A year ago, the perch was exactly the same, but the landscape couldn’t be more different.
A year ago, Tom Pecora was sitting at the top of Quinnipiac’s M&T Bank Arena watching the Bobcats practice. He wrote down his observations, scribbled some thoughts and offered some suggestions through the eyes of 40 years of coaching basketball.
Sometimes these ideas are used. They were often ignored. Slowly, Pecola began to realize that maybe this was the end of her coaching career. He was removed from the trip by coach Baker Dunleavy. He was then removed from the bench. This was his current office, the frontier. I’ll be waiting.
He thought, “Maybe it’s time to stop holding on.”
“I thought maybe I could keep caddying and bartending happy for a few years until I was ready to really retire,” he says.
A year later, he’s back at the top of the arena, but at 9:15 a.m., an hour before practice, he’s surprised to find several players already collapsed on the gym floor. A banner will soon be hung near the ceiling of M&T celebrating Quinnipiac’s first regular-season men’s basketball championship in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.
“The kids bought in right away and continued to buy in. As a coach, there’s nothing more I could ask for in my life,” Pecora says. “It was really great to be a part of.”
Quinnipiac is 23-8, winning 15 of 20 league games and will earn the No. 1 seed heading into Wednesday’s MAAC Tournament at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. The Bobcats are now three wins away from making their first NCAA Tournament. Their coach is also looking for him. And I understand better than anyone what a precious opportunity this is.
“If you believe these things, someone might have been watching, right?” he says.
He had never been fired before. Not as a coach since Bob McKillop hired him at Long Island Lutheran Church in 1984. In my early 20s, I wasn’t moving furniture across the country. That wasn’t the case when he was 16 and working behind the counter at Pellegrini’s Deli.
“I got lost,” Pecola says. “If you’ve never been made redundant before, you’ll be in shock and have a lot of questions. You’ll wonder if you’ll ever have a chance to get back on track.”
Mr. Pecora was fired in 2015 just before Fordham’s major rebuilding effort was coming to fruition. He recruited future NBA player Eric Paschall and assembled a great recruiting class, but the Fordham suits grew tired of waiting after losing 106 games in five years. The dismissal hit him hard. I tried broadcasting it for a while.
So Dunleavy offered him a lifeline back into business. Just 34 years old, he and Pecora share a pedigree as former Jay Wright assistants, Pecora at Hofstra and Dunleavy at Villanova. The agreement seemed perfect. Pecora will be Dunleavy’s Don Zimmer and will maintain a recruiting touch while being an experienced eye on the bench.
However, as the year progressed, the coach wanted to revamp his staff. He held Pecola back, but gradually forced her out, eventually working her way up to the top row of the gym. Pecola worked hard at his job in Bridgeport. And I realized that it ends for everyone eventually.
“I wasn’t happy,” he says. “But I felt safe.”
Then, on April 12th, Pekora received a phone call. That was Quinnipiac AD Greg Amodio.
“Let’s have a beer,” Amodio said.
Dunleavy had told Amodio that morning that he was returning to Villanova to join Kyle Neptune’s staff. It was 9 o’clock. By five o’clock the job was Pecola’s.
“Sometimes the best thing you can do in a situation like that is not to overthink it,” Amodio says. The right people were already in the building. ”
On Monday, Amodio interrupted Bobcats practice to break the news that Pecora had been named MAAC Coach of the Year. The players’ jubilant reaction confirmed what Amodio already knew. The righteous were truly the righteous. Last month, Pecora received a four-year contract extension.
Now they are preparing for AC and looking forward to what lies ahead. They are buoyed by Matt Ballank, the league’s Player of the Year, and Pecora believes he may be instrumental in winning both awards.
“He’s tougher on his teammates than he is on me,” Pecora says. “And having someone like that on the floor makes my job a lot easier. Stay out of my way.”
And enjoy the scenery.
