Calhoun’s reaction wasn’t quite as dewy-eyed. “It’s a loss,” he said afterwards. “That’s all I see it as, a loss.”
Told of Calhoun’s comments three days later, Boeheim responded, “Why does he act like that?”
Calhoun knows what’s said about him and honestly doesn’t care very much. He has an absolute belief in what he’s done and what he’s doing.
“The answer lies not in the wins or the losses,” he says. “It lies in who our kids become. I feel pretty good about that.”
Calhoun was 15 when his father died of a heart attack; he dropped out of college as a freshman to support his family. He was, among other things, a grave-digger and a headstone cutter. He went back to college, graduated and became a high school coach. His first team was 1-17. His first college job was at Northeastern where he transitioned the program from Division II to Division I and created a mid-major power. Then, in 1986, the Connecticut job opened up.
U-Conn. was supposed to be a coaching graveyard. Many thought the school should drop out of the Big East and find a conference it could compete in. In Calhoun’s second season, Connecticut won the NIT. In his fourth season, the Huskies won the Big East title and lost in the NCAA tournament regional final, only after Duke’s Christian Laettner made a shot at the buzzer. Nine years later, in 1999, the school won the NCAA title, beating Duke. It won another in 2004, the year after Calhoun had surgery for prostate cancer. Four years later he had a serious bout with skin cancer.
Along the way there have been off-court issues with players (notably the Marcus Williams, A.J. Price laptop-stealing scandal of 2005) and feuds with fellow coaches. One way or the other, Calhoun is always in battle.
It shows on his face and sometimes in his step. But never in his coaching.
n n n
With 11:37 left in Thursday night’s game, TV went to a timeout. Bucknell had scored the last two baskets of the game and, as his team came to the bench, Calhoun was furious. He was demonstrating proper technique to all five players as they walked in his direction.
U-Conn was leading at that moment, 64-31.
“Jim’s approach is to push them and push them to reach a certain level. Once they get there, he pushes them to the next level,” said George Blaney, a successful head coach himself for 25 years and now a U-Conn. assistant. “He can’t do it any other way. The day he doesn’t get on them in that situation is the day he stops being Jim Calhoun.”
That day appears to be a long way off. Closing in on 900 wins and 70 years old, he’s worried only about the next loss. And the next battle.
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