After 40 Years, van Breda Kolff Is Still Holding Court as Coach

Butch van Breda Kolff has seen as much basketball as any man can in a lifetime. Yet, it’s his eyes that let you see how much he has enjoyed it.

Sit behind the Hofstra bench and the eyes teaching players, pleading with officials and surveying yet another afternoon on a basketball court are the same you see in pictures throughout van Breda Kolff’s 40-year coaching career.

His eyes don’t lie as they brighten when he talks of coaching year No. 41 and a possible showdown with his son Jan, the first-year head coach at Cornell. They don’t lie when he looks through you to an imaginary time machine and tells you he really doesn’t enjoy recruiting anymore.

The eyes have stayed focused on basketball through a career that has taken him from his college playing days as captain at Princeton to a brief NBA career and then coaching in college, NBA, high school and women’s professional basketball. He is now the oldest coach on the Division I level -- 69, going on a lot lower number.

“The only age barrier is in the minds of the players,” van Breda Kolff said last week after Hofstra won its fifth straight game and improved to 9-6. “Once that’s dispelled, there’s no age barrier. It goes back to the old thing: I’m not running, I’m not playing out there. All you’re taking from me is my knowledge.”

Knowledge accumulated through nearly 2,000 games, too many practices to count and the confidence that his system, with some modifications, still works as it did 40 years ago.

“Once they try some stuff you give them and it works, they don’t care if you’re 100 or how old you are,” he said between handshakes and hugs in a post-game affair attended by alumni, friends and a lot of grandchildren. “The coaching part is easy. It’s getting to the modern-day kid that’s hard because they’re changing. You have to change a little. I said a little; if you change a lot, you’re in trouble because then the inmates are going to run the asylum.

“Even the modern-day kid wants to be told how to do things the right way, but he doesn’t want to be a robot. That’s the fine line. That you have let them do their thing while they’re doing your thing.”

Van Breda Kolff told how the patience his team showed in a 78-54 victory over Brooklyn College showed the players were learning the system and how to use it to their advantage. He wasn’t totally happy -- there would be a meeting with center Pat Cosgrove about blocking out -- but van Breda Kolff was just glad there was progress.

“The shots came maybe 15, 18 seconds later in each possession and it’s a so much better shot and the percentages are there,” he said. “Little by little they see you’re right and they find out not only are they allowed to take the shot, but encouraged to. And then they say ‘Hey, he’s not so dumb after all.”’

Dumb has never been a word used to describe van Breda Kolff’s coaching abilities. He has a 454-231 career collegiate record that includes three pretty special seasons at Princeton with a player named Bill Bradley and his 290-313 pro mark includes consecutive seasons of 52-30 and 55-27 with the Los Angeles Lakers of Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor.

“I do very little talking about those days because that’s a ‘When I’ and I’ll never be a ‘When I.’ But I will say that Jerry West when he came back on defense would take a peek over each shoulder and know where everyone was. These kids look straight ahead. So I’ll use West’s name but they don’t know who he is. All they know is Michael.

“You tell them about a Bradley and how hard he worked and they don’t want to hear that at all but that’s how he became a great player. He was quite limited in physcial skills but was an unbelievable worker. That’s very, very rare today. They don’t want to be told things like how to play without the ball, screen, do things like that. They want to talk about spinning and dunking.”

Van Breda Kolff still has to talk a lot in trying to recruit players to Hofstra.

“The fun part is going in the home, meeting the kid and the parents. It’s great,” he said. “The bad part is when they say they’re not coming to your school and you’ll have to play against them. Kids today don’t really go to the school because of the school. It’s ‘I would play there because they had a lot of openings’ or ‘I went there because he went there.’ The kids put themselves at a certain level and it’s always one level higher than they should be.

“Other schools use your age against you. They say ‘How long will he stay there? At his age he may quit next year and then you’re alone for three years.’ When kids ask me how long I’ll stay, I say I don’t know.”

If he has his way it will be at least one more season and the father-son coaching matchup, something no one can find ever happening before on the Division I level.

“I always want to win,” van Breda Kolff said as his eyes widened as far as they had all day. “If it’s a real good game and we lose, it won’t bother me a bit. He’s going to do a good job. He’s got a good mind for the game and he’s a good recruiter. He’ll win some games.”

Hofstra athletic director Jim Garvey said the schools have been in touch about meeting next season and all that’s holding it up right now is the proposed conference move for the Flying Dutchmen program. If it comes off, the announcement should be made in March.

Garvey added that all school personnel work on one-year contracts and with van Breda Kolff’s good health, the topic of his leaving hasn’t really come up.

Butch van Breda Kolff looks you right in the eye when you ask him about retiring.

“Coaching for me is them, the players, that’s all,” he said. “What do I care if it’s girls or high school or college or pro. To see them happy, to see them play well. If we get a little better, then I’m happy.

“I’ve always said the same thing: as long as I am enjoying it and the players are enjoying it and are playing the way I want them to play and win some games, I’ll still do it. When I think, and I hate to use the words lose control, that practices are short and we’re just going through the motions, I’ll know about it. I’ll know it.”

You’ll see it in his eyes.