For NCAA-Bound San Diego State, There Is No Longer Such a Thing as a Typical Day at the Trailer : First Class Suits Smokey’s Style

Flying first class and being interviewed by three television stations at the airport is Smokey’s style.

Wearing a black pinstriped suit, white shirt and stylish tie, Gaines looked the coach’s role of a conference tournament champion as he and his San Diego State basketball team were greeted Wednesday morning by San Diego media at Lindbergh Field.

This was not your basic day at the trailer, where Gaines has his office.

This has not been another season of flight/bus rides to Laramie to play a University of Wyoming team in a game Gaines thought his Aztecs should win but probably would lose.

This season is the first time the Aztecs have won the Western Athletic Conference Tournament championship, and the first time they will be playing in the NCAA tournament in Gaines’ six years as head coach.

The showman/coach/business entrepreneur is loving it.

He talked about qualifying for the tournament as if he had been preparing the answers for years.

If he was nervous about his team playing ninth-ranked Nevada Las Vegas tonight in a first-round West Regional game at Utah’s Special Events Center, he didn’t show it.

Gaines, the WAC Coach of the Year, was not sifting through sheets filled with statistics or diagramming plays on index cards. He certainly was not chewing on a towel the way that someone he knows, likes and respects does.

That’s not his style.

Save the ulcers for UNLV Coach Jerry Tarkanian. Before one of his team’s most important games, Gaines decided to get a quick bite of lunch just moments before the plane was going to take off for Salt Lake City.

After devouring a plate of ribs and vegetables in nine minutes, Gaines headed for the plane.

But first, just one last television interview before boarding.

Once on board, Gaines made himself comfortable in a window seat in first class.

For only the third time this season, Gaines sat in first class while his team sat in coach.

This is the culmination of a season in which the Aztecs went 23-7 and won the WAC Tournament by beating Texas El Paso in the final at El Paso last Saturday.

“This is the most gratifying year I’ve had in coaching,” Gaines said. “This is my thing here. I took a stagnant program and built it up.”

Gaines said he thought he had something to prove because some questioned the two-year contract he signed after last year’s 15-13 season.

“I was determined to work harder this year because people kept asking why San Diego State didn’t hire a big-name coach,” Gaines said.

This season, Gaines spent more time with his players and less time beating his head against the wall trying to sell basketball in San Diego.

He won and he accomplished things as a coach of which he is very proud.

“When I took my Detroit team to the NCAA tournament, people said I was winning with Dick Vitale’s club,” Gaines said. “I was following a short-time legend, and there was a lot of pressure. Every game I won, they said it was Vitale’s team. Every game I lost, they said it was my team.”

In the 1978-79 season, Gaines led Detroit to a 22-6 mark in his second year as head coach.

“That team was a lot like this year’s team in that we weren’t expected to win that many games,” Gaines said.

The Titans had lost Terry Tyler and John Long, both of whom play for the NBA’s Detroit Pistons. Led by Terry Deurod, Jerry Davis, and Earl Cureton, Detroit beat Georgetown and Marquette in late-season games to wrap up an NCAA bid in ’79.

In the first round, the Titans were upset by Lamar in a narrow loss at Middle Tennessee State.

“My kids felt we were going to win easily,” Gaines said, “and it was tough to get them up. That loss was very disappointing.”

What made the loss a little more bearable for Gaines was that a couple of weeks later he was asked if he would be interested in the San Diego State job.

Ironically, it was in Salt Lake City that Gaines was contacted by Cedric Dempsey, who was the SDSU athletic director at the time.

“When he first called me, I thought San Diego State was a Division 2 school,” Gaines said. “But a lot of the coaches staying with me at the Little American Hotel in Salt Lake kept saying that the San Diego State job was the best opening in the country at the time.”

A month later, Gaines became the Aztec head coach.

Six years after that, he has led them to their best season ever in Division 1.

“No matter what happens in the tournament,” Gaines said, “this has been a heck of a year. Winning at El Paso was a real thrill for me. It gave me a warm feeling.”

Gaines, 44, hopes that warm feeling translates into a new contract pretty soon. He has one year remaining on his current contract.

Said SDSU Athletic Director Mary Alice Hill: “He’s had a great year, and we will talk about an extension at the end of the year.”

Added Gaines: “There are only about three other jobs that I would leave San Diego State for.”

He said those jobs would be at schools that sold out on-campus arenas and had the kind of facilities that could lure top recruits.

“When kids see you working out of a trailer, you often lose them,” Gaines said. “They wonder why you don’t have office space.”

For the moment, Gaines will not worry about a building and will try to continue to build the Aztec program.

Gaines said he has talked to officials at Georgetown, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio State, Arizona, Memphis State, Tulsa and Michigan State about playing the Aztecs next year.

A lot depends on if the Aztecs can afford to pay some of these teams more than the standard $10,000 guarantee.

Hill said the Aztecs are trying to work a deal with North Carolina in which the Tar Heels would play in San Diego next season and the Aztecs would play in Chapel Hill the following two seasons.

Playing North Carolina would be Smokey’s style. Just like flying first class and going to the NCAA tournament.