COMMENTARY
Calhoun is a gym rat at heart
Jim Calhoun has won two NCAA championships. He’s a Hall of Famer, a certified basketball legend. But at heart, he’s still a wide-eyed kid from Massachusetts, giddy at the privilege of walking into some tiny gymnasium to play the sport he loves.
“I still call them gyms,” Calhoun said Monday. Not arenas, coliseums or domes. Gyms. Places where sneakers squeak a happy refrain and crowds delight in a backdoor pass or a slam dunk.
Calhoun has been in more gyms than he can count. When he visits one for the first time, he’ll often walk in when it’s empty and soak it in. So today, perhaps, the UConn coach will take a moment to stop and admire his surroundings at UB’s Alumni Arena, where he will coach a game for the first time.
Buffalo fans should sit up and take a long look at Calhoun, the top basketball figure ever to walk on that floor. Monday, he got his 781st career win, moving into eighth all-time in Division I.
Yet at 66, Calhoun has the same passion for the game that he did as a kid in Braintree, Mass. Last week, before UConn played Bryant, a Rhode Island school in its first year in D-I, Calhoun admitted he had butterflies.
“I tell the kids this,” Calhoun said. “The greatest winner in the history of sports, I think, was Bill Russell. He threw up before every game.”
Calhoun is a chronic worrier. For years, he was tormented by the idea that he couldn’t win the big one, that he ran a rogue program, that he didn’t measure up to the coaching giants of college hoops. Then he won a title in ’99, and another in 2004. Now he’s in search of a third.
He resists the notion that he’s mellowed. That would suggest a diminished fire, a softening of his combative nature. But Calhoun has gained a heightened appreciation for his job, and his life. That’ll happen when you’ve beaten cancer three times in a little over five years.
Calhoun battled prostate cancer in 2003, skin cancer in ’07. Last May, he had surgery to remove a cancerous mass from his neck. Calhoun underwent seven weeks of radiation treatments and lost 24 pounds. He’s now cancer free.
The UConn coaches joked that it was “Calhoun 3, Cancer 0.” Calhoun, who was honored last April for his dedication to the American Cancer Society, said he didn’t want to be “the guy with the most victories in the graveyard.” He’s a fighter — volatile and complex, a man who hates to lose and is famous for his sarcastic, profanity-laced asides to referees.
Tim Higgins, a top official, told Calhoun “It’s nice to have you back” during an exhibition game. When Calhoun raged at a call, Higgins said, “It’s great to see you’re back in midseason form, Jim.”
“That’s kind of who I am,” Calhoun said. “Am I different? My players from the past think I’ve mellowed. You start to realize what you’re doing by the kids you had in the past. You can see the experience through their eyes a little more. The journey could get old after 37 years. But it doesn’t, because I re-experience it all the time. For them, it’s the first time.”
Calhoun would love to win it all for a third time. He’s coached in more games than any active coach. He knows winning a third NCAA title would tie him with Mike Krzyzewski. Calhoun still simmers when he recalls how Duke was regarded as unbeatable in 1999.
“All we heard is that Duke is the team of the ages,” Calhoun said. “It seems to me UConn won that title.”
Now there’s another supposedly invincible team in his sights: North Carolina is ranked No. 1, a heavy favorite to win it all. UConn is No. 2. You get the feeling Calhoun likes it that way.
“I don’t think they’re invincible,” he said, “nor do I think we are. I have a burning, burning desire for us to get to the Final Four in Detroit. There’s no experience in sports like that journey.”
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