LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- In a first ever tie vote, St. John's coach Rick Pitino and Auburn's Bruce Pearl were both named the Associated Press coach of the year in balloting announced Friday.
It is, for me, a happy coincidence. I hope you'll forgive me the personal indulgence of this column.
When I took my first full-time newspaper job at the now-defunct Evansville Press in 1992, the first coaches I met were the basketball coaches at the University of Southern Indiana, the school I was hired to cover. One of them was women's coach Chancellor Dugan, who just retired after 13 years at Bellarmine. The other had just arrived for his first season in town: Bruce Pearl.
Eventually, I would cover him through Elite Eight appearances — a loss in the national championship game in 1994 — and a Division II national championship (won in Louisville) in 1995.
Pearl and I would experience a lot of elements of our jobs for the first time. He was just a great deal more successful than I was. I hosted his radio coaches' show on occasion and remember once a woman called to congratulate Pearl on coaching a "good, Christian brand of basketball." Pearl said, "Thank you very much, ma'am, but I'm Jewish. We do respect all faiths, though."
I remarked that it was appropriate that he apparently had even God thoroughly scouted.
I also learned how to cover the drama of coaching rumors. Pearl seemed to be up for Division I jobs every year after he experienced success at USI. I saw him turn down a bunch of them, for various reasons. He passed on Middle Tennessee. Had no interest in Indiana State. By the time he left USI, he wasn't just the basketball coach, he was the school's vice president for development.
He left Evansville at about the same time as I left to join The Courier-Journal. He finally found a spot he liked — Wisconsin-Milwaukee — and wound up winning 80% of his Horizon League games over four seasons and taking that program to its first NCAA Sweet 16. Then, he was off to Tennessee.
Pearl and I don't communicate regularly. I don't know that I talked to him much during his exile after NCAA rules violations sidelined him at Tennessee or during his time at ESPN. When he got to Auburn, I made it a point to try to cover Kentucky-Auburn games, either here or there, and we'd exchange a word here or there.
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Mainly, one thing I learned is this: Winning a Division II national championship is no easier than winning one in Division I, just less widely celebrated. In some ways, it is harder. The regionals are more pressurized. There's no spreading the talent around the country. If you play in the toughest region, you have to beat the three other best teams in the country to advance.
And I learned something about handling adversity. You just have to keep working. You can't be discouraged. In the 1995 NCAA Championship game, Pearl's USI team fell behind, 17-1. In a huddle at the first TV timeout, Pearl didn't scream at his team. He apologized to them.
"I'm sorry this is happening to you. I really am," he said. "I hate it for all of us. But we can't do anything about it except keep playing and get past it."
They did and fashioned the biggest comeback in Division II championship game history to win the title.
Pearl's teams and career display that ethic of perseverance. After getting another chance at Auburn, he took it to its first Final Four. Now, he has a chance to lead the Tigers to their first championship. I hear lots of discussions about this being a Final Four with no coaches who have won championships. Actually, one of them has. And I can tell you, he knows the way to the title game and to the winner's podium.
It's been a long time, but I'm sure he hasn't forgotten the way. I'll always remember that when my first child was born, the first person, other than family, to show up at the hospital to say congratulations was Bruce Pearl.
Three decades after the National Association of Basketball Coaches gave him its 1995 Division II coach of the year award, it gave him its Division I coach of the year award. And now the AP has followed it up with this award.
All of which is testament to this: Regardless of what happens, you just have to keep playing.
While Pearl's story speaks to steady resilience and reinvention, Pitino's path has always been more storm and spotlight — and yet, the core truth is the same: You just keep playing.
When I left Evansville to come back home to Louisville, my first season covering the Cardinals was Denny Crum's last season. I could probably write a book about that but I'm not sure I have the energy.
After Crum's retirement — and all the battling that preceded it — a new coach would come to Louisville. On the day Pitino arrived with news helicopters tracking his car from the airport to the convention center downtown for his introductory news conference, I was scheduled to attend the closing on my house.
It wouldn't be the first time plans were altered. On the day Pitino was hired, David Hawpe, then the executive editor of The Courier-Journal, told me, "Your life is never going to be the same."
He was right. Over the next 20 years, I would see Pitino through the best and worst of times. The best times everybody remembers. The worst times, they remember too.
Rick Pitino and Eric Crawford (mostly Pitino) sign copies of The One Day Contract at the Kentucky Author Forum in Frankfort in 2013.
But one thing I always knew — and have known about Pitino whatever he was going through — was that he would come back. No defeat, no deficit, no circumstance, has been beyond his ability to rise again.
I viewed him as the central basketball figure in the state of Kentucky in the last half century, almost by default. You lead Kentucky and Louisville both to national titles, you win. That was my reasoning behind telling him when he asked me in 2012 to work on a book with him that I absolutely would. I knew the newspaper wouldn't allow me to do that. But then, WDRB came calling, and I had an opportunity. After Louisville won the national championship in 2013, I know his publisher wanted him to move to a better-known writer for the book. And I suspect he thought about it, but he stayed with me.
In that book, he talked about his personal challenges and about how his work had become a refuge. So when Louisville pushed him out in 2017, and he couldn't work for a time, I knew how hard a time it was going to be for him. But again, basketball was where he turned. He went to Greece, deepened his love for the game, and came back to rejoin the world of college basketball.
There was no doubt he would again soon be near the top of it. The story would have a better finish had he been able to get an offensively flawed St. John's team to the Final Four this season.
But then, the story isn't over.
Both of these guys gave me a great gift. They gave the gift of access. In Pearl's case, I could be at practice every day. In Pitino's, I spent time with him putting together a book or on team planes or, in one case, a plane with him to a shoe company basketball camp. With Pitino, we had 17 years of open locker rooms, hours with players to talk about various topics, to get to know them, if only in a limited way.
The second Pitino-coached Louisville road game I ever covered, the Cardinals lost big to Oregon. By the time I got to the locker room, many of the players had left. Pitino was incensed. Who told them they could go to the bus? He sent a manager out, had him march everyone back into the locker room and ripped all of them. Win or lose, they had to answer questions. He didn't always like it, either. But it's part of the game. He walked out of the locker room and said, "OK, you can go in and get your interviews."
I was the only reporter there. You can imagine how popular I was that night.
We live in different times. Players are properties. Even coaches are pretty tightly packaged. I'm just grateful to have gotten a chance to spend some time around two of the best to do it in their generation and, certainly, two of the best to do it this year.
Seeing them honored at the same time with the same award just brought that home.
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