PHOENIX — The only coach who led his team to March Madness this season, then went straight to looking for a new job, is getting lots of pats on the back this week during his visit to the Final Four.
He needs them. In the quieter times that have become more common since his whirlwind trip to the NCAA Tournament came to an end last month, Dan Monson says, “you do a lot of reflecting, and it’s been a little darker than I wanted it to be.”
The 62-year-old now-former coach at Long Beach State made the trip to college basketball’s Final Four coaching convention, just as he has every year for decades, since even before his dad, Don, started running the show at Oregon in the 1980s. This is a different sort of journey. There were 68 coaches who got their team into the bracket this season. Only one is looking for work.
“People come up to congratulate me,” Monson told The Associated Press during a chat near the hotel lobby where he has been a mini-celebrity. “The ones I know really well, I pull ’em in and I’m like, ‘Congratulate me for getting fired, or for what?”
Monson was the talk of the first week of the tournament, where the story of him losing his job, then leading his team to the Big West Tournament title and the NCAA trip that came with it, landed him in Salt Lake City.
He returned home after an 85-65 loss to Arizona and embarked on end-of-season meetings with his players the next Monday and Tuesday.
“Then, Wednesday morning, I didn’t have anything going,” he said. “That’s when it really hit home.”
He mowed the lawn. Took care of his taxes – “That won’t be as hard to do next year,” he said – then went about the heart-wrenching task of cleaning out his office.
“That was my kids’ play area when they were little,” Monson said. “They were 6, 4, 2 and newborn when I got this job. Now, the last one’s a senior in high school.”
The melancholy has been broken up by moments when he’s been heartened – brought to tears, in fact – by the relationships he’s built in a business that has felt more like a calling than a job.
For instance, he only considered himself an acquaintance with Clemson coach Brad Brownell. And when Brownell’s recruiting director Lucas McKay, texted him shortly after the loss to Arizona, Monson figured it was the typical reach-out looking for scouting tips since that was Clemson’s next opponent.
But Monson considers Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd like family. He dialed the Clemson coach, getting ready to break the news that he could not help. Turned out, Brownell was just making sure Monson had a ticket to Clemson’s Sweet 16 game in nearby Los Angeles if he wanted one.
“It caught me off guard. I just got emotional and I could barely talk,” Monson said. “Here’s a coach who’s been basically in this spot for 15 years. He’s got the biggest game of his career coming up and he’s asking if I need a ticket to the game. It was a really neat thing that happened when it was dark for me.”
Monson said he had a friendly beer with Long Beach State’s athletic director, Bobby Smitheran. It was Smitheran who made the call not to renew Monson. The AD added more weirdness to the story when he told the AP that ousting Monson, who was on a four-game losing streak when the decision was made, was part of the plan to turn things around and landed the team in the tournament.
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There had been upheaval in the athletic department before Smitheran arrived that led to Monson entering 2023 with only one year left on his contract. He knew he would likely need to go to the tournament this year to keep his job.
“The problem is, they didn’t wait to see if we could do it or not before they made the decision. That’s what hurts the most,” Monson said. “We end up winning 21 games and wind up going to the tournament. That’s not a real fireable year.”
But, Monson said, there was no use belaboring the point.
“Am I going to let it define me, or not talk to somebody because they made a decision I don’t agree with?” Monson said. “I’m more of a man than that.”
So, he begins the next chapter with this on his résumé: 27 years as a head coach, 445 wins, nine regular-season or conference titles, four trips to March Madness.
He’s the man who, in the late 1990s, built the foundation at Gonzaga that propelled the Zags on a string of 25 straight trips to the tournament. He also rebuilt Long Beach State, coming in after a recruiting scandal placed the program in NCAA purgatory.
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Maybe most importantly, Monson said, “our kids graduate, we never had a police report, never had a kid ineligible.”
What became clear to him during the off days that came after the tournament is that he doesn’t want to quit this profession. He came to Phoenix to network, to help out his assistant coaches who also need jobs, to take his sons to the games and, mostly, to let everyone know he has nothing to be ashamed about.
“At the end of the day, I did it with integrity, I did it within the NCAA rules and I did it for the betterment of these young men,” Monson said. “I’m proud of what I did. And that’s why I’m walking around here this week with my head up.”