Arizona Remake : Not-So-Brash Bonvicini Is Turning Around Tucson’s Program

This is the gospel according to Joan Bonvicini:

--Positive is good. Negative is bad.

--If you can’t be confident, at least appear to be confident.

--Appearances matter.

--Win, whatever it takes.

Bonvicini has been brought here to make a dormant thing awaken. She is here to make women’s basketball flourish in the desert. She left behind Cal State Long Beach, 12 years of success and scores of disciples.

Here, she has created a cautious following. They are curious and skeptical, but dare to be hopeful.

Here, too, she has gained riches and power and celebrity. And the first multiyear contract ever given a female coach in the state of Arizona.

Behold, the greening of Joan Bonvicini.

WINNING TIMES

“The place has been completely renovated. There was a door here, this wall was knocked out and this room used to be a closet or something,” said Bonvicini, conducting a tour of her office suite at the University of Arizona’s McKale Center. “All the furniture is custom made.European contemporary. Everything here is first class. I like to make a good first impression. Whether it’s right or wrong, first impressions count.”

Bonvicini knows whereof she speaks. One way or another, Bonvicini has been impressing people since she took over the Long Beach women’s basketball program in 1979 from the steady hands of Frances Schaafsma, who in 17 years as coach compiled a .741 winning percentage.

It was left to Bonvicini, a 26-year-old in her first coaching job, to put her mark on a good but unremarkable program. In her first season, the 49ers went 28-6 and won the conference title. In her second, she was voted the Division I coach of the year.

The next year, when the NCAA began sponsoring the women’s postseason tournament, Bonvicini’s team won a bid. For each of the next 10 years her Long Beach teams qualified for the NCAA tournament and twice made it to the Final Four.

A large part of Bonvicini’s success was her ability to sell--herself to fans and media, and the idea of winning to her players.

Said Kay Don, associate athletic director at Long Beach: “Joan’s personality played a big part in the success she had.”

Bonvicini’s teams won 10 conference titles. In her 12 years at Long Beach, her record was 325-71, a winning percentage of .821. Only one active coach in women’s basketball has a better record, Leon Barmore of Louisiana Tech.

It was interesting then that Bonvicini would take a job at Arizona, whose women’s basketball program was a bastion of mediocrity and administrative inattention. The Wildcats were 6-25 last season and 1-17 in the Pac-10. Coach June Olkowski resigned at the end of last season, leaving behind a 34-82 record for four seasons.

In resigning, Olkowski said that apparently she wasn’t bringing the program along as fast as the school administration wished.

Olkowski, though, was simply one of many. The Arizona women’s basketball team has had six coaches, but only one winning season in the last 16 years. The team is the only one at the school never to have held a national ranking.

All of this is more remarkable when contrasted with the men’s program, headed by Lute Olson. Olson, who, like Bonvicini, launched his career at Long Beach, was hired in 1983 to revive a program in similar disarray. In short order Olson--a gregarious and tireless public relations machine--wrested the community’s attention from the powerful Arizona football team and fashioned Tucson into a rabid college basketball town.

Bonvicini has stepped into Olson’s slipstream in a community already well versed in basketball. Fans of the men’s program are accustomed to winning and have become discriminating and selective with their praise.

Not so for the women’s fans. The Wildcats are 6-6, having already equaled last season’s victory total. Bonvicini could leave town now a hero. She has convinced Tucson that her team is something to behold.

“I had to educate people here,” Bonvicini said. “I had to sell myself to the players, the athletic department and the community. They don’t know what good women’s basketball is. Because they’ve never seen it.”

After arriving last April, Bonvicini leaped immediately into recruiting, then quickly grew puzzled. The school and its climate were an easy sell. The Pac-10, an emerging basketball power, was attractive. Bonvicini knew the recruits liked her and the staff. But when it came time to sign, many went elsewhere.

What was it?

“They were watching our practices,” Bonvicini said, laughing.

That sight frightened even the coach at first view.

“The first practice, the first drill . . . “ she said. “We ran a three-man weave, which is a basic drill. It was ugly. Worse than junior high. At the end of that practice, I thought to myself, ‘Oh, my God.’ ”

With a rigorous conditioning program and Bonvicini’s demanding workouts, the team has improved. But the Wildcats are not nearly as good as their fans seem to think. The enthusiasm generated by Bonvicini’s hiring has translated into sales of more than 500 season tickets and an average home attendance of about 1,200. The program’s booster club, Top Cats, even pitched in some of its $23,000 kitty to redo the women’s basketball offices.

Although the attendance figures are an improvement, the team still draws a modest crowd that is swallowed up inside McKale Center, which holds 13,477. But the fans are loud and loyal. They seem to appreciate whatever small improvements unfold before them.

It’s a noticeable change, this fan support. Bonvicini’s assistants sit in their smart new offices and marvel at the fans’ wild response to whatever token the still-struggling team offers.

“We laugh about it,” assistant coach Karen Freeman said, shaking her head. “The fans) think we are good. They ask the kids for autographs. They wait in line for autographs. We win a game and they think we’re Final Four-bound. Geez. Wait until we get good.”

FIRE AND BRIMSTONE

What made Bonvicini’s reputation was not the frequency with which her teams won, but the manner in which they played.

Bonvicini’s Long Beach teams were exciting. They were fast-breaking, full-court-pressing bundles of nerves and sass. Her teams were successful but not popular with their peers. Her players were likely to talk trash and act brash. Bonvicini’s was the kind of team that passed out Final Four T-shirts on the bench at the NCAA West Regional final in 1988 . . . before the game was over.

Reputations are made from such showboating.

Win, whatever it takes.

Asked to characterize Bonvicini’s Long Beach teams, her three new assistants throw out descriptions that range from “tough as nails” to “thuggish.”

Freeman was a much sought-after assistant at North Carolina State who was looking for a head coaching job when she got a call from Bonvicini early last summer. Freeman said she was impressed by Bonvicini and the school, but needed to discuss one sensitive issue.

“I told her that I didn’t want to work with some of the kids like they had at Long Beach. I didn’t want to be spending all my time with kids who were a pain in the . . . . We don’t get paid enough for that.

“I expressed some concern about the kids she had there, the reputation. She told me: ‘This is a fresh start. The mistakes I’ve made, I’m going to leave behind.’ I was satisfied.”

At least one Long Beach player, though, bristled at the suggestion that the players were responsible for the reputation.

“Yes, the team talked and behaved in a certain way,” said Trise Jackson, a senior from Lynwood. “It wasn’t us, it reflected the coach. We got that reputation from Joan. We’re a different team now. We’re disciplined.”

For her part, Bonvicini says she has matured and things will be different at her new school.

“No matter what you’ve done before in a program, when you go into a new one, you start fresh,” she said. “I feel like I’m molding this place into what I want. I want the image. I want them to look right, to dress right, to have good sportsmanship.

“I think people had the image that Long Beach players would talk and carry on and they would put that image on me. It wasn’t me, it was the players. It was nothing that I suggested. That was how the players at Long Beach motivated themselves. Believe me, it was nothing I suggested. We won’t do that here. The image has changed and it’s changing.”

So image-conscious was Bonvicini that she:

--Enlisted a local beauty salon to perform make-overs on all her players, giving them tips on hair, makeup and dress.

--Put the team through mock interviews, with real reporters critiquing the performances.

--Brought in an expert to discuss table manners and etiquette.

Appearances matter.

Glenn McDonald, Bonvicini’s longtime assistant, was promoted to head the Long Beach program that had not only thrived on winning, but also on Bonvicini’s flamboyant style. How have the fans and players accepted the quiet and serious new coach?

McDonald, who was not Bonvicini’s choice to succeed her, answers carefully.

“I heard a lot of comments (when Bonvicini left),” McDonald acknowledged. “But the people who support us like the way I’m taking the program. I don’t curse my players. I don’t snatch my players and yank them. I don’t do some of the things they have seen in the past. (Long Beach players) like Joan. But there was a lot of dissension when she left. She’s a legend at Long Beach. Now I have to step in and say, ‘It’s my program now.’ ”

Bonvicini’s staff at Arizona tells a different story. There has been no sign of the tyrant others describe. Bonvicini’s four-year, $75,000 base contract raised more than eyebrows: Expectations are also high. Bonvicini is well advised to be on her best behavior. Had she come in with an attitude to match her salary, the Welcome Wagon might have run her over.

In fact, Bonvicini’s upbeat and positive outlook has become a running joke among her assistants. They often ask themselves when the honeymoon will be over.

Freeman said she was hesitant about even flying to Tucson for an interview, but was relieved after meeting Bonvicini that she was nothing like her reputation.

“I didn’t know Joan,” she said. “From what I knew of her, I thought she would be a little callous. She is nothing like that. In fact, (the assistant coaches) talk about it among ourselves. She is very positive and caring. A lot of my friends who had similar perceptions have been curious. I’ve had to catch myself from being too defensive. ‘No, she’s not like that,’ I tell them.”

Another assistant, Clemette Haskins, daughter of University of Minnesota Coach Clem Haskins, had seen Bonvicini’s teams firsthand as a player. Haskins, in her second year at Arizona, was a three-time All-American at Western Kentucky. She and the team were ready for the worst when Bonvicini arrived.

“She’s really nothing like I thought she’d be,” Haskins said. “I thought she’d be brash, uncaring. She’s been given an unfair image. People don’t know her. She’s so positive. When she first came here, she’d say all these things were going to happen. We’d look at each other and say, ‘Is she serious?’ We’d laugh. But everything’s happened. She’s sold us.”

Everyone certainly appears sold. The mood around Tucson fairly sparkles with Bonvicini-ites who marvel at her ability to have turned around a moribund program by sheer force of personality, especially considering that the team has nine players from last season’s team.

“We’re not the greatest athletes around,” says Mary Klemm, a senior guard from Ventura.

But everywhere in the athletic department are signs of her influence. Besides the remodeled offices, there are the three assistants who each drive a university-provided car, thanks to Bonvicini. One of the team’s five student managers is on full scholarship, as requested by Bonvicini. And at Bonvicini’s urging, the women’s locker room--which recently had been renovated--is undergoing further face-lifting. And Bonvicini was given a membership at the posh Skyline Country Club, as she had hoped.

Finally, school officials are so enamored of their new coach that she is operating without a budget this season, so that the athletic department can get an idea what it costs to run a big-time women’s basketball program.

Unanimously, the Arizona players speak of Bonvicini in cult-like terms.

“You should see us at halftime,” sophomore Margo Clark said. “We sit there and look at her like she’s a god. She tells us things. She’s so confident, we believe her.”

When these players graduate they may need deprogramming. By then the gospel will be spewing from their lips, too, like a mantra, “Think positive. Be confident.”

By then the desert will be abloom, women’s basketball at the University of Arizona will be humming, and the disciples of Joan Bonvicini will be legion. They will graduate, go forth and multiply. Soon the world will know:

Positive is good. Negative is bad.

Days at the Beach

Joan Bonvicini’s record as women’s basketball coach at Cal State Long Beach. YEAR: 1979-80 RECORD: 28-6 FINISH: Western Collegiate Athletic Assn. champions, Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women West Sectional final, No. 9.

YEAR: 1980-81 RECORD: 27-7 FINISH: WCAA champions, AIAW East Sectional final, No. 6.

YEAR: 1981-82 RECORD: 24-6 FINISH: WCAA champions, NCAA West Regional, No. 9.

YEAR: 1982-83 RECORD: 24-7 FINISH: Second in WCAA, NCAA West Regional final, No. 6.

YEAR: 1983-84 RECORD: 25-6 FINISH: WCAA champions, NCAA West Regional final, No. 6.

YEAR: 1984-85 RECORD: 28-3 FINISH: WCAA champions, NCAA West Regional final, No. 3.

YEAR: 1985-86 RECORD: 29-5 FINISH: Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. champions, NCAA West Regional, No. 8.

YEAR: 1986-87 RECORD: 33-3 FINISH: PCAA champions, NCAA Final Four, No. 4.

YEAR: 1987-88 RECORD: 28-6 FINISH: PCAA champions, NCAA Final Four, No. 7.

YEAR: 1988-89 RECORD: 30-5 FINISH: Big West champions, NCAA East Regional final, No. 7.

YEAR: 1989-90 RECORD: 25-9 FINISH: Third in Big West, NCAA second round, No. 14.

YEAR: 1990-91 RECORD: 24-8 FINISH: Big West champions, NCAA West Regional semifinal, No. 18. Totals: 325-71: .821, 10 conference titles.