Coach Is Disciple of Discipline, Defense : El Camino Mentor in ‘Class by Himself’ in Community College Ranks

Inside the spacious North Gymnasium at El Camino College, away from the hazy warmth of a February afternoon in Southern California, the Gardena man whose career is built on the “double D’s” of basketball drilled his sweaty troops on a new passing game.

Paul Landreaux wore no whistle. “(I) never do,” said the Warrior basketball coach. Discipline, the first “D,” can be demonstrated inherently by tone of voice, he explained.

Defense, the second principle in a philosophy that has won more than 270 games in roughly 10 years, was readily apparent: The blue-clad starting unit had difficulty getting a basket against the gray-shirted reserves.

Landreaux was born to coach.

“Sometimes I feel that this was what they put me on earth to do,” he said.

Competing coaches often remark that the second team at El Camino could very easily be ranked in the state’s top 10 in any given year.

Some of basketball’s best minds have marveled at his ideas. Jerry Tarkanian of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas has, at times, flown the El Camino coach to Nevada to teach the Runnin’ Rebels about defense.

Twice, teams he has coached shut out opponents for an entire 20-minute half. El Camino once held an opponent to nine points in a game.

Only 44 years old, Landreaux has distinguished himself at El Camino with a litany of achievement awards and nine seasons with 20-plus-wins. He has captured two state championships, one of only four men in the history of community college basketball in California to have done that. He is expected, should he remain at the school, to win more state titles. Only his good friend and former mentor, Tarkanian, who won four at Pasadena and Riverside city colleges in the mid-1960s, has done better.

“He is in a class by himself,” said Cypress College Coach Don Johnson, one of the other two-time state titleholders.

In his own gym, wearing jeans and a polo shirt, Landreaux stood on the base line, hands in pockets, a white roadster cap covering his curly black hair. He did not raise his voice, yet his players stood riveted when he gave instructions.

Landreaux is known as an excellent teacher, a communicator who believes that it is just as important to teach the principles of life as it is to teach how to win.

Said Roland H’Orvath, a starting forward at the University of Santa Clara who starred at El Camino two years ago: “He looks at you not as basketball players, but as people. He teaches you that there is more to life than basketball. . . He tells you that basketball will help you learn to accept responsibility in life and not put it onto others.”

Landreaux has been a father figure to many players, an attitude he imparts because “I have this gut-wrenching feeling that my kids love me.”

Guard Marc Wade, who went from El Camino to Nevada-Las Vegas, sent Landreaux a Christmas card recently. A written note on it ended: “The things I learned from you were minimal compared to the things you showed me about life.” The card still hangs on the wall in Landreaux’s tiny campus office along with dozens of pictures and postcards from former players with similar messages.

“He’s an outstanding coach and a fine person,” said Santa Monica Coach John McMullen, a longtime Landreaux rival.

Those who play for him learn to live by his rules or find another place to play, because the disciplinarian in him seldom bends. Earlier this season, he removed two key players from his team, including one--Charles White, a potential state player of the year, who has signed with Purdue--because they were involved in a brawl at the end of a game the Warriors easily won. He stressed that no player is above Landreaux law when it comes to discipline.

Eventually the players were reinstated, but not before they apologized to the opposing team.

“Sometimes you have to bend a little,” acknowledged Torrance High School Coach Carl Strong, an assistant under Landreaux in his early years at El Camino. “(Yet, his priorities are) established. That’s a quality I admire in him.”

Landreaux’s swift decision--he removed the players moments after the game ended--is the reason that players at El Camino are so highly regarded by four-year schools.

More than 95% of all Landreaux’s athletes have gone on to careers at four-year schools, a statistic that the coach--who has received press criticism for not paying enough attention to other vital statistics--is proud of.

The No. 1 question that has dogged him over the years, however, is why, if he is such a successful coach, has he not been hired by a four-year college? It is something Landreaux cannot explain.

“When I sit back and look at all the things I’ve done, sure I wonder,” he said. “People come up to me and wonder. I have no answer.”

Even his co-workers wonder.

“It also surprises me,” said James Schwartz of El Camino, Landreaux’s boss. “They are overlooking a really talented person. He could go to UCLA or USC or anywhere, and he would be successful.”

Strong recognized Division 1 potential immediately when Landreaux came to the school.

“It constantly surprises me that someone doesn’t go after him,” he said.

Landreaux makes no secret that he wants a job at a four-year school.

“I have done everything I was supposed to do here at El Camino to prepare myself for the so-called next step,” he said. “We run a class program. Any four-year school that might be interested in a quality coach, a coach that does things the right way, they’d have to look at my program first, and look at me.”

Sitting in his office the other day, Landreaux spoke of the frustrations he has had in applying for positions at local four-year schools. He was a candidate three times in the last five seasons at Cal State Long Beach, and, according to a source, the runner-up for the job at San Diego State a year ago. That position eventually went to Wyoming Coach Jim Brandenburg after a successful pilgrimage through the NCAA playoffs.

The situation with San Diego State aggravated him, Landreaux said. Officials from the school did a thorough background check, he said. It was reported that they made several calls to administrators at El Camino, asking, among other things, about his character.

Landreaux met with San Diego representatives on several occasions both in that area and in the South Bay. San Diego officials attended El Camino games.

Then the attention ceased, and two months of silence last spring made him nervous. When Landreaux was told he was not the top choice, he felt angry.

“I’m not going to get involved in any more jobs unless someone--an athletic director--calls me and asks if I am interested in the job,” he said in disgust. He cited the pressures of job-hunting, which he said subject his family to stress.

Those who know him say there are a variety of reasons why he has been passed over, not the least of which is politics. Landreaux alludes to this himself.

“Everybody is trying to get their guy in (to a better job),” he said.

Strong agrees: “Sometimes maybe it’s not what you know, but who you know.”

Some say it is the stigma attached to junior college coaches in general, particularly in California, a system that refuses to participate in the National Junior College Athletic Assn. playoffs.

Landreaux insists he has “no skeletons in the closet.” However, he can be cantankerous--such as with the local press, which he has chided for not paying enough attention to his program.

“Paul feels the media concentrate on football and so forth, but then they are not here for basketball games,” Schwartz said. “That bothers him because he feels he has a strong program.”

Landreaux acknowledged this. “At times that can be very frustrating from a coaching standpoint,” he said.

He also speaks highly of himself--”I’ve heard different coaches say they’re deliberately trying to keep me out of (coaching) with various means because I’m too good.” He denies, though, that he has an excessive ego problem.

“I can see where some people would get the impression (that he is aloof),” said Long Beach State College’s Bill Fraser, one of the deans in the coaching field. “I don’t, though. Coaches are really competitive, and there is some ego involved in everything you do. That gives off the (feeling) that you don’t like to lose.

“Paul is a proud guy and that could give some people the feeling of aloofness. It’s not meant to be. He an outgoing and fun guy.”

Of those who accuse Landreaux of having a big head, Strong says: “Perhaps (the accusers) are just in envy of him.”

Then there is the time he took a three-week leave of absence three years ago in the middle of basketball season. Landreaux said he needed time off to be with his family. The press had a field day with that excuse.

“My son had never been in the snow,” he explained. “Because of basketball I had always been putting (my family) off. My wife and I were having difficult times with this. I got caught up with reality in terms of my family and basketball.”

The situation was worsened by physical symptoms--a nagging rash that Landreaux attributed to a bad case of nerves. In December, he asked for and received permission from the school to take time off without pay. He spent two weeks in the mountains of Southern California and then traveled with his family to Las Vegas, leaving the team to an assistant coach.

When he returned he was aghast at the coverage that his leave was given in the local press. The college refused to say anything accept that Landreaux was missing for “personal reasons.”

Worse yet, El Camino “lost a couple of games.”

(The press) “attributed (my leave) to everything from burnout to a fight with the administration,” he said.

Schwartz said this media reaction was out of proportion.

“We wanted to be honest with the press but it was a personal problem,” he said.

Landreaux’s strong family loyalty may have held him back from pursuing a lot of jobs, which translates into lack of interview time, something that four-year athletic directors may have expected.

He has been known to lament his situation to other coaches, and that gossip has made the rounds of the coaching grapevine.

And Landreaux’s disciplinary techniques have brought charges that he is old-fashioned and a bit stuffy. He acknowledges that, but says that in a period of relaxed thinking, he considers discipline tantamount to success. Team unity (“We are a family”) is important to him.

Example: Players at El Camino are expected to wear color-coordinated coats, slacks and ties to all games, a kind of family portrait. Most do not have facial hair. On a level where games are often played before just a handful of spectators, his attention to attire has been called downright silly.

“Paul is a strict disciplinarian and it shows with his team,” said Fraser, who often plays golf with Landreaux in the off-season. “Particularly in this day and age, when (most coaches) are more flexible than in the past.”

Landreaux concedes he has doubts about the attitudes of athletes these days.

“Sometimes you wonder with the breed of kids you get today,” he said. . . . It seems as if it gets harder and harder to motivate (them).”

Landreaux got a lesson in loyalty and motivation early in his coaching career. Tarkanian gave him his first job in 1971 when the UNLV coach was at Cal State Long Beach. Apparently, he saw something in a 6-foot, 3-inch swing man whose knees would not allow him to finish a playing career at Cal State Los Angeles.

“I walked into the gymnasium at Long Beach and asked (Tarkanian) for a job. He didn’t know me from the man in the moon,” Landreaux said. “I just strolled in.”

Tarkanian told him to “come back tomorrow.” Landreaux returned, then set out on a sojourn of assistant jobs at the high school, junior and senior college levels. In his first year as a head coach--1978--he guided Trade Technical College, a perennial cellar dweller, to a Western State Conference championship. A year later, he was at El Camino.

With this year’s team, Landreaux is bearing down on Tarkanian’s JC championship mark, despite a rash of problems that included ineligibilities, the fight and a lack of leadership at the point guard position.

El Camino was the preseason pick of the state coaches’ association to win the state title. The team won 19 of its first 20 games and is now 25-3. But internal problems have led the veteran coach to admit that with this team he is getting the stiffest test of his professional abilities.

“This has been a challenging season,” he said.

He knows, though, how to deal with big challenges, as evidenced by a poster in his office. In it, a golfer stands on a long tree branch, a 7-iron in his hand. His tee shot rests precariously in a crack on the limb. The caption on the poster reads: “No problem.”

Landreaux approaches the X’s and O’s of basketball the same way because the “two key words that I try to live by”-- discipline and defense--solve most of his problems.