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Saturday, March 17, 2007
Tubby knows who he is
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Chicago — Here’s what the bashers don’t understand: Tubby Smith doesn’t hear you and doesn’t really care what you think. He knows he can still coach. He knows he can always find suitable employment. He knows who he is.
A half-hour after Kentucky beat Villanova here Friday night, I asked Smith how much of the criticism actually registers. “You don’t want to give it any credence,” he said. “There’s always going to be critics.”
And what of his wife? (Donna Smith is an avid reader and Internet-surfer.) Does she absorb it all? “We’re too old for that crap,” he said. “If I were 25 or 30, it’d bother me. But when you’re 55 …”
He looked up, almost defiant now. “I can always get a job. That’s one thing my dad told me: ‘Don’t ever worry about work.’ “And what did Guffrie Smith, a Maryland sharecropper who raised 17 children, mean by that? Said Tubby Smith, sixth of the 17: “It’s only the lazy people who have to worry about work.”
To judge from the clamor back in the Bluegrass, Smith should be a nervous wreck. His Wildcats, who lost 13 games last season, have lost 11 this time and will be a massive underdog against Kansas today. His athletics director, the mealy-mouthed Mitch Barnhart, issued a statement last month so lacking in support of Smith that the AD felt moved this week to offer a “Tubby’s-our-coach” clarification. Then you saw the coach at work against Villanova, and you saw a man who seemed utterly relaxed.
He didn’t rip his jacket off, usually a signature move. He didn’t make any of those glowering Tubby Faces. Truth to tell, he spent the first four minutes sitting with his legs crossed. He knows who he is. He knows he can coach. (His team beat Villanova, didn’t it?) A few blowhards insisting he’s running their precious program into the ground won’t make him feel overmatched or inadequate or even unduly stressed.
To be fair, not all criticisms are groundless. Smith’s staff is among the weakest in the country. It was thought Tubby would hire new assistants after last season — Georgia Tech’s Charlton Young was believed to be one of the possibilities — but he wound up settling for a strength coach and for bringing back Shawn Finney, who’d been fired at Tulane, as director of basketball operations. And at the start against Villanova, the incompetence of Smith’s aides showed yet again.
Chief assistant David Hobbs identified Dwight Perry, as opposed to his cousin Bobby Perry, as a starter in the official scorebook. Thus did the nation’s winningest program open the 2007 NCAA tournament with a walk-on in its first five. (Dwight Perry was ordered to foul immediately so he could be substituted, and he dutifully complied.) “A little embarrassing,” Smith conceded. “But I couldn’t even read what was in the book.”
Because Smith doesn’t care much for recruiting, he needs stronger assistants who’ll do the heavy lifting. Two years ago, we had this conversation:
Me: “You know, I’m from Maysville (Ky.), and I’m still upset you didn’t recruit Chris Lofton.”
Smith: “Why didn’t you say something?”
The greater point is that Smith needs people around him who’ll say something, not just yes-men happy to be sitting by the eminent coach’s side. The greater point is that Kentucky shouldn’t have to settle for lesser talent on an annual basis. (Besides the dauntless Lofton, the Wildcats also passed on Corey Brewer, who’s the best all-around player on Florida, the nation’s best team.) As clever as Smith is — and at Xs and Os, he’s among the very best — he can’t override the sort of resource imbalance he faces against Florida and will face against Kansas.
But here’s what even his supporters (and there are, contrary to popular belief, more than a few of those) don’t fully grasp: Tubby Smith likes doing things his way. He was taking teams (Tulsa, Georgia) to the Sweet 16 before he arrived in Lexington, and if he decides to leave for a more welcoming climate he’ll win big there, too.
He knows who he is — a smart man, a successful man, as decent a man as there is in his cutthroat industry. He knows he can always find another job. What the bashers don’t understand is that Kentucky, for all its hubris, might never find another Tubby Smith.
Permalink | Comments (37) | Categories: Final Four, Mark Bradley
Houston begins its Rocket countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Kissimmee, Fla. — You won’t find Roger Clemens live and in person in this cow town, where the Houston Astros spend the spring. Check the PGA Tour and it’s likely he’ll be playing in the pro-am, the Bob Hope, the Pebble Beach, and this past week under Arnold Palmer’s own label at Bay Hill. While major league players are sweating out offseason impurities under Marine conditions, “Rocket” - as Phil Garner addresses him - does it in country club style.
Clemens has his own spring conditioning routine, and it doesn’t include spring training, as you and I know it. He has made it a custom lately to come strolling in sometime in May, not plump and out of shape, but ready for foxhole duty. And how does that go over with a major league manager?
Well, when Garner became manager of the Astros, it went this way. “When I first got there, Rocket came in and handed me this long sheet of paper filled out with his program. I put it aside and never looked at it until one of my coaches said, ‘Did you see Rocket’s schedule?’
“I hadn’t, so I took a look at it. It was an itemized schedule of everything, workouts, throwing days, starts, the whole thing for almost the whole season. So I asked him about it, and what if I thought some of it ought to be changed. He said he’d change it, no problem. It wasn’t a demand schedule, it was just how programmed he is. I made a few changes and he went right along with it. I’m not crazy about the ‘freedom’ clause in his contract, but he has never taken advantage of it.”
It’s a most unusual arrangement. Clemens has been with the Astros three years, but you don’t find his name on the roster, nor his record in the press guide. He is as free as a free agent can be, and the presumption is that sometime in May he’ll check in, program in hand, and be ready to pitch.
He and Andy Pettitte came to Houston in sort of a package arrangement, and when Pettitte defected to the Yankees this year, the question arose about Clemens’ direction. “I’ll see what happens sometime in May,” he told an Orlando columnist.
“Is that what he said?” Garner asked. And being assured that it was, Garner must have had a comfortable glow light up his body. And why such an oddball way of going about it?
“I think it’s because he doubts he can go a full season anymore, so he doesn’t want to run out of gas,” Phil (once known as “Scrap Iron” as a player) said.
And yet he pitched the last three innings of that 18-inning game when the Astros beat the Braves in the deciding game of the playoffs two seasons ago. “You know something?” Phil said. “He’d have gone six or seven if we’d needed him. He’s that kind of team player.”
They are a sort of odd couple, Garner and Clemens. Garner is Smokey Mountain Tennessee all the way, son of a minister and straight as an arrow. Clemens is classic Texan, athletically handsome and muscled for heavy duty. Under these unusual conditions you might suspect some kind of smoldering crossfire just waiting to surface. Check the thought.
“Rocket is so great with kids,” Phil said. “He gets out there and throws batting practice to them until they run out of steam. Once some of the kids sort of tapped the ball back to him, and he said, ‘is that all you’ve got?’ Then they loosened up and started swinging. He’ll work himself until he’s dripping with sweat.”
And through all this, you can see that Garner is looking forward to May. No matter how it may come across to some doubters, “Rocket” and “Scrap Iron” have become a pretty good team as Astros.
“I’ll say this to you,” Phil said, “he is a dream to have on this team.”
Clemens has won 348 games, eighth all time, and the Astros are waiting for him to add to it. The Hall of Fame door is open, and his reservation has been made.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
