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Bowling Green State University Athletics
Bowling Green: Where the Coach Knows Everybody's Name
August 11, 2005 | Men's Basketball
Aug. 8, 2005
Bowling Green, Ohio - People all over this one-exit town off I-75 know Dan Dakich, as they should. He's the basketball coach at Bowling Green, and has averaged 19 wins in seven seasons at the MAC school. Everyone knows Dan Dakich? Big deal.
Here's the thing: Dakich seems to know everybody right back. Spend several hours with Dakich, as we did Friday, and you'll see some surprising stuff.
Dakich is eating dinner at a restaurant off Wooster Street when he spots a roly-poly redheaded kid, maybe 6 years old. The kid's father is wearing a Bowling Green hockey shirt. Dakich waves to the dad, greeting him by name, then beckons to the kid.
"Alex, I want you to come over to my house next Thursday, and I'm going to give you a basketball," Dakich tells the kid, firm but friendly. "No more of this hockey stuff."
Later Dakich is driving through a residential street when he spots a woman walking up her driveway. He stops his ride and jokingly chastises her for allowing her daughter to attend an American Idol show in Columbus, rather than his basketball camp.
"Hey, Karen, we missed Kayla at camp," Dakich tells the woman. "Believe me, the talent level took a hit."
Dakich could use some lessons on being big-time. A Division I basketball coach doesn't troll for golf matches by sticking a note, with his home phone number, on the clubhouse wall of StoneRidge Golf Club, his home course. A Division I coach doesn't coach his son's sixth-grade team. A Division I coach might go to the state fair with his children ... but in a car teeming with his kids' friends, too? A Division I coach doesn't do that.
Dakich does. Dakich also founded the Ugly Golfer Association, which conducts an annual tournament. Scores of golfers compete for prizes, and for four hours the UGA turns serious: no mulligans, foot wedges or conceded putts. When Dakich's father once scooped up a two-inch putt, assuming it was good, Dan had to administer the penalty: "I hate to do this to ya, brother, but that's two."
Dakich plays hard but fair, and he expects the same of those around him. When his leading scorer from 2003-04, shooting guard Ron Lewis, transferred in August 2004, Dakich discovered which schools had tampered and turned them in to the NCAA. Ohio State, which eventually landed Lewis, was not among those schools.
Three years ago Dakich accepted the West Virginia job, but after a week on campus he uncovered potential NCAA violations under the previous coaching regime, and returned to Bowling Green. Although the Mountaineers never faced NCAA sanctions and reached the 2005 Elite Eight, Dakich doesn't second-guess his decision.
"I don't have any regrets at all," he says. "It was a decision I made based on a lot of things only I know, only my wife knows. You're going to think this is stupid, but I rooted for them at the NCAA Tournament. I don't have any regrets about it. It was what I felt was -- and still feel without question was -- the best thing for everybody. Where I grew up, you make your decisions based on being able to look yourself in the mirror."
Dakich grew up in Gary, Ind., a 1970s melting pot where his father was principal at Calumet High. After clashing with the new superintendent, Tom Dakich was fired in 1975. The kids at Calumet revolted.
"The entire student population of this high school -- black and white, Puerto Rican, Mexican, you name it -- they marched down the street. Refused to go to school. It was national news," Dan Dakich says. "Dad went to the kids and said, 'It's not about you, it's about them. Go on back to school.' He went on and taught seventh-grade typing to take care of us -- I learned how to be a dad from him. I made up my mind when I got into coaching that I wanted to be there (for the kids)."
Dakich brought along Andrew, 11, to the Nike All-America Camp last month at Indianapolis, and lets him sit on the bench at most road games. Laura, 8, joins her father at postgame news conferences. Dakich is coaching Andrew's basketball team this month, and while he has installed a handful of plays and devotes practice time to defense and free throws, he doesn't claim a psychological advantage over his sixth-grade coaching colleagues.
"It's not like Pitino walks into the gym," Dakich says. "I don't think there's a lot of fear amongst the other coaches."
It's doubtful MAC coaches are trembling about Dakich's overhauled roster. Bowling Green lost six of its top nine scorers from last season's 18-11 team, including the nearly 36 points per game of burly senior forwards John Reimold and Josh Almanson. Dakich will remake the 2005-06 Falcons around guards Steven Wright (11.1 ppg, 3.2 assists) and John Floyd (7.0 ppg, 5.2 apg) and seven new players. He expects immediate contributions from juco guard Martin Samarco and freshman wing Darryl Clements, and compares 6-7, 235-pound freshman Erik Marschall to former Indiana star Eric Anderson. Teammates tell Dakich that another freshman, 6-7 Dusan Radivojevic of Serbia & Montenegro, "doesn't ever miss" in summer pickup games.
Sounds like Dakich on the golf course. Last week he shot a 73 to win $5 from his buddy, Bowling Green golf coach Garry Winger, who shot a 74. Dakich calls it a once-in-a-lifetime round -- wincing, Winger concurs -- but Dakich is modest that way. Ask him how he famously stymied North Carolina All-American Michael Jordan in the 1984 NCAA Tournament, and he'll shrug.
Press Dakich for more, and the truth comes out. Indiana coach Bob Knight had told Dakich, a 6-5 junior guard, that UNC wasn't going to feature Jordan. "He told me if Jordan got a backdoor on me, I was coming out," Dakich says. "And if Jordan got an offensive rebound, I was coming out."
Jordan finished with 13 points, no backdoor baskets and one total rebound, and Indiana beat the No. 1 Tar Heels 72-68. Two years later, Dakich became the only player ever to go directly from Knight's roster to his coaching staff.
Dakich relayed that Jordan story Friday as he was shooting his 73. He also told about the time later that summer in 1984 when he ran into Jordan at Indiana's golf course and took his lunch money by firing a 76. Dakich probably had more stories to tell, but he kept running into people who knew him. And who he knew right back.
"Great shot, Brooks!" Dakich called out to a teenager on another fairway. Brooks smiled, nodded and kept walking to the green. The coach at Bowling Green knows his name? Big deal. Around here, the coach at Bowling Green knows everyone's name.