Perfect Match: DeVoe, Navy

It’s 30 minutes to game time, and the soft buzz created by the couple of thousand fans at Alumni Hall is easily drowned out by the sound of bouncing basketballs and squeaking sneakers.

Don DeVoe stands alone, watching his Navy team crisply run through drills. Although this game against Colgate has ramifications within the Patriot League, it has generated little interest within the state, let alone the rest of the country.

Immediately after tip-off, DeVoe jumps to his feet to call out a play. It hardly matters that the competition is not Kentucky or that the gym is barely half full.

Years earlier, DeVoe spent similar Saturday afternoons coaching against top 25 teams in huge, packed arenas. He won his share of games, too, and received a good deal of adulation while building a reputation as one of the best coaches in the business.

But he also endured the ugliness that sometimes comes with big-time programs. He felt so threatened during a poor season at Florida that he had a security guard sit with his wife at home games.

DeVoe now operates in relative anonymity at a school that places little emphasis on basketball. And that suits the 56-year-old coach just fine. Although he enjoyed success at Virginia Tech, Tennessee and Wyoming, DeVoe wasn’t truly happy until he got to Navy.

“To a degree, you do miss the adoration of so many people,” DeVoe said. “But with that adoration also comes their loathing when you’re not successful. It’s a love-hate relationship at a big-time school, like Tennessee, and I don’t have that here. I feel that I fit very well.”

There was a time when DeVoe wasn’t sure whether he could fit anywhere. He coached in seven NCAA tournaments and made four trips to the postseason NIT but went two years without work before Navy athletic director Jack Lengyel called him.

The two men watched the 1992 NCAA tournament on Lengyel’s television, then went out for dinner to talk a little more. Within days, DeVoe was hired to revive a moribund team that had gone 25-88 over the previous four seasons.

So far, so good.

In his first five seasons at Navy, DeVoe went 80-62 and twice won league titles in becoming only the 11th coach to take three different teams to the NCAA tournament (he also went once with Virginia Tech and six times with Tennessee). At midweek, the Midshipmen were 11-8 overall; 6-0 and in first place in the Patriot League.

“Coach DeVoe is a winner wherever he goes,” senior forward Hassan Booker said. “He’s really committed to our program. He’s a great teacher. I know I’ve learned a great deal of basketball here. We play smart, as well as athletically.”

Lengyel said he believes DeVoe is one of the top “strategy coaches” in the game and knew he would work well within the Navy system.

“He was familiar with coaching at a military academy because he was at West Point with Bobby Knight,” he said.

DeVoe’s experience at Army in the late ‘60s convinced him that the Navy job would work out. Certainly, he had his fill of the big time after his troubled Florida team went 7-21 in the 1989-90 season.

“The experience in Florida was really very depressing. It wasn’t so much our record but the degree of hatred that was shown to my family and myself,” DeVoe said. “The fans chanted ‘DeVoe must go’ and I had to have a security guard sit with my wife at the home games.

“All I was doing was trying to coach basketball. It was a bad experience for me, and I just kind of walked away from it and said I’m not going to take another coaching job unless I can be at a place where my principles are in line with those of the school.”

DeVoe got a 10-year contract extension last year that should keep him at Navy through the 2006-2007 season.

“I would have never asked this institution for a 10-year contract if I didn’t see myself wanting to stay here for the rest of my coaching career,” he said.

“I’m doing the exactly same thing here that I would if I were with the Volunteers or the Gators or the Hokies. I’m recruiting, I’m coaching,” he said. “I have all the privileges I had at those other institutions, plus I have the big advantage of not having to address all those alumni groups.”

He also has no reason to be concerned with the media.

After the Midshipmen disposed of Colgate, 80-52, DeVoe meandered into the interview room. A mere handful of reporters surrounded him, and the questions were easy to handle.

It’s had been a good day.

“Everything is relative. I don’t make the hundreds of thousands of dollars that other coaches make, but then again, I’m older and probably a little more resolved with my finances,” he says. “I’m comfortable.”