Post by elp525 on May 10, 2011 5:10:51 GMT -5
Tuesday May 10, 2011
by Mike Casazza
Charleston Daily Mail
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- For about as long as Joe Mazzulla was a West Virginia University basketball player - an eventful era that began five years ago with John Beilein and an NIT championship and grew to include a life-altering injury, an NCAA Sweet Sixteen and a Final Four under Bob Huggins - he was thinking about a career in coaching.
"I've kept everything," he said. "I have every play and every play name from Beilein and Huggins. I saved 90, 95 percent of the scouting reports. I've got just about every game on DVD."
When the point guard's career ended in March with an NCAA Tournament loss to Kentucky, his coaching career was ready to begin. Gary Tuell, coach at Nova Southeastern University, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., had seen Mazzulla interviewed on television following the second-round victory against Clemson.
That was all the interviewing Mazzulla would need to do to get the job with the NCAA Division II school. So impressed was Tuell that the offer was eventually made. The job was Mazzulla's.
The decision wasn't that simple.
After a lengthy dialogue with the people he trusts the most, Mazzulla will instead pursue a playing opportunity in Europe, South America, Asia, wherever.
"I'll go wherever the best situation is," he said. "I want to play."
Given everything Mazzulla went through at WVU, be it the postseason virtuosity, the legal incidents, the relationships with two very different coaches or the physical and emotional struggle with a shoulder injury, there's no doubt he can be a very good coach one day.
It just won't be anytime soon.
Despite his experiences, his contacts and his master's degree in athletic coaching education, Mazzulla knew he wouldn't have been a good coach next season because he knew he could have still been a good player.
"I think having that in the back of my mind would have hindered my coaching ability," he said. "When I start to do something, I want to go all in. I don't want to have any reservations."
The left-handed Mazzulla worked too long and too hard to fix the growth plate in his left shoulder that fractured in 2008.
He spent too much of himself getting back to writing his name or brushing his teeth, let alone dribbling and shooting, to give up on the game.
And the Rhode Islander never played better with the Mountaineers than he did in the final half of his senior season.
Nine of the 19 times he scored in double figures in his career came in the final 18 games.
He started the last 16 and set his career-high, later matched it and then eclipsed it with 20 points against the Wildcats in the last game.
That just could not be the end.
"I think I've put myself in a good enough position as far as the relationships I've built and my master's degree that I can take a risk and do what I love to do, what I've done my whole life, and that's play basketball," he said. "I've always been a competitor and I'd rather have someone drag me off the floor than just step away."
There is risk involved. The shoulder will never be as it once was and there's a certain danger involved in every game he plays. If that were a deterrent, though, Mazzulla wouldn't have pushed as hard as he did to get back at WVU.
It won't stop him now.
"People say, 'What if you blow your shoulder out?'" he said. "I'd consider blowing it out to be trying instead of blowing it out 10 years from now mowing the lawn."
The other gamble is in visibility.
Mazzulla has been a chest-thumping, floor-diving, game-changing, quote-giving sight to see for years now. He's a known entity who's about to slip out of sight for a few years and then ultimately enter a pretty competitive industry when he won't be quite as trendy or recognizable.
"I'm sure that will happen," he said. "It happens to everybody. My name might not be in two or three years what it is now, but that's where I bank on all the things I've done to get in this position.
"I think people know me more than I know people and coaches just have that ability to see on the floor and see my IQ and the fact I can be a coach."
And so Mazzulla is all in, having told his agent to find the best available situation, no matter the location. His father is leading a quest to secure his son's dual citizenship in Italy, which would then make Mazzulla more appealing because he wouldn't count toward the limit of American players a team is allowed to have.
He'll move to Cincinnati next month with former WVU teammate John Flowers and begin working out and waiting for the foreign leagues to finish their postseasons and get into building rosters for next season.
"I had to revamp my entire career and after a year-and-a-half I found myself as a player, so why throw it away?" Mazzulla said. "And it took Brett Favre three times to retire. It was a touch decision, but I'd rather be yanked off the floor with people saying, 'Enough's enough. You stink.'"
by Mike Casazza
Charleston Daily Mail
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- For about as long as Joe Mazzulla was a West Virginia University basketball player - an eventful era that began five years ago with John Beilein and an NIT championship and grew to include a life-altering injury, an NCAA Sweet Sixteen and a Final Four under Bob Huggins - he was thinking about a career in coaching.
"I've kept everything," he said. "I have every play and every play name from Beilein and Huggins. I saved 90, 95 percent of the scouting reports. I've got just about every game on DVD."
When the point guard's career ended in March with an NCAA Tournament loss to Kentucky, his coaching career was ready to begin. Gary Tuell, coach at Nova Southeastern University, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., had seen Mazzulla interviewed on television following the second-round victory against Clemson.
That was all the interviewing Mazzulla would need to do to get the job with the NCAA Division II school. So impressed was Tuell that the offer was eventually made. The job was Mazzulla's.
The decision wasn't that simple.
After a lengthy dialogue with the people he trusts the most, Mazzulla will instead pursue a playing opportunity in Europe, South America, Asia, wherever.
"I'll go wherever the best situation is," he said. "I want to play."
Given everything Mazzulla went through at WVU, be it the postseason virtuosity, the legal incidents, the relationships with two very different coaches or the physical and emotional struggle with a shoulder injury, there's no doubt he can be a very good coach one day.
It just won't be anytime soon.
Despite his experiences, his contacts and his master's degree in athletic coaching education, Mazzulla knew he wouldn't have been a good coach next season because he knew he could have still been a good player.
"I think having that in the back of my mind would have hindered my coaching ability," he said. "When I start to do something, I want to go all in. I don't want to have any reservations."
The left-handed Mazzulla worked too long and too hard to fix the growth plate in his left shoulder that fractured in 2008.
He spent too much of himself getting back to writing his name or brushing his teeth, let alone dribbling and shooting, to give up on the game.
And the Rhode Islander never played better with the Mountaineers than he did in the final half of his senior season.
Nine of the 19 times he scored in double figures in his career came in the final 18 games.
He started the last 16 and set his career-high, later matched it and then eclipsed it with 20 points against the Wildcats in the last game.
That just could not be the end.
"I think I've put myself in a good enough position as far as the relationships I've built and my master's degree that I can take a risk and do what I love to do, what I've done my whole life, and that's play basketball," he said. "I've always been a competitor and I'd rather have someone drag me off the floor than just step away."
There is risk involved. The shoulder will never be as it once was and there's a certain danger involved in every game he plays. If that were a deterrent, though, Mazzulla wouldn't have pushed as hard as he did to get back at WVU.
It won't stop him now.
"People say, 'What if you blow your shoulder out?'" he said. "I'd consider blowing it out to be trying instead of blowing it out 10 years from now mowing the lawn."
The other gamble is in visibility.
Mazzulla has been a chest-thumping, floor-diving, game-changing, quote-giving sight to see for years now. He's a known entity who's about to slip out of sight for a few years and then ultimately enter a pretty competitive industry when he won't be quite as trendy or recognizable.
"I'm sure that will happen," he said. "It happens to everybody. My name might not be in two or three years what it is now, but that's where I bank on all the things I've done to get in this position.
"I think people know me more than I know people and coaches just have that ability to see on the floor and see my IQ and the fact I can be a coach."
And so Mazzulla is all in, having told his agent to find the best available situation, no matter the location. His father is leading a quest to secure his son's dual citizenship in Italy, which would then make Mazzulla more appealing because he wouldn't count toward the limit of American players a team is allowed to have.
He'll move to Cincinnati next month with former WVU teammate John Flowers and begin working out and waiting for the foreign leagues to finish their postseasons and get into building rosters for next season.
"I had to revamp my entire career and after a year-and-a-half I found myself as a player, so why throw it away?" Mazzulla said. "And it took Brett Favre three times to retire. It was a touch decision, but I'd rather be yanked off the floor with people saying, 'Enough's enough. You stink.'"
