MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota athletic director Joel Maturi sat in his customary Williams Arena seat on Sunday with the smile only satisfaction can bring.
Tubby Smith’s Golden Gophers were steamrolling Penn State with their most complete and balanced performance of the season, and there was nary a seat to be had in the roaring Barn.
“I said, ‘Boy things have changed,”’ Maturi said. “Obviously, Tubby was the reason.”
Less than 21 months have passed since Maturi lured Smith away from dissatisfied powerhouse Kentucky to a program that was laid ruin by a massive academic fraud scandal and seven dour seasons under coach Dan Monson.
One of the brightest stars in the constellation of power coaches, Smith had made a career of quickly turning around programs at Tulsa and Georgia before leading Kentucky to a national title and five SEC championships in 10 seasons.
That Smith appears to be a success once again should come as no surprise. But for it to happen this fast at a program that lost a school-record 22 games the year before he arrived?
“I don’t think anybody expected that,” Maturi said.
After wins at Iowa and home against Penn State last week, the Gophers (15-1, 3-1 Big Ten) rose to No. 18 on Monday in The Associated Press Top 25 and are off to their best start since 1976-77.
In just over a season and a half, Smith has already managed to brand that Tubby Trademark on this team.
All players worship at the altar of defense. Shots are meant to be blocked. Passes are made to be intercepted. Ball-handlers are hounded until they can’t take it anymore.
“If you can’t play defense, Coach Smith won’t play you,” junior college transfer Paul Carter said.
The message has clearly hit home with this group. There are 11 — 11! — players who play at least 13.6 minutes per game.
That means that egos and selfishness have been cast out into the frigid Minnesota winter to freeze and shatter. And that’s a lot more difficult than it sounds when you’re dealing with young men, most of whom have been the stars of the show on the court for as long as they can remember.
“Absolutely,” Smith said. “Because they’re used to playing as many minutes as they want, usually, in high school and junior college. It’s just a tough adjustment. When they do do that and you have that type of balance, it makes you pretty effective and a hard team to beat.”
Carter admitted that it took him a while to get acclimated to the fluctuating playing time after coming in from Missouri State-West Plains.
“We were the main options, so the ball was going through us,” Carter said. “It was one-on-one situations and that’s how we’re used to playing. In this offense, you’re coming off screens, you’re curling, you’re popping off pick-and-rolls, so that was the only challenge for us.”
Lawrence Westbrook leads the team with a modest 12.8 points per game, but it’s been a different Gopher coming through nearly every night.
“They know that we trust the system. If they just move the ball and play the right way, it really doesn’t matter to me who is shooting it. It’s the team that wins,” Smith said. “I usually tell guys, you actually just had the ball in your hand and it just so happened that it went through the hoop. But guess what? We all get credit for it because you couldn’t play by yourself.
“I think we’re starting to get that mentality and that attitude.”
On Sunday it was Devron Bostick, who scored 11 points total in the team’s previous three Big Ten games before getting 19 in a 79-59 win over the Nittany Lions.
“I think it is an advantage for us,” Smith said. “How do you prepare for us? We’ve got about 10 guys that have ways to score and beat you.”
Penn State coach Ed DeChellis didn’t have the answer.
“It’s hard to try and concentrate on who you’re going to guard, who you’re going to try and take out because they play so many guys and keep rotating them,” DeChellis said.
Maturi sees the appreciation manifesting itself in the Williams Arena crowd. At its best, the rickety ol’ Barn is one of college basketball’s most intimidating environments.
It lay for seven years in hibernation created by a cheating scandal that brought NCAA penalties that stripped the Gophers of their only Final Four appearance.
Now, the Barn is most definitely back.
So is the hop in Smith’s step. Despite all the success he enjoyed at Kentucky, that notoriously demanding Big Blue Nation always seemed to want more.
In the end, that’s part of the reason Smith chose to leave the nation’s premier job in the heart of basketball country for a program that lay buried under the rubble of NCAA sanctions in the snowy north.
“When we were in the process of getting him here, I told him, ‘Coach you’ve been way too successful not to enjoy it. And I didn’t think he was enjoying it,” Maturi said.
“We want to win championships, too, but we’re going to enjoy this journey. I do believe he’s enjoying his journey here.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
