Memorable Monday for the Huskies’ Top Dog?
Monday could be an amazing day in Jim Calhoun’s life.
That morning, he’ll find out if he has been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
That night, his Connecticut team might be playing for the national championship.
The thought of such an extraordinary double left Calhoun with a goofy sort of fingers-crossed, embarrassment-of-riches expression when somebody mentioned it as he stood on the court after his Huskies crushed Alabama to reach the Final Four.
Calhoun also knows he could go 0 for 2 and end up watching Duke play in yet another title game while hoping he’ll make the Hall of Fame ballot again next year.
The truth is, Calhoun might need to win a second national championship or make a couple of more Final Fours before he makes the Hall of Fame.
Only four active men’s college coaches are enshrined in Springfield, Mass.
They are Bob Knight and Mike Krzyzewski with three titles each, Lute Olson with one title and five Final Fours, and Temple Coach John Chaney, who hasn’t reached the Final Four but was the first African-American coach to win 700 games.
Among the accomplished coaches not yet in the Hall of Fame is Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim, who won his first national championship last season, has coached in three title games and ranks fourth among active coaches in tournament victories behind Krzyzewski, Knight and Olson.
Oklahoma State Coach Eddie Sutton was a finalist for the Hall of Fame last year and was not elected. He will be coaching in his third Final Four in San Antonio and has won 755 games, but no title.
Consider the collection of coaching experience first-timer Paul Hewitt of Georgia Tech is going against: Krzyzewski, Calhoun and Sutton combined have won four titles, qualified for 15 Final Fours and won 132 tournament games.
“That’s the old question: ‘Who doesn’t belong and why?’ ” Hewitt said with a laugh, calling the other three coaches “hall of fame” coaches.
Calhoun has won 680 games and is coaching in his second Final Four after winning the title in 1999, but his great accomplishment might be that he built a powerhouse in tiny Storrs, at a university that until recently didn’t play Division I-A football.
A native New Englander, he said the other day he has dreamed of the Hall of Fame all his life.
The museum’s Springfield home has special meaning to Calhoun. He starred at Springfield’s American International College in the late 1960s and has served on the school’s board of trustees.
He is one of 16 finalists this year on a Hall of Fame ballot that includes Clyde Drexler, Dick Vitale, Lynette Woodard -- the Kansas and U.S. Olympic team standout who was the first woman to play for the Harlem Globetrotters -- and Purdue Coach Gene Keady.
To be inducted, nominees must receive at least 18 votes from the 24-person honors committee.
“If we could win this, it would just put the icing on the cake for Coach,” Connecticut guard Ben Gordon said. “Everybody already knows that he’s going to be in the Hall of Fame. I think it’s a no-brainer. Just to win this for him would be really special, for him to get his second championship.”
A lot has happened in Calhoun’s life since that 1999 title, when Richard Hamilton led the upset of a Duke team that had lost only one game and was being compared to the best in college basketball history.
That March, his first grandchild was born. Now there are five, and a couple of them were on the court with him after the Huskies won the Phoenix Regional.
And it has been only a little more than a year since Calhoun announced he had prostate cancer. He took an immediate leave and underwent surgery on Feb. 6, 2003, returning to the sidelines to coach a game only 16 days later.
Now he is back for his second Final Four.
“When we won the national championship in 1999, Mike Krzyzewski, as he shook my hand, said, ‘You are not only going to like this, but you are going to want to get here even worse than you did when you first came here,’ ” said Calhoun, whose teams were stopped in the Elite Eight three times before reaching the Final Four.
“For the last five years, those words have never rung so true. You want to return to the Final Four and take your team there because you know what it is like.
“I think Mike is right, because it is even more special because you know how special of a week it can be and you know what can happen at the end of the rainbow on Monday, which is incredible.”