He Takes Long Route to Head Coaching Job : Basketball: Former USD standout Ken Smith gets his first chance at a top job at Division II Northern Colorado.

Coaching careers often take circuitous paths, and right now Ken Smith’s has taken him down U.S. 34, past the Canine Companions Puppy Kindergarten (Beginning and Advanced), past the Greeley Mall (“Where Good Things Happen”) and by the Smiling Moose Bar and Grill.

It has led the former University of San Diego basketball star away from the Pac-10 limelight and into a town that on some days, when the wind is blowing just so, is situated a little too close for comfort to cattle feedlots, if you get the drift.

Not that he’s complaining. Smith, 38, and 10th among USD’s all-time leading scorers, has finally landed his first head coaching job. It is at the University of Northern Colorado, an NCAA Division II school, and Smith is enjoying that moment of solace available to all first-time head coaches in the remaining days before his debut season.

He hasn’t yet lost.

“The pressure is not there because we’re in practice and I enjoy practice,” said Smith, whose team opens at Southern Colorado on Nov. 23. “I’m so busy trying to figure out what the kids can do and what they can’t do.”

Smith began looking for work after last season, when Coach Don Monson and his Oregon staff were let go. Smith was at Oregon under Monson for three seasons and was instrumental in recruiting guard Terrell Brandon, a 1991 NBA lottery draft pick of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Someone told Smith that Northern Colorado might have an opening. He checked. They did. He was hired in April, becoming the school’s first black head coach in any sport.

There will be some adjustments. Greeley, a city of 60,536, has very few black residents. And it’s a long way from the Pac 10.

“The minority thing isn’t a big part of his life,” said Sue Jacobson, Northern Colorado athletic director. “He’s going to adjust to anybody and anything.

“It may be tougher on (Smith’s wife) Stephanie, because she doesn’t have the big basketball focus. We’re hoping Greeley will work out for her. I don’t think Greeley is a bigoted town, but people here need to go out of their way to accept newcomers.

“I think maybe we in Greeley could do a better job in that regard.”

So far, Smith said he, Stephanie and their children MacKenzie (3 years old) and Kyandra (5 weeks) are enjoying themselves. And as for his groundbreaking status as the school’s first black head coach, he said he doesn’t give it much thought.

“I think I was the first black assistant in the Big Sky conference,” Smith said. “Now I’m the first head black coach at UNC. To tell you the truth, I really don’t think about it. That’s not what’s important.

“What is important is that people know Ken Smith.”

Smith, who led USD to the NCAA Division II playoffs as a freshman under then-coach Bernie Bickerstaff, has been intent on coaching since he was 15. He had so many good coaches and good relationships with coaches in his youth that he never really considered being anything else.

He felt particularly close to his Little League coach. His Jefferson High School (Daly City) coach was the best man in his wedding. He still keeps in contact with USD volunteer assistant Gus McGee.

He played one year of professional ball in Germany after his USD career, then got his first coaching jobs in the 1977-78 season--when he landed a junior varsity head coaching job at Jefferson, his alma mater, and an assistant’s job at Skyline Community College in San Bruno.

“That was a year, there,” he said, smiling and rolling his eyes.

His career then included assistant coaching stops at the University of San Francisco, Montana State, Washington and Oregon.

Now, after spending the past four seasons in the Pac-10, Smith arrives at a place where Butler-Hancock Gymnasium is next to the James A. Michener Library rather than in the shadow of a mammoth football stadium. Imagine that.

“The biggest change, obviously, was that (in the Pac-10) I could fly to Texas one day, fly to Kansas that night and the next day maybe go to Salt Lake City and then fly back to Eugene, Ore.,” Smith said.

“Now, it’s a five-hour car ride to recruit. Really, the biggest difference is you look at ways to stretch your dollar. In the Pac-10, the Oregons and Washingtons provide you with a budget that allows you to come and go without worrying about money.”

But the size of the basketball court remains the same, and his players are adapting to him.

“We like him a lot,” said junior guard Derek Chaney. “You can talk to him. He’s nice, and personable, but on the court it’s all business.”

And Smith is young enough to relate to the players. At a team dinner at Smith’s house on Halloween, several players were shocked to look up and see Smith in a devil’s costume as he prepared to take MacKenzie trick-or-treating.

“We said, ‘Uh, coach, you better take that off before practice,’ ” Chaney said.

Sometimes, though, the guys look at Smith during practice and swear the devil suit is still on. One of the first things Smith is attempting to instill in his new players, you see, is discipline.

“We don’t know what our won-loss record will be,” said football Coach Joe Glenn. “But the way they’ve been running, we should enter them in cross-country meets.”