Prep Coach Wooten Nearing 1,000 Wins

Down one, two seconds to go, overtime, and Morgan Wootten still is selling.

Wootten is drawing and talking now, a 61-year-old grandfather on bended knee, concocting this basketball play that will surely succeed, reminding yet another group of breathless and expectant teen-agers that two seconds is a long, long time, even giving a wink like they’re all going to be part of this magical conspiracy to deliver to DeMatha High School another victory from near-certain defeat.

But there will be no reversal of fortune this night.

The pass is perfect, yet the shot is short, and the game is lost. So Wootten and his team walk slowly and silently off the court while the players from Archbishop Carroll shout and raise their fists in triumph.

“We make ‘em pretty happy,” Wootten says in the locker room as the Carroll celebration echoes in a corridor.

Then , he resumes selling. But this time, he’s like a father with a son, soothing, consoling, wrapping the constructive criticism into a layer of paternal love.

“I’m proud of you,” he says, his face flushed, his voice calm. “We played an excellent game. One basket going in or out should have nothing to do with how we feel about each other. We’re getting better. An excellent effort.”

He reviews the mistakes. Missed layups. A couple of blown rebounds. One last overtime turnover. Talks about pluses. Reads out the rebounds, and, with each name and number, the players applaud.

“I’m like you guys,” he says. “I want to see us win. We’re making a real effort.”

No practice tomorrow. Study for exams. Get some rest.

“One point shouldn’t matter when we leave our hearts on the floor,” he says. “We have to work hard. Now, hit the showers.”

Thirty-seven seasons, and Wootten still is out there trying to close a deal. He doesn’t want your money, he just wants your best.

And now, he is approaching a milestone--becoming the fifth high school coach to reach 1,000 wins.

With a team that is young (two seniors), small (not a player over 6 feet 5) and struggling (7-6 overall), Wootten is at 997 wins, 143 losses and holding. Yet surely, he will get his 1,000th win in the next few weeks, adding to a legend that already has spawned books, videos, even some myths.

FROM EISENHOWER TO NBA

During Wootten’s reign, which began when Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House and Bill Clinton was in junior high school, DeMatha has won five mythical national titles and averaged 27 wins.

The school has sent 185 players to Division I programs, and, during one 30-year stretch, every senior player received a college scholarship.

A dozen DeMatha players, led by Adrian Dantley, have reached the NBA.

Twenty of Wootten’s former players and assistants have gone on to coach in college, and this week Sidney Lowe became the first DeMatha graduate to become a pro head coach, taking over the Minnesota Timberwolves on an interim basis.

“I don’t think any other place has produced coaches on the high school, college and pro level,” Wootten said. “That is definitely something to be proud of.”

Yet all this talk of success on the court and in the classroom may sound like some long, drawn-out Up With People concert with Wootten orchestrating syrupy melodies.

Even his vices (smoking cigars and playing cards) are endearing. After all, this is a man who attends Mass every day.

In a profession with its share of counterfeits, Wootten is the genuine article.

Listen to Dantley.

“Morgan is the No. 1 coach I ever had,” said Dantley, who also played for, among others, Digger Phelps, Dean Smith and Chuck Daly. “There were things he taught me in high school, guys in college and the pros were still learning. I beat people with the fundamentals I learned from Morgan.”

PRAISE FROM WOODEN

Listen to John Wooden, architect of the UCLA dynasty.

“I stand in awe of him,” he said. “Not only from the techniques of playing and coaching basketball, but what he does with those kids. Morgan has always had the best interest of the youngsters at heart. He could have won anywhere.”

Listen to Dereck Whittenburg, the DeMatha star who led N.C. State to an NCAA title.

“Morgan is what I call a brick-wall coach,” he said. “You buy into his system, and you’re willing to run through a brick wall for him.”

And listen to Wootten’s youngest son, Joe, 20, a Maryland sophomore who is coaching the DeMatha freshmen.

“He does this the right way,” he said. “You can’t do it with mirrors for 40 years. He developed a great program.”

Yet, to understand how well known and respected Wootten is, all you have to do is sit with him in his office overlooking the band box of a gym that bears his name at DeMatha, a school with an enrollment of 870 boys in Hyattsville.

A one-hour conversation is interrupted 15 times by phone calls--from coaches who seek his advice to former players who want to know how he is handling an uncommonly difficult season.

And there are the interview requests from newspapers throughout the country.

Wootten has never shunned publicity, but he is genuinely perplexed by all the attention he is receiving for 1,000 victories.

“The big thing is to make a winning effort,” he said. “I’m not obsessed with wins. Is 1,000 wins a big deal? Well, if it is, we wouldn’t have played the teams we played. You play for a challenge, for participation.”

The profession has been very good to Wootten, a scrappy guard from a Washington-area high school who worked his way through Maryland coaching at an orphanage and later the junior varsity at St. John’s of Washington. He arrived at DeMatha in the autumn of ‘56, a 24-year-old eager to coach football and basketball, teach world history, and start a career.

And he has never left. Never even looked back with regret at lucrative college offers rejected.

WHY LEAVE?

“I’ve had an opportunity to coach a lot of wonderful young men, and I’ve had wonderful young coaches work with me,” he said. “I’ve got an administration that backs us. I’ve been coaching a long time. Why leave?”

He turned down a $700,000 offer from North Carolina State in the 1970s. Wake Forest wanted him, too. Even the University of Maryland had him on a short list in 1969, putting him on hold for 24 hours while Lefty Driesell pondered an offer.

Driesell took it. And Wootten stayed.

“If you get involved with kids and recognize the rewards, it’s hard to give all that up for money,” said Brendan McCarthy, who played football and basketball for Wootten before going to Boston College and the NFL.

“The Great American Dream isn’t all money; it’s position in the community,” he said. “You have to live that, and Morgan does. He’s not going anywhere now, and he never was going to go anywhere in the past.”

Wootten has been able to realize nearly all of his dreams in a small, comfortable place--and remain a family man.

He and his wife, Kathy, married in 1964 and raised a family of five children in a home not two miles from the DeMatha campus.

“Morgan isn’t fanatical about this,” said Kathy Wootten. “He sees these kids as individual personalities. Each group is different. He is a real motivator and a salesman at the same time. And he really loves what he is doing.”

STOPPING ALCINDOR

Wootten put himself and his school on the basketball map on a snowy winter’s night in January 1965, when 12,500 turned out at Cole Field House to watch DeMatha hand Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then Lew Alcindor, his only loss at New York’s Power Memorial, 46-43.

“Practiced for Kareem by having one of our players use a tennis racket and wave it under the basket,” Wootten said.

But Wootten and DeMatha weren’t famous for one game. They created a style.

He revolutionized the game with little wrinkles.

Before Wootten came along, players drove with impunity through the lane. At DeMatha, the term “taking the charge” took shape.

Trapping zone defenses? Another innovation Wootten helped create.

DeMatha was one of the first teams to use drills to improve quickness and agility.

“Fundamentals never change,” Wootten said. “I think I know more than I did back then. Hopefully, you’re in a constant state of growth. But the longer I coach, the less I coach.”

From his office, he oversees a basketball empire that has made him not just famous, but also financially secure through clinics, summer camps, a shoe contract, video, television shows and five books, including “Coaching Basketball Successfully,” targeted to become the best-selling sports manual ever.

He says he makes $150,000 a year from his basketball enterprises and another $47,000 as DeMatha’s associate athletic director.

But, with Wootten, it’s not just about strategy and commerce. He couldn’t sustain his program or his reputation without building lasting relationships with his players.

“He knows a lot about basketball, but he knows more about life, about motivating people,” Dantley said.

An example? Dantley recalls a game when he finished the first half with no rebounds. Expecting to be yelled at by Wootten, Dantley was startled when Wootten said matter-of-factly, “Oh, and here is Beverly Dantley, doing a great job on the boards. No rebounds.”

The result?

“I went out and got 16 in the second half,” Dantley said.