On the Fast Track : Bozeman’s Success in Recruiting, Coaching Players at Cal Attracts Critics Whispering Questions

If being one of college basketball’s good old boys is a little like being a middle-aged frat guy, then it’s a pretty decent bet that Todd Bozeman won’t ever be tossing down beers with Bobby Knight or trading secret handshakes with Dale Brown.

There was a time, not long ago, when coaches were refusing to even shake Bozeman’s hand after a game, dismissing the routine gesture of sportsmanship. It started with then-Washington Coach Lynn Nance shortly after Bozeman had been named California’s interim coach after Lou Campanelli’s startling in-season firing the season before last.

Later, Brown elected to do the same when the Golden Bears beat Louisiana State in the first round of the 1993 NCAA tournament. Last season, Bozeman and Arizona’s Lute Olson openly sparred in the glare of national television.

Presumably, one could attribute this to being a product of Bozeman’s rugged initiation into the often-narrow world of college basketball coaching, a natural result of the clumsy circumstances surrounding the Campanelli-Bozeman transition.

But it seems to be more than Mr. Outside merely replacing the consummate insider. What happened was that Bozeman immediately lost the interim tag and started winning a little too quickly and easily--games on the court and the hearts and minds of America’s top recruits.

For starters, he has built a 33-10 record and is 21-6 in the Pacific 10 Conference. The Golden Bears reached the final 16 in the NCAA tournament in 1993, the school’s first such appearance since 1960. Last season, California finished ranked No. 16 in the Associated Press poll but flinched under the pressure of increased expectations, losing to Wisconsin Green Bay in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

Then came a five-year contract extension through the 1998-99 season. When it expires, Bozeman will be all of 35. When he replaced Campanelli, Bozeman was 29, which made him the youngest head coach in Division I basketball. In the Pac-10, he’s the only coach in the conference who was born in the ‘60s. His closest peer--in terms of age--is Washington’s Bob Bender, who is 37.

Finally, there is the steady procession of talent that Bozeman has recruited--Jason Kidd and Lamond Murray in seasons past, Alfred Grigsby and Monty Buckley in the present, and an incoming recruiting class considered the second best in the country by at least one publication.

Applause outside Northern California has been in short supply, however.

After all, college basketball is not a feel-good, supportive place. Instead of admiration for Bozeman’s efforts, the buzz is that Cal must be doing something outside NCAA boundaries, especially since the school is short on grand tradition and has no high-tech facility to dazzle potential recruits.

Without evidence, no coach will raise his voice above a whisper. But sneaker sage Sonny Vaccaro voiced such suspicions during a recent Southern California radio interview, saying that Bozeman recruited on the shady side and raising the usual questions about rumors of irregular recruiting. Naturally, word filtered back to Bozeman, who happened to be in Los Angeles for the Pac-10 media day the day Vaccaro was interviewed on radio.

“Somebody told me about that,” Bozeman said. “You have to look at the source. When you look at someone making comments, sometimes you have to look at the person. If a convicted criminal was making comments, how much weight would his comments have?

“With some people, they might not look at it that way. They’d say, ‘Wait a minute, where is this coming from?’ I know who he is. There’s a story behind it. A lot of petty jealousy and stuff like that.

“How does a guy who didn’t have a job at one time end up coming up and being a sneaker guy?

“Everybody is entitled to their own opinions and I’m not about to stand up and try to defend myself against everybody. The most important things are my family, my players, who are an extension of my family; my friends and my employers. Nothing else matters. Nothing else will distract me from what I’m trying to do.”

In Bozeman’s view, one has to start somewhere. As an assistant at Tulane, his vigorous recruiting helped bring the Green Wave program back from the dead, almost literally, as it had been disbanded for four years in the aftermath of a point-shaving scandal.

Compared to that, injecting life into Cal’s program was a layup, particularly with the likes of the now departed Kidd and Murray. Hoop dreams are made of this. Bozeman doesn’t mind when people ask: Why Cal? His answer is: Why not?

“When people ask me, ‘How did Cal come from nowhere?’ I say I’ve seen programs grow and I have seen people have that vision when no one else has had it,” he said.

Buckley, a 6-6 senior guard from Sacramento who averaged 12.8 points last season, wonders why there are questions about the program’s evolution.

“The way I see it, (Bozeman) is a young guy coming in and doing well,” Buckley said. “They don’t question why other coaches get players. Every program has to start somewhere.”

Buckley, who was benched for an exhibition on Saturday for disciplinary reasons, says he doesn’t think Bozeman is cocky, but he’s confident “in a good way.”

Said Bozeman, “I’ve never said anything about any other coach. I’ve never criticized a coach and I won’t. I won’t criticize a program. I never get into that. A lot of times people dislike things they wish they had and that’s the way I rationalize it.”

Sophomore guard Anwar McQueen frowned when asked why the college basketball fraternity considers Bozeman to be cocky.

“It’s false, negative and almost a rude perception of things,” McQueen said.

In fact, the first time Bozeman called McQueen at his home in Washington, D.C., during the recruiting process, they spoke very little about Bozeman and the basketball program at Cal. McQueen said they talked for about three hours and spent 20 minutes discussing basketball.

“I opened up,” McQueen said. “My whole senior year in high school was very frustrating. With other coaches, it was brief. Cut and dried. It was funny. Talking to him was like talking to one of the homeboys.”

Bozeman is a young 30 and an old 30 at the same time. A father of two, he met his wife, TeLethea, at a high school sock hop.

“Sock hop sounds like the ‘50s, doesn’t it?” he said.

But he listens to jazz and rap and understands when his players start talking about music.

There’s a framed picture of Malcolm X on his office wall and a book about Spike Lee’s films atop a shelf. If nothing else, Bozeman is trying to teach his players about the outside world and has brought in a variety of speakers, among them a district attorney, a woman who is HIV positive, a nutritionist and a television producer.

“He’s been there before,” Buckley said. “He already knows what we’re going through because he’s done it already.”

Asked about the most significant people in his life, Bozeman does not hesitate and speaks about his parents, Ira and Martha, who both worked multiple jobs when Todd was growing up in Washington so they could send him and his brothers to a private school.

“That’s why working hard is not foreign to me,” he said. “Being in this business, I want to try to be the best. But I take from a lot of different coaches. There are coaches I owe a lot to. People like John Thompson, George Raveling, Nolan Richardson, Coach (John) Chaney. Their success predated me. Had they not had success, I might not have got an opportunity to even coach.”

Bozeman doesn’t care much what the outside world thinks about him. Hey, it just gets in the way of the task at hand. The results are the thing.

“It’s always easy when you are on the outside looking in,” Bozeman said. “I say everybody has a different way. There’s always a lot of factors involved; unless you are there you don’t know. There’s no right way or perfect way.”