Fang Mitchell traveled the highway of life as if it were a demolition derby. A trail of players collided with the Coppin State College men's basketball coach, and the sport's establishment steered clear of him.

Then Fang married Yvonne, and she became his cushion as he tried bumper cars. People get jostled, but everyone stays in the game.

"I'm truth and justice," Mitchell said. "She was mercy and grace. I'm a strong believer that you need balance in your life, and that's what she gave me."

Equilibrium has been hard to achieve in Fang's toughest year. Mitchell has reached great heights in his 16 years at the West Baltimore school - defeating the University of Maryland, posting 11 consecutive winning seasons, making three National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament appearances, scoring an NCAA victory as a 15th seed. But this past season, while his team spun out of control and a 17-game losing streak gained steam in January, he confronted a weightier loss.

As if trying to revive the most accomplished program in Baltimore on three veterans and a shoestring budget isn't arduous enough, Mitchell does so as a widower.

It has been 11 months since Fang locked his keys in his office and called his wife of 10 years to come get him. He wanted to stop around the corner, at the Heaven's Gate Eatery. She didn't feel well and begged off, so they headed home. Within hours, Yvonne was hospitalized with chest pains and suffered an aneurysm. She lapsed into a coma and died the next day at age 56.

"Against All Odds" is a mantra for Ron "Fang" Mitchell, who turned his rough upbringing and a small historically black college into a success story. Fang prayed and planned that his fairy tale would include a happy ending for him and Yvonne, but the line there wasn't in his favor, either.

They met at Gloucester County College in New Jersey, where he was the coach and she worked in financial aid. When Mitchell moved to Coppin State in 1986, the basketball talent in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey wasn't the only reason he rented on the northeast side of Baltimore. It cut the driving time to Yvonne Washington.

Her marriage to a minister was breaking up, and he took to visiting while she recovered from an auto accident. Fang wasn't ready for a third marriage - "I'm not the easiest person to live with," he said - but the Interstate 95 romance grew, and they wed in August 1991. When Yvonne took a job at what was then Western Maryland College, they settled in Reisterstown. It was farther from his recruiting trail, but then he always went great distances for her.

Mitchell became Coppin State's athletic director in 1996, in part because the added income would put her in a better situation should something happen to him. She suffered from lupus and survived a risky operation years ago, so when she took ill in January, her peril was immediately understood. Before Yvonne lost consciousness, Fang reminded her of how complete she made him feel.

The yin and yang extended to their names. Hers flowed softly. He got his in high school, when his barking speech pattern resembled the roar of a beast on a children's television show. While he sometimes seemed bent on banishing players, her mission was to find a way for kids to afford college, and Coppin State players heard opposing viewpoints from the household.

Fang: "If you're not taking care of business the way you should, on or off the floor, then I'm always going to have a problem with you. That's where the clash is."

Yvonne: "Just call me if Mr. Mitchell gets too hard on you. I'll talk to him."

At the Coppin Center, she sat behind the bench and shushed her husband. At home, she clipped a newspaper photo of him ranting, stuck it on the refrigerator and said, "Mitchell, you're out of control."

There's a scene in It's A Wonderful Life, the classic Christmas film, where George Bailey bawls out one of his kid's teachers on the telephone, and his wife takes it to apologize. That's exactly what Yvonne did when Fang shouted over the line at a reporter a few years ago.

While friends and family left town to find fame and fortune in that movie, the hero stayed and became part of the community's bedrock. Coaches jumping to better jobs is part of college basketball, but Mitchell turned down offers and remained loyal to Dr. Calvin W. Burnett, Coppin State's president since 1970. Fang is part of the college's fabric, and so was Yvonne.

"For the first time, I saw him rely on somebody," said Derek Brown, Coppin State's women's coach, who has worked for or alongside Mitchell since 1978. "You could see how she molded him. He would fight it, but you would see the edges rounded on this big tough guy. When Yvonne died, we were all devastated, but he was the first one to say life goes on. He wasn't ready, but he said it anyway. Dr. Burnett told him to take off the rest of the season, but Fang put on his suit of armor. I still don't know how much it took out of him."

Mitchell, 54, appears fighting trim at a few pounds over 200. At one point in the mid-1990s, he tipped the scales at more than 250, and he should be over 300 by now because, he says, "When I'm stressed, I eat." That tendency, however, clashes with a discipline distilled into another of his credos, one Coppin State players hear in their sleep: "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get it done."

Mitchell grew up on the wrong side of the Delaware River, in Camden, N.J., and on the wrong side of town. There was one safe route out of town for Eastside's black residents. After high school, he worked an assortment of jobs, and one in a bank taught him that he needed to be his own boss.

He played for Gloucester, sold sporting goods, then tried coaching, a curious choice for a man whose clashes with his father sometimes turned violent. The Cheyney State coach loved his style at summer camp and became an adviser and confidant. John Chaney moved on to Temple University, and the meanest match-up zone south of Broad Street took Coppin State where no other Baltimore team ventured.

Thirteen years ago today, his fourth Eagles team beat Maryland at Cole Field House, the Terps' last nonconference loss there. Coppin State is the only Baltimore team ever to play in three NCAA tournaments, and in 1997 the Eagles became just the third 15th seed to win. That conquest of the University of South Carolina was the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference's lone NCAA victory in its first two decades in Division I.

A 1-point loss to Texas in the second round, however, was Coppin State's last NCAA game. As Mitchell spread himself thin with his AD job and Brown took over the women's team, the Eagles' stock dipped, from 21-8 to 15-14, 15-15 and 13-15. Since-gone assistants didn't recruit enough in the Philadelphia region, where Mitchell's reverence for the game was fostered, and last season his record plunged to 6-25.

In Fang's first game after Yvonne's funeral, he was ejected. Since the start of last season, he has dismissed six players from his program, and it's natural to speculate that some might be around if Yvonne were still here. He insists that he has adapted to recruits who have been what he calls "Mama-tized" and that his tight ship is being run with modifications.

"Fang never got the attention of a Bob Knight, but there are similarities," said Phil Booth, a star forward for the Eagles from 1988 to 1990. "You better know what he expects, how he wants things done. When you're 18 or 20 and away from home for the first time, it's tough to grasp why this man would scream at the top of his lungs because you're 2 inches from where you should be.

"What we've learned is that competing in the corporate world is tough, too. He made it possible for us to survive as businessmen, and we all owe him a debt for that. For a lot of us who didn't have a father around, he became the dominant male in our lives. That said, I tease him about how nice he is now."

Coppin State has just three experienced players, and it would be two if Dunbar High School grad Larry Tucker hadn't gotten a degree and been restored the year of eligibility the NCAA denied him as a freshman because of academics. When a veteran takes care of business - pulls himself up by his bootstraps - you relax your ban on cornrows, which Mitchell implemented because "that will be a problem in a job interview."

"When I was a freshman, I was suspended several times," Tucker said. "I was immature. He was this no-nonsense guy, but I think he's less hard on the freshmen than he used to be."

Patience is an imperative when your eight-man rotation includes four freshmen, and only one nonconference opponent has had the bravado to visit your gym in the past three seasons. Coppin State got its first victory Saturday at Morgan State University but returns to its normal fall fund-raising tour in two days at No. 6 Oklahoma.

The 1-5 Eagles have displayed glimpses of the toughness Mitchell demands. The Monday before Thanksgiving, a knee injury sidelined 7-footer Henry Colter at Ohio State University in Columbus. The Eagles had nine in uniform, but only because two managers suited up. Darron Bradley, one of six fresh faces from Philadelphia, put Coppin State on top inside four minutes, before the Buckeyes won by 7.

Two Eagles played with the flu. Kelvin Green, a 6-5 rookie mending from foot surgery, also picked up the bug and was hospitalized for a few hours. As the rest of his team returned to Baltimore, Mitchell settled into a waiting room and pondered a performance that made him proud. More excited after a game than he had been in years, Mitchell began to punch the speed dial on his cell phone to resume a road ritual but then stopped.

"I caught myself," he said. "I was going to call home and talk about how great the kids played, but then I remembered Yvonne wasn't there anymore."