Free A Season Inside by John Feinstein Page B

you, Chris, and to you, too, Mom and Dad. I try to recruit leaders and I think that’s what Chris will be when he’s through playing basketball. We’ve got two kids ready to sign withus who play Chris’s position but I’ve told them I won’t offer them a scholarship until you tell us no because you are our number-one priority.
    “And I’ll tell you something, Chris, and I’ve said this very few times in my coaching career: You come to LSU and in four years you will be a number-one draft choice. I guarantee that. I’m certain of it. Our style of play is perfect for you.”
    There is more: Brown talks about the summer jobs program at LSU, telling Jent he’ll make $12 to $15 an hour. He talks about Ricky Blanton, his best player, saying, “You two would be like Siamese Twins. You both play like Attila the Hun.” When Megan wanders by, Brown grabs her and bounces her on his knee. Finally, he brings out not one but two tapes.
    The first one is a highlight tape of the ’87 season put together by Brown’s daughter. The second is a tape of Brown’s television show during the last weekend of the ’87 regular season. Brown always brings his seniors’ parents on the show, and in this case, the mother of Anthony Wilson had read him a lengthy poem, thanking him for taking care of her son the previous four years.
    By the time the second tape has been shown, Brown and Carse have been in the house more than two hours. Brown goes through his litany one more time and then Arnie Jent walks down the driveway to the car with the two coaches. By the time Brown gets in the car, he is flying.
    “Now I really want that kid,” he says, breathlessly. “I think we’ll get a visit from him, and if we do, we’ll get him. That kid should play for me.”
    The Jents were impressed by Brown. But not impressed enough to change the recruiting process they had started so long ago. Jent’s decision would come down to two schools: Ohio State and Pittsburgh. Brown and LSU had lost.
    Williams and his coaches had felt all along that Pittsburgh was their big competition for Jent. They were concerned about Calipari’s friendship with Dennis Tobin and about the lure of the Big East to a player who had grown up in Big East territory during the league’s remarkable recent rise to prominence.
    Their advantage, they felt, was that Jent had relatives in Columbus and, coming from a close family, would feel comfortable going toschool in a place where he had family nearby. Jent had made an unofficial visit to Ohio State during the summer, driving to Columbus and staying with his relatives.
    By the time Williams and Fraschilla visited Jent on October I, most of America’s coaches were near exhaustion. They had been on the road almost nonstop for fifteen days and still had six days left. “This is like a long sprint,” Williams said. “You have to go all out from start to finish but by the end, you’re running out of gas.”
    Before leaving his hotel for the Jents’ house, Williams calls home. His daughter, Kristen, has an important test that day. Like many coaching fathers, Williams feels guilty about the time he spends away from home.
    As he and Fraschilla leave the hotel, they run into the Rutgers coaching staff. Craig Littlepage, the Rutgers coach, starting his third season, is under fire after two twenty-loss years in a row. Not keeping New Jersey players at home has been Rutgers’s problem. The fact that Rutgers isn’t even involved with a player like Jent is symptomatic of the problems there.
    Littlepage greets Williams warmly. “What are you guys doing in New Jersey?” he asks. “Didn’t you know we’ve already bought all the players?”
    The coaches chat briefly, bemoaning the intensity of the twenty-one-day visitation period. Williams gets in the car and shakes his head. “I feel bad for Craig. I think he’s gonna get fired at the end of the year if they don’t turn it around. He may just be too nice a guy for this