I used to tell this story too often and prematurely to make it a good story, but it might be appropriate and good now.
Utah coach Roberts was named to the national coach of the year watch list yesterday. The Utes are ranked #4 by the AP, and a Pac-12 season championship game with #3 Stanford is on the horizon.
In the mid-2000s, I was writing the West Coast Conference. San Francisco, Santa Clara, and St. Mary’s were short drives, and sometimes they were good teams.
San Diego was very good in those days, and their visit to Pacific for a non-conference game in Dec. 2006 coincided with a kids’ chess tournament on campus that weekend.
Perfect, I thought. I’ll work at the chess tournament, watch San Diego stomp the host team, and never have to visit Stockton again.
San Diego won 74-67, but it was close late, and an upset seemed possible. Pacific freshman point guard Jake Kelly shot lights out that night, during Roberts’ first year in Division 1 following 30-win seasons at Chico State.
I thought: There’s a story here, so I’ll stick around to watch Jake Kelly lead Pacific to greatness. Jake was gone in a year. (Know who’s still around? One of the other impressive Pacific players was senior Jerise Freeman — I asked Roberts years later if there were any players she would’ve liked more time with, and she said Freeman, now a Utah assistant coach.)
Looking back at 2007-8: After Jake left, I could’ve stopped following that story — Pacific was a 70-minute drive — but I thought Roberts was creating something, and they never got rid of me. (They tried — for two seasons in a row, they moved the press table closer to the door.)
In 2013, Pacific won the Big West championship, though I didn’t feel like that was the end of the story, either.
Today, Coach Roberts’ Utah team is nearly there, wherever there is. Roberts proved me right — she’s building something great. A dozen years later and 800 miles further away than I anticipated, but here we are.
Utah wing Jenna Johnson is a special player, and one aspect of that is affectionate respect for Coach. She was departing Utah’s practice at Berkeley last month, and Coach introduced her to me. She said: “He and I have known each other for…”
“Sixteen years”, I said.
“Since I started at Pacific”.
“It was unintended. I was there to see San Diego. But I never left.”
Johnson said: “You’re stuck with her.” One of those things that’s completely in how one says it, and Jenna said that with a solid read of why — and for whom — I was at practice.
Pacific, by the way, has won five in a row. Coach Davis’ team peaked in March last season, and the Tigers are doing it again. I wish I could be there for that, but it hasn’t been safe for me to drive the Altamont Pass these days.