Speaker 1: Hey, welcome in. I'm Doug Gottlie. This is all ball
Speaker 1: and uh we got a great guest for His name
Speaker 1: is Steve Lapis. He's a good friend of mine, of course,
Speaker 1: the former head coach at Manhattan had Villanova at UMSS
Speaker 1: and UM. In this part, this is part one, we'll
Speaker 1: get to his His life story is really amazing, you know,
Speaker 1: growing up in the Bronx in New York. UM. His
Speaker 1: dad was an immigrant. Wait to hear what his dad
Speaker 1: did when his dad first saw him play basketball, when
Speaker 1: he first moved out of the house, Like all of
Speaker 1: it is like you just you can't fount these these
Speaker 1: things are so good. Um, I gotta do a pod
Speaker 1: for you on actual things going on inside of hoop.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, I think they'll love this. It's
Speaker 1: too good. Steve Lappas works for CBS. He was an
Speaker 1: outstanding coach at Manhattan, led them to twenty five wins
Speaker 1: in their fourth year and then took Villanova. Uh they
Speaker 1: were I we played against that team that that lost
Speaker 1: with Carry Kittles and uh, Chuck Corner Gay and Eric
Speaker 1: Ebers and Alvin Williams. What a great John Cellistan on
Speaker 1: a tremendous team. Well, well we'll David dive into how
Speaker 1: he got the Villanova job all this other stuff without
Speaker 1: further ado. Here's my man lap. So uh laugh. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think everyone knows the end of the coaching and
Speaker 1: into the broadcasting call and n c A tournament games.
Speaker 1: But I'm more fascinated by growing up and what took
Speaker 1: you from there to here. So you grew up where
Speaker 1: in New York? I grew Brandon, Washington Heights, right by
Speaker 1: the drug Washington Bridge, and Upper Manhattan. Okay, so Upper
Speaker 1: man Uper Manhattan? Um, who are the who are the
Speaker 1: players at that time? You're coming out in high school?
Speaker 1: This is where you started kind of throw off all
Speaker 1: the New York City guys. Who are the guys at
Speaker 1: that time? Well, at that time, Tiny Archibald was a
Speaker 1: couple of years older than me, but he was a
Speaker 1: guy that we looked up to. Ron Behagen was a
Speaker 1: guy who played for d with Clinton. He was another guy.
Speaker 1: There was a guy of boys and girls named Ermie
Speaker 1: Douse and some of the you know, obviously Nate Archibald
Speaker 1: became a big time playing Ron Behagen played in the NBA.
Speaker 1: Tom Henderson was another guy who was around and played
Speaker 1: in the NBA for a long time. So those those
Speaker 1: were probably the main guys, you know what I mean
Speaker 1: from the Manhattan Bronx type area. What was the what
Speaker 1: was the name of the court that you grew up playing,
Speaker 1: because everybody had every court had a name. I grew
Speaker 1: up with Dyken Street and Dyken Streets a pretty famous court.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of guys played in the Dykeen
Speaker 1: projects there. Actually kareem obviously older than he grew up
Speaker 1: right in those projects. So we played a lot of
Speaker 1: Dighting Street projects. But you're you're older than Kramer. He's
Speaker 1: older than you, He's older than me. Okay, So did
Speaker 1: you like, did you ever see him play pick up
Speaker 1: when you're a kid? You ever never saw? I did?
Speaker 1: I did see Power Memorial play two years after he
Speaker 1: graduated from there, and they were still very They had
Speaker 1: Searcy len Elmore and Jack Trimble. They were number one
Speaker 1: high school team in the country after Korean There were
Speaker 1: number one when he was there too. So I never
Speaker 1: he's about I'm gonna guess he's probably five or six
Speaker 1: years older than me. So no, would never never cross paths. Okay,
Speaker 1: So again and and forgive me if I'm wrong for
Speaker 1: saying this year in this pod, you're allowed to say
Speaker 1: whatever part of this is. You know, my dad grew
Speaker 1: up in the Bronx and then moving out to the Island.
Speaker 1: His contention always was that New York City is a
Speaker 1: basketball town and the only reason that that it's still
Speaker 1: like a Yankees town or Giants or Rangers is just
Speaker 1: because the basketball hasn't been good, right but this but
Speaker 1: whoever can get it back to where it was when
Speaker 1: Red Red Holtzman was coaching the Knicks like that guy,
Speaker 1: they'll have a ticker tape rate and it will coolly change.
Speaker 1: So but you were that that you were around during
Speaker 1: that era, Oh yeah, absolutely so. So the jutasition of
Speaker 1: now where the Garden is still great, okay, but players
Speaker 1: go outside the city to go to prep schools, you know,
Speaker 1: or go or New York in terms of going to college.
Speaker 1: What was it like back then? Well, then, there's no
Speaker 1: question that New York was the mecca basketball. Now, the
Speaker 1: crazy thing about the Knicks is they've only have two
Speaker 1: titles in the history of the franchise, and they happened
Speaker 1: within four years of each other. So that is kind
Speaker 1: of the crazy. So here you have this job that
Speaker 1: the perception is it's, you know, certainly one of the
Speaker 1: best jobs in the world in basketball. Yet they haven't
Speaker 1: really been able to bring one home. Patrick Ewing got close,
Speaker 1: and pat Riley and Jeff Van Gundy got close. But
Speaker 1: bottom line is we haven't had a championship is nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, which is kind of crazy when you think
Speaker 1: about it. But there's no doubt that it's a basketball time. Now.
Speaker 1: If you ask me now, I haven't grown up there,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say number one Yankees, number two Nicks if
Speaker 1: I had to, if you made me put it in
Speaker 1: or seven they want twenty seven titles. The Yankees are
Speaker 1: the Yankees, and that's that is never go to Jake,
Speaker 1: But I would say the Knicks if they're good. But
Speaker 1: but you don't you don't have and the kids don't
Speaker 1: play as much pick up as they used to. Okay,
Speaker 1: but you don't have stickball in the streets anymore. You
Speaker 1: still do have some you still have a ton of basketball,
Speaker 1: right and it's not like New York is pumping out
Speaker 1: baseball players and that that it's it's a there is
Speaker 1: you know as a basketball town. Okay, So how good
Speaker 1: were you as a player? I was a started in
Speaker 1: high school my senior year, came off the bench on
Speaker 1: the city championship team. My junior year. What what high school?
Speaker 1: Bronx High School of Science. We were in the B division. Okay,
Speaker 1: they have the A division that was the big schools,
Speaker 1: Clinton and those schools, even though we played them in
Speaker 1: those days. We played in the B division, which was
Speaker 1: smaller schools, and we won the B Division championship two
Speaker 1: years in a row. My sophomore year I didn't play
Speaker 1: at all. My junior year I played some is coming
Speaker 1: off the bench. Then my senior year I started. We
Speaker 1: were very good. Probably something doing me starting and then
Speaker 1: uh I went to c C N Y and I
Speaker 1: started for a couple of years Division three player. UH
Speaker 1: average probably seven points and had some assists. No three
Speaker 1: point shooting. That was the one thing I could do
Speaker 1: was shoot from pretty far out in those days. But
Speaker 1: so I was. I was a half pass player and
Speaker 1: loved it. That's all I wanted to do. What what? What?
Speaker 1: What was your parents? What were their occupations? Well, my
Speaker 1: father came from Greece in nineteen twenty seven. He was
Speaker 1: a florist. He had a flower shop in Jamaica Queens
Speaker 1: and you know, and my mother is Greek, but she
Speaker 1: was born here, and that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: they settled in Washington Heights. It was a big Greek neighborhood,
Speaker 1: one of the bigger Greek neighborhoods in the country. It
Speaker 1: was a Greek church there, in Greek school. I went
Speaker 1: to Greek school from when I was kindergarten to eighth grade.
Speaker 1: I still read and write Greek because I learned that's
Speaker 1: when we spoke at home. So, you know, and my parents.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny, Doug, because your parents you want
Speaker 1: to see all your kids gave. My parents did not
Speaker 1: see me play basketball until I was in college. I
Speaker 1: was playing for one was like twelve thirteen years old
Speaker 1: in elementary school and then in high school, and they
Speaker 1: didn't see me play time was in college as opposed
Speaker 1: that now, I've seen my kid play every game he
Speaker 1: ever played, probably or pretty close. So, um, what was
Speaker 1: your dad like when you're you know, you have this
Speaker 1: passion for a sport that he clearly doesn't relate to
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, Like like my like my grandpa was
Speaker 1: an accountant and then he became a car dealer. He
Speaker 1: took over a car dealership, and he thought my dad
Speaker 1: was nuts for for his love for basketball. Like they
Speaker 1: actually had him like tested to see if he was
Speaker 1: if he had something wrong mentally. He's like, no much,
Speaker 1: just love this sport and all it does for people.
Speaker 1: What was what was their reaction to your love for basketball? Well,
Speaker 1: let's understand that he comes here when he's fourteen years old, okay,
Speaker 1: and so he when never was, never went to high school,
Speaker 1: so he didn't understand this idea of you play high school,
Speaker 1: that you play sports in high school. I would go
Speaker 1: play after school in high school. And thankfully my mother everyone,
Speaker 1: I said a Greek bol was born here and had
Speaker 1: brothers who played sports when she was a kid. I
Speaker 1: would tell him, no, the kids here, he said, when
Speaker 1: you get a job after school, what is was he
Speaker 1: go play bass? What is this playing basketball? And my
Speaker 1: mother said, no, no, the kids here they go to
Speaker 1: school and they play sports. This is what they do.
Speaker 1: So anyway, so he understand that. So now I'm like
Speaker 1: twenty years old and I'm trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: I want to do. So I was I made it
Speaker 1: in biology. I wanted to be a doctor when I
Speaker 1: was in college. So what happens. I get a C
Speaker 1: plus in organic chemistry. So now in those days, Doug,
Speaker 1: you couldn't make medical school if you don't have all
Speaker 1: a's in every subject in this country. You'd have to
Speaker 1: like go to Mexico or somewhere else. And I didn't
Speaker 1: really want to do that. So I'm like, now what
Speaker 1: am I gonna do? This is what I've been talking
Speaker 1: about all these years. I started coaching my brother and
Speaker 1: his friends at the Greek Church when I was twenty
Speaker 1: years old, and I, you know, it's pretty cool. I
Speaker 1: liked this. I love not I want. All I wanted
Speaker 1: to do is play, even though it was a half
Speaker 1: as player. I played like eight hours a day in
Speaker 1: the parks whenever we're looking for a game. That's what
Speaker 1: I did. And I'm like, you know, why not try
Speaker 1: to coach and do this? So I remember going to
Speaker 1: my father to make a long story short, and he
Speaker 1: asked me in Greek we used to talk to what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? But how does that sound great?
Speaker 1: What is? What are you gonna do? Is saying saying Greek,
Speaker 1: did that guy in the smith the zois? What are
Speaker 1: you gonna do with your life. And I said, well, Dad,
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you. I want to try and
Speaker 1: coach basketball. And he said why he said, and he
Speaker 1: said in Greek? He said, are you gonna get by
Speaker 1: with a ball? That's what he said to me. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try and do that. Focus ahead, I become
Speaker 1: a high school coach. See your first height? Sell, how
Speaker 1: did you get to high school job? Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: we gotta take this slow. That Well, what happens is
Speaker 1: so now I so you graduated twenty years old. I
Speaker 1: know I wasn't one. I was a junior there trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what I wanted a major and do
Speaker 1: because I couldn't do this bio thing. Okay, it wasn't
Speaker 1: wasn't really worth the way you switch to p I
Speaker 1: switched to education. Okay, so I switched education. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna trying to be a teacher. But now it
Speaker 1: took me the next year. You go out of college
Speaker 1: because I had taken all these other classes in sciences.
Speaker 1: It took me a whole other year to get out.
Speaker 1: So now I'm gonna be a fifth year guy. I'm
Speaker 1: and we're commuting to school. It's different in those days.
Speaker 1: How about this dog course? Fifty two dollars to go
Speaker 1: to C. C and Y. In those days, if you
Speaker 1: were in New York City resident, where where was C.
Speaker 1: C N Y? Right in Harlem? It's right in the
Speaker 1: middle of Harlem. So from from where you live, it
Speaker 1: was a fifteen minute bus ride. You did the bus,
Speaker 1: didn't do the subway? Did the bus the bus? The
Speaker 1: subway was further. The bus dropped you off right in
Speaker 1: the corner that where the campus was. So so Steve
Speaker 1: lap Is years old hopping on the bus. You got
Speaker 1: the post every day, like what was your what was
Speaker 1: what was your day of routine? Got to New York
Speaker 1: Post every day, no doubt, still to this day read
Speaker 1: it every day and just you know, go there, go
Speaker 1: to school. Now my fifth year, obviously I didn't play
Speaker 1: on the team because I was already done with my eligibility.
Speaker 1: So I was in practice, right and I was just
Speaker 1: going to school, taking as many course I could in
Speaker 1: education so I can get get out. Who is your
Speaker 1: who's your high school coach? My high school coach is
Speaker 1: a guy named Norman left Woods, who was a tremendous
Speaker 1: See we were considered I don't want to say it.
Speaker 1: I guess I said we were considered the real smart
Speaker 1: school in New York City, so we weren't supposed to
Speaker 1: have good teams. That this guy was a tremendous coach.
Speaker 1: We would win games forty two, forty forty six, forty four.
Speaker 1: That's how Anyway, he's also one of the founding fathers.
Speaker 1: People don't know this a five star. He was on
Speaker 1: the first five star staff with Garfinkel at Will Klein.
Speaker 1: He was in their first tremendous coach. So I played
Speaker 1: for him in high school. But I'll tell you what, Doug,
Speaker 1: he put the fear of God in me. I was
Speaker 1: so scared of I mean scared to death here I
Speaker 1: what I mean. I think everybody it was a little
Speaker 1: taking it back by him. You know, I grew up
Speaker 1: going to this Greek school. I never really got yelled
Speaker 1: at that much. You know. I was kind of the
Speaker 1: good kidd. Did what I was supposed to do, and
Speaker 1: he scared me to death. So he was. He was
Speaker 1: hard to play for initially, and then you know, it
Speaker 1: got a little better. But but ironically, when I graduate college,
Speaker 1: I don't have a job coaching rethink. I voluned. He
Speaker 1: becomes a Division three head coach, and I becomes volunteer
Speaker 1: assistant at York College, which is in Jamaica, Queens. So
Speaker 1: I did that for a year, just helping him, you know,
Speaker 1: going to practice, trying to recruit a little bit. Whatever.
Speaker 1: What was he What was he like in terms of
Speaker 1: his practice planning, in terms of what you guys worked on,
Speaker 1: because you know, like all of these planted seeds in
Speaker 1: what made you into an outstanding coach? What was he like?
Speaker 1: He was we do the same thing every day. He
Speaker 1: had a system. We ran this like wheel system, and
Speaker 1: that's what we It was kind of it wasn't as
Speaker 1: complicated as Princeton, but it's kind of like those Princeton guys.
Speaker 1: You know, those Prinston guys are like, this is like
Speaker 1: a religion. Running that stuff is a religion, and this
Speaker 1: is what we do and that's it and we're doing it.
Speaker 1: That's how he was with his offense. And it was
Speaker 1: a very patient offense. Passed cut cut, It was the saying,
Speaker 1: and we just did every single day in our sleep.
Speaker 1: We could do it. So his his practices were very
Speaker 1: basic passing drills. You know, it was different in those days,
Speaker 1: you know, based baseball passes just passes. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying there's not a place for it today, But I
Speaker 1: don't know high school coaches dribbling drills. You know, it
Speaker 1: was like basic fundamentals and run through this offense and
Speaker 1: play defense like there's no to law. Okay, So then
Speaker 1: who would you play for? CCN one? And SE's why
Speaker 1: I played for two guys, three guys. I played for
Speaker 1: a guy named Ralph Baco who, uh in ninety seven
Speaker 1: was the leading scorer in the country at Northern or
Speaker 1: southern Northern Northern Illinois. Really good guy. He's passed away.
Speaker 1: Then I played for a guy named Jack Camoner who
Speaker 1: was kind of a legend in the New York area,
Speaker 1: coached in the Bronx and coached in Westchester Counties, Carsdale Eyes.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know you're a West Coast guy.
Speaker 1: You remember a guy named John Revelli played at Stanford. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's probably, you know, too old for you to know
Speaker 1: because you're too young. But and Butch Graves, those are
Speaker 1: two guys that he had played for him. That one
Speaker 1: went to Yale alone went to Stanford. He was from
Speaker 1: Scarsdale High School, and then I played for Floyd Lane,
Speaker 1: who played on the nineteen fifty c C N White
Speaker 1: team that won the n c A and an I
Speaker 1: T Championship. Um, what is there anything of those three
Speaker 1: guys that you took with you that you said I
Speaker 1: want to do that or or you organically did. I
Speaker 1: took a little bit of all of them, to be
Speaker 1: honest with you, not a basketball perspective, not much, but
Speaker 1: from a personal perspective and how they dealt with people,
Speaker 1: how they dealt with situations I tried. All three of
Speaker 1: those guys that I had in college were really personable,
Speaker 1: really great guys, and they had great communication skills with
Speaker 1: the players. And that was one of the things that
Speaker 1: I saw and I liked because it made me feel
Speaker 1: Whereas my high school coach was a great coach and
Speaker 1: we became good friends, I was afraid of him in
Speaker 1: high school. These guys I wasn't afraid of, And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's some of the things. And
Speaker 1: you know, Jack Camerer was a guy who was a
Speaker 1: tremendous teacher and a little more advanced than Norman left
Speaker 1: Woods was. It was my high school coach, but a
Speaker 1: guy who could really break things down and like take
Speaker 1: a take a game plan and make it into drills
Speaker 1: of Okay, we gotta do this to guard this because
Speaker 1: so he's the one who gave me my first experience
Speaker 1: with that kind of stuff. Um, okay, so you get
Speaker 1: done and you you volunteer at York right. Okay, so
Speaker 1: York's in Jamaica queens. Your dad's flower shops and Jamaica queens.
Speaker 1: How you are you making money? Are you working for him?
Speaker 1: Are you doing anything that or you're just simply grinding
Speaker 1: with hoops. No. I get my first teaching job in
Speaker 1: the Bronx at a Greek school um called the Greek
Speaker 1: American Institute, And I was making five thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: year and I would teach, get out at to thirty
Speaker 1: three o'clock and drive the Jamaica Queens every day. Now
Speaker 1: we didn't have a car. That was the first car
Speaker 1: our family had, was the one that I had when
Speaker 1: I graduated college. Uh. My father took the subway to
Speaker 1: Jamaica every day. Was an hour, three subway, three trains
Speaker 1: every each way, every day. He did it for thirty
Speaker 1: five years. And you know, Doug, it's funny. His day
Speaker 1: off was two day. Imagine Tuesday, Like everybody's off Saturday
Speaker 1: and Sunday, his day off was Tuesday because in the
Speaker 1: flower business, people at weddings, people had things on Saturdays
Speaker 1: and Sunday, so he was open. And so this is
Speaker 1: what it's amazing what these guys did that came from
Speaker 1: the other side, the work ethic and what they had
Speaker 1: to do to so you know what it was. It
Speaker 1: was a and I don't want me to be a
Speaker 1: get on a soapbox, but life consimpler. They they weren't
Speaker 1: worried about how we're gonna eat. We're worried about I
Speaker 1: want this car, I want this house or no. It's
Speaker 1: very basic. We need to work. So that weekend live period,
Speaker 1: and that's what it was. Fox Sports Radio has the
Speaker 1: best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of
Speaker 1: our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app search f s R to
Speaker 1: listen live. You know, my my, my, my grandpa. He
Speaker 1: no one had been the college and he couldn't afford college.
Speaker 1: Also c c N Y and so what he did
Speaker 1: was he and a buddy. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: rented a truck or at least a truck or bought it,
Speaker 1: bought a truck like one of those uh box box trucks, right,
Speaker 1: and they would go to the docks and they would
Speaker 1: buy fish okay at you know whatever, you know, ungodly
Speaker 1: time in the morning when when the when the fish
Speaker 1: would come in, and then they set up the counts
Speaker 1: at different restaurants and then they would sell the fish
Speaker 1: to the restaurants. So that's so he would take night
Speaker 1: school and then wouldn't go to sleep, would simply go
Speaker 1: and get this box truck, get the fish, and then
Speaker 1: do the fish and then sleep in the afternoon. And
Speaker 1: that's how he paid his way through through c C
Speaker 1: N Y and became an accountant, and then he became
Speaker 1: a card dealer because as an accountant, he looked at
Speaker 1: people's and like, you know, they couldn't pay him. So
Speaker 1: he'd take one businesses that he thought could make makes sense.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a similar thing. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: I just figure it out right, how and how can
Speaker 1: I put things on the table. It wasn't And and
Speaker 1: he too just like just like your dad, like he
Speaker 1: thought my dad was crazy, Like you really my master's
Speaker 1: degree from Colombia And when you want to coach basketball, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: what he wanted to do. A matter of fact, in
Speaker 1: one he was the head coach at the w Milwaukee
Speaker 1: and they were going to Division three. They were Division
Speaker 1: one to Division three. So he walks and my grandpa
Speaker 1: we lived with him for a year in in Hewlett,
Speaker 1: New York. We lived with them. My grandpa wanted my
Speaker 1: dad to take over one of his car dealerships, just
Speaker 1: the one on Long Island, Like it was a layup,
Speaker 1: you know, just I mean a running a car dealership
Speaker 1: that's already been up and going for twenty five years
Speaker 1: and really successful. And my Dad's like, how about we
Speaker 1: buy the new Jersey nets for one million dollars? And
Speaker 1: my grandpa, again, this is an eighty one is before Burden,
Speaker 1: Magic took take took the lead off, Lee offf My
Speaker 1: grandpa count looked at the books and said, this is
Speaker 1: a disaster. No one should ever, you know, buy an
Speaker 1: NBA team, Like it makes no sense financial right, But
Speaker 1: the point is it's the same sort of work ethic
Speaker 1: where that we we we don't have the perspective of
Speaker 1: what it was like. We just don't. Okay, So you're
Speaker 1: you're you're teaching at a Greek School. You're courch coaching
Speaker 1: at York. Okay, that season ends, Um, this is two
Speaker 1: years now that you have been playing and you've been
Speaker 1: coaching right then? One then I become I find out
Speaker 1: and I live in Washington Heights, which right across the
Speaker 1: bridge from Fort Lee, New Jersey. And I had a
Speaker 1: couple of friends who used phony addresses to go to
Speaker 1: Fort Lee High School instead of the local high school
Speaker 1: in Washington Nights, which wasn't very good. So we had
Speaker 1: some connection there. They needed a JV coach. I take
Speaker 1: the job at Fort Lee High School as the JV
Speaker 1: coach and that's what I did that So that was
Speaker 1: my first paying job. So you're now are you now?
Speaker 1: Are you teaching at Fortly High School? You still teaching
Speaker 1: Greek School? And drive the Greeks go in the Bronx
Speaker 1: near co Op City, driving to uh Fortly High School
Speaker 1: every day? Coach? What kind of cars? I had a
Speaker 1: Honda Civic. Yeah. I had to have a small car
Speaker 1: because it was it heights. You can't park well, yeah,
Speaker 1: Honda Civic because what what what? What? What year? What
Speaker 1: years is? Oh? This is now uh nineteen sim It's
Speaker 1: amazing because when we moved to California. In one my
Speaker 1: dad became text Winners assistant at Lombie State and the
Speaker 1: car that he gave him recruiting was a nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six brown Honda Civic hatchdown mine was like a brownish
Speaker 1: gold You know what, here's the thing. If you're gonna
Speaker 1: live it, now you gonna understand. He's the other thing.
Speaker 1: We were immigrant kids. I lived home till I was eight.
Speaker 1: You know now my kids have been OUs is their eighteen.
Speaker 1: I didn't go away to college. We lived home till
Speaker 1: we got married. You know what I mean. That's kind
Speaker 1: of how it was. Um bedroom right, like you want
Speaker 1: to went to Stanley here, Well, I I shared my
Speaker 1: brother till I was twenty eight, who was five years
Speaker 1: younger than me. Yes, really had a two bedroom apartment. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is why you dive in because these things
Speaker 1: I had no idea. Um okay, So so you're at
Speaker 1: Fort Lee as the JB coach. Who's the varsity coach?
Speaker 1: A guy named Chris Anorado. What was he like? Good guy?
Speaker 1: Good guy? You know he was a little bit older
Speaker 1: than me, not by me. I was twenty four. Now
Speaker 1: I'm twenty four years old. Uh, and so he was,
Speaker 1: you know, good guy treated me good. You know. It
Speaker 1: was did you help up? You help him with the
Speaker 1: varsity or you only Yeah, I was kind of like
Speaker 1: the bars. It was really like he had an assistant
Speaker 1: under you were the JV coach. You do a JV
Speaker 1: coach and you were one of the varsities. But he
Speaker 1: had a real assistant, you know what I mean. It
Speaker 1: was with him all the time. I was because I
Speaker 1: was practicing with them, but I helped him out somewhat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I helped him out something. Yeah. So now this is
Speaker 1: your own team though, first time, and I'm getting paid.
Speaker 1: I got playing hundred bucks. What are you running? What
Speaker 1: are you doing? I'm running the stuff that I did
Speaker 1: in high school that doing the wheel, doing the wheel
Speaker 1: and winning with when we won games, we were like
Speaker 1: you know, well like I think we were like fourteen
Speaker 1: and eight saving something like that, and you know we're
Speaker 1: running the wheel and we're winning games six and you know,
Speaker 1: playing smart, not turning it over, just running the wheel,
Speaker 1: playing solid, and you know that's that's kind of what
Speaker 1: we did. But on no siety is I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember what you do? Remember sure that bridge
Speaker 1: Gate thing with the Christie and the Mayor Affortly. Well,
Speaker 1: the Mayor Affortly was on my JV thatt Mark style
Speaker 1: he was. He played for me on that JVT. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Okay, So you get done with that year.
Speaker 1: Then I get a call from I said I had
Speaker 1: three college coaches from Jack Cameroner. Jack Cameroner had left
Speaker 1: C C and Y and took over as the head
Speaker 1: coach at Harry Has Truman High School in the Bronx,
Speaker 1: and he had left there and left his assistant the job.
Speaker 1: His assistant now I'm just complicated, tears his a c L.
Speaker 1: Like three days before practice is supposed to start, he's
Speaker 1: taking a leave of absence. They need somebody to coach
Speaker 1: Truman High School for the year. So I said, what
Speaker 1: the heck, I'm a JV coach. I'll go. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'll do next year, but coach
Speaker 1: to varsity this year. There and that wen't do it.
Speaker 1: So that call really changed my life. That one call.
Speaker 1: This guy tearing his a c L, pull selling town.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget his name, tears his a c L.
Speaker 1: I come in, I'm coaching Truman High School for the year,
Speaker 1: which was we had a really good team in you know,
Speaker 1: the New York City Class A and the Bronx, and uh,
Speaker 1: I loved it. It was great. Just so now you're
Speaker 1: community so much shorter, right because I'm literally a mile
Speaker 1: away from Truman High School. So so now you're now
Speaker 1: now it's close, and now you're coaching at the higher
Speaker 1: level that you want to. You still run the wheel,
Speaker 1: still running the wheel, ran the wheel throughout my high
Speaker 1: school career. Okay, you know, let me say one thing, Doug.
Speaker 1: It's and I will probably get to this at some point.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how much I didn't know about basketball when
Speaker 1: I was a high school coach. It's amazing, like you
Speaker 1: were so much. I didn't know you, well, I didn't
Speaker 1: know you kind of from Afar when you were a kid,
Speaker 1: but you were so much more well versed in offenses.
Speaker 1: I knew nothing. And then we'll get to when I
Speaker 1: learned something. I know nothing. I just been with my
Speaker 1: high school coach or one of my college goes. I
Speaker 1: have no assistant and an X and O. I didn't experiment.
Speaker 1: This is what I did. Period don't really Well, it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting because that's what you know I mean it's
Speaker 1: very normally like you you run what you know, right,
Speaker 1: coach what you know. But I used to we used
Speaker 1: to go to high school games. My dad. My dad
Speaker 1: wasn't as into X and O's, you know, he was
Speaker 1: he that he was just you know, he would do
Speaker 1: the Ralph Miller one for the the love because he
Speaker 1: coached a year with Ralph and he just wanted guys
Speaker 1: to play hard and I get highball, screen, share the ball, whatever,
Speaker 1: Whereas I've always watched basketball, and I had a high
Speaker 1: school coach that I had to high school coaches, but
Speaker 1: one which we actually learned almost all the basic offenses
Speaker 1: so we knew how to defend them. Like one day
Speaker 1: we would practice, we'd run flex because so many teams
Speaker 1: ran flex, you know, and we never actually ran flex,
Speaker 1: but we just run it for that day, so you
Speaker 1: know the offense and then if you know it well enough,
Speaker 1: you know the intricacies out of Anyway, my dad and
Speaker 1: I used to watch high school games and I played
Speaker 1: like a game where I try and figure out how
Speaker 1: long would take for me to figure out what they're running, right,
Speaker 1: because everybody ran a pattern because we've gone away from
Speaker 1: kind of motion or are they running motion whatever. So
Speaker 1: that's where that And then I played for so many
Speaker 1: different people. You know, when you start to play professionally,
Speaker 1: you played for so many different people and there's so
Speaker 1: many different ways of doing the same thing that if
Speaker 1: you're paying attention. I remember my last year playing in France,
Speaker 1: I played for a young African coach and he was
Speaker 1: we were talking strategy or someone. I was just like listening, man,
Speaker 1: just tell me what you want and I'll do it.
Speaker 1: You don't have to like just tell me basically, like
Speaker 1: what do you want to do? And I've seen it all,
Speaker 1: Like I've done it all. Do you want me to
Speaker 1: look to shoot and score? Do you want to run
Speaker 1: your office? We want to get the ball to tell
Speaker 1: them what you like to run and we'll run it.
Speaker 1: And that's it. You have to worry about nothing. You
Speaker 1: were about everything else and I'll just do it. And
Speaker 1: that was what. It took me a long time to
Speaker 1: get that confidence to say that to somebody, whereas a
Speaker 1: lot of times when I was in college it was
Speaker 1: I still had a fear of God from those those coaches. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how did it go at Truman High School? Well,
Speaker 1: the first year we lose in the championship, the Bronx Championship,
Speaker 1: so we get that's like the equivalent of I guess, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the quarterfinals of the City Championship and
Speaker 1: we lost to Stevenson High School. Uh Fred Brown. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you remember Fred Brown of of Georgetown
Speaker 1: fame who threw the past to Sam to uh James
Speaker 1: Worthy at the end of the Georgiantown game. He played
Speaker 1: the Stevens in high school and we lost to them
Speaker 1: in the Bronx Championship game my first year, and I
Speaker 1: loved it. I mean it was great coach at that level.
Speaker 1: And I my best player was a kid named Benji
Speaker 1: Bowman who went to Florida Southern and played for how Whistle.
Speaker 1: They won the National Division to National championship with him
Speaker 1: as the point guard like two years later. So you
Speaker 1: know it was. It was a very good high school team,
Speaker 1: no doubt. Then then we had a couple of years
Speaker 1: that weren't great. Wait wait, so you stayed there, so
Speaker 1: the I didn't come back. The guy never came back.
Speaker 1: The guy let me, I'm sorry I didn't explain this.
Speaker 1: The guy ended up applying for full disability because he
Speaker 1: got hurt on the job, so he couldn't come back
Speaker 1: and just coach because he was getting disability. So they
Speaker 1: give me the job. You get disability for an a
Speaker 1: c L. Yeah, for any imagine that for an a
Speaker 1: c L. Because he got hurt on the job and
Speaker 1: got disability for that's a good point. Yes he did.
Speaker 1: So now I get the job. Next year we make
Speaker 1: the playoffs. The year after we don't make the playoffs anyway,
Speaker 1: so I'm skipping ahead in my fourth year. You know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be pretty good, pretty good. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the kids comes up to me and says, coach,
Speaker 1: and I just want to tell you there's a kid
Speaker 1: he's gonna be he's coming into the school. He's transferring
Speaker 1: from Rice High School, and he's he's pretty good. So
Speaker 1: that's great. You know whence he comes out tomorrow, he's
Speaker 1: gonna start his first day of school at Druman High School. Whatever, Okay,
Speaker 1: come come to the gym. He comes to the gym,
Speaker 1: I swear to God that he goes up and down twice.
Speaker 1: And I turned to my assistant coach, who was a
Speaker 1: friend of mine volunteered. I said, yo, I think that's
Speaker 1: what a pro looks like when he's fifteen years old.
Speaker 1: It was Rod Strickland, and I'm like this tude. First
Speaker 1: of all, he was like five nine, like a hundred
Speaker 1: thirty pounds. But I had never seen anybody bounced that
Speaker 1: ball like this guy. But it was different. It was
Speaker 1: it was Yeah, I've seen great ball handlers in my time. No, No,
Speaker 1: this was something completely different. The way this kid bounced
Speaker 1: the ball. He went where everywhere. We went to a drill, Doug,
Speaker 1: you know, in the half court circle. This guy, I
Speaker 1: would have two guys in that. You have to stay
Speaker 1: in the circle at hare court. Two guys could take
Speaker 1: it from, could take from two guys that are just
Speaker 1: there trying to take the ball from. He could dribble
Speaker 1: the ball half an inch off the ground. He could
Speaker 1: dribble it to feet off the ground. I never saw
Speaker 1: anything like a ball forget about both hands. You know,
Speaker 1: I always tell people, they say, as he's I'll tell
Speaker 1: you about Rosherville. The same thing with any sport. At
Speaker 1: one point, he was giving a ball for the first
Speaker 1: time in his life. Whether he's two, three, four, or five,
Speaker 1: I don't know how old it was. And the first
Speaker 1: time he bounced it. He could bounce that thing he
Speaker 1: just could bounce it and this kid was unbelievable. So
Speaker 1: we had, you know, we make the playoffs that year,
Speaker 1: we're losing the first round. Then the next year's which
Speaker 1: ends up being my last year at Truman High School,
Speaker 1: we go eight and to twenty seven and three. We
Speaker 1: win the New York City Championship and the New York
Speaker 1: State Championship. And I'm gonna throw something else in there,
Speaker 1: because Rod Rod was a junior that year and he
Speaker 1: was our only Division one player. He was obviously a pro.
Speaker 1: And we were talking about my parents. My father came
Speaker 1: to that City championship game. He had to be the
Speaker 1: proudest guy in the history of the worlds he would come.
Speaker 1: He was at St. John's University, sold out and he
Speaker 1: was there and he was on the court with us
Speaker 1: after the He so, here's a guy who went from
Speaker 1: not knowing this and when I was coaching at Villanova
Speaker 1: in those places, he'd have articles in his pocket. Then
Speaker 1: he showed his friends, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: he had come full circle about seeing what this wasn't
Speaker 1: but started really you know, that night at St. John's
Speaker 1: he saw like, Wow, this is this, this is something
Speaker 1: that this guy is doing, you know, and so that
Speaker 1: we won the city and state championship. My last year
Speaker 1: a Truman school, I went to Villanova is the uh
Speaker 1: restricted earnings coaches. They called him the guy who, you know,
Speaker 1: could only make a certain amount of money. So how
Speaker 1: did that conversation take place? Well, you know, the funny
Speaker 1: thing was, I had worked coach massa Mino's camp a
Speaker 1: couple I knew well all this time that I'm at
Speaker 1: Truman High School, I'm working five star because I know,
Speaker 1: you gotta make connections, doun. I am sending resumes all
Speaker 1: over the country to be a graduate assistant anywhere. I'll
Speaker 1: go to Lehigh, I'll go to I'll go to California,
Speaker 1: win in nobody even yet I never even got answers.
Speaker 1: So I was doing. I knew what I needed to
Speaker 1: do to get into college. I wanted to get into college,
Speaker 1: and I knew what I need to do. I needed
Speaker 1: to either be a graduate assistant, get to know some
Speaker 1: people or something. So I started working camps in the summertime.
Speaker 1: So I worked coach Massamino's camp. I got to know him.
Speaker 1: But the big thing was, now, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: all these people are coming at the end of that year.
Speaker 1: They want to talk to me about Rod Strickland, Joey
Speaker 1: my every coach, and now this kid went and you know,
Speaker 1: I never I haven't seen this Doug, a kid that
Speaker 1: was on nobody's radar none to being like the guy
Speaker 1: everybody wanted. I never saw that. In like six months,
Speaker 1: nobody heard of him. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: is the guy everybody wants. Anyway, So I got to
Speaker 1: meet all these guys, and Coach Massmino came in and
Speaker 1: talk to me about Rod, and we had a great
Speaker 1: I had interviewed for the assistant coaching job at Columbia
Speaker 1: that I wanted so desperately. I'll never forget, I hinted,
Speaker 1: and I was telling him, you know, coach, I just
Speaker 1: interviewed like two days ago at Columbia for an assistance
Speaker 1: job and he said, okay, as great, So you didn't
Speaker 1: think ohing of it. Like two weeks later, Paul Cormier,
Speaker 1: who was on his staff, gets the head coaching job
Speaker 1: at Dartmouth, and Mitch bar Girl, who was his topassistant,
Speaker 1: calls me and says, hey, you know, we have a
Speaker 1: job open. Are you interested? He said, not, only pays
Speaker 1: six thousand dollars. Listen, I don't care if I got
Speaker 1: to pay you. I'm interested. Are you kidding me? So? Okay,
Speaker 1: So coach Mass. I meet coach Mass at the Princetonian Diner.
Speaker 1: We have that's where he interviewed. We have a great talk.
Speaker 1: I think it went great. Go home. I had just
Speaker 1: been we had just been married, you know, two years,
Speaker 1: and uh I go home. I tell Harriet, I said, Harry,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you this might be it. I can't believe this.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get all these jobs at these low
Speaker 1: level places. Now this is in Villanova, then not what is?
Speaker 1: He had been to three lead eights, so it's not
Speaker 1: like they had a great history and tradition. Jack Craft
Speaker 1: went to the finals against U C. L A and
Speaker 1: nineties seven. Bill Nova was big more North Carolina, Bruce
Speaker 1: big time. So he says, I want you to come
Speaker 1: down with your wife Sunday, and well, I want to
Speaker 1: meet her. So I'm like, I'm gonna I gotta beginning
Speaker 1: his job. Why do you want to be my wife.
Speaker 1: We're down there eight hours the whole day, we have
Speaker 1: a great time, the whole thing. I'm very ready to leave.
Speaker 1: He says, all right, I'm gonna call you this week
Speaker 1: we leave. We are on clouding and he also got
Speaker 1: understand we were two kids from New York City, had
Speaker 1: never left New York in a lies ever. And so
Speaker 1: now I'm waiting. First week, you don't call, second week,
Speaker 1: you don't call, third week. You know, I'm like pupping down.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't believe this, I said. I thought,
Speaker 1: I'm getting this job. Somebody else gotta be involved in
Speaker 1: this job. Why why is it taking so long? I
Speaker 1: get up the nerve to call him, and you know,
Speaker 1: when you were talking to him, he was like, I
Speaker 1: do one of these, like coach. I don't mean to
Speaker 1: bother you, but I just was curious. Any chance you
Speaker 1: have an idea. I'm trying to like, do it, soft
Speaker 1: show it. He said, I'll know next week. But next
Speaker 1: week comes nothing. Week after I buy, I buy an
Speaker 1: answering machine. In those days, like answering machines were like
Speaker 1: high tech. I buy an answer machine to make sure
Speaker 1: I don't miss this call. Finally calls. I got bad
Speaker 1: news for you. I'm giving the job to somebody else.
Speaker 1: I was crushed, crushed. I've never been I don't know
Speaker 1: I've been crushed since then, There's no question never that
Speaker 1: was as big as crushing as I've ever taken in
Speaker 1: my life. He offered the job to Jerry Wayne. Right,
Speaker 1: So I'm crushed. I don't even want to go out
Speaker 1: for like days. Harry tells me, listen, forget this bologne.
Speaker 1: He go back, start working camps again. You'll get another
Speaker 1: chance somewhere. The Columbia job didn't working out. In high
Speaker 1: school job, no, I haven't quit my highchool job. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I still had my high school job. But it was
Speaker 1: like I was so close to the big time. Yet
Speaker 1: two weeks later, I'm working in Manhattan, man in colleges camp,
Speaker 1: ironically enough, and my wife calls me on the pay
Speaker 1: phone because there were no cell phones. Then called on
Speaker 1: the pay phone and says, you know, I got a message.
Speaker 1: I think it's coach Massimino. All rights it played for me,
Speaker 1: and he says, you, god damn Greek, you're still interested?
Speaker 1: Call me. I'm like, it's like, honestly, look, it's like
Speaker 1: you gotta reprieve, like you was so crushed and now
Speaker 1: it's staying. I call him back and said, you wanted
Speaker 1: to still want the job? I said yes, He said
Speaker 1: it's yours. Jerry Waynewright turned it down, and now that's
Speaker 1: how I end up getting there. Long story, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: So so you just pack up all your stuff, okay,
Speaker 1: and you moved to close to campus. It's a beautiful
Speaker 1: area where no, no, we couldn't, we couldn't live back
Speaker 1: close to games. How about this, the restrict their earnings.
Speaker 1: Coach before me, who got elevated now to a nice,
Speaker 1: good paying job for those days, certainly you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, gave me his He had this car that
Speaker 1: used to call the bomb. The players still tease me about.
Speaker 1: It was a nineteen eight in power. Okay. So, um,
Speaker 1: you show up at Villanova. What was that like? What's
Speaker 1: it like? Raleigh Massimina? What was it? What was it like?
Speaker 1: Let me tell you something I am. Okay. First of all,
Speaker 1: he used to tease me all the time. We went
Speaker 1: out to dinner the first night I was on the
Speaker 1: job with the staff. He always believed in dinners with
Speaker 1: the wives and everybody. And I'll never a good sitting
Speaker 1: next to me and he goes, I just want you
Speaker 1: to know. He points his finger, like right in my face.
Speaker 1: You just went from being Mickey Mouse to Mickey mantle
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, I hear you. I know that.
Speaker 1: And he used to he used to teach us, to
Speaker 1: call you a high school Harry. You would teach me
Speaker 1: because I knew Doug. These guys would sit in the
Speaker 1: office and X and O, and I swear to gun.
Speaker 1: By the time I figured out where the first past
Speaker 1: one they raised it diagram and something else, I was
Speaker 1: lost completely. That's what I'm trying to tell you about
Speaker 1: you your knowledge. I had no knowledge they were X
Speaker 1: and oh, and I didn't even know what they were
Speaker 1: talking about. And I said, well, I got a lot.
Speaker 1: I got me a lot of work to do here,
Speaker 1: I can tell you that. So I realized very quickly
Speaker 1: what I didn't know. And if you don't know what
Speaker 1: you don't know, you ain't never gonna learn it. And
Speaker 1: so I was. I got the sneakers. I used to
Speaker 1: drive two hours to pick up Coach massamenos cheese. Uh
Speaker 1: you know what, wait, hold on his cheese. He had
Speaker 1: a certain you know, he was a pasta freak, and
Speaker 1: he had to have this certain cheese on his pasta
Speaker 1: every so every so often. I had to drive to like,
Speaker 1: you know, Allentown, Pennsylvania out that way and to get
Speaker 1: him this cheese from this particular Italian stuff store before
Speaker 1: it was a Pecorino Romano. Now you no, no, no, Um,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's what we get. I forget the name
Speaker 1: of it. Forget the name of it. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: he had to have the specific cheese. So every so
Speaker 1: often I'd have to make the right to pick up
Speaker 1: the cheese. Um, get the sneakers. I did the academics.
Speaker 1: I did the academics and uh talk, but I really
Speaker 1: Doug knew nothing. We would do Scotti reports and he
Speaker 1: he always wanted to make sure you weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: have notes when you were an assistant coach, like you
Speaker 1: better know that whole thing by heart, and you better
Speaker 1: have every and one thing about him. He was the
Speaker 1: film freak. So if there was something that report, if
Speaker 1: someone wasn't in that report, that dude would find it
Speaker 1: because he was watching tape after tape after tape. He
Speaker 1: would find it. And if it wasn't in there, you
Speaker 1: were dead man. Okay. So nine four your first year,
Speaker 1: okay at Villanova, Um, you had but ed Pittney Blaine Blaine,
Speaker 1: you had Harold Pressy, Gary McClain. Right, this is this
Speaker 1: is the team. This is the team. But this is
Speaker 1: your first year college basketball. Okay, I think all anybody
Speaker 1: knows is one game, right is one game? What was that?
Speaker 1: You're actually like, well, you know, we we underachieved that
Speaker 1: people expected. I mean, we were nine seats, so there
Speaker 1: you go, you know what I mean. So people we
Speaker 1: we were we underachieved for the year. And coach Mass
Speaker 1: was disgusted with these guys. He was, really, how about this.
Speaker 1: We played Pittsburgh on national television on CBS, last game
Speaker 1: of the regular season. We are getting drilled with down twenty,
Speaker 1: and at halftime he comes in the locker room and says,
Speaker 1: you guys, got three minutes. You don't do something, you're
Speaker 1: out for the rest of the game. Sure enough, three
Speaker 1: minutes out. Everybody national TV. You don't care. Everybody's sitting
Speaker 1: on the bench. We get drilled. We go to New York,
Speaker 1: now the Big East Tournament. We play St. John. We
Speaker 1: win the first game. Forget who we played. We play St. John.
Speaker 1: Second game, drilled. Chris Mullen and those guys Walter Barry
Speaker 1: killed us. We go to his house after the game.
Speaker 1: He said, thank god, I got one more game with
Speaker 1: these guys. Because they're driving me nuts. I can't they
Speaker 1: go on to win the championship. As he said, I
Speaker 1: got one more game because he felt like we're gonna
Speaker 1: make it, but just barely, because those space if you're
Speaker 1: a nine C, he could just barely made it. Isn't
Speaker 1: a large team, the only sixty four teams then, and uh,
Speaker 1: we thought it was gonna be short. And you know what,
Speaker 1: Doug is funny because people tell me you need momentum
Speaker 1: coming into the tournament. Oh no, no, you need momentum
Speaker 1: during the turn. Okay, so your first game, it was
Speaker 1: the two point game with Dayton. You guys are eight
Speaker 1: C by the way, nine to nine, they were enough.
Speaker 1: What do you what do you remember about the game?
Speaker 1: I remember, first of all, Don donoher was a great coach,
Speaker 1: and he's he was kind of low in the philosophy
Speaker 1: that I was telling you about with my wheel and
Speaker 1: the way my this guy there was no clock. You
Speaker 1: knew you were and we're by the way, we're playing
Speaker 1: them on their floor. We're playing Dayton at Daton on
Speaker 1: their home court. So now we know we're in for
Speaker 1: a battle because these guys, you know, the way they play,
Speaker 1: they don't make mistakes. They're gonna run the system all
Speaker 1: the way through. Tight game. Twenty seconds they go, they
Speaker 1: got the they're holding for the last shot. We make
Speaker 1: a steal and we make a layup with like five
Speaker 1: seconds deal win the game. Otherwise that home they're holding
Speaker 1: for the last shot on their home court. We make
Speaker 1: a steel and make a layp We went. Next game,
Speaker 1: now we're feeling like, yeah, you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: we were the eight day were the nine toss up
Speaker 1: game we want? Thankfully. Now we're playing Roy Tarpley, Antoine Hubert, Michigan.
Speaker 1: They were the number one seed, and we played them
Speaker 1: in the second game and we play unbelievable. They gonna
Speaker 1: understand Twayne McClain was a pro, Pickney pro, Presley pro.
Speaker 1: We had a good team, we just didn't play great
Speaker 1: that year. We beat Michigan. Now we're starting to feel like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: something's going on here. Next game Len Bias, Wow, Maryland.
Speaker 1: He had toured we played them during the regular season.
Speaker 1: He had had like thirty five. The only game of
Speaker 1: his career I believe where he was not in double
Speaker 1: figures was that NC Tournament game. We were defensively, we
Speaker 1: were unbelievable. Was that the last game was that the
Speaker 1: last game of his life. They express that was his
Speaker 1: That was his first year. His next year we played
Speaker 1: him again, so though that was his first year of
Speaker 1: what what was he like? If you were if you
Speaker 1: were to give the analysis like to today analysis that
Speaker 1: he was what is he? He was the best player,
Speaker 1: like the best player I had ever seen up and
Speaker 1: he was the best player that I had ever seen
Speaker 1: up to that point. You know, well him and Patrick Ewing,
Speaker 1: because Patrick Ewing was in the Big East in those days.
Speaker 1: He was I always felt like in my lifetime, Patrick's
Speaker 1: you know right there. So he's not what six eight
Speaker 1: six nine six six could You know in those days
Speaker 1: when you saw six a six nine got a good shoot,
Speaker 1: you never saw that these guys you six a six nine,
Speaker 1: you're playing inside in those days, no three point line.
Speaker 1: Every think this guy can step out and make seventeen footers.
Speaker 1: You could put it on the floor. Yeah, you felt
Speaker 1: like this guy is gonna be an all time great,
Speaker 1: no doubt about it. I mean he put thirty five
Speaker 1: on us a couple of times in regular season games. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you beat Maryland, then who's next? Now you gotta
Speaker 1: say it? So here I am who would have died
Speaker 1: to be the assistant coach of Columbia. And now we
Speaker 1: play in North Carolina to go to the final four.
Speaker 1: So they got Kenny Smith, they got you know, I
Speaker 1: for got who the other obviously they have guys. You
Speaker 1: know what I made it. So we're playing then to
Speaker 1: go to final fourt and I'll never forget this dog.
Speaker 1: So we're sitting outside by the way. You forgot that
Speaker 1: you beat Michigan. You played Dayton and then Maryland. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you played Carolina. Carolina has Kenny Smith, Brad Doherty,
Speaker 1: Joe Wolf, Buzz Peterson, Dave Popson, h Ranzino Smith, Curtis
Speaker 1: Hunter from Warren Martin. Okay, good, but not not like
Speaker 1: an all time team. You guys smelled him. We're down
Speaker 1: ten at half time or eight a half. We're down
Speaker 1: at half time. By year, down five and half seventeen seventeen.
Speaker 1: You outscore him thirty nine two in the second half.
Speaker 1: Did Steve Lapp has come in as a restricted earning
Speaker 1: this guy and make the adjustments? No, I think it's
Speaker 1: funny thing go ruling. Massima made one of his most
Speaker 1: famous speeches at half time. The guy, guys were all
Speaker 1: up tight, and they weren't. He said, you know what,
Speaker 1: you guys, all I want right now is a big
Speaker 1: poll of pasta with liguini and clam sauce. That's what
Speaker 1: I want right now, and that I swear to God
Speaker 1: said it a half time and everybody started laughing. Whatever.
Speaker 1: Now is that why we went out and beat the
Speaker 1: heck out of the second? I don't know, but that's
Speaker 1: what he said. He's the thing. Before the game, we're
Speaker 1: sitting outside the locker room with the coaches. We're talking
Speaker 1: and who's coming down the hallway towards Dean Smith? Not
Speaker 1: for me. I'm like, this is ridiculous. I was cooking
Speaker 1: high school last year. Dean Smith walks down. He says, Hey,
Speaker 1: Hi Roley, Hi Mitch. She knew the assistance him Mark.
Speaker 1: He know me. I never met him, said hey, high coach.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Dean Smith called me coach. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm beside him. We're playing North Carolina, go
Speaker 1: to final four. Last year was in the Bronx and
Speaker 1: you know what, we're playing the Lemon High School and
Speaker 1: sure enough we played great. Now we're going to the
Speaker 1: Final four Alexican to Kentucky course. Famously there's three big
Speaker 1: easte tames. The other one other than Georgetown, was St.
Speaker 1: John's that had Chris Smullen, that had Walter Walter Berry
Speaker 1: March Jackson like that was at all time, all time
Speaker 1: teams all time. So you're getting ready for the finals
Speaker 1: and you're gonna play Georgetown. Now you played them what
Speaker 1: three times previously to that year, but twice or three
Speaker 1: times every year while Patrick was there and Edie pick
Speaker 1: he was there, so we were there was no all factor.
Speaker 1: They beat us by once by two and once by
Speaker 1: six that year, close one possession games. Role. He played
Speaker 1: those teams great every time and beat him the year
Speaker 1: before once at the buzzer. So our guys like pick
Speaker 1: the youing what you gotta I think I think if
Speaker 1: somebody else, uh Doug played Georgetown from somewhere else in
Speaker 1: the country, they were intimidating, but they weren't intimid dating.
Speaker 1: Does We played him every year? Eddie picked me as
Speaker 1: a software at twenty seven points, at twenty two rebounds
Speaker 1: against Patrick Ewing any game, so he knew he could
Speaker 1: play against Patrick. Yeah, Patrick's better, and there's no question,
Speaker 1: but you know, we knew we could play. So I
Speaker 1: know they call it the greatest episode of all time,
Speaker 1: but I gotta be honest with you. We thought we
Speaker 1: could win. We never were like, wow, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be no. We said if we do this, this and this,
Speaker 1: we can win. Now, the fact is we shot sev
Speaker 1: one by two free till life was that. How did
Speaker 1: you keep him off the free till line? Zone? Played
Speaker 1: him all zone. They were not a good jump shooting team.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a good zone coach either. And you know
Speaker 1: what the funny thing was Patrick as great. You know,
Speaker 1: it's funny Patrick. He made a crazy transformation because in
Speaker 1: college he was a defensive force, you know, dominating games defensively. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but people forget that about Elijah are right, Like Elijah
Speaker 1: Onan is known for the dream shake. When he was
Speaker 1: in college, all I did was dunking block shots, right,
Speaker 1: That's Patrick did. He became a much better offensive player.
Speaker 1: You know, in the NBA. He never made these shots
Speaker 1: that he made the NBA. When you were at NOVED,
Speaker 1: I was at Notre Dame. We played them and we
Speaker 1: had never practiced zone as a team. A day of
Speaker 1: practice the day before he played Georgetown, we put in
Speaker 1: a little two three zone and we nearly beat him.
Speaker 1: It was the same, and it was it wasn't that
Speaker 1: he wasn't Every coach has his strengths and weaknesses. I
Speaker 1: don't feel like he was a great zone coach. You know.
Speaker 1: They were incredibly physical, they were tough minded, they played hard.
Speaker 1: They played hard like those guys played hard, all right.
Speaker 1: And and they weren't talkers, right, I didn't feel like
Speaker 1: they were talking. They weren't timid, but they weren't intimidateing
Speaker 1: because they were talking trash right like. But I didn't
Speaker 1: feel like there was anything special about what he did
Speaker 1: against his own and they just first guy that got
Speaker 1: it shot him. So you win this game. It's your
Speaker 1: first year coaching in college, okay, and you you guys
Speaker 1: beat Lefty right, uh uh, Let's meet Steve Fisher and
Speaker 1: I mean not uh Freeder? Right, be Donna her at
Speaker 1: Dayton at Dayton, okay, and then you and you beat
Speaker 1: Dean Smith and now you beat John Thompson and Pat Ewing.
Speaker 1: You guys win a national title. Well for you, what
Speaker 1: are your personal memories? When that buzzer sounds, you look
Speaker 1: out that you got sixty six and they got sixty four. Well,
Speaker 1: the funny thing is they have that famous clip where
Speaker 1: as soon as the game's over, on like the first
Speaker 1: guy that gets coach man. So that a little bit
Speaker 1: that well living in for me, as they say, you know,
Speaker 1: but just it was surreal, like it's like it did
Speaker 1: you know, it feels like it didn't happen sometimes, but
Speaker 1: obviously it did. I remember walking to the press County
Speaker 1: coach mass afterwards, you know, he's going to meet the media,
Speaker 1: and I said, I was posting his chop saying what's
Speaker 1: so hard about this? He clunched me in the arms
Speaker 1: are So I will tell your memory I have is
Speaker 1: there was a Sports Illustrade article right where I think
Speaker 1: it was Dwayne McClean, right, he admitted to using using
Speaker 1: coke like throughout the tournament. Gary McClain, Oh, Gary Clay,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Gary mclett, not not doing Gary mcclett. Um
Speaker 1: as as a young coach, right, the young coach, you're
Speaker 1: supposed to be the eyes and years and know what's
Speaker 1: going on, Like did you know any of this stuff
Speaker 1: was going on? Boy, Doug, that's a you know, that
Speaker 1: was like a dark time for us. You know, it
Speaker 1: was first of all, I think to this day. It's
Speaker 1: the longest article ever written in Sports Illustrate, was six
Speaker 1: six pages long, and we heard when it was coming out.
Speaker 1: Coach Mass was devastated. We were all devastated. Was Gary
Speaker 1: mcclein doing cocaine? Yeah? I mean I think a lot
Speaker 1: of kids were doing a lot of things in those days.
Speaker 1: Was he high in cocaine every day? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: But now the other thing is, and Gary is you know,
Speaker 1: I can tell you this is a fact. Sports Illustrated
Speaker 1: paid him forty dollars for the article, So I don't
Speaker 1: know does that was? It was? Also and again this
Speaker 1: is very important. It is a very different time. Okay,
Speaker 1: I never I've never seen cocaine in my life. Okay,
Speaker 1: But the following year, Len Bias or two years later,
Speaker 1: right us later, Len Bias is the second pick of
Speaker 1: the traffic and save the Boss, Tell the Sea died.
Speaker 1: He died like what I believe is from like cocaine.
Speaker 1: And that was like the wake up call to all athletes.
Speaker 1: Like that was the in my childhood. Don't do drugs?
Speaker 1: Was was was because of that, right, don't have unprotected
Speaker 1: sex because magic got HIV? Right, These are the learning lessons,
Speaker 1: But you have to like now if you hear guys
Speaker 1: use cocaine and cost but eighties different just different time
Speaker 1: was everywhere thou me, that's what they did. So I know,
Speaker 1: won't I won't say a name. I know there was
Speaker 1: a prominent, very very prominent coach at a very problement school.
Speaker 1: And we can talk about this off air, but um
Speaker 1: that I believe he was let go because they caught
Speaker 1: him using cocaine in his office, right like it was?
Speaker 1: Is that it was. That was the early to mid eighties,
Speaker 1: and I frankly think that len Bias, while he tragically
Speaker 1: passed away, probably saved a lot of dudes lives. And
Speaker 1: because it was it all of a sudden, it became
Speaker 1: much more taboo and it wasn't previously. Yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: doubt about it. So you know that that was that
Speaker 1: came a couple of years later after the championship when
Speaker 1: that article came out, and that was that was Coach
Speaker 1: Mass felt really betrayed, really betrayed. And it kind of
Speaker 1: took for the time being, it took a little bit
Speaker 1: of the because we were kind of a field good
Speaker 1: story villain still are you know, I mean, I hate
Speaker 1: I hate bringing up. But but it's part that it was.
Speaker 1: It was a huge thing at the time, huge huge,
Speaker 1: Um you get done with that season? When did you
Speaker 1: get bumped up the full time? So now Mitch barter
Speaker 1: Euro leaves and goes becomes the head coach of Fairfield
Speaker 1: and so roll he puts me on the road for
Speaker 1: like until he figures out what he wants to do.
Speaker 1: And I'm devastated. He decided not to give me the job.
Speaker 1: He decided not to move me up. He brings in
Speaker 1: John Olives. I remember remember John Oliver, of course, so
Speaker 1: he brings in John Allen. John Olives was his first recruit.
Speaker 1: Did I understand? I understood. I didn't like it. I
Speaker 1: didn't like it. I was divis I was I was upset,
Speaker 1: I said, But the truth is I showed up on
Speaker 1: campus in August. It's April. He basically knows me for
Speaker 1: four months and now he's gonna hire his first recruit.
Speaker 1: So he hires John Alive and I'm in the same job.
Speaker 1: But I swore that I may be number three, but
Speaker 1: I won't be number three. I'll be number two. I'm
Speaker 1: going to come in there and I'm gonna be able
Speaker 1: to do all the Scott my X and knows had
Speaker 1: become finally and more I've worked at it got good.
Speaker 1: I was able to do things. So he was able
Speaker 1: to lean on me. I knew that, and so that's
Speaker 1: kind of what I was alwayel like. So so before
Speaker 1: that you were the wheel offensively? What was what was ROLLI? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I gotta say this a defensive um
Speaker 1: like a man scientist, like he loved sitting in that
Speaker 1: office for eight hours, does ten hours and just figure
Speaker 1: out ways to screw. He would get a kick out of, Hey,
Speaker 1: they had no idea what we're doing. That was his
Speaker 1: like that that gave him the biggest thrill. So like
Speaker 1: when he Diamond one trying on to and a man, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: start zone. Get them to run their their their zone offense,
Speaker 1: go man, a man show man. Get them start doing
Speaker 1: it and making it look like we're zone. I mean,
Speaker 1: the ball gets passed to the right way, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna do this is the ball gets passed to the
Speaker 1: left way with that and you gotta have you gotta
Speaker 1: they understood the system and they were smart kids. You
Speaker 1: can't you can't just you can't do that. You can't
Speaker 1: do that with dumb kids. You gotta do with smart kids.
Speaker 1: You gotta do it with smart kids. And these guys,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. When you left there as a player,
Speaker 1: it's like you you knew basketball Like those guys when
Speaker 1: they were twenty one years old and I was twenty
Speaker 1: one years old. They had a pH d In basketball.
Speaker 1: I had another. So they were tremenous. That's what he did. Offensively,
Speaker 1: Coach Mass wasn't a great offensive coach. You know why
Speaker 1: because you know I always said this that you can
Speaker 1: be impetuous and reactionary defensively, but if you're impetuous and
Speaker 1: reactionary offensively, it's not good. He didn't have patience if
Speaker 1: this play didn't work. Now we're getting new him. Whereas defensively,
Speaker 1: a lot of times even sometimes we were screwed up
Speaker 1: doing what we were doing, but the other team was
Speaker 1: screwed up doing what we were in the idea he loved.
Speaker 1: So he's very he's very obviously animated and passionate. Okay, before,
Speaker 1: when you're in high school and you're coaching at Truman,
Speaker 1: were you the same or did you kind of take
Speaker 1: on some of his mannerisms? Hey, when I was coaching
Speaker 1: in the Greek League. I led the thing in technical files.
Speaker 1: I was bad. So you gotta understand there's nobody in
Speaker 1: the gym, and I'm screaming like a man man in
Speaker 1: these Greek League games. I was crazy. No coach mass
Speaker 1: had another to do with me. Who I was? I was?
Speaker 1: So who is the who is the other assistant? He
Speaker 1: had Marty mooreback, who became the head coach of Canisius.
Speaker 1: He left. You know, I was in the restrict I
Speaker 1: was only an assistant for four years. I only recruited
Speaker 1: for one year. I was restricted earnings for three years,
Speaker 1: and then Marty left my fourth year and now it
Speaker 1: was me John Olive and Jay Wright came. What was Jay? Like?
Speaker 1: Jay was? You know the swap? But what would you
Speaker 1: do even even then? Like he came by buck Now.
Speaker 1: Now buck Now is very very proper school. And I
Speaker 1: don't know what Bucknell was like then, but buck Now cool,
Speaker 1: little town, very cool school. Kind of feels not Ivy League,
Speaker 1: but feels a little a little upper upper crust. Okay,
Speaker 1: So like when he walked in the doors, restricted earning,
Speaker 1: this guy or the third assistant, then was he already
Speaker 1: put together or was it? Was there a transformation. Oh no,
Speaker 1: he was always put together. I hired him to work
Speaker 1: our camp. He was an assistant at the time at
Speaker 1: Rochester Division three school, and I hired him to work,
Speaker 1: ok because he was from the area. And I'm the
Speaker 1: one and I'm the one that told Rolie you gotta
Speaker 1: hire this guy, you gotta hire this guy. So he was, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, the personable swab. What you see. Imagine when
Speaker 1: he was like twenties six, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what you want seven And it's the same way,
Speaker 1: look better, probably because he's younger. Amazing. Okay, so how
Speaker 1: did you get the Manhattan job? So now we went
Speaker 1: to we I'm there four years, Manton job opens up,
Speaker 1: Manhaton job. Get understand that was what was lasting Division one,
Speaker 1: worst job in the country. They had one seventy games
Speaker 1: the ten years before I got there, and had four coaches.
Speaker 1: The whole bit. It was Roly said, you're crazy, that
Speaker 1: is the worst job. You can't go there. You got
Speaker 1: a month, you'll get a better job in that. It
Speaker 1: started on the island of Manhattan. Yeah, in the Bronx.
Speaker 1: And so he gave me a list. He said, here's
Speaker 1: ten things if they got to do every one of
Speaker 1: those things that you're taking the job. So, I mean
Speaker 1: with the athletic director in Philadelphia, I tell him the
Speaker 1: list of things that I think you need to do
Speaker 1: if you want to be any good. He comes back,
Speaker 1: he says, we'll do them all. And one of them
Speaker 1: was like put they had the tartan floor in those days,
Speaker 1: put a wood cordon. Who was gonna cause him like
Speaker 1: sixties seventy grand me? That was a lot of money
Speaker 1: back in. They did every one of them. So I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, and I grew up five minutes from there.
Speaker 1: I said, you know, coach, I'm gonna take it. He
Speaker 1: thought it was nuts, And you know, gradually we built
Speaker 1: it up. My last hold on job at Manhattan College.
Speaker 1: What your dad said? He was he was retired then
Speaker 1: he was so happy. He came to the press conference.
Speaker 1: He was retired, so he would get on the bus
Speaker 1: every day and come watch practice. He had nothing else
Speaker 1: to do because he was retired, so he'd come up
Speaker 1: and he was able to take the bus there and
Speaker 1: come to practice every day. And he would joke on
Speaker 1: me because one of my things I always said was
Speaker 1: how are you up? How are you up? And he
Speaker 1: knows it. How do you? How do you? You always
Speaker 1: imitate me? So, yeah, he loved it. He came to
Speaker 1: all the games, came to practice, loved it. You didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything, really, but I loved watching. There's
Speaker 1: no that lay in in in Hebrew or in Israel
Speaker 1: they say y'alla. Now y'alla is actually Arabic for like
Speaker 1: let's go, right, But they say like yalla in in
Speaker 1: Russia and you say divide. There's no Greek for let's go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that means how can how came you? You never you know?
Speaker 1: I always went with English. No my players, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and some explutives and stuck in there in between two. Okay.
Speaker 1: I so now it's been four years since you've been
Speaker 1: a head coach. Okay, but you learned from the master.
Speaker 1: You've been to the peak, right, and you've watched all
Speaker 1: these big East coaches, you know, sitting on that bench
Speaker 1: like the best of the best of the best. How
Speaker 1: were you different? How had you evolved from Truman High
Speaker 1: School to Manhattan College? Well? I was. I was way different.
Speaker 1: Now I've learned so much more about the game and
Speaker 1: excess nose and Scott me what we did scouting wise
Speaker 1: at Villanova and if funny thing does was I did
Speaker 1: a lot of things that coach mass Me did defensively
Speaker 1: but offensively. I became the opposite he wanted. He wanted
Speaker 1: to call every single play. I went to motion, and
Speaker 1: I had never been exposed to motion. I was I
Speaker 1: used to. I was watching Bobby Knights tapes and all
Speaker 1: these different Dean Smith's tapes to figure out how I
Speaker 1: wanted to play on offense because I was like, if
Speaker 1: we can stop these plays because of great scouting, then
Speaker 1: why am I gonna run set plays? I'm gonna run
Speaker 1: something that can't be scouted. And that's why motion. If
Speaker 1: you have great motion. I thought we had pretty good
Speaker 1: motion at Villanova in Manhattan. If you run good motion,
Speaker 1: you can't scout it. Why don't Why don't people run motion? Now?
Speaker 1: You know it's I don't know. I really don't know.
Speaker 1: When I mean, people are running more sets and things
Speaker 1: like that. I don't know why people aren't running motion
Speaker 1: like they used it. There was there was a time
Speaker 1: can offer up a offer up a hypothesis. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: just you know, like Fran McCaffrey, who's Philly guy. We
Speaker 1: both know very well. He and I know they lost
Speaker 1: the other night or whatever, but he's one of the
Speaker 1: few that run motion. I've had other coaches tell me like,
Speaker 1: that's one reason they're so hard to care for is
Speaker 1: they're doing something that like what do we do here? Coach, like, bro,
Speaker 1: you just gotta play basketball. I would say, there's there's
Speaker 1: three things that come to my mind. One is the transferring, okay,
Speaker 1: because you gotta and it actually, let's start at the start.
Speaker 1: The first thing is how they're taught at a young age. Right,
Speaker 1: every kid now has a trainer, and every trainers teaching
Speaker 1: them have to play how to play against a cone
Speaker 1: one on cone right, how to play ball string, how
Speaker 1: to score man a man, how to how to play downhill.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't teach kids how to read a
Speaker 1: screen and how to move and set our feet, right,
Speaker 1: we don't. So how they taught at a young age
Speaker 1: and then transition them to college and you don't have
Speaker 1: them for as long period time if you have a
Speaker 1: kid for a couple of years. You know, I remember
Speaker 1: I got another dame, like I kind of I knew
Speaker 1: I'd run some motion in high school, but I just
Speaker 1: remember the first two weeks, three weeks of practice like
Speaker 1: I couldn't I couldn't stop the other guy, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't get a shot because I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: play really kind of play basketball with an emotion. But
Speaker 1: once you get it, you're like, this is the best
Speaker 1: because there's no set pattern, right, you can just read
Speaker 1: a screen, read your man, and you're like working together.
Speaker 1: But I don't think teams by and large are cohesive
Speaker 1: enough because they're going they transfer where they go, pro whatever,
Speaker 1: and coaches feel that and know that it's even though
Speaker 1: it's better to run motion, they don't feel stable enough
Speaker 1: to to implement it and to have guys struggle. Whereas
Speaker 1: if you put them in a ball screen, they all
Speaker 1: know how to play a ball screen and their their
Speaker 1: their personal skill comes out. You know what, I never that.
Speaker 1: I never thought because the truth is about motion. Motion
Speaker 1: is kind of like you have to be committed to
Speaker 1: it and as a program you gotta get you get
Speaker 1: better at it every year, and guy get better at it.
Speaker 1: I tell my asist, I said, you know when we
Speaker 1: you know when where we're gonna be. Where I want
Speaker 1: to be when our guys played pick up and they
Speaker 1: run in motion, real motion, teach guys how to play.
Speaker 1: Bobby Knight said, I took it from him. Teach guys
Speaker 1: how to play, don't teach him place. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of where we were. Okay, So your your career at
Speaker 1: Manhattan College is like, that's how you're supposed to do it, right.
Speaker 1: You come in your first year, you win seven games,
Speaker 1: your last year you win, right, and those are all
Speaker 1: the guys that you initially recruited, right, How many of
Speaker 1: those guys from your first recruiting class were there for
Speaker 1: the fourth year for when you when you got when
Speaker 1: you won everyone and not only that, when I left
Speaker 1: to go to Villanova after that year, they were all seniors.
Speaker 1: The following your friend for Sheila took him to the
Speaker 1: n c A Tournament. We lost at the Buzzer to
Speaker 1: Lisalle in the mac j issues game. That year with
Speaker 1: my last year there and the year we went and
Speaker 1: then we lost the Notre Dame in the quarterfinals of
Speaker 1: the n I t and then all those guys were back.
Speaker 1: They were all juniors. Day he lost in the quarterfying
Speaker 1: you could have gotten play in the garden, yes, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they had a Lofonso yeah, Elmer Bennett, yeah, uh and
Speaker 1: one more big time player. I forget it was named Dammit.
Speaker 1: There were three. It was a big freesome. They called
Speaker 1: it Damian Sweet. It was Damian He was the third guy. Yes,
Speaker 1: and based on Billy Billy Taylor, who's very good coaching.
Speaker 1: He's at He's at Iowa. Now, Um, Carl Cozeno, I got,
Speaker 1: I got a great story. I guess lamar justice. Okay,
Speaker 1: Keith Tower is a true story. Okay, Keith Tower, he's
Speaker 1: from Moon, Pennsylvania. We recruited him. That's funny. Uh, Keith
Speaker 1: Tower my first year at my first year Notre Dame,
Speaker 1: Keith Towers in the NBA. Right, he comes back to
Speaker 1: play with us, and we used to play in the pit.
Speaker 1: The pit is now there's now basketball practice facility in
Speaker 1: the basement of of of the arena that used to
Speaker 1: be called the pit. That's where we warm up, that's
Speaker 1: we have practice some days. It was like our auxil region.
Speaker 1: So here I am punk kids Southern California. Highly tried
Speaker 1: to recruit and we start playing pickup ball and I'm
Speaker 1: not in the first game, and now I'm not in
Speaker 1: the second game, and so I get in like the
Speaker 1: third game. I played a little bit in them off.
Speaker 1: I don't win him off. And this happens a couple
Speaker 1: of different days, and so finally I go to France
Speaker 1: and I was like Fran, like, fun did I come
Speaker 1: here for? Like you told me? I'm gonna start right away,
Speaker 1: and I'm not even in pickup games. We don't control
Speaker 1: pickup games. You want to get in the game, get
Speaker 1: in the game. So so Keith is doing this whole
Speaker 1: seniority thing right, like if Fawns comes and plays, he's
Speaker 1: gonna play. If Keith, if any of these guys come play,
Speaker 1: and the freshman, you guys just get him when we
Speaker 1: tell you to get in. We got like five right
Speaker 1: me a, Tony Weish, Gary Bell, uh, Phil Hickey. Right,
Speaker 1: we're all just like rereading class and we can't get
Speaker 1: in pickup teas. So finally they're playing one day and
Speaker 1: I just stand on the court and the game ends
Speaker 1: and I'm just staying on the court and he's like,
Speaker 1: what do you do it? And I said, I'm playing
Speaker 1: next game called game I have game. No you're not,
Speaker 1: you're not. You don't have credit outs. It's all right,
Speaker 1: you guys play. I'm not moving. So they started playing
Speaker 1: pick up and I'm there shooting jump shots at the
Speaker 1: freezer line. Finally they stopped and one of the guys
Speaker 1: sits out and I get get into the game. And
Speaker 1: after that it was never it was never an issue
Speaker 1: ever again. It was like one of those you gotta
Speaker 1: stand up for yourself moments. Yeah, you gotta do that
Speaker 1: once in a while. You gotta do it once a while. Okay,
Speaker 1: So take me through going from Manhattan College. You lose
Speaker 1: in the quarterfinals of the n I. T Okay, this
Speaker 1: is right where you grew up. You finally got a
Speaker 1: roll in. When did you get to Villanova? Call? Well,
Speaker 1: originally they had wanted to hire Pete Gillen first. Pete
Speaker 1: gill and was also a rolely assistant for a couple
Speaker 1: of years, and then Pete decided he didn't want it,
Speaker 1: and then they called me. So it's probably two weeks later,
Speaker 1: and it was you know, like, so so this is
Speaker 1: so you get Are you finished playing yet? Are you
Speaker 1: still playing? Like? I don't know the time we're finished?
Speaker 1: We're finished playing. This is at the end of the season.
Speaker 1: So what time beer is it? Like? How how late
Speaker 1: did it happened? Well, and I'll tell you a funny
Speaker 1: story that uh about when I signed my extension in
Speaker 1: Manhattan when I when I went to Manhattan College, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I asked for was uh an
Speaker 1: interest free loan, because, uh, you couldn't buy a house
Speaker 1: in New York. I mean, I wasn't making enough wind
Speaker 1: money to buy a house. And so they put in
Speaker 1: the contracts, Okay, we'll give me give you this loan,
Speaker 1: interest free loan wasn't that big, but it was enough
Speaker 1: down payment. And if you made your first house, my
Speaker 1: first house, my second half. No, I had houses in
Speaker 1: assistant in Villon. So then, uh, they put in the contract,
Speaker 1: We're gonna give you this loan, and if you make
Speaker 1: the n s a tournament, will forgive along. Wow. So
Speaker 1: now and he lost in the buzzer shot buzzer. But
Speaker 1: now here's the thing. The president of the school walks
Speaker 1: in my office the next day. You know, it brings
Speaker 1: tears to my eyes when I think about it, he says, Coach,
Speaker 1: I just want you to know this. We didn't put
Speaker 1: that in the contract so that you would suffer from
Speaker 1: some kid missing a shot or making a shot or whatever.
Speaker 1: But if you did what we you did what we
Speaker 1: wanted you to do. Here, we'll forgive him a loan. Wow,
Speaker 1: and I felt and then two weeks later I left. Okay,
Speaker 1: So who calls you? Um, the athletic director Tennesseeto, who
Speaker 1: has since passed away. He calls me, that calls you. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is now. We're in the now. We're in the nineties, right,
Speaker 1: So he he calls you on your office phone, home phone,
Speaker 1: home phone, call me on my home phone and said
Speaker 1: did you pick it up or Harry pick it up?
Speaker 1: I picked it up and he said I But he
Speaker 1: there were a couple of big time boosters who told
Speaker 1: me the calls coming. So it wasn't a surprise when
Speaker 1: I got the call because I had these friends at
Speaker 1: Villanova had made while I was there as an assistant
Speaker 1: that warned me and said, you're looking good. He's gonna
Speaker 1: call you. Okay, So he calls you, calls for you.
Speaker 1: Now I know. Now you got understand in this to
Speaker 1: at Villanova event not now so much the athletic that
Speaker 1: it comes down to the president, not the athletic director. Right.
Speaker 1: The head priest is the guy who's making a decision
Speaker 1: out who's coaching the basketball team. Now, I don't know
Speaker 1: how it is now they haven't got to do it
Speaker 1: in twenty years. So but then that's how it was.
Speaker 1: So the athletic that called me, but the president wanted
Speaker 1: to see me. Okay, so you shaw, you pack the
Speaker 1: car and you go see him. Did you did you
Speaker 1: tell how did you handle with Manhattan today? Did Did
Speaker 1: they know that they were talking? You're talking they knew
Speaker 1: that the one place that I would leave for was that. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well they kind of knew it from the beginning. I said, listen,
Speaker 1: I love it here. It's his home for me. You know,
Speaker 1: my wife's from me here, we're from here. We love it.
Speaker 1: But if something happening to Villanova, that's all bets are off. Um,
Speaker 1: So you go meet with the president. What was it like?
Speaker 1: It was? You know? Uh? He said to people afterwards
Speaker 1: about me, He said, I liked him because of the
Speaker 1: fire he had in his belly. So you know, you
Speaker 1: can imagine knowing me, you know how I am with
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, and you know the fact that
Speaker 1: I was there, the fact that you know I left
Speaker 1: there and people like me, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: help obviously, And I think I think actually means. I
Speaker 1: think it actually means more than getting any other job,
Speaker 1: just because saying we really liked you at you personally,
Speaker 1: We've seen what you've done, but we know you. I
Speaker 1: actually think it speaks more to when you can get
Speaker 1: a job at a place that you've been before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're a percent right, You're right. So and
Speaker 1: then you know, um Um he told me, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd like to hire you, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. You know, I did believe it obviously
Speaker 1: because I knew kind of had a feeling that this
Speaker 1: was for him to call me in it was gonna happen.
Speaker 1: But there were other guys involved, you know, Mike Jarvis,
Speaker 1: they were talking to, They had talked to Nick mccartchick Uh,
Speaker 1: they had talked to Uh. I confused the park Hill
Speaker 1: that was at Penn State, Bruce park Hill, Bruce Um.
Speaker 1: Those were the main three other guys. Okay, so so
Speaker 1: last thing. That's the end of part one. Okay, how
Speaker 1: did you handle it with leaving Manhattan terms of the assistants,
Speaker 1: in terms of talking to the president, in terms of
Speaker 1: talking to the players, because it has become a big
Speaker 1: topic of conversation with is how you leave. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was very upfront with them from the beginning who
Speaker 1: as I got that first call. As soon as they
Speaker 1: heard Roy left, they knew I had told him. I said, listen,
Speaker 1: if something happened. I don't know if anything's gonna happen,
Speaker 1: but if something happens, it's Villanova. And they understood. They
Speaker 1: were told the athletic director of Villo at Manhattan and
Speaker 1: the president would and this to me always they understood
Speaker 1: completely was the problem. You know, I felt so bad
Speaker 1: for them kids. They came there when the place was nothing.
Speaker 1: Now we had this thing going last. How about this
Speaker 1: the last game in Draggy. Now you can understand this.
Speaker 1: When I get to Draggy, when I get to Manhattan.
Speaker 1: We played my first game against Hofstra. Butch Van Bredakoff
Speaker 1: is the coach. There's fifty people in the gym for
Speaker 1: my first game as a head coach. I walked in
Speaker 1: the gym for the game, I said, what did I do?
Speaker 1: I come in this fifty people. My last game at home,
Speaker 1: two thousand people sold out. They were scalping tickets out.
Speaker 1: I who playing Wisconsin Green Bay. Tony Bennett was playing
Speaker 1: for his father and we we won that game at
Speaker 1: the Buzzer. And that's when we went and played uh Rutgers,
Speaker 1: beat them with the buzzer at Rutgers and then lost
Speaker 1: another Dame. Okay, so that's Part one. That's just him
Speaker 1: getting to Villanova. Getting to Villanova, he's been a part
Speaker 1: of the national championship team, been an assistant coach, been
Speaker 1: head coach in Manhattan, talked about his kind of own
Speaker 1: personal journey. Part two will be coaching at Nova, losing
Speaker 1: the job at Nova, going to U mass getting into television,
Speaker 1: and now having a son who's a coach. All of
Speaker 1: that's up coming in the next one. By the way
Speaker 1: of the Doug got Leave Show is twelve to three
Speaker 1: Eastern time, Pacific Coast time, three to six Eastern time,
Speaker 1: Fox Sports Radio, I Heart Radio app. Wherever you download
Speaker 1: this podcast, you can download that as a podcast as well.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening, and thanks to Steve Lapis.
Speaker 1: We'll have him join us for part two. That's next
Speaker 1: time on All Ball