HAYES: Chambers just what BU program needed

Two years ago, Boston University Athletic Director Mike Lynch had a vision. Former men’s basketball coach Dennis Wolff was not part of it.

Wolff, who had been coaching the BU men’s basketball team for the past 15 years, had led the Terriers though a 17-13 season, third in America East in 2008-2009. In that season’s conference tournament, the Terriers exited in the quarterfinal.

Wolff’s 230-184 record while head coach of BU was pretty good, enough to make him the winningest head coach in school history. His biography on the athletic department website dubbed him as, “the architect of one of the best periods of Boston University basketball.”

That wasn’t good enough for Mike Lynch. He didn’t want Ted Mosby, he wanted Frank Lloyd Wright.

Thus, the university decided to part ways with Wolff, the Ted Mosby of this story, and began a search to find the next coach of the Terriers, the potential Wright.

They found him toiling away as an apprentice in Philadelphia. Patrick Chambers at the time was an assistant coach at Villanova University under head coach Jay Wright. He had led a bit of a quiet career, having served as an assistant at his alma mater and at Episcopal Academy, a Pennsylvania prep school, before jumping up to Villanova.

In the spring of 2009, BU hired Chambers to be the next coach of a historically lackluster program. Sure, good coaches, namely Rick Pitino, and players, such as Tunji Awojobi, have passed through BU. But the program, as a whole, has never been historically relevant. The Terriers’ last win in the NCAA Tournament, when they reached the Elite Eight, came in 1959, and their last appearance (one of only six) came in 2002 under Wolff.

Taking the job required a bit of a step down for Chambers, who was given the title of associate head coach during his final season at ‘Nova. During his tenure there, the Wildcats danced in March five times. Four of those times they advanced as far as the Sweet 16, and in his final year they went to Final Four in Detroit. The Wildcats fell to the eventual national champion University of North Carolina at Ford Field.

Two years later, on the verge of the first America East title game to be held at Agganis Arena, and the first AE title game to be held in Boston in eight years, it appears that the short-sighted decision of two years ago was the best thing for BU in the long term. Lynch made the smartest possible move in hiring Chambers, who at the time was a fresh, untapped basketball mind.

Chambers has long stated that his goals for this program are to build it up and develop a true mid-major powerhouse. His comparison is always “Gonzaga or Xavier of the East,” both of whom are always in the conversation around Selection Sunday.

That is exactly the right direction for this program to go, and it’s not a direction Dennis Wolff was prepared to take this team. The AE can only contain so much success. Eventually, any team that wants to succeed, wants to be in the discussion as mid-majors can’t do that toiling around the middle of the AE. You have to go big or go home.

Under Chambers, BU is making an attempt to go big. Although the Terriers are still a long way away from the top, they have already made strides in the right direction.

The Terriers’ run through the College Basketball Invitational last year was the first time an America East team recorded two wins in a post-season tournament. Granted, the CBI falls in the post-season pecking order after March Madness and the National Invitational Tournament, determining the 96th best team in the country, but the Terriers move into the semifinals was much better than the way University of Vermont fared as the AE Champions in the NCAA Tournament, a loss.

Chambers’ work in building a roster has also been phenomenal. Preparing to graduate nine seniors last year, the coaching staff convinced four players to transfer to BU, developing a secondary veteran core to back-up the few returning starters.

The freshman recruiting class this year only complements the roster. The seven members of the Class of 2014 were dubbed one of the top 10 mid-major recruiting classes by ESPN.com. Four McDonald’s All-American nominees joined the Terriers this year, and three members of the state champion Friends’ Central High School made the move from Philadelphia to Boston.

This weekend’s AE championship game is the culmination of two years of hard work, evaluation and excellent play. The Terriers have a real chance to knock off Stony Brook University and wander into March Madness, in front of a home crowd. I’ll take it a step further, and state the obvious: the Terriers are the favorites. They should win. They have the higher rank, the better record. It’s their game to lose, all thanks to two years of smart planning and decision making.

There haven’t been many smarter coaching decisions in mid-major college basketball in the past few seasons than BU’s hiring of Patrick Chambers. What looked like a shortsighted decision in the firing of Wolff has turned into almost an instant success story. BU grabbed credibility by snagging an up-and-coming coach, one who knew from first-hand experience what the limelight in college basketball felt like.i

An argument could be made that if you wanted to instantly catapult BU into perennial contender status, the easiest way to do that would be by hiring a bigger name, not some new guy with no true head coaching experience. But that’s not a healthy practice. A smarter decision is to hire a man who will stick with a program and build it up.

That’s what BU got in Chambers – someone who is pragmatic, willing to set realistic goals for the program. It does not make sense for BU to pretend to be the Duke of the Northeast. Instead, the Terriers should be focused on developing into the top team in the AE, and they have exactly the right man for that.

This article has been edited to reflect the correct facts about BU’s exit from the conference playoffs in 2008-09.