Forty-five minutes before Cal tipped off against Stanford last weekend, a roar erupted from Haas Pavilion’s packed student section as Golden Bears coach Ben Braun walked onto the floor.
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A grinning Braun flashed a thumbs-up to the students, who returned the gesture. A couple of hours later, after Stanford had dismantled the Bears 88-56, Braun’s smile had changed to a grimace.
“I’m a little disappointed with our effort,” he said. “We have to be more concerted with our effort.”
It wasn’t what Braun expected from his team against its Bay Area rival. But his refusal to gloss over an ugly result spoke volumes about Braun’s honesty, which some might consider a dangerous quality in his profession.
There has been plenty of talk about possible successors to Brian Ellerbe at Michigan, who is widely expected to be dismissed at the end of the season. Big names–including Rick Pitino, Bob Knight and Tubby Smith–have been tossed around. But if Michigan Athletic Director Bill Martin is searching for a new coach, he might want to look here.
Braun would be a nice fit in Ann Arbor on several levels.
The Michigan administration likes Michigan men and while Braun technically isn’t maize-and-blue material, he’s close. Braun spent 11 years at nearby Eastern Michigan, where he went 185-132 and won three Mid-American Conference crowns and three MAC Coach of the Year awards. He spent another eight years in the state at NAIA Siena Heights.
Braun also has experience cleaning up other people’s messes. That would come in handy at a program wracked by a booster scandal and other off-court problems. Braun inherited Cal’s program from Todd Bozeman, whose use of ineligible players forced the Bears to forfeit 28 games from 1994-96.
In Braun’s first year, 1997, the Bears came in second in the Pac-10. The Bears haven’t finished with a winning league record since, but this year they’re 17-7 overall, 8-4 in the conference and in the hunt for an NCAA tournament berth.
It might not be easy to pry Braun away from Cal, which last season opened sparkling $57.5 million Haas Pavilion on the site of old Harmon Gym. When Braun signed a contract extension through 2005, he called Cal a “dream job” and said “I’m here for the long haul.”
But that was four years ago and that qualifies as the long haul in Division I coaching terms. Braun, a New Trier alumnus who graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1975, might decide it’s time for a new challenge. Cal occasionally may challenge for the Pac-10 title, but it could struggle to step out of the long shadow cast by Stanford, which went to the Final Four three years ago and sits atop the national polls this week.
Of course, were Braun to take over the Michigan basketball team he would find himself in the shadow of an even more imposing powerhouse–its football team. But that’s another story.
Crum-bling support: Denny Crum may not have many friends in the University of Louisville administration. But he has plenty in the coaching ranks and they have begun to come to the beleaguered coach’s defense.
Amid rumors that the university had decided to dismiss Crum at the end of this season, Purdue coach Gene Keady called Crum in Salt Lake City, where Louisville was losing to Utah last weekend.
“Denny’s a good friend of mine,” said Keady, who has served with Crum on the National Association of Basketball Coaches board. “It’s one of those things all the coaches that care about each other are frustrated about it and don’t understand why it’s happening. There has to be some stuff we don’t know about. I told him he had our support and we’d be very unhappy if they let him go.”
Crum has won 673 games at Louisville, but his Cardinals teams have been mediocre in recent years. When word leaked his future was in doubt, Crum publicly blasted school officials, saying he had turned down more money to go elsewhere out of loyalty to the university.
“They want coaches to be loyal, but when coaches do a great job over the years, then they don’t want to be loyal to them, so it’s not a two-way street,” Keady said.
Louisville President John Shumaker last week denied reports Crum soon would be fired. But Cardinals players seem to be bracing for the move.
“Losing a coach is a big thing in college,” Louisville backup Bryant Northern said. “Whatever happens in this decision, it’s going to affect our lives. We’re like a family here. No one wants to see anyone leave. We’d all be happy if everyone stayed, but sometimes things just don’t work out that way.”
The Hawk strikes: When St. Joseph’s played in the NCAA West Regional in Salt Lake City a few years ago, coach Phil Martelli asked tourney officials to remove the “PA” from a courtside banner identifying the school as “St. Joseph (PA).”
“It’s not St. Joseph of Pennsylvania,” Martelli said. “St. Joseph was everyone’s St. Joseph.”
Martelli grew up watching Philadelphia’s Big 5–St. Joe’s, Temple, Penn, LaSalle and Villanova. The impish Martelli has become a wisecracking counterpoint to Temple coach John Chaney, the brooding street philosopher.
“Think of it as having four older brothers and you’re all fighting over that last pair of pants,” Martelli said.
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This year, at least, St. Joe’s is wearing the pants in “Fluffya,” as Martelli pronounces it. The Hawks (21-4) soared into the national rankings Monday for the first time since the 1996-97 season. They are led by Marvin O’Connor, who averages 20.4 points per game, and freshman point guard Jameer Nelson, the Atlantic 10’s assist leader.
Chaney had hoped Nelson would replace Pepe Sanchez at the point for Temple. But Nelson wound up at St. Joe’s. Such is life in the Big 5, where recruiting battles can be ferocious.
“I would say the maturity level has really grown since last year,” O’Connor said. “We have guys who are pretty much more focused on team goals rather than individual goals.”
Free throws: Chicago product Awvey Storey keeps banging away in the Pac-10. The 6-foot-6-inch Arizona State junior is averaging 14.8 points and 11.5 rebounds in his last 12 games. Storey is the Pac-10’s top rebounder at 9.5 per game. A Sun Devil hasn’t led the league in that department since 1993. . . . Cal’s Sean Lampley is another Chicagoan who’s thriving on the West Coast. Lampley, a senior forward from St. Francis de Sales High School, needs 54 points to pass Lamond Murray as the school’s all-time leading scorer. Lampley has scored 1,635 points. “Sean has been a guy who has wanted to take responsibility for this team and how it performs,” Braun said. Lampley is one of two Chicago products on Cal’s roster. The other, junior guard Dennis Gates, will earn his degree in sociology in only three years. Gates was the 1998 Chicago All-Academic Player of the Year at Whitney Young High School, where he teamed with future DePaul star Quentin Richardson.
Missouri’s loss to Oklahoma Monday night was its first defeat in 13 starts at Columbia this year. . . . Keep an eye on hot-and-cold Syracuse sharpshooter Preston Shumpert during the NCAA tourney. He went from a four-game cold spell (25.9 percent beyond the arc) to a sizzling 8-for-11 outing in Monday night’s 65-60 victory over Connecticut. . . . St. John’s 91-59 loss to Duke was its worst defeat in Madison Square Garden since 1960. The same people who raved about coach Mike Jarvis when he led the Red Storm to the Elite Eight in 1999 are beginning to wonder when he’s going to produce similar results with his own recruits.
It’s tough to turn Southern Cal coach Henry Bibby into a sympathetic figure–he’s easily the least-liked coach in the Pac-10–but that’s what a crew of conference officials managed to do last week when they mistakenly ejected him from a game against Arizona State. The rules call for a head coach to be ejected after his second technical or his bench’s third. But the refs sent Bibby off after he had been assessed one technical and the Trojan bench two. Once the officials realized their mistake, Bibby was summoned to return. The Pac-10 suspended Richie Ballesteros, the veteran crew chief, for two games and referees Jim Giron and Don McAllister for one game apiece.