WORCESTER, Mass.
As Vermont and Syracuse battled down to the wire on Friday night, Doug Wojcik sat in the scouting seats on press row at DCU Center calmly taking notes and drawing an occasional diagram. His face registered little emotion as the Catamounts went about pulling off their stunning upset.
Inside though, Wojcik's mind and emotions were churning. He couldn't help but think that a Vermont victory would help Michigan State, the school where he has been Tom Izzo's associate head coach the past two seasons, if the Spartans managed to hold off Old Dominion later in the evening. Earlier in the day, he had spent a good deal of time on the phone, tracking down the players from Tulsa, the team he will begin coaching when Michigan State's NCAA tournament run is over.
"I've got a lot of different feelings going on right now," he said. "I really want this team to make a run because we've worked very hard to get into this position this year. But I'm also anxious to get started at Tulsa. I've waited for this chance a long time. I've worked hard for it. I think I'm ready."
It has been a long and winding road for Wojcik, who graduated from the Naval Academy along with David Robinson in 1987 after helping lead the Midshipmen to the three most glorious years in the school's basketball history. After a two-year stint in the Navy, Robinson went on to a career in the NBA that will land him in the Hall of Fame. Wojcik went on to the USS William Sims (known affectionately as "Billy Sims" to those on board) before following his dream to coach when he got out of the Navy in 1992. He returned to Navy to help Don DeVoe rebuild what had become a fallen program and went on to Notre Dame, North Carolina and Michigan State. Now, at 40, he believes he is ready to apply all he has learned as a head coach.
Playing for Skip Prosser -- now Wake Forest's coach -- in high school first convinced Wojcik that he wanted to coach.
"He's still my father figure in coaching," Wojcik said. "We talk all the time. Tom's like my big brother; Skip's my father. I saw what he did, coming into a program that had been losing and turning it into a winner in three years, and I saw how he did it, with this common sense approach to life and I thought I'd like to do that myself someday."
First, Wojcik had to go to college and there weren't any Division I schools beating down his door. But he had a friend, Mike Sonnefeld, who had graduated from Navy in 1980 who began pushing him toward the academy. Prosser, who attended the Merchant Marine Academy, thought it was a good idea. The problem was, Navy wasn't all that hot to recruit him.
"When I became an assistant coach, I saw my recruiting file," he said, laughing. "They had seen me at Five-Star [Basketball Camp]. Basically they just kind of wrote me off as not much of a prospect."
Navy is different from other schools when it comes to recruiting. Because it has to cast a wide net looking for players who have an interest in the school, it doesn't completely give up on any player who shows interest in the school. Finally, assistant coach Jim Leary told Wojcik that the school might be willing to send him to the academy's prep school for a year.
"It was perfect for me," Wojcik said "I was very skinny, and I really needed a redshirt year someplace. I realized this was my only chance to play Division I basketball. I jumped at it."
A year in the prep school helped, but Wojcik still didn't make the varsity as a Navy freshman. Only when a classmate named Willie Jett flunked out did then-coach Paul Evans begin looking at him as a point guard candidate. By the time his sophomore season began, he was the starter along with the suddenly blossoming Robinson, who had gone from 6 feet 7 to 7-1 between his freshman and sophomore seasons. The Mids won the ECAC South that season and went to Dayton to play LSU in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The Tigers had no idea who anyone from Navy was -- including Robinson and certainly Wojcik. At one point, Coach Dale Brown jumped off the bench and screamed at one of his players to "take 5 and tell Mike to take Wojcik."
Wojcik wore number five. He scored 18 points in the game and the Mids won by 23.
A year later, they beat Tulsa, Syracuse and Cleveland State to reach the final eight before losing to Duke.
