9803130105
DETROIT FREE PRESS
980313
Friday, March 13, 1998
METRO FINAL
1C
Photo KIRTHMON F. DOZIER/Detroit Free Press
Brian Ellerbe says it might be better to retain the suspense
regarding his situation: "I don't want our players to exhale."
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1998, Detroit Free Press
BRIAN ELLERBE: HOW SHOULD HE BE JUDGED?
So much has been written, broadcast and debated about Brian Ellerbe -- the job
he has done with Michigan basketball, good, bad, whether he should get to keep
it -- and over and over, people keep missing the points.
First of all, his biggest accomplishment was not winning over his players, it
was winning over his assistant coaches.
Second, the standards used to judge Ellerbe's future should not be mere wins
or losses, nor his success in this NCAA tournament. He should be judged by
whatever standards got his predecessor, Steve Fisher, fired and gave Ellerbe
the job in the first place -- namely, is the program clean and pointed toward
the right values? Otherwise, why was Fisher fired?
And finally, contrary to some images, this is not some nervous beginner hoping
to smile his way into the full-time job. Brian Ellerbe may be 34 and new to
the post, but he's smart and he's confident and he thinks he has earned it.
"Can you say to yourself you've done enough to be asked back as coach?" I
asked him the other night in his office.
"Yes, without question," he answered.
"Would it be hard for you to imagine not being the coach next year?"
"It would be very hard."
Does that sound nervous to you?
Now, before you decide if you agree with his assessment, let's ignore his 24-8
record and begin with his two greatest accomplishments, Brian Dutcher and
Scott Trost. These are the two assistant coaches whom he leapfrogged when
Michigan athletic director Tom Goss named him interim coach last October. The
whole thing could have exploded right then. After all, Ellerbe was the newest
of the three assistants. He had been on staff only a few months. He had been
forced to crash at Trost's place upon getting the job, sleeping in a spare bed
in Trost's apartment for a month. Together they watched ESPN and ordered
takeout food.
Now he was Trost's boss?
A tough pill to swallow. And what about Dutcher? He had even more right to be
upset. Dutcher had been with Fisher from the beginning, nine years. They were
close. They worked in tandem. Dutcher was Fisher's right-hand man, his
recruiting ace, his eyes and ears. He was already suffering with his old
friend's firing, now here comes Ellerbe, who barely knows how to drive around
Ann Arbor, and suddenly he's in charge?
This was a tinderbox. Everyone who understands college basketball knows
players are often closer to the assistants than the head coach, because
assistants recruit and get to know the kids as high-schoolers. With Fisher
gone, the last allegiances of the Wolverines belonged with Dutcher and Trost
-- not Ellerbe. Had Ellerbe alienated the assistants, the kids would never
have responded.
He'd have been dead on arrival.
Instead, Ellerbe forged a sort of partnership-in-desperation with his
assistants. He spent his first days as boss making sure he didn't act like
one. He let his colleagues know he needed them -- especially Dutcher. Ellerbe
knew how competitive Dutcher was. Heck, they used to recruit against one
another, when Ellerbe was an assistant with Virginia. If they were chasing the
same kids, Ellerbe would teasingly whistle "Hail to the Victors" whenever
Dutcher showed up.
Now they had to whistle the same tune.
"I tried to put myself in Dutch's position," Ellerbe said the other night. "I
tried to feel what he'd be feeling with me as head coach. So I immediately
delegated things out, made sure I didn't do everything or even try to do
everything.
"The whole point with Dutch and Scott was to make everyone feel like it's
their team as much as it was mine."
By focusing on "what we could do for the kids," Ellerbe bumped the spotlight
away from him, and with it, any hot lights of jealousy.
It was his first big accomplishment.
The second big accomplishment came in getting the players to rally. It took
time. Don't be fooled by the recent glow of the Big Ten tournament. The
Wolverines were up and down all year. This is a team that beat Duke but lost
to Bradley, that beat Michigan State but lost to Western Michigan and Eastern
Michigan, that won the conference tournament, didn't win the conference title,
but has captured its last six. Only a fool would predict its performance.
But when U-M jells, it's a joy to watch. And if the Wolverines are peaking
now, it's due to Ellerbe's deft touch. He has gotten a good deal out of his
limited number of players. On Tuesday night, I asked him to break down the one
thing he did or said to each player to elevate his game.
"Robert Traylor," I began.
"I asked more from him. The more you ask, the more you get. More leadership,
more scoring, run harder, be tougher. If you can't ask your big guy, you're
done anyhow."
Jerod Ward?
"I told him I'm not judging you on what happened before I got here. I don't
know. I don't care. I will only go by what I see. He appreciated that."
Louis Bullock?
"I told him to be more aggressive. Why not go to the basket more? You're
quick, you can jump, you can handle it. Go after it."
Player by player, case by case, Ellerbe tried to bring out something special
in his kids. Perhaps the fairest thing he did was this: He never asked them to
win for him. "I didn't want them to feel that kind of pressure. Besides, they
should be playing because they love basketball, not to keep their coach. If I
didn't accomplish anything else in this job, I wanted to make sure the kids
would look back on this year and say they enjoyed it."
By the same token, he is not above using the indecision over his status as
incentive. The other night, ESPN did a satellite hookup with Ellerbe, and
Digger Phelps told the nation, on live TV, that Goss should "hire you right
now" and eliminate the mystery.
As usual, Ellerbe ducked the question.
"I actually think it's better this way," he later told me. "I don't want our
players to exhale."
This brings us to the final question, on what basis should Goss be making his
decision? It is the worst kind of hypocrisy to fire Fisher -- a guy who went
to three Final Fours in nine years -- then hire his replacement based on wins
and losses. Fisher was fine on wins and losses. He was fine in tournament
performances. People who say "Ellerbe gets the job if he gets these Wolverines
to the round of 16" must have pretty short memories.
Winning is fine. But if Ellerbe can't control boosters and behavior any
differently than Fisher did, why on earth should he get the job? You might as
well hire Fisher back.
Ellerbe knows this. He also knows he has had a clean slate during his
five-month run.
"I'm not sure that I 'corrected' so much," he admitted. "These weren't bad
kids to begin with. And I think they were definitely scared by what happened
with (Fisher), so nobody was going to try anything.
"But they know what I expect of them in every phase of their life. Also, I'm
not so much older than them, and I'm able to talk about having gone through
some of the same things."
The truth is, Ellerbe did benefit from the shock vibrations of Fisher's
firing, just as he benefited from inheriting three senior stars and three
junior stars. He has handled those circumstances admiringly. How he handles
the program in the future and how well he can recruit -- the biggest question
mark on his dossier -- are still up in the air.
But as I mentioned, this is one confident fellow. "I think we have a chance to
build something special here with me, Dutch and Scott," he said. "We're young
enough to go after it but we're experienced enough to know what we're doing.
We can make Michigan basketball a historic program, the way North Carolina,
Kentucky, and Indiana are historic, meaning you expect great basketball from
them every year."
Should he get the chance? Well, on the one hand, he's very young, has one
season under his belt, and is still making mortgage payments on an empty house
in Baltimore.
On the other hand, he has some experience with fate. Early in his career, a
coaching friend wanted him to meet his girlfriend's boss.
"You gotta meet her," the friend kept saying. "You'd really like her."
Ellerbe never got around to it. Years passed. Finally, the friend married his
girlfriend, and Ellerbe was in attendance. And there, at the wedding, he
finally met the boss lady.
They were married less than a year later.
You want to battle that kind of fate, go ahead. My money says Brian Ellerbe
keeps the job. Something tells me his light is about to turn green again.
To leave a message for Mitch Albom, call 1-313-223-4581.
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