Strictly Speaking : Tough-Talking Phil Mathews Wasted No Time Showing Who’s No. 1 Don at USF

The way John Duggan remembers it, the first meeting between Phil Mathews and the University of San Francisco basketball team was something akin to George Patton laying down the law to a troop of Boy Scouts.

Unfamiliar with Mathews’ fiery personality, the players listened attentively as their new coach spelled out his rules and regulations--mixed with a few colorful words--the day after his hiring in July.

“He came in as an absolute tough guy,” said Duggan, a junior forward. “He told us if we didn’t do exactly as he said, we would be headed to a Division II school or wherever else we wanted to go.”

The Dons are still adjusting to Mathews’ style, but most seem glad they stuck around.

“It was a little hard at first because we weren’t used to his strictness and yelling,” senior guard Gerald Walker said. “When he first came here, he said we would need thick skin to deal with him.

“We’ve coped with it pretty well. If you want to play for him, you have to deal with it. But it’s been real positive. We know what he can do and we have a lot of faith in him.”

As he demonstrated during 10 winning seasons at Ventura College, Mathews, 45, doesn’t just coach a basketball team, he controls it in every way, shape and form, demanding the best from his players on and off the court.

His longtime motto is prominently displayed on a sign hanging over one of the doors leading to San Francisco’s Memorial Gymnasium: “We play hard!”

The results already are being felt. San Francisco, 8-7 after losing to Pepperdine on Saturday, is only two victories away from equaling its total of a season ago.

“The school wants to win,” Mathews said. “They’re giving us the resources to do it, and we’re going to do it.”

If there were doubts Mathews would make an impact in his first season at San Francisco, they were quickly erased in the team’s second game Nov. 28.

Facing Stanford, then ranked 16th in the nation, the Dons trailed by one point with 13 seconds left when Mathews sent in Walker, who had not played because he was still recovering from a broken foot suffered in preseason practice.

None of that mattered, however. The decoy had been planted.

Walker drew the attention of the Cardinal defense, allowing freshman Michael Colter to score the winning basket with five seconds left to give San Francisco a 59-58 upset.

“It was a great win for our program,” Mathews said of his first victory as a Division I head coach. “It was another positive as we try to get where we want to be.”

He knows that will take time.

San Francisco is a long way from Ventura College, where Mathews molded one of the nation’s most successful junior college programs. He guided the Pirates to a 298-56 record and two state titles, capping his 10-year reign with a 37-1 championship campaign last season. He was inducted last year into the Ventura County Sports Hall of Fame.

San Francisco was 10-19 in 1994-95 and has not played in the postseason since reaching the NCAA tournament in 1982, the year the school dropped the basketball program for three seasons after guard Quintin Dailey was convicted of assaulting a nursing student.

“All new things have to start from the bottom,” Mathews said. “I didn’t come in here saying we were going to go 28-0. We’re going through some growing pains, but we’re going to get through it.”

If the victory over Stanford had the Dons on cloud nine, they were brought crashing back to Earth after a 92-58 loss to UCLA on Dec. 30 at Pauley Pavilion.

“We did not execute well and UCLA is a very talented team,” Mathews said. “They are just better than us. There is no shame about losing to them.

“You always want to coach against the best in college basketball, and UCLA is one of the best programs around. It’s nice to bring our team in to play them. Hopefully, we can do it again and have a little better performance.”

All things considered, Mathews is grateful to have the opportunity to coach at a Division I school located in a vibrant, cosmopolitan city. He was chosen from a list of candidates dominated by coaches from four-year colleges, including UCLA assistant Steve Lavin. Mathews declined to say how much his multiyear contract pays him.

His goal is to help the Dons return to their glory days of the 1950s, when Bill Russell and K.C. Jones led the Catholic school to back-to-back NCAA championships in 1955 and ’56.

His office, which he says is “five times” larger than the one he had at Ventura, is decorated with black and white posters of Jones, Walker and former Don standouts Bill Cartwright and Orlando Smart. The Ventura jersey of the Lakers’ Cedric Ceballos, Mathews’ most-famous former player, is displayed in a picture frame.

But what really stands out is an absurdly large 80-inch television that takes up an entire corner of the room. Mathews says he uses it to watch game videos--”You don’t miss anything on that,” he says--but at this particular time a soap opera is on the tube.

“This is a great opportunity here,” Mathews said, sitting behind his desk during a break between a constant string of phone calls. “The school has a great tradition. I want to bring it back to what it was and win the [West Coast Conference] title. There’s a lot of history here, and you can tell the kids that.” Mathews, who attracted players from across the country to Ventura, signed his first recruits for San Francisco in November--point guard Dony Wilcher of Los Angeles Fremont High, 6-foot-6 forward Hakeem Ward of Ventura College and 6-8 forward Ra’oof Sadat of Las Vegas Durango High. “They’re three pretty good kids,” he said. “We’re saving one [scholarship] for the late signing period.”

Mathews is equally excited about his new home. Two months after he was named coach, he moved his family--wife Margie and 18-month-old son Jordan Philip--into a Victorian-style house across the street from the university, which owns the property and furnished it. He has a two-minute walk to work.

“I love San Francisco and my wife loves it,” said Mathews, who has two adult daughters from a previous marriage. “It’s a great city. The people are very supportive.”

Bill Hogan, executive director of athletics at San Francisco, said Mathews has been well received at the school. Mathews replaced Jim Brovelli, who resigned in May to become the associate athletic director.

“He’s given us a lot of hope for the future of USF basketball,” Hogan said. “He’s very tough, but he’s consistent on and off the floor.”

Mathews earned a reputation for toughness at Ventura, where he once pulled all five starters from a game, marched them into a hallway while play continued and chewed them out before returning to the bench. The Pirates went on to win by 30.

Mathews also demands high standards in the classroom from his players, a tradition he enforced at Ventura with daily study halls and regular grade checks. Hogan said San Francisco’s players attend study hall five times a week and are maintaining the highest team grade-point average in 11 years.

“He’s a real good communicator,” Hogan said. “Not because he says what the kids want to hear, but because he tells them what they need to hear. . . . He doesn’t put up with anything.”

Duggan, the team’s leading scorer, agreed with that assessment.

“You have to block out his yelling and swearing and listen to what he’s saying, because the underlying message is valuable,” Duggan said. “When we play his style, we usually end up winning.”

Unlike his showtime teams at Ventura, Mathews has adopted a slower, walk-it-up-the-court offense in his first season at San Francisco, not by choice but by necessity, he said. Based on early results, the Dons’ three-year reign as the conference’s top-scoring team will certainly end this season.

“Gerald Walker is athletic, but overall we are not,” Mathews said. “You have to adjust to what you have. Maybe next year we’ll get some players that will allow us to adjust our style.”

However, there has been no change in Mathews’ take-no-prisoners defensive philosophy. He still expects his players to get after it at all times.

The emphasis on defense has helped the Dons improve from allowing a conference-high 84 points a game last season to holding opponents to under 70 this season. Thursday, they limited Loyola Marymount to 39.6% shooting in a 61-57 victory.

“It’s entertaining to watch the kids play hard--take charges, dive for loose balls and play aggressive defense,” Hogan said. “The response from our fans has been real good.”

Mathews knows all about rabid fans. At Ventura, the basketball team’s entertaining fastbreak offense and pressure defense consistently drew the largest crowds in the county for an indoor event--sports or otherwise.

As San Francisco becomes more successful, Mathews expects the team’s support to grow.

“We’re averaging about 2,000 a game,” he said. “When I started at Ventura, we only had 50 people coming to games. As you start to build a winner, more people will come.”

Mathews said he misses his many friends in Ventura, where he still owns a home but has no regrets about leaving a comfortable situation for a new challenge.

“It was time for me to move on,” he said. “I did all I could do there. Now I’m starting over.”