Sidelines
Towe trying to make
the best of his second chanceHE sounds like a fighter, he looks like one, he is. You have no problem imagining this intense, 5-6ish man scoring 17 points in what some still call "the Greatest Game Ever Played," his North Carolina State team's overtime win over Maryland in the 1974 ACC Tournament final.
That team would go on to win the whole thing -- David Thompson, Tommy Burleson, all those guys. Monte Towe was the leader then, and he still is, forever the diminutive point guard whose favorite phrase in all the world is "Big stop! BIG STOP!"
But those days of glory are long in Towe's past. Today he is the coach of the University of New Orleans. And tonight, at the Adidas Festival, Hawaii faces a man who knows what it takes to win a national championship. And a championship in the Venezuelan league.
He's been everywhere, these last several seasons. A once-promising coaching career took a decade-long detour through the basketball bushes' alphabet soup: the GBA, the CBA, JCs. He was in Sioux Falls. Raleigh. Fayetteville. South America.
He once coached a team called the Bullfrogs, a million miles from the big time. But still, he coached.
"I was like a boxer," he says. "I've been knocked out, and on the ropes. You know, the eight-count."
At last, he's back. At UNO, he has his first Division I head coaching job.
At one time he was a hot name, a shoo-in, a rising star in the coaching ranks.
"I think everybody thought I was going to be the next head coach at Florida," he says. "It didn't happen. That's just the way it goes. Nobody promises you a rose garden.
"And I've hung in there, and I've gotten my shot, here at the University of New Orleans."
He played with the Denver Nuggets briefly, an ABA all-star. Then he rejoined his old mentor, NC State legend Norm Sloan. They went to Florida together, stayed there nine years. Towe, the former point guard, was the heir apparent and associate head coach.
Sloan elevated the program, winning championships and going to the NCAAs, but then trouble followed. The staff was fired. Towe was apparently banished and besmirched, left to wander the basketball desert for years on end.
"I couldn't put my finger on it," he says now. "You know, I had no NCAA violations. But still people associated me with a program that was ... I think we only had two violations when we got fired. I can't explain it. You'd have to ask the athletic directors and the presidents."
He was effectively locked out of major college basketball. He hit the circuit, trying to work his way back. At last, he was an assistant in the Continental Basketball Association. Then back at a junior college. A close friend finally brought him back home into Division I ball as an assistant.
Always, the member of NC State's all-time team, the 2002 inductee into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, just kept coaching.
In 1998, he became head coach at a community college in Gainesville, Fla. A town he'd lived in. A town he'd been happy in.
"I just assumed that's what I was going to do the rest of my life," he says.
But then the phone rang, unexpectedly, and it was the University of New Orleans on the line.
"Yeah, yeah, like right out of nowhere," he says. "I'd stopped inquiring for the head coaching positions, because I'd been turned down so many times, never gotten an interview, never got a shot.
"That's OK. A lot of people never get their shot. A lot of people that are better coaches than I am never get their shot."
But he had one again. This was his shot. He took the job in a heartbeat, a fighter who had slipped off the ropes. He was up again. He was swinging again.
He's a Division I head coach at last.
Last year, his team beat his state's big fish, LSU. Last night, the Privateers defeated Cal-Poly 89-75.
"I'm the happiest guy in the world," he says. And you believe him.
Tonight UH goes against the point guard who won the Greatest Game Ever Played, a man who knows how it feels to take home a national title. Tonight, the Rainbows face a man who went to another continent, just to keep coaching.
He's a fighter, this 5-6ish man. You can feel it. He's gotten his shot at last, with the University of New Orleans. And he's not letting it go.
"Basketball's been great to me," he says. "It's been my whole life."
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com