Check out this article found in today's Boston Globe. I'm going to put in the text so it remains after tomorrow when the globe might take it away:
In the paper itself, there was even a big picture of Coach/Father and Son. I hope they can succeed in this endevour that can't be an easy one.Parental guidance at BU
By Mark Blaudschun, Globe Staff | December 28, 2004
The call came one evening a few weeks ago. No major crisis. Just a call from a freshman in his first semester of college, looking for some homeland security from a parent. Dennis Wolff picked up the phone and heard his son Matt say, "Can I talk to Mom?"
Wolff, who had just come home from work, laughed and said, "You don't want to speak to me?"
"No, I want to talk to Mom," came the reply.
Wolff knew what it was about. Matt Wolff, the freshman basketball player at Boston University, did not want to talk to Dennis Wolff, the men's basketball coach at BU. He wanted to talk to his mother and not his coach, with whom he just spent three tough hours that afternoon.
It is a dividing line that Dennis and Matt are crossing every day. Dad? Coach? Which is it?
Not that Matt, a 6-foot-5-inch shooting guard who came off a championship team at Walpole High School has had a problem with that line. He has been contributing 5.0 points in 16.6 minutes per game on a team that has won seven of its first nine games.
Nor is the father-son thing that unusual in college basketball. Perhaps the most famous and successful pair was Pete and Press Maravich at LSU 35 years ago. Other coaches such as Al McGuire, Eddie Sutton, Tubby Smith, and Jim Calhoun have had sons playing for them, with varying degrees of success.
Currently, Davidson coach Bob McKillop and West Virginia coach John Beilein have sons playing for them. Dennis Wolff has talked to both of them about how to handle the dynamic.
Beilein's son Patrick, a 6-4 junior guard, is coming off the bench, similar to the role Matt Wolff has at BU. And John Beilein, like Dennis Wolff, can talk about his son from an analytical viewpoint.
"Patrick is not going to beat you off the dribble, but he's a terrific shot," said Beilein. "The great thing is that Patrick can sit on the bench for seven minutes and then come in and hit the open 25-foot jumper."
McKillop's son, Matt, is a 6-1 junior who has moved from point to shooting guard and plays a bigger role for Davidson.
The main sticking point coaches want to avoid in these situations is the perception that the son gets playing time because of bloodlines rather than talent.
McGuire faced that situation at Marquette when his son Allie was getting more playing time than some thought he should. When a player questioned McGuire about it, he was brutally honest in his reply. "I love my son," said McGuire. "For you to play, you have to be twice as good as him."
"As rewarding as it is to have your son play for you, it's also incredibly difficult," said Calhoun. "I'd like to take a mulligan and do it over. There were times when I wanted him to be me. It's just a very, very tough thing, I don't care what anybody says."
Wolff says all he asks is that Matt be as good as he can be.
"In the recruiting process, from our standpoint, we had to decide if we would have recruited Matt if he weren't my son," said Wolff. "Once we decided that, we recruited him like everyone else."
An unusual recruit
As a kid, Matt Wolff was a gym rat from a basketball family. His father had played college basketball at Connecticut. His sister Nicole, now a junior, has played on national championship teams at UConn. Matt had hung around the BU campus and the basketball team since he was in eighth grade.
He didn't want to make an official visit to BU but his father pushed, telling him it would give him a different perspective. But of course, Matt wasn't the typical recruit.
"I've known the seniors for four years," said Matt. "I'd been around them for a while."
An advantage Coach Wolff had in the recruiting was that he could watch all of Matt's games, or at least those he could fit into his work schedule. But he still had to adhere to NCAA regulations about contact.
"I was allowed to watch him any time as his father," said Wolff. "But once his game was over, I had to leave the gym." Once he began coaching his son, Wolff's viewpoint changed. "In high school, I could sit in the stands rooting for him," he said. "Now, while he's still my son, when practice starts, I look at him as one of the guys on the team. During the game when he hits a shot, I don't say, `That's great for Matt.' I say, `That's great for our team.' "During practice, Matt has been able to keep the roles of father and coach in different compartments. "I don't address him as `Coach' or `Dad,' " said Matt. "Sometimes I make eye contact. It hasn't been awkward at all."
Nor has the transition to college.
"It's a lot different than high school, a lot harder," said Matt. "In terms of basketball, it's been completely different. I'm living with three other freshmen. It's been pretty cool."
So far, so good
There are times when Matt wants to talk about college life with a parent, not a coach. And that, according to his mother, JoAnn, has been pretty cool, too.
"So far, it's been great," she said. "Dennis had never coached Matthew in basketball until now, and that's worked out pretty well. But we wanted to make it clear to Matthew that if something happened in basketball that he didn't like, he could talk to me and it wouldn't get back to his coach. He was worried about putting me in the middle of that situation."
So far, the results have been mostly positive.
"He's worked hard to be a good player," said Wolff, sounding like a coach but expressing the pride of a father. "JoAnn and I talked a lot about this, about my ability to coach him and his ability to take coaching. He did have some growing up to do, but he would always come around to what is right."
Some moments have been particularly enjoyable, such as earlier this month when BU beat Michigan at Michigan for the second straight year, an accomplishment Wolff told his players they would be talking about 20 years from now.
Matt laughed when he came onto the court in Ann Arbor and heard "who's your daddy?" taunts and comments that he wasn't the best player in his own family, a charge Matt will happily contest.
Wolff said he has worked hard to allow Matt to be "one of the guys." He also has worked at maintaining a coaching attitude that has turned BU into a perennial 20-victory program. And he has been known to vent after losses, such as the one to Holy Cross in the season opener, which prompted a "tough love" practice two days later.
"They all knew I was going to dog them in practice," said Wolff. "And they probably were saying some things. But they were talking about my coaching, not talking about his father, and I think that's a healthy setting."
Wolff has tried hard to keep his coaching temperament on an even keel regarding Matt.
"I don't think I should be any harder on him than any other kid," he said. "Nor do I think I should play him more because he's my son. "