University of Hartford, Gallagher 40 minutes from realizing their dream
His players were left shattered in the early afternoon of March 11, 2020. Not because of a season-ending defeat, but for the game that never was played.
Forty minutes from a dream, Hartford coach John Gallagher kept saying. Forty minutes from a dream.
With the Hawks ready to head to Vermont for the America East championship, COVID-19 intervened and crushed the dream, as it crushed so many around the nation.
“A lot of raw emotion in that room,” Gallagher said.
“A lot of tears.”
No one knows any better than basketball fans in Connecticut that the greatest joy for the powerful lay at the end of the NCAA Tournament. The UConn women have 11 banners and the UConn men have hung four as proof of such satisfaction.
Yet for the little guys, the one-bid leagues, the schools that love basketball every bit as much yet don’t have the brand, the money, the facilities to land McDonald’s All Americans and future lottery picks, the greatest joy is in the earlier March days. With conference titles, Selection Sunday, the hours leading into the NCAA Tournament first round, the explosion of pride at schools that occasionally require a GPS to
find is a thing to behold. Behold the Hawks. If Connecticut is to embrace the full experience of what March Madness can be, what could be cooler than a UHart victory at home Saturday against UMass Lowell in the America East championship?
Their story is twice as good now. They are the pandemic flower looking to bloom again. Fifty-one weeks after being denied their moment, the Hawks went to Burlington and beat Vermont 71-65 on Saturday in the AEC semifinals.
Again, 40 minutes from the dream.
Of the more than 350 Division I basketball schools, 42 have never been to the NCAA Tournament. UMass Lowell is one, but the River Hawks are newcomers. They went DI in 2013. This is UHart’s 36th season, Gallagher’s 11th.
“Cards on the table,” Gallagher said. “They were firing me four years ago. We had the best two years in school history and they gave me a one-year extension. We bring Malik Ellison and Traci Carter in, we get to the title game and COVID happens. They give me a long-term extension during the year. The AD gets let go.”
Those are the facts that take this story to the Jersey Shore and a former NFL executive.
“Mike Lombardi was Bill Belichick’s right-hand man and I’ve become very close to him,” Gallagher said. “I’m walking with him in Ocean City where he lives. Mike says, ‘Why the transformation?’ I said for two years I haven’t left the bunker. I am going to get out and just coach like I used to do.”
Lombardi tapped Gallagher on the shoulder and said four words: “Stay in the bunker.”
“I talk about it with my staff,” Gallagher said. “Fellas, it’s Hartford basketball only for seven months.
We’ll have five months to be normal human beings. I know it’s a sacrifice.”
At 69-52, the best fouryear run in the school’s Division I history, back-toback title games, Gallagher is on the verge of history at UHart. He’s also on the verge of something many doubted could happen.
“Why?” Gallagher said. “I stayed in the bunker.”
His mind drifts to when he accepted his first head coaching job at age 32. Dan Leibovitz had taken UHart to its one America East final in 2008, but 48 losses in the next two years and the program was back in a familiar place.
“I got the job here and all I heard was can’t, can’t, can’t,” Gallagher said. “Only private school in an allstate school league. You don’t have this. They don’t support this. They do this. They do that. It was all excuses. If you know anything about how I was raised, we don’t live in an excuse world. My father and mother wouldn’t allow it.
“So this was the perfect job for me. Year Six and Seven, was I questioning myself? Absolutely. But you have to literally bare your soul to change programs like this. You have to put everything on the line, heart and soul, to rejuvenate it. When I took over, I said it could be a 10-year makeover.”
He had that part right. Here’s the other part. John Gallagher might be the most optimistic man in America. Has he on occasion been too optimistic? Maybe. But let’s answer it another way: With 365 draining days of COVID, that optimism has served Hartford basketball especially well.
“We are playing at a very confident level right now,” he said. “I think we’re a team and a program that is just not happy to be here anymore. It’s one thing to say we expect it. They are just words. Your actions and your approach are what matter most.
“Look at video of Vermont.
We didn’t celebrate after the win. I got text messages from people that if you saw us walk off you wouldn’t even know we won.”
His team followed the defensive game plan to the letter against Vermont, and Gallagher insists the halfcourt defense is playing at an elite level.
“So I’d give our overall performance at Vermont a B,” he said. “Why? We were up 10 with five minutes to go and turned it over three times and gave them easy runouts. There are five (media) people across the country right now that want to talk to us. Something like this fascinates people.
“But here’s the thing. We haven’t done anything yet. We had Sunday practice. I showed them the last 10 minutes. I said, ‘Guys, we’re losing Saturday if you think you can turn it over like this.’ I think I shocked them.”
With COVID, Gallagher wanted to challenge his team early this season and remain engaged throughout. He took on UConn, a 69-57 loss, and Villanova, an 87-53 loss. With games being postponed, he actually was searching another tough game or two.
“We didn’t get any money for the Villanova game,” Gallagher said. “We got peanuts from UConn. With COVID, it would have been easy to avoid them. That wasn’t going to happen. UConn game, we’re down three in the second half. I walked out of the gym feeling good. Honestly, the culture of Villanova, I thought it was a great game for us to play. Those two opponents are why we went on a five-game winning streak.
“The second thing is players are in their own sort of quarantine. It’s tough. Coaches that are relational are going to have a better effect. That’s why you see UConn where it is now. Danny Hurley, players’ coach. Porter Moser (Chicago Loyola). We’re not robots here. Believe me, I have my weaknesses, but my strength as a coach is I love my players to the end and I feel they love me to the end. So there’s so much left in the tank when you see other programs ready to hit the buzzer.
“We have a genuine love for the program, the school, the game. That becomes contagious. Honestly, it feels like the beginning of the year for us.”
Gallagher is on a roll now. When you have stability in recruiting and everyone except Carter back, he said, the next two years are going to be even more exciting than this year. He feels it. Forty more minutes.
“We called it ‘The Neighborhood’ here, you know,” Gallagher said. “Everyone who has supported us, from donors to family members to former players to coaches. Jack Phelan, his wife, Patti …”
Phelan, the coach who ushered the school from Division II to Division I in the 1980s, died unexpectedly at 66 in July. He was the pioneer in this, after his playing days, before his days as Farmington athletic director, back when UHart played at the XL Center before Beach Boys and Kenny Rogers and Smokey Robinson concerts.
“Jack was so good to me …”
John Gallagher just started crying on the phone.
“… when I was going to get fired, he texted me every day, every day, man,” he said. “I honestly feel he’s part of the reason we’re winning. There are no fans allowed Saturday. We would have made one exception. I don’t care what would have happened. Jack would have been in the stands.”
Forty minutes from a dream. This time they play. Hawks win Saturday and, believe this, John Gallagher will be the most emotional man in America.