2/6/2004 - Men's Basketball
Leaving By Way Of The High Road
Leaving by Way of the High Road
By Bob Socci
There was little more than an hour left to that March morning in 1998 when I started walking from the locker room onto the floor of the Hartford Civic Center.
The NCAA Tournament was about to begin and Navy would soon face the East Region's top seed, North Carolina.
As with every other broadcast during that first full season covering the Midshipmen, I had just finished taping a pre-game interview with the head coach.
Or so I had thought.
Before ever reaching my seat along the sideline, I was struck by the alarming reality that the cassette inside my recorder was still blank.
I had forgotten to push the record button.
What followed those few horrifying seconds is something I'll never forget. And something that tells you all you need to know about the seven years I've spent working with Don DeVoe.
Imagine, what he must have been thinking just minutes before tip-off-How do we stop Vince Carter? Who will keep Antawn Jamison off the glass?-when the out-of-breath radio announcer returned in his sights to request a do-over.
Most coaches would have told the kid with the microphone, in no uncertain terms, to get lost. Or, in the very least, thrown a tirade that , however short on syllables, could be easily understood.
If Don DeVoe resisted such temptation that day, I'll never know.
He simply let me repeat myself and, as he had done a short time earlier, calmly answered every last question.
That experience and many others since are reminders of why, wherever I travel, there are so many who inquire about the man coaching the Midshipmen during the last dozen years.
People like the Hall of Fame baseball announcer in Cincinnati or the sportswriter from Albuquerque who were both on the beat when DeVoe was at Virginia Tech in the early seventies.
Or the former Dayton newspaperman who walked the Ohio State University campus about the same time DeVoe was playing alongside all-timers like Lucas and Havlicek.
They, like those of us in the media who've dealt with Don since, know him to be honest and accessible, true to his Midwestern roots and above the kind of ego-centric, overly self-important traits that define so many in his profession and ours.
And they, no doubt, like so many others, are saddened today by what's become of the Navy basketball program and by the news made public earlier this week.
Twelve seasons and 182 victories into his stay in Annapolis, DeVoe announced his decision to retire from the Academy.
“With the dynamics of the situation I felt like it was the best time for myself, my family and the Navy basketball team to retire at the end of this season,” DeVoe said in an official press release. “I've never quit on any team in my life and I'm not quitting on this team as I will remain the head coach the rest of this season, but I felt like it was important to announce it now so everyone can move forward.”
So, for at least eight more games DeVoe will reside on the bench in his Navy blue blazer, trying to salvage the remains of his 31st year as a college head coach.
Come March, that time to move forward will be upon us. But not before proper reflection on where the Mids have been.
Perhaps no one on the Yard today knows better than Victor Mickel. He was there at the beginning, a junior when DeVoe succeeded Pete Herrmann in 1992. And he'll be there at the end, an assistant in his fourth season on the Navy coaching staff.
“It was very emotional for me watching coach when he told us the news,” he said the day after DeVoe informed the Mids of his decision.
And a decade after Mickel and his teammates exorcised the post-David Robinson failures of the late-eighties, early-nineties.
The program DeVoe inherited from Hermann had lost 22 games in 1991-92, 13 of those defeats among Navy's 14 Patriot League contests.
A year later, the Mids won five conference games. And a year after that, they were league champs, bound for the NCAA Tournament.
“I would run through a brick wall for him,” Mickel said on Tuesday, after conducting the team's first practice of the week. “You would like to leave the program in better shape than you found it. No one likes to leave on a bad note.”
Unfortunately, but for a March to madness at the Patriot League tournament, that is likely how the head coach will exit, what with the Mids dangerously close to a third straight 20-loss season.
Still, over the last 12 years, there have been far more high notes than low for Navy basketball.
Three times in a five-year span, from 1994-98, the Mids advanced to the NCAA Tournament. They won at least 20 games each of the next two seasons, including 1999-2000, when a 23-6 record should have put them in the NIT.
As recently as 2001, they were on the brink of a fourth league crown under DeVoe, until an ill-timed whistle and strange overtime bounce helped Holy Cross to the title.
“You can never take those things away,” said Mickel. “He came here with that type of success.”
DeVoe was in only his second year as a college head coach when he guided Virginia Tech to the NIT championship, back when there was still cachet to the NIT.
Eventually, he moved on to Wyoming and then Tennessee, where he presided over seven 20-win seasons and nine postseason appearances in 11 years.
Overall, in more than three decades at five schools, the teams he's coached have won 510 games.
“That (prior) success aided us in turning it around so quickly,” Mickel says of Navy's mid-nineties renaissance.
And yet just as quickly, the Mids experienced another turnaround sometime between the winters of 2001 and '02, when 19 wins were abruptly followed by 20 losses.
By that time, the challenge of preserving their place atop the Patriot League was far more strenuous. The reasons are varied, both internal and external.
Among them was the disruption of continuity within the Navy basketball family, as the Mids, in a very real sense, became victims of their own success.
Within two years, they lost their top two assistant coaches, Doug Wojcik and Emmett Davis. Excluding Wojcik's career as a three-year starter at point guard, they spent a combined 21 seasons on the Navy staff.
Splitting the country in half, Wojcik and Davis recruited and cultivated relationships with some of the most valuable players in the program's history, from Brian Walker to Hassan Booker, Sitapha Savane to Chris Williams.
Their work, and that of the Mids, eventually earned opportunities abroad. First, Davis left to become head coach of Colgate. Then Wojcik departed to join his friend Matt Doherty at Notre Dame.
Even the assistants who stepped into their stead, namely Jimmy Allen, Nathan Davis and Tom Marryott , eventually assumed other positions in the college coaching ranks.
Meanwhile, the caliber of play, level of athleticism and quality of coaching within the Patriot League rose dramatically.
Schools not only began awarding scholarships, they committed the resources to attract people like Jeff Jones, Ralph Willard and Jim Crews, all of whom had already established their credentials as head coaches in higher-profile conferences.
Of course, those and whatever other factors conspired to cause Navy's demise are of little relevance today for the Mids who must try to recover the fragments of a broken season.
In particular, for the seniors whose careers are now reduced to the next three weeks.
“I just don't want it to be a distraction,” says the team's captain, Jason Fernandez. “Everybody has to be as focused as possible.”
Speaking before practice the other day at Halsey Fieldhouse, he was somewhat philosophical. And as a kid who grew up in the game as the son of his high school coach, Fernandez recognized that the shortcomings of the season are shared by all.
“It's not one person's fault,” he said. “There've been a lot of games where we haven't done what we needed to do. I've thought about that a lot.
“There's certain things coaches and players control. (Winning and losing) are always a combination of things.”
With that, he hinted at the hope that must drive the Mids in the days ahead.
“When it's all said and done, all you have to do is win three games,” said Fernandez, thinking about March and how it's still possible for Navy to blaze its way to glory in the Patriot League Tournament.
Mickel recalls what it was like to be in a similar position, back when Hermann was headed out and DeVoe was coming in.
“The team rallied around itself,” he said, while also contemplating where the current Mids can go from here. “There are a couple of ways you can go, either up or down. Hopefully, we take the high road.”
Which is exactly the route Don DeVoe followed to this point and will, no doubt, continue along in the next chapter of his life.
Still in his early sixties and having learned more than a thing or two about the sport Mr. Naismith dreamed up, he's certainly young enough to stay active in the game he loves for a long, long time.
As for his staff of young assistants, the near future is one of uncertainty.
The countless hours they've spent on the road recruiting, holed up in front of a monitor breaking down tape and on the court itself, all for relatively little pay, have led them to this time and place.
And though nearly all in their profession visit such adversity sooner or later, that doesn't make it any less difficult. For them, or their families.
Perhaps one, some or all will be retained when the next head coach takes up residence in Annapolis. When DeVoe took over he kept a pair of young assistants around, Davis and Wojcik.
Twelve years later, as irony would have it, each now represents a logical starting point in the search for his successor.
Whomever the choice, he can look at what Navy basketball accomplished under Don DeVoe.
At once, it will be a tough standard to meet and a smart blueprint to follow.
