A Season Inside (11 page)

The next year the record was 24–8 with a freshman named Robinson averaging six points a game. Still no NIT bid and no job offers. The
next year, when Robinson blossomed, the Midshipmen were 26–6. They reached the NCAA Tournament, stunned LSU in the first round, and had Maryland down 11 before losing in the second round. Now people noticed Navy—and Evans. California called. So did Old Dominion. And Rutgers. He was even interviewed for the prestigious Kentucky job.

None of those jobs felt right, though, so Evans stayed where he was. The next year the record was 30–5. Robinson was a superstar. The Midshipmen beat Tulsa, Syracuse (at Syracuse), and Cleveland State in the NCAA Tournament before losing to Duke in the regional final. Evans couldn’t keep track of the job offers: Southern California, Houston, Northwestern, Pittsburgh.

He knew his time was up at Navy even though Robinson had one more year. He wanted his top assistant, Pete Herrmann, to succeed him, but he didn’t want to leave Herrmann with a bad team. And, he didn’t want to leave at the same time as Robinson and be perceived as riding Robinson’s coattails. Pittsburgh was the best job. There were good, though undisciplined players there and it was in the Big East.

There were also rumors that Pitt was about to get nailed by the NCAA. That was alleged to be part of the reason why Roy Chipman had resigned early in the season. But Pitt’s people told Evans they were clean. Evans took them at their word, and it turned out to be the right decision—the NCAA posse never did come to town.

Evans made it clear from day one to the experienced Pitt players that their lives would be simple: my way or the highway. When Lane talked back to him, he got tossed from practice. When someone messed up, everyone ran. The players responded to what Evans was telling them.

“It really wasn’t that hard to get their attention,” he said. “The year before they had done it their way and they stunk. They had to be willing to give my way a chance.”

Not that all was bliss. Evans’s hard-nosed manner angered the players at times. They thought he was unfair. He thought they were too wild. He told them to avoid parties, they went to parties. He responded by lengthening practice. In all, though, the marriage worked—to the tune of twenty-four victories. And yet, Evans finished the season less than happy with his team.

“Once we won twenty games and clinched a share of the Big East title we didn’t have another good practice the whole season,” Evans said. “That’s the problem with the older guys on this team. They’re
satisfied too easily. We have to get away from that this year if we’re going to be any good.”

Evans had told his team in no uncertain terms it was too easily satisfied. Bluntness is a policy with him. It was that bluntness that had gotten him into a shouting match with Massimino at the Big East meetings that spring.

The league had wanted to pass an unwritten rule that it believed would prevent repeats of the Bobby Martin incident. The rule would hold that if one league school had a verbal commitment from a player the other league schools would stop recruiting him. Massimino balked.

“I’ve been the nice guy too many years,” he said in the meeting. “I’m tired of being pushed around by people because I try to do things the right way and they don’t.”

Evans, knowing Massimino was referring to him, shot back, “Rollie, don’t blame me because you screwed up your recruiting.”

After that, it got unpleasant. Now, the season was about to start. Evans had a team with high expectations and Massimino had a team with low expectations. Before the year was over, they would meet—and clash—again.

Six days after the Big East Media Day, most of the top high school seniors in America began signing national letters of intent. Villanova signed two good players that day and received a verbal commitment from a third. Pittsburgh, in the running for three top players, struck out: zero for three. Ohio State signed four—the four it wanted.

Chris Jent opted for the Buckeyes over Pittsburgh. Bill Robinson signed as did Mark Baker and Jeff Hall. Eric Riley, with seven days left during the signing period, was still undecided. Williams was ecstatic. He had gotten three Ohio players and a top player from out of state. He had also gotten a center, two mid-size players, and a point guard. Riley would be a bonus since he could play power forward, but he would have to compete with his high school teammate Treg Lee at that spot.

The last crucial period for Williams during the fall had been Halloween weekend, when Jent, Baker, and Riley made their visits to Columbus. Williams had already gotten the good news that Robinson was going to sign, although he didn’t want to announce it until the signing date.

Having three recruits visit the campus on the same weekend would
make things hectic. Before they arrived, a careful itinerary had been prepared for each one, including meetings with teachers and counselors and one-to-one sessions for each player with Williams. Jent, who was interested in communications, would be introduced to some local TV people. Riley and Baker, who were black, would meet with two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin to talk about what life on campus was like for blacks at Ohio State. All three would be introduced to Gov. Dick Celeste before the kickoff of the football game on Saturday.

Driving to the airport Friday morning to pick up Jent, Williams was tight, as tight as he might be on the day of a big game. Fraschilla was with him. Ayers had driven to Dayton to pick up Baker. Riley was driving from Cleveland with his father. Beulah Riley wasn’t coming—a fact that made Williams nervous.

As he drove, Williams sipped his third cup of coffee. “I never drank it until three years ago,” he said. “I started so I would cut down on Coca-Cola. Now, I’m hooked on this stuff.”

Since the home visits, Williams and his staff had kept up a steady stream of mail and phone calls to the recruits. This weekend was the key though and they knew it. The weather had turned up sunny. Williams was thankful. “Sometimes, if it rains, that sets a whole mood and there’s nothing you can do to overcome it. This is a good start, anyway.”

With each assistant assigned to a player—Fraschilla/Jent, Ayers/ Baker, and part-timer Paul Brazeau/Riley—Williams would have to run practice alone that afternoon. He had been uptight earlier that week in practice and didn’t want to be that way today. It wasn’t so much being on best behavior as being careful not to be on worst behavior. “I can’t get on a profanity roll today. Even if the guys mess up.”

The afternoon will be full of routine meetings for the recruits. The evening will be more important.

Dinner is very carefully planned. Two current players will join the recruits and the coaches. One is Jerry Francis, a junior, who was Jent’s counselor at a summer camp. The two became friends there and Williams wants someone Jent feels comfortable with to come along. What’s more, Francis is exactly the kind of person Williams wants
representing Ohio State: articulate, funny, and not caught up in the notion of being a basketball player.

The second player invited to dinner is freshman Perry Carter, who knows both Riley and Baker from the Nike camp. After dinner, the recruits will be turned over to the players for a night on the town.

According to Williams’s schedule, dinner is set for 7:30. He shows up on time, along with Carter and Francis. The coaches and the recruits are nowhere in sight. They wait. At 7:45, Williams is getting antsy. He paces for a while, then sits down and shakes his head.

“You know, I’m really not sure I want to be doing this when I’m fifty,” he says. “As I get older, I wonder about it more and more. This is all I’ve ever done but maybe I’d be happy doing something else. It’s all so consuming. Look at me now. It’s Friday night and I’m spending it with a bunch of teenagers. Nothing against them but if I’m going to be with a teenager, I’d like it to be my daughter. Sometimes it seems like I never see her.”

He stops at that thought. “You know, I have a picture of her in my mind that’s so vivid. She’s nine years old, just a little girl going to school. Now, she’s seventeen, driving a car and getting ready for college. What happened? How can she not be nine anymore? Where did all that time go? Tomorrow, it will be the same thing, I’ll be working with these guys all day. That’s been my life for twenty years.”

Williams looks at his watch. It’s almost eight. The softness in his voice disappears. “Where the hell are those guys?”

They arrive at eight. As the group is being seated, Williams takes Fraschilla aside, not wanting to demand an explanation for their tardiness in front of the players. “Gary, the reservation was for eight.”

Williams shakes his head. “My schedule says seven-thirty.” It was a minor issue, but in the middle of a vital weekend, the kind of annoyance Williams could have lived without.

The dinner came off without a hitch. No one drank any alcohol. This is an interesting side of recruiting. The coaches would have loved a drink but weren’t about to have one in front of the players. The players would love a drink but wouldn’t dare order one in front of the coaches. So everyone drinks iced tea.

Dinner over, it is time for Francis and Carter to take over. As the five players drove off, Williams stood with his coaches in the restaurant’s parking lot. “All you can do now is hope everyone shows up in
one piece in the morning,” he said, echoing every coach’s lament. He turned to his coaches. “I need a beer.”

Undoubtedly, so did the players.

Everyone turned up in one piece the next day. The weekend was a success. Ten days later, Jent and Baker both signed with Ohio State. Robinson formalized what he had told Williams, and Hall also signed. Riley was still undecided. Then, four days after the signing period began, Ohio State fired football coach Earle Bruce, a move that brought national outrage.

Bruce had the best record in the Big Ten during his eight years as coach but that wasn’t good enough for many powerful OSU alumni. So, ignoring the recommendation of Athletic Director Rick Bay, University President Edward Jennings fired Bruce. Bay was so upset by Jennings’s decision that he resigned.

This turn of events stunned Williams. Bay was the man who had hired him, someone he liked and respected. The firing wasn’t just unfair, it was an embarrassment to the entire school. Two days later, Riley announced that he was going to Michigan. Williams was convinced that any chance to get him went out the window after the Bruce firing. His suspicions were confirmed when Riley’s coach told him that everyone had felt the firing was a sign of instability in the leadership at Ohio State. Williams couldn’t really argue. He just felt lucky that the other four players had signed before the firing.

Still, he felt they needed reassurance. He called all four to tell them the basketball program would not be affected by what had happened. He still had a long-term contract and wasn’t going anywhere.

It was a disturbing turn of events, though. Just when Williams should have been basking in a smashing series of recruiting victories, he was caught in the middle of a major controversy. The new athletic director was a quickly-moved-up assistant named James Jones. Williams didn’t know him well. He would shortly.

While Williams was focusing a lot of his attention on the future at Ohio State, no one at Purdue was looking past the upcoming season. The Boilermakers’ attitude was perhaps best summed up by Coach
Gene Keady’s annual list of ten goals that was posted in the locker room. At the top of the list were two words: “
FINAL FOUR
!”

The other goals didn’t really matter because all of them could be reached—but if the first one wasn’t, the other nine would be meaningless. No one was more aware of this than the senior trio of Troy Lewis, Todd Mitchell, and Everette Stephens.

But already, ten days before the season began, there were problems. On October 23, Jeff Arnold and Dave Stack, the two seniors who were academically ineligible for the first semester, were arrested during an on-campus party. The cops had been clearing the place out when Arnold went back for a coat he had forgotten. Apparently, Arnold had not moved quickly enough in leaving to satisfy the police. When they told him to get moving, he didn’t. Words were exchanged and Arnold ended up in handcuffs. When Stack tried to go to his aid, he ended up in handcuffs too.

The story was in the student newspaper that Monday. Lewis, Mitchell, and Stephens were reading it at lunch when the assistant coaches wandered by. “They’re gone, aren’t they?” Lewis asked, pointing to the story.

The coaches nodded glumly. Like the seniors, they remembered Keady’s “one more chance” edict of the summer. That chance had been used up.

Arnold was really the issue here. Stack was a little-used player who had never really fit in at Purdue. If he was a good guy and sat on the end of the bench, that was fine. If he was a bad guy, there was no room for him.

But Arnold could be a key player. He was 6–10 and a pretty good athlete who had improved steadily since migrating to Purdue from California four years earlier. Arnold was a flake and everyone knew it. Mitchell, Lewis, and Stephens all liked him and knew that he could help this team, perhaps even as a starter.

But they also felt his continuing escapades could hurt the team. Arnold liked to party, have a good time. That didn’t make him unusual. But he seemed incapable of drawing the line between fun and trouble. When he had first become ineligible Lewis had told him bluntly: “You fucked up again, Jeff, just like you’ve been doing for four years.”

Arnold hadn’t argued. Now, Arnold and Stack were certainly gone. The three seniors had mixed emotions about it. They felt empathy for them, especially Arnold, but they also felt that if Keady didn’t show who was boss, things could get out of hand on the team.

“We walked into practice that day,” Lewis said later, remembering that Monday in October, “and Jeff and Dave were there. Well, there was a recruit in, so we figured maybe Coach Keady was waiting to tell them. But that night, we had a meeting. Coach said that Arnold and Stack were going to run after practice every night and that if anyone screwed up they were going to be in trouble. I was sitting in the back of the room thinking, This is wrong. These two guys don’t deserve to be on this team.’ What I should have done was stand up and say, ‘Coach, I don’t want to play with these guys anymore.’ ”