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Friday, March 3, 2006
New AD already a good fit to Hewitt
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Let’s get something out of the way, because everything else we discuss in this space involving the state of Georgia Tech basketball will hinge on the following question: So, Paul Hewitt, do you wish to hug the Yellow Jackets’ new athletics director or choke him, and does this mean that you’re staying or going?
Hewitt answered quickly, which was a wonderful sign if you’re partial toward old gold and white.
“Obviously I haven’t worked a day with him,” said Hewitt, referring to Dan Radakovich, the outsider from LSU who was picked over celebrated Tech man Bill Curry to succeed Dave Braine. Just so you know, Braine is Hewitt’s sugar daddy who hired the previously unknown coach from Siena six seasons ago. But back to Radakovich, with Hewitt adding, “I’ll tell you what. I’ve gotten more calls from people who really don’t have a dog in the race, as they say, who have been glowing about this guy. They’ve done some background checks on him, and he always comes up five stars. That includes what I hear from Lonnie Cooper’s office.”
That’s Cooper, the noted Atlanta agent with more than a few clients who have interacted with Radakovich during his journey as a college administrator from Miami (Florida) to Long Beach State to South Carolina to American University and to LSU. That’s also Cooper, Hewitt’s agent, the person who placed all of those clauses in Hewitt’s contract that allow him to bolt to another school within two years after Braine’s departure or to an NBA job at any time.
Looks like Hewitt isn’t going anywhere, which is yet another reason why you can ignore the fluke that is the ongoing bust of a season for Tech. Come next year, with the maturation of what currently is the ACC’s youngest roster, and with the arrival of Javaris Crittenton along with other recruits, the Jackets should rise from the dead in a hurry.
So why did Hewitt still have a mortician’s demeanor? He gets it. He knows that coaches who wish to stay among the elite never are satisfied. As a result, he prefers not to discuss the promise of the future when he has to deal with the mess of now.
“It’s been a very humbling year, and by far, this has been my toughest year,” said Hewitt, whose wildly inconsistent Jackets enter their last conference game of the regular season today at Clemson with a 4-11 record in the ACC and 11-15 overall. Such ugliness happens when you play more freshmen and sophomores than anybody in one of the nation’s toughest conferences, and your accomplished point guard, Jarrett Jack, leaves early for the pros.
Still, with a bunch of shooters such as Anthony Morrow and Lewis Clinch, this Tech team hinted of becoming more prolific on offense than many of its forefathers. The Jackets also have Jeremis Smith, a mostly complete player, and defensive wizard Mario West, all enough to make us surmise before the season that the Jackets would do nothing less than surge on the verge on the ACC tournament.
Instead, they’ve stunk.
“Even that second year when we started out 0-7 at one point and finished out winning eight of the last 10, I knew we were going to be really, really young and that it would be an uphill climb, but this one has caught me off guard,” Hewitt said. “Boy, we’ve lost so many close games that could have made a difference in us being on the bubble of the [NCAA] tournament. Fourteen-point lead to Florida State. Double-figure lead at North Carolina. The game we had here, when we blew an eight-point lead against Duke with eight [minutes] to go. We had games right there.”
They lacked toughness, though, and Hewitt said he’ll help his Jackets acquire it before next season. He’ll also continue to collect the type of gritty players who led Tech to the NCAA title game two seasons ago. Thus his recruiting trips that included one this week to Baton Rouge, where Radakovich remains for the moment as LSU’s senior associate athletics director.
“I stopped by Dan’s office, and I just spent 10 minutes with him,” Hewitt said. “I ran into somebody there that I know on the basketball staff, and he said, ‘You’re getting a great guy.’ So I’m looking forward to working with him.”
Good. No, great.
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No ‘shade’ for Texas’ Brown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Austin, Texas — The Vince Young saga had still not played out at Texas. That story out of the National Football League combine in Indianapolis, alleging that the quarterback rage had scored only 6 points out of a possible 50 on an exam intended to gauge prospects’ intelligence, had triggered Mack Brown’s ire.
“That six was inaccurate. It was graded improperly,” he said. “It just mushroomed from that. It’s some kind of goofy test that doesn’t seem to have stood up too well in the past. Vince is a very intelligent young man. He left needing only three and a half hours for his degree and he would have graduated in the fall.
“I’ll tell you this, we have no place to hide ‘em at Texas,” inferring that there is no soft curriculum for athletes.
Spring practice was just beginning and Mack Brown was about to rebuild his case for the defense of the national championship the Longhorns had won in the Rose Bowl Jan. 4. (“My mother’s birthday,” he said. “She called and asked me what I was going do for her next year.”)
This hadn’t happened in Austin since the days of Darrell Royal, who did it three times, 1963, 1969 and l970. This was what Mack Brown came to Texas for, and he has done it in the stadium bearing Royal’s name. Royal is still about, 81 years old and visitor to practices nearly every day. He has his own particular Longhorn vernacular, such as “The less you say, the less you have to take back,” “Don’t sit in the shade,” and other chuck wagon sayings. His approval of Brown as a Longhorn is couched in this phrase: “He’s been dipped and vaccinated.”
The Browns come from Cookeville, Tenn., and football has put food on their table for a long time. Mack’s grandfather was the winningest high school coach in eastern Tennessee. His brother, Watson, a year and a half older, is head coach at University of Alabama-Birmingham.
“Not many coaches can pick up the phone, call another coach and say ‘I’ve got this problem, what would you do about it,’” Mack said. “And I do now and then, and so does he.”
Both Browns went to Vanderbilt, Watson because he wanted to be a sports writer — but later saw the light — and Mack planned to be an attorney. Something changed his mind as well and he switched to Florida State, there lettered two seasons as a running back.
There has been one particular thorn in Mack’s side at Texas — Oklahoma. The Sooners. “We beat them the first two times, and nobody said anything. Then we lost five in a row” — twice when Oklahoma ran up over 60 points — “and it became like a burr under everybody’s saddle. Then we beat them last year and nobody says anything.”
This was a major stop on the road to National No. 1, and Texas is still celebrating. No doubt he would have been everybody’s “Coach of the Year” if 79-year-old Joe Paterno hadn’t intervened. Nevertheless, Mack has won more games the last ten years than any coach in the big dog division.
“Now, I’m just gonna sit back and enjoy it. We may hold onto it and sit out the year,” he said and grinned. “Just kiddin’. As Coach Royal says, ‘Don’t sit in the shade.’”
He is surrounded by the Taj Mahal of facilities and a state crawling with prime prospects.
“Recruiting in Texas is the hardest thing I have to do. There are 1,200 schools that play football, more prospects in the Houston area than in all of North Carolina. And about all we can take is 20 or 25 .”
The first shoes to fill are the large brogans of Vince Young, 6 feet 6 , 235 pounds. Right now the leading prospect is about as Texas as a kid can get — Colt McCoy out of Jim Ned High School in Tuscola, population 620. Colt is 6 feet 3, about 195, and led the state in everything legal and decent in Level 2A, and is ready to move up after a year of running the scout team.
Now, about Young’s future in the NFL, how would he best be used, as Mack Brown sees it. “Well, lean heavily on his throwing, but let him do it with what he does best, run, like Michael Vick. We didn’t run him a lot.”
Statistics show that he was Texas’ leading rusher, 1,050 yards to go with his 3,036 passing. The indelible memory of his championship game is a run, his last for the 8 yards that put Texas over the top against Southern Cal. Right then he owned the world, No. 1 draft pick, top of the heap. Things have changed, having nothing to do with the NFL’s IQ exam. Brown is aloof to opinion on how his pro career will shape up, sorry that he took early departure, but also says little of that. Except to say, “You have to do what you have to do.”
One of the first messages that greets a fellow approaching the Darrell Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium area is a stern admonition that shouts out: “We Are Texas.” And don’t you forget it.
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