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University Daily Kansan
Tuesday. Feb. 11. 1986
COACH
Continued from p. 1
glance south from his desk to where Tradition hangs on the wall.
The smiles of the 1952-53 National College Athletic Association Western Regional champions beam from a framed photograph. Look closely. Their shoes are red. Larry Brown likes that.
"I want to do it the way they used to do it," he says. "Go to the red shoes and the red uniforms.
Brown has organized workouts at Allen Field House for Kansas Special Olympians.
With all eyes focused on the future for Brown and his team, Brown, the traditionalist, is conjuring up the basketball ghosts of Phog Allen, James Naismith, Clyde Lovellette and Wilt Chamberlain. Tradition always has been important to him. It's part of what has made the University of Kansas special for him during the last three years.
At Kansas, Brown says, he has found the right mix of tradition, home town and loving fans. After trying on Denver, Los Angeles and New Jersey for size, he thinks he's found the place that fits.
"When I came here and took this job, it was something I hoped would be permanent, where I could more or less have roots," he says. "I don't look at it any differently now.
"I like the people here, they allow me to be myself. I've been able to make a lot of friends. I can eat out, go to the doughnut shop or play golf. I feel like part of the community."
If one piece is missing it's Kristen, Brown's 18-year-old daughter from his first marriage. A KU student last fall, she returned to North Carolina at semester break to be with her mother. This semester she's enrolled at the University of North Carolina.
"I'm disappointed she's not
here. That was a highlight for me," Brown says. "My ex-wife out-recruited me."
Although Kristen no longer cheers her father from the student section at Allen Field House, thousands of others still do. In three years, Brown has built a special bond with "the kids," KU students.
That closeness was evident last Wednesday at the Colorado game when Brown quietly resolved the conflict between students sitting behind the bench and season ticket holders seated behind them.
Before the game, Brown circulated among the students asking them not to stand throughout the game as they had been doing. The students sat. Tempers cooled. A few words from Larry Brown was all it took.
"Students feel they know him," says John Fevurly, Tonganoxie junior and a student member of the Kansas University Athletic Corp. board. "Kids love to see a person in a high position come down and talk to them. He seems real."
Brown feels the admiration. When he pops onto the court at home games, the students behind the bench clamor to their feet and applaud thunderously.
A few of the "Lar-ee, Lar-ee" chants that echoed loudly during Brown's first two seasons still boom out. But his relationship with the students seems to have ascended to a higher plane.
Shouts aren't enough anymore.
Brown says of his popularity with students, "It's neat. I felt fortunate at UCLA that there was a common bond between me and the student body. I feel the same sense here."
Barbara Brown says of her husband, "In a way this is his Chapel Hill. He's pretty much found that here, as far as the atmosphere on campus and with the students."
Although her husband has found
home, Barbara Brown hasn't warmed to Kansas. She plans to graduate from KU in May with a bachelor's degree in journalism then go to work for a New York advertising agency.
"June 1." she says, beaming.
"He does a lot of recruiting on the East Coast, so on weekends I'll fly wherever he is. Or if he's somewhere during the week he'll fly into New York."
Of the impending long-distance relationship with her husband, she says, "It will be interesting. We're going to commute. It's worked the last two summers I've worked there.
The Browns' daughter, Melissa, 14, plans to follow her mother east to enroll in a Massachusetts prep school.
All of which leaves Larry Brown alone in Kansas, surrounded by his other family: his players, his assistant coaches and the fans who love him.
"This is the year, this is the button," proclaims a cardboard sign inside Rusty's Food Center, 901 Iowa St.
The button in question is pinned beneath the red scrawl. From its blue background pops a hand, wrapped into a fist, with the index finger raised in the No. 1 sign. To the left stand red and white letters: KU.
Lawrence abounds with Great Expectations these days, Larry Brown has the city and the University talking basketball.
At K-2 Sportswear LTD, 1023 Massachusetts St., fans are snapping up T-shirts depicting a Jayhawk stuffing a basketball over Texas. "Final Four Bound" taints the backsides.
"The town and the whole area have a different feel to them," says Laird Noller, a local car dealer and friend of Brown's.
With good reason, Lawrence travel agencies are booking dozens of trips to Dallas in March for fans fully expecting the Jayhawks to play in the NCAA Final Four.
Larry Brown doesn't want to hear about Dallas. For him, the
word symbolizes his latest challenge.
"The year, it's been difficult because there have been such unbelievable expectations," he says, "hearing everybody say, 'Hey, I'll see you in Dallas,' and 'We're going to the Final Four.'"
"It's been difficult," he says. "I find our kids are under a lot of pressure."
While fans smile, Brown broods.
Such is life for a coach who refuses
to let himself or his team get
caught up in the revelry.
The challenge draws out Brown's perfectionist streak. It's the foot-stomping, arm-waving Larry Brown that fans see on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
"I'm a competitor." Brown says. "The pressure's from me, not from anybody outside. Coaching is the only thing I know how to do, the only thing I care to do. So I want to do it well."
It's Larry Brown at the office.
But this year, Brown admits, he sometimes has let the pressure get to him.
"Coaching makes you do funny things." he savs.
There was the Oklahoma State game in which Brown lurged at a Cowboy assistant coach making a technical foul sign with his hands as Brown disputed a referee's call.
"If I had to do it all over again, I probably would have waited to say something to him," he says. "And I've said some things to referees that I wish I could take back. But it happens. You just have to go from there."
"I'm a competitor. When it' s over, it's over. I hope the fans understand that. It's not a personal ting."
Some of Brown's players have bridled under his perfectionist whip. But they say now that they think they understand "Coach."
"What happens on the court stays on the court," says guard Calvin Thompson, who considered quitting the team earlier this season largely because he thought he wasn't measuring up to Brown's expectations.
One problem was his weight,
which sometimes has ballooned 20
Brown celebrated his 100th collegiate win Dec. 23 after a 94-71 win over George Washington University
pounds over the 205 pounds Brown considers Thompson's playing weight.
But a heartfelt talk with Brown before practice one day eased Thompson's mind. He says Brown made him feel wanted. Now Thompson thinks he understands Larry Brown.
"The minute we step off the court we see this big smile and it's like, 'What's that?' " Thompson says, laughing. "We realize now that on the court it's business."
It's basketball on Brown's terms and in Brown's concept of the game. Few know it better than Thompson and this year's two other senior starters who Brown inherited from the team under Ted Owens.
In three years, Thompson has learned appetite control, forward Ron Kellogg has learned defense and center Greg Dreiling has learned agility.
"I've worked hard under Coach Brown." Dreiling says.
Says Thompson, "That's Coach.
That's his style. He's not going to change, and that's what I told the other players. I told them we had to adapt to him."
The doorbell rings on a Saturday night at Rian Gray's house in the Alvamar neighborhood. Outside on the stool stands Larry Brown.
On a working day for Brown, whose Jayhawks have just pulled off a 71-69 thriller over the University of Louisville on national television, he has come to visit a friend.
Like most seventh graders at West Junior High School, Ryan Gray's passion is sports, especially basketball. But he'll probably never play.
A tumor has grown inside Ryan's head since birth and now confines the 13-year-old to a wheelchair. But Brown makes sure Ryan doesn't forget about basketball.
Tonight he's stopped by to make sure Ryan knows the coach hasn't forgotten his good luck charm. Ryan was sick with a cold and had to watch the game from bed instead of his reserved spot a few spaces from the bench at Allen Field House.
Ryan Gray and Larry Brown met in the spring of 1984, shortly after Brown moved to his house four blocks east of the Grays' home. Their friendship has grown steadily closer since.
"There is a different Larry Brown," says Ryan's father, Cap Gray, a Lawrence physician. "In the heat of battle, he can be like a hard-to-please father. Outside the game he's a very gentle fellow."
Meet Larry Brown, nice guy. He greets his public at Becerros Mexican restaurant or Carol Lee Donuts with a soft "Hi" and a smile. He finds time to talk on the phone with a fraternity member and arranges to go to dinner and talk what else basketball.
He's the Brown who doesn't forget people like Ryan Gray.
Friends say the thing that most suprises them about Larry Brown is that he remains bigger than his ego.
"I've learned a lot about Larry Brown," says Cap Gray. "He knows where he stands in the national limelight but he has down-to-earth feelings."
"He always takes time to say hello to you, but it's more than that." says John Wooden, owner of the Wagon Wheel Cale', 507 W. 14th
St., and a golf buddy of Brown's "He makes you feel at home."
Athletic Director Monte Johnson, Brown's boss, says, "He always has the same temperament with everybody. He's laid back and unassuming. That's the way he was at the first interview we had with him, and he'll probably always be the same."
Barbara Brown says her husband is just plain shy.
Brown doesn't like to dwell on his personality. He smiles, glances at the floor and says, "I'm a regular person. It's nice to have people say nice things about you. But I'm like everybody else. I want to be liked."
"My best friends that I've known for 10 years and so can count on two hands the number of times they've been out with him other than at basketball games," she says. "He really is a private person. Socially he is very shy."
Brown's sensitivity shows in the way he sees his team — as family. On the walls of his office inside Parrott Athletic - Center hang framed photographs of graduated seniors: Tad Boyle, Carl Henry, Brian Martin and Kelly Knight.
"I want this to be the type of situation where the kids come back," Brown says. "Even if a kid leaves here, that doesn't mean we forget about him. He's still going to be a part of the family. That's part of coaching. It is a part I like."
Jeff Guoit still feels part of the family. A rising star at point guard on the team under Ted Owens, he rode the bench after Brown stepped in at the start of his sophomore year.
He transferred to Pittsburgh State University at the end of that year.
"He did everything he could to see that I was happy after I left," Guiot says. "The first year I was down here he wrote me a letter asking how I was doing. He treated me like I was still a member of the team. That's a good feeling."
"I left because it was pretty obvious that my playing time was going to be limited," Guiot says. "I went and talked to Coach Brown. We talked about where I wanted to go. He said he wanted to find me a place where I would play a lot of ball."
At Pittsburg State, Guiot is getting the playing time he wanted. But he still sees Larry Brown as a mentor and friend and wants to return to Lawrence this summer to work for a third time in Brown's basketball camp.
Shortly after 1 p.m., Larry Brown bumps back to his office, refreshed, invigorated — and sweaty.
He's just finished lunch — five miles of road padded over by a man whose left hip is worn from years of similar pounding and in no condition to withstand the punishment. At least that is what his wife and friends tell him.
But to clear his mind, Brown jogs.
"It's great therapy." he says
It's great therapy, he says. For once, basketball takes a back seat for Larry Brown. On a country road, downtown or through campus, he stretches his legs and forgets about picks, points and pressure.
But only for an hour.
At 3:30 p.m., the family meets. The squeal of sneakers on polished wood reverberates inside empty Allen Field House. At mid-court stands Larry Brown, hands on hips, immersed in basketball.
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