Go ‘Lopes…
Scott Mossman, the head coach at GCU in 2007-08, when I came over, was really interested in having the defensive philosophy infused into his program- just like Dave Brown was at Yavapai, and Rob Babcock was at Phoenix College many years earlier. Dave had no problem with the amount of time necessary to build the defense from scratch, but Rob did and so did Scott. The difference between Rob and Scott, however, was that Rob cut my teaching time drastically as we went along, while Scott didn’t want me teaching at all. He spent many hours with me going over the progression of drills so that he could teach it. But that didn’t work too well and eventually he just gave up on it as too complicated. So that left me kind of out there to figure out where I could best help the program. For a while, I worked exclusively with the post players, as we also had a progression of post moves that we taught. That caught up with me, too, as Scott basically told me that he thought the progression was too difficult for his guys and he wanted them to learn one move, and if they couldn’t get in position to make that one move, just kick the ball back out. So for about the last third of my one year at GCU, I was more of a spectator than anything else.
Despite the coaching difficulties, there were a lot of new and interesting things that happened during that year. As you may recall, GCU was an NCAA Division 2 affiliate, so right up front I had to study for and pass an NCAA certification test. I never had to do that as a high school or junior college coach. I also had the great fortune to get to know Mike Grothaus, who was also on the coaching staff. He had been a player at GCU, but I knew of him as a player for Gilbert High School under Tom Bennett in 2003. He was a tough and gritty player on a team that won the state title that year. Mountain Pointe had played them in the championship game of the Gilbert Holiday tournament that year. We were up 1 with 7 seconds to play and at the line shooting a one and one. Our player, Brett Collins, who would go on to a fine career at St. Mary’s, missed the free throw and as the Gilbert point guard, Tommy Hambicki, dribbled over to call timeout, one of our players fouled him with 3 seconds left. He made both and we lost by 1. I told Mike that was the game that propelled Gilbert to the state title, in my opinion. He disagreed, of course, saying that they won 30 other games that year. At GCU, Mike and I became close friends. We came from the same tree, really- Coaches Youree and Bennett- and it was pretty obvious then and still is now that Mike was going to become the next great Arizona coach. Interestingly, halfway through the season, some players were let go from the team, and Coach Mossman asked Mike to play one more semester. He had started college at Jamestown State in North Dakota, then come over to GCU: and with NAIA and NCAA D2 transfer rules being the way they are, he somehow managed to have an extra semester of eligibility. When it comes to eligibility, you hear about the “clock” all the time, but that only relates to NCAA D1. D2, D3, and NAIA all go by semester of full time enrollment counts. Suddenly, Mike was a player and he immediately started behaving like one- meaning we couldn’t pry any information out of him from locker room chatter. You have got to respect that.
GCU was in the PacWest conference at that time, which included four Hawai’i schools- Chaminade, Hawai’i Pacific, BYU Hawai’i, and the University of Hawai’i Hilo. We went two separate times, which meant that I got two all expenses paid trips to Hawai’i for a week each. Scott Mossman always stayed in great hotels no matter where we went, and Hawai’i was no exception. We stayed right on Waikiki Beach in a resort both times, and I remember calling my colleagues at Mountain Pointe in the social studies department while they were eating lunch and telling them that I was walking in the surf at Waikiki at that moment. On one of the trips, we flew to the big island and stayed in Hilo for a few days at another great resort. The gym at Chaminade had Chiquita banana stickers all over the wood floor, which was a bit odd. Also, the players had to dress in a classroom on campus which was up a steep hill from the gym. When you came down the hill, you entered the gym from a side door that took you down the bleachers to the bench. At halftime, you had to go back up through the bleachers to get out, and trust me, the fans were giving it to you- and not in a pleasant way. We didn’t go all the way back to the classroom at halftime, but just went about halfway up the hill, where we got the most fabulous view of Diamondhead. On one of the days, the coaches went over and climbed Diamondhead, which was pretty cool. The view of Waikiki from the top was awesome.
We also took the players over to Pearl Harbor and did the Arizona tour. That had special meaning for me, because my Dad came from a small town in Texas and grew up on a farm during the Depression. Life was very hard, so right when he graduated from high school, he decided to enlist in the new army air force. His neighbor, Rusty Jackson, who was only 16, wanted to go along to the recruitment office in Dallas. While Dad was in the army air force office, Rusty wandered over to the Navy recruiters office and lied about his age and joined up. Dad was stationed at a new air base outside of Glendale, Arizona, which had been named for the famous “balloon buster” of World War I, Frank Luke. When he got there, it was hot as hell in an era before air conditioners. Rusty, on the other hand, got a plum assignment- the battleship USS Arizona. On December 7th, 1941, Rusty was able to man his machine gun mount, and his body was later recovered in the harbor. He was 17 years old. When I was a kid and we would visit my grandmother in Texas, my Dad would always take me and my brother over to the cemetery in his small town, where we would go to Rusty’s grave. My brother and I would just roll our eyes- "going to see Rusty again". His parents were poor and did not have a headstone- there was just a little marker and a frame with a picture of Rusty wearing his sailor’s hat with “USS Arizona” on it. When I was a kid, that didn’t mean as much to me then as it did when I walked up to the Arizona memorial and saw Rusty’s name up there. By then, my Dad was suffering from dementia, so I couldn’t tell him how much I appreciated the fact that he wanted his sons to remember Rusty’s sacrifice.
We didn’t have a great year, going 16-16. BYU Hawai’i won the PacWest, even though we did beat them in Antelope Gym. We were really not a good road team. I could tell also that my time there was going to be limited to one year, as I was really not contributing much and not enjoying it very much. Early in the competition season, I found out that Alton Lister had left Mesa Community College, so I decided to throw my name in there. One night after practice, Scott Mossman asked me if I was going to apply for the MCC job. I told him that I had already, and he told me that he was thinking about applying for it, as well. He thought it was the third best basketball coaching job in the Valley, behind the Suns and the Sun Devils. I didn’t know about all that, but I was aware of the great tradition that Mesa had, and knew that it was a full time basketball coaching position. While we were on one of the Hawaiian trips, MCC called me while I was at Sunset Beach with the team They wanted to interview me…
Next…The T-Birds…
