Tufts. Columbia. Fordham. Rhode Island. Texas. George Washington. And now Houston. Tom Penders has coached at all of them. On Friday night Penders returned to the root of his coaching career to receive the 2004 Tufts University Athletic Department/Jumbo Club Distinguished Achievement Award.
After playing basketball and baseball for UConn, Penders began his career by invigorating the Jumbo basketball program in the early 1970s before leaving for Columbia, where he became the youngest Div. I basketball coach. In 1988, Penders experienced his first NCAA tournament success when he guided the Rhode Island Rams to the Sweet Sixteen before losing by a point to Duke. His most successful stint then came at Texas from 1988-98, when he averaged over 20 wins a season and made eight NCAA tournaments, including the 1990 Elite Eight. For his career, Penders is 527-361 (.593 winning percentage) and has gained a reputation as someone who can turn a floundering program around.
Penders experienced negativity at the end of his Texas career, when there were media rumors of a players' mutiny and an assistant coach released the grades of one of his players, Luke Axtell, to a local radio station, where they were read on the air. Penders resigned and went on to GW, where he later resigned citing burnout. In March, after serving as an analyst for ESPN, he agreed to take over a Unviersity of Houston program that hasn't won an NCAA tournament game since the days of Akeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler.
Before returning to the Hill to be honored for his contributions to Tufts, Penders talked with the Daily about coaching, what Tufts used to be like, the state of basketball, Chris Mihm, and the controversy at Texas.
How did you get into coaching basketball?
I was drafted by the Cleveland Indians in 1968 in the 9th round and played ball in A and AA and then in the offseason, just looking for work and trying to feed my family, I was bartending and substitute teaching in high school. And in Bridgeport where I was teaching, the coach quit, and the principal asked if I wanted to jump in, and I did.
And you're still coaching.
When I coach it feels like I'm still playing. Basketball teaches a lot about life, and coaching is really one of the greatest one of the ways to make a living if you can stay focused. You can't believe the impact you have on people's lives, and you don't realize it until 20 years later, and I can't think of another profession where you can touch so many lives and have so much to be thankful for.
When you started at Tufts, the team the previous year had gone 1-17, and you weren't much older than your players. The next 3 years you won 12, 22, and 20 games. How do you turn a program around?
When you take over a program that's down, you have to build a pride and sense of a commitment and you have to get in shape. Losing creates a culture that breeds negativity and defeatism and brings out the worst in people. Not everyone can win and not everyone in the record books is a winner but it's about building a lot of team concepts and pride. And that's what a coach does.
What do you remember about Tufts' athletic scene in the seventies?
Well, we couldn't start practice until November, and there was no offseason conditioning like there is now. I only had a few weeks to get my players together because I was the JV soccer coach as well. The AD, Harry Arlanson, was a real gentleman; I don't think I ever saw him without a suit and tie on. Rocky Carzo was the opposite, just like Columbo. He always had a gray t-shirt on, sneakers and shorts, and a whistle around his neck.
Out of all the places I've coached at, it was where you focused on coaching and teaching the game. We recruited but we recruited on the phone. We couldn't go watch kids play or visit them in their home.
What was student support like?
It was tremendous. You couldn't get a ticket, couldn't get into a game. The last two years it was totally sold out, people hanging off the rafters. Not just for basketball. One year our soccer team beat Harvard at home and there had to be 5,000 people there. We were getting as much ink in the Globe as BC, and I have the clippings to prove it.
That's hard to believe if you go to Tufts now.
Well it wasn't like that at first. I lived in Wren sort of as a dorm counselor, and I'd eat with the student body, and I'd pass out leaflets for games in the dining hall. But once you start winning you create excitment.
How bad was the basketball team when you took over?
Just about everything that could go wrong with the program had gone wrong in the previous years. I was still good enough to play and beat any of the players on the team. I tried to instill confidence and toughness. They had no self-esteem.
Do you think athletes are better today than they were in the '70s?
No. I think there's more weight training, and it's more of a strength game now. In the '60s and '70s players coming out of high school were better prepared. They understood the team concept; they weren't trying to be professional athletes.
The Tufts guys worked as hard as the guys I have now, maybe even harder. Leroy Charles was a better shooter than 90 percent of the guys that are playing today and Eddie Tapscott was a better point guard than a lot of Div. I guys these days.
Now it's too individual - it's all about dunking, it's all about making the highlights on ESPN. That's why our Olympic team can't beat teams from South America and Puerto Rico. It shows how far our game has dropped. It's proof.
Well is there a way to fix that?
All they have to do is a put on a rule that a kid has to be 21 before he's drafted. It's simple. Because for every LeBron James there's 50 guys that take the shot and don't make it. I think there are great coaches in college, but too many guys go straight to the NBA.
So you think the NBA is to blame?
The NBA has set the game back a good 10 years.
When you recruited Chris Mihm, did you think he'd be able to play in the NBA?
Yeah, I did. He used to come to my camps when he was young, and I saw him growing and shooting up, and all of a sudden he was really tall. He played tennis and was really agile and had great hands, and I was not at all surprised he made the NBA. If anything I thought he'd be better, more of a force in the NBA, and I don't know if it's because he's been traded so much or what.
At Texas, with the whole Luke Axtell situation, if you could go back, is there something you would do differently?
No, there's really not. You know, that whole thing was just one player and that was an academic issue. I had one player who was unhappy because I disciplined him because of academics. And that one player got three guys to go to the AD's house, and the other three told me personally that they had nothing to do with it and weren't unhappy. And the media handled it badly.
How so?
When I took the job here at Houston, they interviewed two of the "four players" that had gone against me, Gabe Muoneke and Bernard Smith, and it wasn't what the media had portrayed. They interviewed them and they said that that was not true and they were called to a meeting and never had anybody ask them if they were happy or unhappy or whatever.
It was strictly a political thing with the AD. It never had anything to do with the players. That was pure garbage, and they put that out to justify getting rid of me, and they used those kids. I had differences with the athletic director, and they were well known, and I should have moved on before, but I didn't.
So it was the media's fault?
The local media was basically in bed with the University. You're just one person, a leaf in the wind. But I'm a man, I had a contract, they paid me in full because they had no leg to stand on, and I signed a buyout agreement with them, but the media continued to say what they wanted. And finally on March 28th, 2004, the truth came out when these players were interviewed when I took the Houston job. Why did it take six years to ask these guys, did they have a beef with me?
And now you're coming back to Tufts.
It all started at Tufts. I can't tell you how much it means to me to be able to come back to where it all started. A day doesn't go by where I don't think of Tufts and where I got my start. It's important to me that kids who play basketball for me have a chance to be a success. And I look back at Tufts, there are judges, lawyers, CEOs, all kinds of different success stories. And that's kind of cool.<$>
-by Ben Hoffman
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