WORCESTER, Mass.
Tom Brennan insists he is through crying. Chances are, that's not the case.
Brennan isn't Dick Vermeil or Roy Williams, coaches who cry regardless of time or final score. But last Saturday, when the crowd at Patrick Gym began repeatedly chanting, "Thank you, Bren-nan," it all crashed. Nineteen years as the coach at the University of Vermont were culminating with a third straight America East championship and Brennan was riding into the sunset, retiring at the age of 55 because the fire has gone out.
"I'm completely satisfied," he said. "You can't be satisfied and still coach. It doesn't work."
So there he was, on national television, crying a blue streak as his Catamounts blew Northeastern out of the gym. The party that day at the Brennan house started at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and ended near midnight after close to 300 people had come and gone. The next morning, the first phone call was from Dennis Wolff, his longtime rival at Boston University.
"I'm really proud of you," Wolff said. "But what in the world was all the crying about?"
"We were up 30," Brennan answered. "I had nothing else to do."
The case can be made that Brennan's retirement is as big a story in Vermont as Dean Smith's was in North Carolina. He has taken a school that had never made the NCAA tournament to three straight, and he is the co-host of the most popular morning-drive radio talk show in the state, "Corm and the Coach." If there is anyone in the state of Vermont who doesn't know and love Tom Brennan, no one can pinpoint exactly who that person is.
"I've gotten way too much publicity," Brennan said Thursday afternoon, relaxing inside the building formerly known as the Centrum. "I told a guy the other day that no one loves Tommy Brennan more than I do and I'm sick and tired of me."
Brennan knows the chances are good that Friday night's NCAA tournament game against Syracuse likely will be his farewell. Naturally, that's not the approach he's taking.
"I told the kids this ain't about video cams and good memories," he said. "We're going down there to win. I know how talented Syracuse is, but we're a good team. Maybe Taylor [Coppenrath] is Larry Bird or Bill Bradley. I don't mean getting us to the Final Four; I mean winning one game."
Coppenrath, who scored 37 points in the championship game, was an un-recruited kid in high school who has blossomed into a star in college. When Coppenrath was a high school senior at St. Johnsbury Academy, a tiny Vermont prep school, his main asset was being 6 feet 9.
By his sophomore year, he was the America East player of the year and the star on Vermont's first NCAA team. The presence of T.J. Sorrentine, a hard-nosed point guard with big-time range, gave Vermont a consistent inside-outside presence. When the Catamounts won a second straight America East title, with Coppenrath coming back to score 43 in the championship game after missing three weeks because of a broken wrist, Brennan knew it was time to get out.
"We had all these people over at the house after the final, and I looked around at everyone and how happy they were and I thought, 'It can never get better than this,' " he said. "We were just on such a high. I wanted to coach these seniors [Coppenrath, Sorrentine and three others], and I knew, to be honest, I wouldn't have to coach them very much. I don't think I could have coached another group this year. I just wouldn't have been into it enough."
