Colorado University Athletics
Brooks: Abatemarco Impressed Boyle, Beat The Odds
June 01, 2010 | Men's Basketball, B.G. Brooks
That was the mercurial Tom Abatemarco a little over a month ago, and uttering those words might have seemed as strange to him as it did for me to hear them.
The last time he took "a really important recruiting call?" Well, it was sometime during the 2003-04 season when he was Rick Majerus' top assistant at the University of Utah.
Things have changed - and more than a little. Majerus headed east and Abatemarco traveled further west. In 2007, Majerus landed as Saint Louis University's head hoops coach, while Abatemarco, who prior to his one-year stint in Salt Lake City seemed to have made stops on almost every campus on this continent, left the college game entirely after leaving SLC.
The past seven years mostly were spent in Sacramento, Calif., in several roles (player personnel director, scouting coach, assistant, broadcaster) for the Kings (NBA) and Monarchs (WNBA).
AS OF EARLY APRIL, THOUGH, Abatemarco was back in the college game, having been hired as an assistant by former Colorado men's coach Jeff Bzdelik. If my campus count is correct, CU is Abatemarco's 12th college stop, and that includes a previous layover in Boulder (1990-93) under then-Buffs coach Joe Harrington. Abatemarco is your quintessential "have-whistle-will-travel" hoops nomad.
Harrington, who also has made a return to campus as a University of Maryland assistant, had his former employee perfectly pegged when he told me several years ago, "Tom just loves basketball; he doesn't want to do anything else. Sometimes when you're away from it for a while, you come back better prepared."
Abatemarco has spent most of his adult life in the college game and the rest devoted to some form of hoops. I found it hard to believe when he told The Washington Post in April 2005, "I don't miss the college game. I don't need to chase a job. I'm making good money (and) I like what I'm doing."
I don't doubt the second and third sentences; Abatemarco is as well-connected in basketball as anyone who ever stepped inside a gym. But as for not missing the college game, even after a couple of unpleasant campus experiences, that's hard to buy. In fact, when I sat down with him in his Coors Events Center office earlier this week, he told me he did miss it: "Very much so," he said.
But getting back into it required time, mainly because Abatemarco "wanted to get back in at the right place." He said personal circumstances forced him to decline offers from Bob Huggins (Cincinnati, Kansas State and now West Virginia) and Kevin O'Neill (Marquette, Arizona and now Southern California). Bzdelik tried twice to hire him, succeeding on the second attempt.
BUT THAT'S WHERE THE TALE begins to twist. Shortly after Abatemarco arrived in Boulder, Bzdelik was making an unscheduled landing in Winston-Salem, N.C., having been hired as Wake Forest's hoops coach. According to Abatemarco, Bzdelik intended to take Abatemarco with him, but the proposal was shot down by Wake Forest athletic director Ron Wellman, who pointed to Abatemarco's previous Atlantic Coast Conference ties - he was an assistant on the late Jim Valvano's North Carolina State staff (1982-86) - and said, in essence, even a former Wolfpacker wasn't welcome at Wake.
When that option fizzled, Abatemarco said another arose. A coaching friend at another Big 12 Conference school (he declined to name it) had a staff opening, and as a fallback Abatemarco said he could have rekindled ties with the Malouf brothers - the Kings owners.
But his first choice was to stay in Boulder and take his chances with new coach Tad Boyle, who Abatemarco said told him on the front end: "I don't know you and it's going to be really tough to hire a guy I don't know. But I know you have a good reputation, so let's just see if it works out day-by-day."
Unless they're mandated by the administration to do so (Bzdelik kept two Wake assistants) or have prior knowledge of coaches left behind in a coaching change, incoming head coaches rarely retain an outgoing coach's assistants. Boyle filled two of his assistants' slots with coaches he had worked with previously - Jean Prioleau and Mike Rohn. To Boyle, though, Abatemarco was an unknown, Bzdelik's lovely parting gift.
And Abatemarco didn't want to be retained by a mandate: "I'm glad they didn't do that; I don't think that's the right thing," he said. "I think you need to earn it. I think if Tad was told he had to keep me, he'd always been thinking that I was kind of forced on him . . . and I think the school let him know they were going to have something for me to do."
INDEED, HAD BOYLE CHOSEN TO GO in another direction to fill out his staff, Abatemarco said CU's administration - after a vetting process he claimed "might be able to get you hired in the White House . . . I mean, they screen you very, very closely" - would have provided a safety net.
"Everybody here was very nice to me," he said. "Dr. (Phil) DiStefano (chancellor) reached out to me through Mike Bohn (athletic director) and said it was Tad's choice. But if things didn't work out they were going to try and work something out for me here at the university. The university was above board in everything; they weren't going to leave me hanging out there, which I thought was really nice. I would have had an opportunity for at least a year or so, or whatever."
So Boyle let the assistant left on his doorstep prove himself. "Tad was very fair to me," Abatemarco said. "He was upfront in the beginning . . . but to be honest, I didn't think I had the job. I was very lucky. The way I approached it, I was working here until I was told I wasn't working here. I didn't complain or do anything else; I just kept working, doing things and trying to help coach in any way I could while I was on the payroll."
If you know anything about Abatemarco, you know this: He's the Energizer Bunny in overdrive. His cell phone never stops ringing and he rarely stops punching in numbers. He's also retained Valvano's mantra: "Never give up."
"So I just never gave up," Abatemarco said. "I approached it in my mind that I might not be kept . . . I just kept working. And I really didn't call for any other jobs; I just told people if something came up I would entertain it. I think it really worked out well when Jean (Prioleau) and Mike (Rohn) came in and we hit it off.
"Tad never gave me a hint that he would or wouldn't keep me, he just had me be part of the staff. I was working but I knew it wasn't a done deal."
BESIDES OFFERING A CONTACT LIST that rivals any in college hoops, I asked Abatemarco what he brings to Boyle's staff. He acknowledged that he's still extremely plugged into most coaching circles, but added this: "There's some guys who have a knack for being able to recruit and some guys who just can't do it, won't embrace it. Now, I love coaching on the floor, I love scouting. But I also like recruiting and you have to accept that it's a 24-hour-a-day deal.
"You have to write letters every day, or now do e-mail every day. You have to use your contacts. But there's also a lot of hard work and enthusiasm. There's certain guys who don't want to embrace it and they're not going to be good at it. There's certain people who are not good in sales . . .
"What I laugh at now is hearing people say, 'Recruiting's changed so much . . . the AAU people are involved, this and that.' What I believe is if another guy is put under the same set of rules that I am - and, of course, unless his program is bigger or there's distance involved - I still have a chance of beating him, because there's always ways to work. People say you (college coaches in general) don't work as hard as you used to, you could go out all the time . . . there's always ways to do things and get it done.
"I think a lot of people who say you can't work as hard now - that's an excuse for them, an excuse not to work. I got a saying from coach (Lefty) Driesell - 'The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Are.' Lefty had that on his desk, and I believe in that. Here at Colorado - or anywhere you recruit - you have to be ready for failure. Colorado is an elite school academically and you just can't get anybody in. And you're going to have the distance factor; it's big. Kids are always interested, but when it comes down to push and shove, are their moms and dads going to be able to see them play? There's things you're going to fight.
"I think here, if you can get a kid on campus, he'll stay. You're OK. The hardest thing is getting them to come. Once they come, they'll see a beautiful place to live. And it's a fun environment."
From his first stint at CU, Abatemarco remembers that in-state recruiting might produce a couple of Big 12 prospects every couple of years. The state's population base simply doesn't compare with that of California or Texas - two states he says the Buffs must mine.
"The two things here you have to understand and work with (at CU) is you're going to have to recruit some distant guys, because there's not a lot of players in-state," he said. "Now, coming up in the next couple of years there's some younger kids who are good players. But there's not an abundance of players. You have to go somewhere else and beat somebody in their backyard, which is always a challenge.
"What areas are you going to recruit? Your bases have to be Colorado, the West, California and Texas. Those have to be your bases. Then you have to look for players through your contacts."
EVEN WITH THE RECRUITING CHALLENGES, Abatemarco believes Boyle & Co. can win at CU. "Yeah, I think you can win here," he said. "When Joe was here we did win at times. The first year was big (19-14 in 1990-91) and then we won a little bit after that. After working just a short time for coach Boyle, I think he is really the right guy for the job - not that Jeff wasn't or somebody else couldn't have been. It's just that (Boyle) is a Colorado guy who really wanted this job and wants to stay here. He always talks about building a program, which is important.
"I think here, what you have to do is embrace the job and not really worry about any roadblocks that might come. Just try and keep working and believe things will work out here. And what's nice is that Jeff and his staff did a tremendous job and there's good players here. You have a chance to be very, very good next year."
With 30 years of coaching experience at the college level, another half dozen or more in the WNBA and working with the Kings organization, Abatemarco's age would be about . . . don't ask.
I did - and Abatemarco wouldn't say, citing advice once offered by the late and legendary Al McGuire.
"I went to pick him up in a limo . . . he was speaking at my banquet at Sac (Sacramento) State," Abatemarco said. "He said two things. I was going through a divorce and he said, 'Pay her, don't fight it.' Then he said, 'When you're in sports, don't tell anybody your age because they judge you by that.'"
So when CU's 2010-11 basketball media guide is published, it probably won't include Tom Abatemarco's birthday. I asked him if he'd like to be referred to as "ageless," and that was fine with him. He's just happy to be back on a campus - this campus - and working.
Contact: BG.Brooks@Colorado.EDU
