Figuring It Out at Memphis

“Anybody know who John Wooden is?”

John Calipari shouts the question to his Memphis basketball players.

Then Calipari holds up his cellphone and waits for the Tigers to answer. They are riding a bus from LaGuardia airport to their New York hotel and there is the usual whooping and hollering from young men on their way to an adventure.

Until the question.

Then there is dead silence.

“See what I mean,” Calipari says. “That’s what I’m dealing with. It’s a different time now.”

Tonight the Tigers (2-0) will play UCLA (3-0) in a semifinal of the NIT Season Tip-Off tournament at Madison Square Garden. Memphis is ranked 11th in the nation, and if that sounds high and mighty, well, there are grumblers who have complained that it’s taken Calipari long enough.

Calipari came to Memphis in 1999 to fix a mess. Local legend Larry Finch had been let go as coach and his successor , Tic Price, had been fired for allegedly having sex with a Memphis coed. The team’s graduation rate was zero and there wasn’t a lot of success on the court either.

But Calipari’s hiring wasn’t welcomed by everybody. He was young and slick, an Easterner from Pennsylvania who had built a winning program at Massachusetts.

A winning program that had its warts.

His star Massachusetts player, Marcus Camby, was found to have made illegal contact with an agent while still in college, prompting the NCAA to take away money and accolades the team had earned on their way to the 1996 NCAA Final Four.

And Calipari was coming to Memphis after going 72-112 in a little more than two full seasons with the NBA’s New Jersey Nets, where he is best remembered for angrily shouting an ethnic slur at a Latino beat reporter, an act for which he apologized.

One of the first players Calipari signed at Memphis was Camden, N.J., star Dajuan Wagner. One of the first coaches Calipari hired was Wagner’s father, former Louisville star Milt Wagner. So you can see how suspicions multiplied.

“But that’s so wrong,” Calipari says, shouting to be heard above the bus cacophony. “I didn’t hire Milt until after Dajuan committed. Why wouldn’t I hire the guy? He won championships as a high school player. He won a national championship while he was at Louisville. He was a Laker. Why wouldn’t I hire somebody like that? And is he still on my staff? Yes, he is. Is his son still here? No, he is not.”

There have been other blips. One of Calipari’s prized recruits a couple years back was Sean Banks, another Jersey kid. Before arriving at Memphis, Banks was arrested and accused of using a cigarette to burn a gang sign on a girl’s leg. He came to Memphis, though, and was rookie of the year in Conference USA as a freshman.

Last season, as a sophomore, Banks became academically ineligible and eventually entered the NBA draft.

When Calipari says it’s not as easy as it was when he made something out of nothing at Massachusetts, he lists the hotshots he signed out of high school but who went straight to the NBA -- Amare Stoudemire and Kendrick Perkins. He doesn’t mention Banks but, less than 10 seconds into a conversation he adds, “seven of my last nine kids have graduated. We also have kids coming back -- Anfernee Hardaway, Marcus Moody, Andre Turner -- they’re coming back and going to school.

“The other side of it, on the court, I just never realized kids are going to go pro this quickly. At Mass, Camby was the only guy to leave and that wasn’t until his junior year. So we had the same team together. Now, I’ve got six first-year players. What’s that about?”

It’s about recruiting, and Calipari is a star pitchman. “Some days you love him, some days you hate him, but basically, Coach Cal, he never lies to you,” says sophomore guard Darius Washington. “Coach Cal, he just tells it like it is.”

Washington had a moment in the spotlight in March in the Conference USA tournament championship game against Louisville. Washington was fouled as time ran out while he was desperately attempting a three-pointer. Memphis was down by two. Washington made the first free throw but badly missed the second and third. The loss cost Memphis an automatic NCAA bid and the Tigers slunk off to the NIT. Washington, a freshman, fell face first on the court and cried.

At the next Tiger practice, Calipari had each player stand alone at the foul line and shoot two free throws. Only three players made both and Calipari had made his point -- “It’s not so easy and no one should blame Darius for anything.” It was a lesson taught out of the spotlight and well.

Calipari shouts another question to his players. “Who’s Sam Walton?”

This time he gets answers. “Wal-Mart, he owns Wal-Mart.” Calipari then asks, “Who’s Bill Walton?” First there is silence. Then a single voice tentatively says, “TV announcer?”

“See,” Calipari says, “it’s so different now. Did I think it would take six years to get back where we want to be? No. But it has. We’re not there yet. We’re not ‘a program’ like Duke or Kentucky or Arizona. We’re closer though. We’ve got it figured out now.”

Somewhere South of Georgetown

Horace Broadnax played with Patrick Ewing at Georgetown. He was on the team that lost to Villanova when the Wildcats played the so-called “perfect” game in 1985. He was a head coach at Bethune-Cookman from 1997-2002, then quit and went to law school.

Now Broadnax is back in coaching at Savannah (Ga.) State, which owned a 65-game losing streak until the Tigers beat Wilberforce, 63-59, last week.

“This is not like Georgetown,” Broadnax said. “But I guess no one thinks it is.”

Broadnax said he was friends with Savannah State Athletic Director Tony O’Neal and that he missed coaching. “I don’t know if this makes sense,” Broadnax said, “but while this is not exactly how I want to do it, I’m doing exactly what I want to do.”

Savannah State’s win came against an NAIA school. The Tigers have followed up with an 83-23 loss to Oregon and an 82-37 loss to Pacific.

“Hey, you know, we get hammered pretty good, but I still wake up and look forward to the day because I’m going to have fun,” Broadnax said. “I can be as creative as I want with this program. The pressure isn’t on me, it’s on the administration.”