Calhoun on UConn dancing, Ewing coaching

Selection Sunday was the day Jim Calhoun picked to walk around his Pomfret home without a cane. He is making strides. The hip replacement surgery he underwent on the last day of January doesn’t prevent him from shooting from the hip. Nothing ever has. Calhoun reached back to the late Dave Gavitt — who developed the expanded NCAA Tournament bracket in the 1980s — to offer some advice to UConn basketball fans.

“It’s not your seeding. It’s who is in your bracket,” said Calhoun, who has coached Division III St. Joseph’s the past three years. “If they don’t match up with you, oh boy.”

Gavitt, whose son Dan now oversees the NCAA selection process, would later offer Calhoun more wise words: “One of the good things for schools that are inundated with fans, families like UConn is if you move out West it works.

“You give us a better seeding we’ll go out West. We won’t bitch about it publicly. We’ll be more than happy to go there.”

Focus the team. Focus the dream. The four times Calhoun got to the Final Four was through regionals in Phoenix in 1999, 2004 and 2009 and Anaheim in 2011.

“Of course, this year they all go to Indiana,” Calhoun said.

This year: No. 7 UConn vs. No.

10 Maryland. Winner stands to get No. 2 Alabama. Michigan is No. 1 in the East bracket. Certainly, it could be worse.

Calhoun, 78, usually rides the bike or works the treadmill every day. He had finished working out and was changing a few months ago when he caught his leg in his sweatpants, took a flip and banged into the wall.

“Holy … you can imagine what I said,” Calhoun said. “Pat was down at Hilton Head. I was alone in the house and it took me like 15 minutes to crawl over to the phone.”

He dislocated his hip and, along with arthritis, that led to the hip replacement. Calhoun fell off his bike during a charity ride and broke several ribs in 2009, fractured a hip when he skidded in sand on his bike in 2013. He has overcome skin, prostate and stage

4 stomach cancer. The man doesn’t do minor scrapes and bruises. Small wonder one doctor asked him, “What god did you piss off?”

“The only good thing is I have a good bounce-back gene.”

He also has a television to watch in recuperation. He watched UConn men play 15 times. So, of course, we had questions.

Is James Bouknight fully ready for the NBA?

“That’s a good question,” Calhoun said. “I saw Danny Hurley mention about ‘the tension,’ how you react in the big games. Do I

think he’s ready physically? I don’t think it matters, because he’s a talent. I don’t think the NBA looks at you how you’ll perform next year at UConn. It’s how good are you going to be two years down the road. With that said, you’d like to see have another 15 games or so, Georgetown a couple times next year, something to test your mettle a little more. But I could say that about a lot of players.

“Has he shown up like some of the other guys (Kemba, Shabazz, etc.)? Well, he has an NCAA Tournament to show up even more. He has been terrific. Creighton game was two hours of tension. You got to make plays down the stretch. He is a very talented kid. You can’t ask him every night to be a miracle man. Yeah, I’d like to see him have some more games, but it’s not realistic in the sense he’s an NBA talent.”

Later, Calhoun added: “Let’s relax a little and see. He hasn’t been on a great team. A guy like Rip Hamilton, don’t forget we had a 24-game win streak against a terrific schedule. Kemba averaged 30 points in three straight days against Wichita State, Kentucky and Michigan State in Maui. There’s no doubt he’s an NBA talent. Not every NBA talent ends up being a terrific, terrific NBA player.”

Your overall impression of the Huskies after having watched so many games?

“I like the team. At times, I like them a lot … Their work ethic comes across. A good pressure defense comes across. They have a good young center (Adama Sanogo).

He may not be quite athletic, jumpy enough (to be an NBA regular). I don’t know that yet. He doesn’t look like Emeka Okafor right now. Fine. He is functional as hell. Boy, he’s got a good game already. I like him a lot. Their depth and size is good. They get loose with the ball sometimes.

“I love how hard they play. I love how together they play. I’d just like to see them run more. If we play a skilled halfcourt team like Creighton, it’s not good for us. I’m not saying Creighton wasn’t trying to create that. They were. We need a counter to get up and down the court more.”

And rebound.

What went through your mind as the eight-seeded Hoyas under Patrick Ewing finished an improbable run to the Big East title and the first NCAA bid since 2015?

“Patrick has been terrific,” Calhoun said. “He and I have talked three, four times; once at a Hall of Fame gathering we sat down for an hour. I heard from the guys from Charlotte (where Ewing was an NBA assistant) what a terrific guy he was. As a player, he wasn’t just big and strong. He was big, strong and mean on the court. It could be intimidating to a lot of people. Those doesn’t bother me. My point is everyone you talked to said how good a person he is. He just wanted to coach.

“Ninety percent of it these days may be getting good players and learning how to handle them. There is so much outside social media and outside influence. He lost a couple of really good players. I’m not blaming Patrick. It’s ‘I I could take it under Coach Thompson, you should be able to take it.’ It’s not quite the same as those days. My thing is respect.

“And one of my looks at a coach is, does his team do what they want to do every night? They developed into this running, pressing team. It can blow up in their face a little bit, they’re not a great shooting team to keep the flow. You saw what happened against UConn. But four straight days they played their game and proved if you stay with it, good things can happen. Just as he stayed with it. He talked about coaching for like 15 years before he got his chance.”

Rick Pitino was fired at Louisville in 2017 in the play-for-pay scandal, coached in Greece and Iona took a chance last spring in hiring him. He got the Gaels into the NCAA Tournament. Is he a fortunate man?

“I’ll make one statement,” Calhoun said. “When Rick Pitino goes someplace — we don’t have much of a relationship, really no relationship — the guy can coach. No doubt about it. People like people. People don’t like people. I guess he’s fortunate. People also have done worse things and are still coaching.

“That team has won before, from Jimmy V. on. It’s in a good location (New Rochelle). The other thing I knew is they’d be really well coached. He got two years of a lot of crap thrown at him. Deserved, not deserved, I’m not making judgments on people.”

You’re a boxing fan from Braintree. Did you know the middleweight boxing champion from down-the-road Brockton who died Saturday?

“I knew the Petronelli brothers (who managed and trained Marvin Hagler),” Calhoun said. “I went to a couple different fights to see him. I was really upset with the Sugar Ray Leonard decision that led him to retire. Hagler was the man. He was fearless. Think about it. At the time, nobody had a bald head. Now, everybody has a bald head. He was a warrior. He always was in shape. He always brought it. Those fights involving Thomas Hearns and Sugar Ray were legendary. Magical stuff.”

Your team finally is squeezing a half-dozen games/exhibitions into this month. Glen Miller and your son Jeff have filled in for you during your absence. St. Joe’s was ranked ninth in the nation in one poll in November before the NCAA decided there weren’t enough teams for a national tournament. Thoughts?

“I’m disappointed,” Calhoun said. “I understand the finances and what Division I does. We’re getting tested three times a week. If that’s so, I think they should have provided us with an NCAA Tournament. I know they’re not going to do an (on-site) bubble for us. But we could do our own (regionalized) bubbles.”

You going to coach next season? “We’re going forward like it was before, a day at a time,” Calhoun said. “Our new building is opening. Wait till you see it.”