A Season Inside Read Online Free PDF

needed to survive. When he asked athletic director Doug Dickey the question, Dickey was direct, but not specific: “Show me improvement, Don,” he said. “I need to see improvement.”
    The record the previous season had been 14–15, 7–11 in Southeast Conference play. That was the starting point for DeVoe.
    Improving on that record might not be that easy. Already, on October 15, there were headaches. The previous spring, feeling he needed help in recruiting, DeVoe had hired Bill Brown as an assistant coachfrom California State at Sacramento. Brown had gone back to California before moving to Knoxville and while he was there had been arrested along with several others during a drug bust. DeVoe had no choice: Brown resigned immediately.
    Then, the night before practice started, the Volunteers’ best player, Dyron Nix, had been in a car accident. Nix lost control of his car and hit a telephone pole. His passenger, a member of the Tennessee women’s basketball team, was injured so seriously that she didn’t play all season. Nix, after a scary night in intensive care, came through without any serious injuries. He would be back practicing after two weeks.
    But as practice started, DeVoe couldn’t help but think, “What else can happen to us?”
    If ever a coach and a program had reason to feel jinxed, it was DeVoe and Tennessee. The new arena, two years late already, had been plagued from the day it got off the planning board. A construction worker had died on the project, one construction company had been fired, and two law suits were still pending. As if that wasn’t enough, the man who had contributed the first $5 million to get the project started, B. Ray Thompson, a man whose fondest wish had been to see Tennessee play in the new building, was dying of cancer. Everyone at Tennessee hoped he would live to see the inaugural game, scheduled for December 3 against Marquette.
    B. Ray Thompson died on October 22. The season was still six weeks away. DeVoe knew it might be a long one.
    For Rick Barnes, October 15 was the Christmas morning he had dreamed of all his life. And, like any little kid, he just couldn’t wait to open his presents. That is why his George Mason basketball team was on the floor that day at 6 A.M. There was no midnight practice only because George Mason isn’t the kind of school where thousands of people will show up to celebrate the opening day of basketball practice.
    But Barnes didn’t care. All he knew was that he was a head basketball coach. He knew that outside the Washington, D.C., area very few people had heard of George Mason, a commuter school in Fairfax, Virginia, twenty-five miles from downtown Washington. But he also believed that with a two-year-old, ten-thousand-seat arena, an evergrowing student body, and a spot in a very respectable conference—theColonial Athletic Association—GMU had the potential to get noticed in the near future. If it had the right coach.
    Barnes believed that it did.
    Rick Barnes was thirty-two but looked twenty-two. Ten years ago, when he had been twenty-two and no doubt looked twelve, he had managed to get an interview with Eddie Biedenbach, then the coach at Davidson, for a graduate assistant’s job. Barnes had grown up in North Carolina and played at Lenoir Rhyne, a decent player in a decent small college program. When he graduated he knew his playing days were over. He also knew exactly what he wanted to do: coach.
    Through a friend he managed to arrange an interview with Biedenbach. It was scheduled for nine in the morning. Not wanting to take any chances on being late, Barnes left his house at 6 A.M. and was at Davidson by eight. He sat down in the bleachers to wait for Biedenbach. An hour went by. Then two. Barnes asked the assistant coaches if they knew where Biedenbach was. On the road recruiting. He would be in, but they weren’t sure when.
    Barnes kept waiting. At noon, he thought about going to get something to eat but decided against it.