A Coup for Cal : Bozeman’s Hiring Caused Resentment, but Bears Play On

Todd Bozeman checked into his hotel Monday afternoon only to find a small stack of messages, including one from Louisiana State Coach Dale Brown.

“Please call,” it read.

Brown had left a similar message for the California coach at Bozeman’s office in Berkeley.

“He’s been calling me here, but I haven’t had a chance to call him back yet,” said Bozeman. “I would imagine he’s going to explain to me what happened.”

What happened is this: Brown failed to shake Bozeman’s hand after Cal’s victory over LSU in last Thursday’s first round of the Midwest Regional. To make matters worse, Brown then predicted in the postgame press conference that California wouldn’t have “a prayer” against second-round opponent Duke.

“I guess he told the media that he went to go get his jacket,” Bozeman said of the incident. “All I know is that he didn’t shake my hand. But that doesn’t bother me. No one knows the key to success, but the key to failure is when you try to please everyone. I can’t please everyone. Everyone’s going to have a different opinion--that’s part of what makes the world go ‘round. You can’t fight everything .”

This should be one of the happiest times in Bozeman’s life. His team has advanced to the Sweet Sixteen and he finds himself two victories away from the Final Four. He has the breathtakingly talented freshman guard Jason Kidd, as well as sophomore sensation Lamond Murray, who leads the team in scoring. And since he replaced the fired Lou Campanelli in early February, Bozeman’s team has won 11 of 12 games, including NCAA tournament victories over Brown’s Tigers and Mike Krzyzewski’s Blue Devils, the two-time defending national champions.

Yet, there is no sense of joy in Bozeman’s voice as he recounts the events of the last nine weeks. Instead, he tells of the conversation he had with his wife, TeLethea, shortly after he became interim coach Feb. 8.

“Basically I told her, ‘T, listen, you’re going to have to stick with me now because it’s going to get crazy here,’ ” Bozeman said.

It did, and all because of a botched dismissal that outraged the likes of Indiana’s Bob Knight, Georgia Tech’s Bobby Cremins and North Carolina’s Dean Smith, among others in the coaching profession. Caught in the middle was Bozeman, 29, who, depending on your allegiance, was either a savior or a traitor.

Of course, it didn’t help that Cal Athletic Director Bob Bockrath initially offered no real reason for Campanelli’s midseason firing, other than to say he felt a change was in order.

But as the controversy swelled, Bockrath became more talkative. Campanelli, he said, had verbally abused the Golden Bear players to the point that the success of the program was in jeopardy. So despite a 10-7 record at the time, Bockrath said it was obvious what he had to do: fire Campanelli and hire Bozeman on an interim basis.

Given the nature of the close-knit, sometimes petty world of college coaching, it didn’t take long for the rumors and whispers to appear. Bozeman, so the story went, might have engineered the coup. Bozeman, it was said, knew of the player unrest regarding Campanelli and did nothing to defuse the situation. And anyway, groused some of his peers, what did Bozeman know about being a head coach, what with not a minute’s experience on any level?

“It was a very awkward feeling, and I knew it was going to get worse because there was no clear-cut explanation why the move was made,” Bozeman said.

But not everyone sniped. George Washington Coach Mike Jarvis called with words of encouragement. So did Tulane Coach Perry Clark, Massachusetts Coach John Calipari, Virginia Coach Jeff Jones, Rice Coach Willis Wilson and several assistant coaches around the country, including Tommy Amaker at Duke. The first question was always the same.

“You all right?” each coach would ask.

“Yeah, I’m all right.”

“Hey, I know you can handle it,” a coach would say. “Just do the best you can. Be prepared for rumors, but don’t worry about it. Your friends are behind you.”

It was Clark who first offered the unproven Bozeman a position on his Tulane staff in 1988. Bozeman’s coaching experience was minimal and, truth be told, he wasn’t the top candidate on Clark’s list. But as time went by, Clark was more intrigued by the former Rhode Island guard.

“He was hungry,” Clark said. “And I think in this business, guys who want to be successful and who are willing to pay the price should be given the opportunity.”

Bozeman was ambitious--his goal was to be a Division I coach before his 30th birthday--but he wasn’t ruthless. Ira and Martha Bozeman didn’t raise their three sons to stick knives in peoples’ backs.

Still, Bozeman’s reputation was questioned by the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches shortly after Campanelli was canned. Johnny Orr, the Iowa State coach and NABC president, went so far as to investigate Bozeman’s involvement, if any, in the firing. That done, the NABC issued a statement saying that Bozeman was clean, as if Bozeman needed its approval.

Clark: “I think more coaches were upset by what happened (to Campanelli). It was a tough situation and I know that Todd agonized over it. But I’ll just say this: In all my years of knowing Todd, he’s been extremely loyal. He’s always been loyal.”

Bozeman is weary of defending himself. He says he can sleep at night, that he did nothing wrong. His boss was fired and he was offered the job. What was he supposed to do, say no? Resign in protest?

“That crossed my mind, but it didn’t weigh heavy on my mind, because I looked at the situation (like this): Assistants basically sign one-year contracts,” Bozeman said. “I wasn’t in any position to resign. I’m the provider of my household. I have a 10-month-old son and a wife and I have no other family on the West Coast. So I was not in any position to resign and get in any unemployment line.

“When I worked for Lou, I worked my tail off. If there were any problems, I always went to him and told him what the problems were. So I didn’t feel bad (taking the job). When (Campanelli) called to tell me about the news, it was like an empty feeling inside because I was thinking about myself, too.”

During that call, Campanelli told him that Bockrath was going to name Bozeman or fellow assistant Jeff Wulbrun as interim coach.

Said Bozeman that day: “Well, Coach, what do I do?”

According to Bozeman, Campanelli said: “Hell, Todd, I don’t know.”

“So right then it’s like I’ve got to fend for myself,” Bozeman said. “Right there I was thinking whether (Bockrath) would hire me or would he hire Jeff. But either way I wasn’t going to resign. I couldn’t. I couldn’t come home and tell my wife, ‘Look, baby, I’m going to have to quit this job. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but. . . .’ ”

Bockrath chose Bozeman. Wulbrun resigned immediately after being informed of the decision.

With that as the backdrop to the start of his head-coaching career, Bozeman made his debut Feb. 10 against Cal State Northridge. The Golden Bears won. Nine games later, Cal had earned a second-place finish in the Pacific 10 Conference and an NCAA tournament bid. But respect didn’t come as easily.

Then-Washington Coach Lynn Nance, never known as Mr. Warmth to begin with, declined to shake Bozeman’s hand after the Golden Bears defeated the Huskies at Seattle on Feb. 27. A miffed Bozeman challenged him at courtside.

“What’s the deal with that?” Bozeman said.

Nance, who has since resigned, turned and grudgingly extended his hand.

“It’s kind of disturbing,” Cal center Brian Hendrick said. “The coaches should have mutual respect. It’s like they’re almost showing disregard for him as a coach at their level.”

Bozeman and the Golden Bears accomplished so much in such a short period of time that people were unwilling to believe it wasn’t luck. But the 11-1 post-Campanelli record and the No. 6 seeding in the Midwest Regional were no accident. Nor was Bozeman’s impact.

This was a team that had all but given up on an NCAA bid. It was a team that had come to dread the very sight of a basketball and the very sound of Campanelli’s voice. Then came Bozeman: demanding, but not demeaning. Positive, but not preachy.

“He came in and reminded us that the year wasn’t a waste, that we could still make good on it,” Hendrick said.

So they did. And because of the victories, Bockrath called off a nationwide replacement search and gave Bozeman the title and a multiyear contract last Wednesday. Bozeman didn’t bother to celebrate. He didn’t have time.

Bozeman, said his mother, Martha, has always been a serious-minded person, but even more so these last two months. Years ago, the Bozeman family would sit around the dinner table in Forestville, Md., and she would tell her sons Danny, Todd and Michael that there were few feelings better than a job well done. If you did nothing more in life than rake leaves for a living, she would say, then at least make sure that not a single leaf was left on the ground at workday’s end.

The lessons were not lost on Todd, who treated each venture as a mission.

As a skinny sixth-grader, he used to write letters to Bear Bryant at Alabama, telling the Crimson Tide football coach that he one day wished to play football there. That dream ended only when Martha Bozeman decided that football was too violent a game and prohibited any of her sons from playing it.

And when a once-promising basketball career was stymied by an ankle injury, Bozeman decided he would pour his life into coaching.

“Todd is very serious in anything he does,” Martha Bozeman said. “I try to loosen him up. I’ll tell him, ‘Todd, you can laugh.’ ”

Said Ron Juanso, Cal’s associate media relations director: “He’s driven, absolutely driven.”

Not more than an hour after the team’s arrival in St. Louis, a VCR had been set up in a spare room so Bozeman and his staff could start viewing tapes of Thursday night’s opponent, Kansas. And during that day’s brief practice, Bozeman probably reminded his young team once again of the miracle national championships won by North Carolina State in 1983 and Villanova in 1985.

Could Cal do it? Tulane’s Clark doesn’t question the possibility.

“Obviously, I felt he was capable,” he said of Bozeman. “But nobody expects anybody to go beat Duke. You know, we’re supposed to play (Cal) in a tournament next year. Tell Todd I’m going to get out of that after seeing his team play.”

And then there is Martha Bozeman, who said she never doubted her son’s ability to rescue the Golden Bear program. So confident is she of Cal’s chances that she and her husband won’t be making the trip to St. Louis.

“That’s because I’m coming to the Final Four,” she said.