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Meet Jay John Admit it.
Just to be sure. John J ... no, no, that’s not it. And then you remind yourself. Last name first ... last name first ... Jay ... Jay John ... yes, that’s it ... whew. Well, don’t fret. You’re not alone. Jay John is the seventh man to hold the esteemed position as OSU’s head basketball coach since 1929. He also might be the most obscure since Bob Hager quietly handed the reins to a rail-thin young freshman coach named Amory T. Gill in 1929. In a world where the giants are known either by their first, last or nickname — Lute, Pitino, Coach K — the Beavers’ struggling program now rests on the shoulders of a man whose name is dyslexically equated more with a Revolutionary War statesman than any coaching legacy. Small wonder. John has been passed over for more Division I jobs than he’d like to count, including OSU’s in March 2000, when former athletic director Mitch Barnhart opted for a glittery rising star named Ritchie McKay. His best sport as a youngster in Tucson, Ariz., was football, his degree from the University of Arizona is in biology and he isn’t a glib public speaker. He’s a 43-year-old lifelong assistant coach who seems more at home in the trenches with the players than schmoozing with suits. He’s a hard-hat, lunch-bucket, blue-collar coach who’s waited two l-o-n-g decades for the type of job others seem to be getting before they’re shaving. And Jay John’s got that confusing name. "I’ve never worried about it," he says with a shrug. "I was a walk-on player at Northern Arizona University. I never went to the Final Four. I wasn’t Michael Jordan’s roommate in college. I didn’t play for Rick Pitino. "I just know my strengths and weaknesses. I just tried to do a good job instead of wishing I would be like X, Y or Z. There are more coaches out there like me than there are like Matt Doherty (North Carolina), Billy Donovan (Florida) and the heartthrobs like Steve Alford (Iowa). There’s a lot less of those guys than there are mainstream coaches." Barnhart’s choice of John over flashier names like South Florida’s Seth Greenberg, Cal State-Northridge’s Bobby Braswell and former OSU all-American Lester Conner is both a function and acknowledgement of the Beavers’ discomforting new place in the college basketball world. OSU may have one of the most storied traditions, but lack of resources, the challenge of recruiting to Corvallis and decaying facilities instantly rule out the possibility of hiring a big-name coach. They also explain McKay’s eagerness to jump to a "mid-major" program like the University of New Mexico, which coaxed him away with a higher salary and potential for instant win-loss gratification. Moreover, the rise and fall of highly regarded Eddie Payne and the struggles of a universally touted McKay show there are no quick fixes. No, what Oregon State needed was a guy who has the patience to build a foundation, a depth of knowledge gleaned from years spent under some of the game’s best coaches, and a roll-up-your-sleeves persona. OSU needed a Jay John.
Long-suffering Beaver fans at first raised their eyebrow at Barnhart’s choice, but indications are that the unassuming, unflinching, unwavering style the former Arizona, Oregon, Butler and San Francisco assistant coach brings to Corvallis is growing on them. They are ready for a solid approach. They watched the program spiral downward under an obvious successor to Ralph Miller in longtime OSU assistant Jimmy Anderson, who proved that success as the right-hand man didn’t equate to victories as the head man. They saw it rise briefly and then stagnate under Payne, an acclaimed teacher and fast-track recruiter who paid for his inability to keep top players in Corvallis. And they watched it flounder under the brash leadership of McKay, who bolted after a 12-17 season that was OSU’s unprecedented and unfathomable 12th consecutive non-winning campaign. "This is a guy who’s paid his dues," Barnhart says. "There are people who love to put glitz and glamour out there ... I think sometimes we lose track of the people who have great work ethic and given an unbelievable effort to get where they are. That’s what this guy has done. "Not only is he deserving of it, he’s capable of it." If OSU supporters feared that John might be intimidated by the ominous task of guiding a Pacific-10 Conference program in his first head job since coaching at Jamestown (N.Y.) Community College in 1988, he quickly allayed their concerns. John’s voice quavered with emotion when he was introduced to the public on April 9 — "I’m not afraid to say that," he says. "It was a big day in my life" — but soon he was uttering words unheard in Corvallis since the Miller era. OSU, he declared, would not accept its perceived place on the lower rungs of the Pac-10 pecking order. The Beavers wouldn’t back down to anybody — not cerebral Stanford, not mighty UCLA, not even his powerful old boss in Tucson. "There’s no reason to," he says firmly. "That’s one of the values of me being in this league for five years. You already know what you need to do to elevate the program. There’s no reason to play scared, to recruit scared." John might have been expected to lean back in his new plush digs in Gill Coliseum and breathe deep the rarified air at first. He might be excused for picking and probing his way through uncharted territory in his new digs. Instead, he has wasted little time putting his imprint on the program. In April, he met with signed McKay recruit Kerbrell Brown from Dodge City (Kan.) Community College and diplomatically told him that, sorry, OSU needed a player with a more certain academic future. Brown is now at South Carolina. Soon after, he informed unsigned McKay commitment Luke Mackay of Lon Morris (Texas) Junior College that the Beavers had no room for another shooting guard. Mackay is now at East Carolina. Signing a point guard was John’s first priority, and the tireless recruiter landed the best remaining unsigned player in the country in 6-foot-4 Lamar Hurd of Cleveland (Texas) Heritage Christian High School, whom he describes as a potential Pac-10 Player of the Year. John reaffirmed a vow to avoid academic risks in the name of a quick fix. He steered clear of a one-time big-time recruit from Christian Faith Academy prep school in Creedmoor, N.C., named DeMarshay Johnson, who publicly stated that he intended to attend OSU. John wasn’t finished there. After considerable discussion with returning players, he welcomed back senior off-guard Jimmie Haywood, who had an oil-and-water relationship with McKay and announced in February that he was transferring to the University of Portland. Finally, in mid-June, between golf tournaments on the annual OSU golf caravan, he met with freshman guard Joe See and the two agreed that See would be better suited at a smaller school. See has transferred to a mid-major California school. John, who ranked third in his class at Tucson’s Salpointe High School, is clearly a man with a plan. "Maybe we know more than what everybody knows on the outside right now," he says. "That’s one possibility out of all this. Now my job is to go out and prove that." John, who’s been actively involved with building a house in Northwest Corvallis with his wife, Lisa, and sons, Tyler, 14, and Trevor, 6, has been busy with the returning players as well, preparing them for a five-game tour of Australia in August. He’s spent his remaining available time with his new team, assuaging psychological wounds inflicted by years of losing and a hot-and-cold relationship with a former coach whose temperament kept them on unstable ground. "My job is to take the guys who are in this program and make them believe more in themselves, make them believe that they’re more empowered than they think they are, and that they have more control over their destiny than what they think," he says. "On game night, I’d just as soon they be out there taking care of problems. They’re out there with their passion, their intensity, their commitment, and they just will themselves to play hard. We’ll live with that effort and the outcomes rather than play scared or uncomfortable or just doubt ourselves. "That’s the biggest thing, just too much doubt." Is John the man to erase the doubt? Certainly the players have embraced him. Senior forward Brian Jackson, who also quit the team over conflicts with McKay before the ex-coach humbly asked him back, has stepped into a leadership role for the first time and actively patched differences between Haywood and the freshmen. He has orchestrated off-season workouts with senior center Philip Ricci, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder. Those who have known John since his high school days in Tucson, his collegiate years in Flagstaff and his early coaching stint in New York are convinced his one-brick-at-a-time foundational approach is perfectly suited for OSU. "Jay is a special kind of guy," says Bill Lawhon, who worked with John at Jamestown. "He’s a straight shooter and you can depend on him. If Jay says he’s going to do something, he’ll do it." Greg Hansen, a former Albany sports reporter who now writes columns for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, agrees. "They didn’t get a former all-American, a local hero or someone with ties to John Wooden or Bob Knight. They didn’t get a celebrity at all. They got a coach," Hansen wrote. John may be obscure, but he hasn’t been napping in the shadows of Lute Olson and Nebraska’s Barry Collier. From Olson, he says he learned how to handle elite players and success. From Collier, he understood how to mesh 12 unique personalities into a cohesive unit. At Jamestown, where he worked for a $1,200 annual stipend, he learned how to scratch and claw for every nickel and to appreciate the value of perseverance. He is convinced it’s a recipe for success at a place like OSU, considered in many circles the most challenging basketball job in the Pac-10. His plan is simple. First, he says, the program must shed its losing label. Then the Beavers must get on a roll where three or four strong freshmen are replacing seniors every year instead of constantly plugging holes with transfers. And they must never, ever play scared against anybody. The signing of Hurd, the first consummate point guard at OSU since Gary Payton, except for a one-year blip with Carson Cunningham in 1996, is a giant leap in that direction for a rudderless team that panicked with a 21-point second-half lead at Arizona last year. "We’ve got to remind people this is the 11th winningest program in the history of Division I," he says. "This is the only generation of people not used to Oregon State winning. Everybody 25 and older, they know about Oregon State winning. We’ve got to give people a reason to believe, then — ka-boom! — it’ll be just like the football program. Football didn’t just do it overnight. It just seemed like it. I have no reason to believe that we won’t. I really believe that. "I couldn’t have picked a better place for my first opportunity to be a head coach." Already, Jay John is giving Beavers a reason to believe. If he gets them back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 13 years, nobody will require a momentary memory check to roll his name off his or her tongue. OSU Jeff Welsch is sports editor of the Corvallis Gazette-Times. |
