Brennan will be missed by college basketball
WORCESTER, Mass. – He sure knew how to make an entrance, whether it was in Burlington at a regular season home game, or on the day before the NCAA Tournament got started. Famous for entering the floor before games at Patrick Gym with Van Morrison’s Jackie Wilson Said playing, he walked into the DCU Center on Thursday in the media section and was talking up a storm with many who were there, more than two hours before his team’s news conference was scheduled.
Now, he’s making an exit.
Call it what you want – the end of an era is one cliché that’s been used, and it certainly applies – but things will never be the same at the University of Vermont. In fact, the outgoing coach said as much over a year ago when reflecting on the team’s success in recent years, and he reiterated it more than once this weekend.
Tom Brennan’s days as head coach of Vermont have come to an end after Sunday’s 72-61 loss to Michigan State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Although he knew after last year’s America East Tournament championship that this was the time – he even hinted as much in the press conference – he announced his retirement in early November.
The story of Brennan’s tenure at Vermont may be one of the last of its kind. Brennan’s first four years were hardly the unqualified successes that his last four were, as his record was 27-85 – a record that would have many likely headed for the exit nowadays. While the Catamounts improved after that, they were still not contenders in the America East Conference in most years, something which would sooner or later mean the coach would be shown the door, especially in an era where winning games has become of paramount importance.
But Brennan never felt like he was on the hot seat. He always believed that the most important thing was to bring in quality young men and graduate them, and he clearly understood that a school at the mid-major level isn’t going to be a place where NBA prospects would come year in and year out. Against that backdrop, he has had a near-perfect graduation rate of his players, who have consistently been high achievers in the classroom.
He steadily won more games during the ’90s, where the team got more and more competitive. Still, they could never finish higher than third in the conference during that decade. Despite the lack of winning conference championships, Brennan enjoyed life as much as anyone, even saying that all of those years were enjoyable.
“That’s why I had the best job in America, because I never felt for one minute that there was any pressure for me to make a number, win a championship, whatever it might be,” Brennan reflects. “The charge was: bring good kids to us, who understand the values of this university, your values, and what we’re trying to achieve here, and that’s all we’re going to ask you to do. Obviously, if you can win it, all the better. As long as your kids keep graduating and are productive members of this community, then we’re fine with that.”
That set up the recent run, where the Catamounts went 89-36 the last four years. The kids are still of the same quality, but now they’re winning. Brennan was already a celebrity in the state – besides the state’s long-time love affair with this program, he is the popular co-host of the morning drive-time radio show “Corm and the Coach” – but this just elevated his status that much more. Players all knew he was a celebrity there, but to a man they admit that they didn’t realize the extent of it before they came to Vermont.
“I knew he had a radio show, knew he had been here for so long, but now it’s at another level,” said senior guard T.J. Sorrentine. “He’s so involved in the community, always trying to give back and always telling us, these people care about you so much, so you’ve got to give back to them, and that’s one thing he’s taught me.”
“I knew he was big around Vermont, but I didn’t know it was like this,” said freshman forward Josh Duell. “Everywhere he goes, everybody knows him, calls him ‘TB’, everywhere you go, somebody will say ‘hi’ to him, and it means so much to our program.”
He almost wasn’t around for part of this run of three straight conference championships. Three years ago, Matt Sheftic quit the team because his sister had a life-threatening illness. Brennan was almost ready to do the same thing, but felt he couldn’t leave at that point as it was in September. He remembers his conversation with Sheftic, who would later return and lead them to their first conference tournament title two years ago.
“When he left, he said to me, ‘I know you can’t understand this’, and I was looking him right in the eye and I’m thinking, ‘Son I understand it better than anybody, because I want to walk right out with you, that’s how I feel’,” Brennan recalls.
“Once I got back into that, I was really recharged, re-focused, and then it was like starting over again.”
Brennan has really defined Vermont basketball. His tenure is the second-longest in the school’s history, but the longest in the history of America East. He has recruited and coached many of the program’s all-time greats, like Eddie Benton, Kevin Roberson, Tony Orciari, Taylor Coppenrath and Sorrentine. Benton and Roberson are the only two Catamounts currently with their numbers retired; the former is the school’s all-time leading scorer, while the latter now has the conference Player of the Year award named after him.
Roberson was tragically killed in May of 1993, which brought back sad memories for Brennan. He had lost both of his parents in traffic accidents, and now he had lost a player and volunteer assistant he loved dearly – he called Roberson “the color of love, because he made such an impact in this community.” The funeral in Roberson’s hometown of Buffalo, as well as the memorial service held later at the university, moved him deeply.
“The same tears, the same heartfelt emotion, the same longing, saying we were going to miss this guy so much – it just jumped out at me how special he was and how lucky we were to coach him,” Brennan recalls.
His feelings toward Roberson are hardly an isolated case. He’s cared greatly for all of the young men he has coached, and one player after another reflects very positively on their time with him. Time and time again, he speaks fondly of what the young men mean to him as well, still showing the same self-deprecating humor he’s always been known for.
Growing up, the native of Philipsburg, N.J. didn’t envision having this for a career, or that Vermont would be the place. He always knew he would be happy in whatever he did, and not long after he got to Vermont, he knew this was the right place.
“After about the first 3 or 4 years, when we turned the corner a bit, like our 5th year when we had our first winning season, then I really did,” he reflected. “Then I thought, this is a wonderful place – they do it right, you get good kids here all the time, kids really care about going to school and what they become after basketball. So it really was the right fit for me.
“There’s no sense of entitlement here – nobody believes that you’ve got to win, you don’t lose your job if you don’t win enough – and I’ve been so blessed for all these years. And then to have the end, where you’re able to give it all back, to say, ‘this is for you, this is for all the people that hung in there and loved the school and loved the program’, it’s just a wonderful program.”
Only twice during his tenure did Brennan, whose first head coaching experience in Division I was at Yale, ever consider going elsewhere. In 1992, he considered the job at Canisius, and two years ago he very briefly considered the head coaching job at Georgia, his alma mater. He fit the profile for that school, which had off-court troubles and needed someone to clean it up. But he didn’t consider it long, saying that “cooler heads prevailed” in the end.
Brennan, who feels the college game is “amazingly healthy” nowadays, is well-respected by his peers for what he’s done, not only on the court but off the court as well. The fact that the winning of the last four years never went to his head is certainly part of it. He consistently spoke of where the program was in his early years during this time, clearly a man who understood that this doesn’t happen by magic.
“He’s the way I think college basketball, college athletics should be,” said Boston University head coach Dennis Wolff, whose tenure is longer than every coach in the conference except Brennan. “He’s a colorful guy, he’s a guy that tries to graduate his players, his kids play hard and they play right.”
“He is a guy who knows where he came from, is very appreciative of the opportunity and growth of the program with Jesse and also with the staff that’s been with him and the kids,” said New Hampshire head coach Phil Rowe. “It’s a special treat that the rest of us have ridden because he’s the kind of guy that, when we’re down, will take care of us.”
Through all of this, there’s one thing about Tom Brennan that has always been very clear: he’s a human being. He wears his heart on his sleeve and tells you what he feels. He was never one to be isolated from people – he would gladly talk with people courtside before the game, from the media to fans to other players and coaches. On the bench, he not only called the shots, but he was a cheerleader. In short, on game day, the Tom Brennan we all saw was the uncut version. While he won’t go down as one of college basketball’s coaching legends because of wins and losses, those who know the game won’t forget him. He’s a colorful man, honest and caring, and a guy the college game will miss – all of that being true even before he was everyone’s favorite interview in Worcester this weekend and his team became America’s Team with its upset of Syracuse on Friday night. We must be thankful that he had the chance to last 19 years, because it won’t be the same without him.
| Classic Brennan Quotes |
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Tom Brennan has had plenty of great quotes in his time to keep us in stitches, but we’ve managed to collect a few of his better ones to give a little taste of what the man is like. (February 8, 2004) “I was 3-24, I was 5-21; there was never any thought of winning 20 games or going to the NCAA Tournament – that was never in the equation. And then these guys came here, and I’m the bad guy, because they’ve never lost; the only loser in the group is me, I’m the only guy that’s lost. They’ve never lost. So they look at me like I’m nuts when I say they can beat us.” |
