A Season Inside Read Online Free Page B

A Season Inside
Book: A Season Inside Read Online Free
Author: John Feinstein
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was angry and unhappy. When he made that unhappiness public, Evans lashed back at him, accusing him of doing a lousy recruiting job.
    That began a war of words that would continue through the summer and only get worse during 1988.
    Evans didn’t want a running feud with Massimino any more than Massimino wanted one with him. But neither man was about to back down from the other. The troubles with Massimino did not affect Evans’s coaching. But they didn’t make life any simpler for him. And this promised to be a difficult year. He had been a successful Division 2 coach at St. Lawrence, a highly lauded coach for six years at Navy, and surprisingly successful during his first year at Pitt.
    Now, Pitt was being picked first by many in the Big East. It was in most top fives around the nation. With Lane, Charles Smith, Demetrius Gore, and Rod Brookin back, along with a very strong freshman class, the Panthers’ potential seemed unlimited.
    But it was not that simple. Even before practice began, Evans had lost his starting point guard from the previous year, Michael Goodson, to academic troubles. Goodson was one of those kids plenty smart enough to do the work, but too cool to take the time. That left Evans with a choice between a former walk-on, Mike Cavanaugh, or a freshman, Sean Miller, at point guard. He would eventually choose Miller,but starting a season with Final Four dreams with a freshman running your team was not exactly ideal.
    “People are picking us too high,” Evans insisted, sounding like any coach dealing with high expectations. “We’re experienced in some areas but too inexperienced in others. If we had Goodson, it would be different. But we don’t.”
    For much of his coaching career, Evans had been the underdog. Now, he was the favorite. It would be a new experience for him. It would not be an easy or a pleasant one either.
    If Evans needed lessons in how to deal with attention, he might have picked up a phone and called Jim Valvano. In 1983, Valvano had become as big a name as there was in basketball when he took a North Carolina State team that had finished third in the Atlantic Coast Conference all the way to the national championship. It was a feat similar to the one that Massimino would perform two years later, but Valvano did it first.
    And he did it with remarkable flair. The night before his team played in the national semifinals against Georgia, Valvano, pouring sweat from a fever, won a dance contest in Albuquerque. Then, in the final, the Wolfpack, given no chance against a great Houston team led by Akeem Olajuwon, not only won the game 54–52 but did it on a miracle shot at the buzzer, Lorenzo Charles snatching Dereck Whittenburg’s woefully short desperation shot out of the air and dunking it, to end the game.
    That shot and the aftermath, Valvano running from corner to corner of the court trying to find people to hug, was rerun more times than all the episodes of
I Love Lucy
combined. If Valvano had been boring, those few moments would have made him a star.
    And Valvano was not boring. He was funny, hilariously funny. He loved to talk—especially when he was being paid a lot of money for talking. He marketed himself and his championship into a business worth $750,000 a year. Huge money for speaking and clinics; radio and TV shows out the wazoo. Shoe and clothing contracts, outside businesses. Want a statue commemorating the accomplishment of a great athlete? Call JTV Enterprises.
    What’s more, Valvano, even though he was criticized at times for not focusing enough on coaching, continued to win games. His teamsreached the final eight in 1985 and 1986 and after a bad regular season in 1987, won the ACC Tournament, shocking a vastly superior North Carolina team in the final in an upset faintly reminiscent of 1983.
    Valvano was rich. He was a winner. He even did a stint on the
CBS Morning News
for a while, jokingly claiming to his friends—and his wife, of course—that Phyllis George,

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