The NCAA Tournament Is Famous For Them: Cinderella Stories

It’s funny what happens when a little school from Nowheresville makes it to the Sweet 16. Life changes. Life changes for the school and for the players and, most of all, life changes for the coach.

Don Monson knows this. In 1982, Don Monson’s Idaho team went from Nowheresville to the Sweet 16.

“The impact of everything involved is incredible,” he says. “That’s what I told my son. ‘Hey, kid,’ I said. ‘Only 16 coaches left, so seize the moment.’ ”

Don Monson’s son is Dan Monson. And Dan Monson is the coach at Gonzaga, one of the schools from Nowheresville this year. Gonzaga, a small Jesuit college in Spokane, has already taken out Minnesota and Stanford, gigantic, well-funded universities. Next up is another, Florida, tonight in Phoenix in the semifinals of the West Regional.

If it seems inevitable now that Dan Monson would become a coach like his father, it had never seemed that way to Don Monson. And it certainly never occurred to Don that his son would end up as coach of the only college in Spokane, Wash., where Don and his wife, Deanna, would choose to retire because it is where Don and Deanna’s parents, brothers and sisters all lived.

And it certainly didn’t seem inevitable that Dan would become a basketball coach when he was a math major at Idaho, though Don did say, “I never knew what Dan was going to do with that math major.”

It did, however, start to become inevitable when Dan took a high school teaching job in Oregon City, Ore., when Don was the coach at Oregon and got a phone call from Dan one day.

“Dan had been doing some assistant coaching and he called and said he was tired of trying to fit in coaching while doing lesson plans. He told me he decided to become a college coach.

“I said, ‘Well, you don’t just become a college coach. It’s not that easy. But if you’re serious, come talk to me.’ ”

So Dan talked and Don sent out letters to all his friends in the business, seeking a job for Dan. Yet it was Dan who got himself that first job. Having accompanied his mother to the hotel pool at a Final Four, he saw Gene Bartow, then coach of Alabama Birmingham, introduced himself and talked himself into a grad assistant’s job.

This has not been some overnight success story for Dan, and it has not always been a fairy tale coaching life that he watched his father live.

Don went from Idaho to Oregon, and from hero to villain. He was fired in 1992, an unpleasant parting that occurred when he didn’t feel ready to retire.

Meanwhile, Dan left Alabama Birmingham in 1988 to become, first, an assistant coach and then, for three seasons, associate head coach at Gonzaga. Last season, finally, Dan replaced Dan Fitzgerald. The Bulldogs were 24-10 but didn’t go to the NCAA tournament. Now they have taken the next step, and it’s pretty clear Dan, 38, knows what he’s doing.

“Yes he does,” Don says proudly from Spokane.

Don is eager to point out that he did not move to Spokane to be near his son, or to live vicariously through his son:

“We moved here, Deanna and I, because our families were here. All four of our parents, who have since all died, were here.”

Don goes to most of Gonzaga’s games. He was happily cheering in the stands at Seattle’s KeyArena as the Bulldogs, seeded 10th, defeated No. 7 Minnesota and No. 2 Stanford.

Dan says he owes everything to his dad.

“Having somebody that close to you who has been here, who has sat on the bench, who has been to the Sweet 16, who has been a national coach of the year, that’s a great compliment to me,” Dan says.

But Don also wants it known he does not ever offer advice.

He loves watching the Bulldogs.

He is impressed with the point guard, Matt Santangelo, who’s a bit of a story himself.

Santangelo hesitated in accepting a scholarship offer from Stanford because he wasn’t sure he could play the regimented style that Cardinal Coach Mike Montgomery preferred. But while Santangelo hesitated, Stanford signed Arthur Lee. And Santangelo, a good Catholic kid from Portland Central Catholic High, went off to Gonzaga, the good Catholic college, because no other big schools wanted a 6-foot point guard. And, yes, Santangelo outplayed Lee on Saturday.

Don thinks the confidence Santangelo had in himself, confidence that allowed him to think about Stanford, is the kind of confidence that helped the Bulldogs last weekend.

Don also loves watching the effervescent play of 5-8 shooting guard Quentin Hall, who is from the Bahamas and against Stanford had eight rebounds, the same as Tim Young, the Cardinal’s 7-1 center.

Don says the what-the-heck attitude of backup center Axel Dench, who is from Melbourne, Australia, and who expected to find a ski resort, personifies the underappreciated Bulldogs.

But Don will not tell Dan these things, or anything else.

“Dan came up to me yesterday and asked me about what to expect at the regional,” Don says. “Before I said anything else I said, ‘You’re asking me for advice, right? This is your request?’ And he had to answer me before I’d tell him anything else.’ ”

What Don told Dan was simple--be yourself.

“When I took Idaho in 1982, I thought the hoopla was unbelievable and it’s 100 times worse now,” Don says. “I told him you can’t do anything about all the attention, all the media hype, all the interviews, all the fans. You can just hold your practices and do your thing.

“The saddest thing about all this is that you miss out on enjoying it while it’s going on. It’s an experience that can change your life. And you don’t even know that.”

Certainly there’s a good chance Dan’s life will change. He has become “hot.” There are going to be coaching offers worth far more money than Gonzaga will ever be able to offer. There is a good chance that Dan will move on from Spokane some day soon.

But be assured that Don will not follow.

“This is Dan’s thing now,” he says. “I won’t be moving around with him. But I’m sure going to Phoenix. The whole family is. We’re all going to enjoy this to death.”

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.