, basketball becomes life. Once it ends, it becomes part of life. In the process, the players provide entertainment to decent-size crowds that generate plenty of noise.

Not all the entertainment at a Baker basketball game takes place on the floor. The smart spectators find a seat close enough to the home bench to witness the game within the game, Weaver’s frequent interplay with the three-man officiating crew.

The game has just tipped off and Weaver asks the closest referee to him, the veteran of the crew: “Awake tonight, or am I going to have to yell at you?”

“You can put it on cruise control tonight,” the ref answers. “You’re in good hands.”

A high energy sort, Weaver doesn’t have a cruise control. When a player from Missouri Valley College drives hard to the hoop and is sent to the line for a pair of free throws, Weaver barks, “Out-of-control move. Out-of-control move.”

A little later in the first half of what would be a 78-75 victory for Baker, Weaver engages the youngest ref on the crew in a conversation about the foul he just whistled.

“That was a bad shot,” Weaver said. “Don’t bail out a guy for a bad shot.”

“Do you honestly think he didn’t foul him?” the ref asked.

“Well, it didn’t have anything to do with the shot,” Weaver said. “That was a bad shot and you don’t want to reward a guy for taking a bad shot.”

A Missouri Valley College player makes a lazy dribble, triggering more lip from Weaver: “Yo, wasn’t that a carry? Yo, yo, yo, that wasn’t a carry?”

When Baker senior forward Greg Allen, a terrific pure shooter who doesn’t count leaping ability among his strengths, is whistled for fouling the shooter, Weaver asks the ref: “Did he get him with the body?”

“He got him on the elbow,” the ref said putting his left hand on his right elbow.

“That’s a physical impossibility,” Weaver protests. “He doesn’t jump high enough to get him on the elbow.”

The ref cracks up and goes about his job.

Despite all the jawing, Weaver has received just one technical this season.

“Different officials have different levels of patience,” Weaver explained from his desk inside the Collins Center. “There are some you can talk to, some you can’t talk to. They’re not listening anyway. Sometimes, a coach will do a lot of griping because it kind of helps you let off more steam than anything else. It’s not like you’re going to say something great and make them change their minds.”

Weaver has his fun with referees, but it would be naive to believe he is not also trying to gain a competitive edge. If he didn’t care about winning, Weaver and his staff wouldn’t be working every night. For example, last week, each member of the coaching staff either had a game of their own to coach or was watching a high school or junior college game to evaluate potential recruits.

“A lot of people think because he’s laughing and messing around he’s not competitive,” said top assistant Terry Zerr, formerly Eudora High’s head coach. “He’s as competitive as anyone else. He just has a good sense of humor with it.”

Weaver keeps Baker backers abreast of the team’s activities by writing lengthy updates called “Roundball Newsletter” and mailing them out to subscribers. He also uses the forum to comment on life in general. In his holiday edition, he bemoaned his wife’s love of the Christmas season, writing, “If she had her way, I would be wearing a Christmas sweater with embroidered reindeer on the front from Halloween to Jan. 1.”

In the locker room after the game, Weaver’s competitive fire and humor both were on display. He wrote “BAW” on the grease board on which Zerr had gone over the scouting report before the game.

“And we know what BAW stands for, right?” Weaver barked.

The players hollered in unison: “Bad (backside) win!”

Baker will be looking for another one of those at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the Collins Center against William Jewell College.