WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — Sean Witecy knew exactly what he wanted after graduating in 2017 from Elkhorn High School in Nebraska.
Now, later this month, Witecy will be part of the first class of young men to enroll at the University of St. Joseph, a Roman Catholic school in this Hartford suburb that was established in 1932 and is newly coed.
It’s not a big college. It’s NCAA Division III, not Division I. But it does offer the 6-foot-5 Witecy something that Creighton or TCU couldn’t — an opportunity to play for Jim Calhoun, the Hall of Fame former coach at the University of Connecticut.
“Could I have imagined something like this a year ago? Not even close,” said Witecy, who was born in Connecticut and had grown up a fan of the Huskies. “I never wanted to play at a small school. I wanted to play D-I. That was my goal.”
But when he heard last fall that Calhoun, who coached UConn to three NCAA championships over a quarter of a century, was going to be in charge of building a Division III startup, “I kind of jaw-dropped.”
He emailed Calhoun and put a video of his highlights in the mail. He visited the campus over winter break. And this fall, he will be a St. Joseph Blue Jay, instead of a Creighton Bluejay, which is just fine with him.
“If I can reach my potential as a basketball player, there’s really no better place,” he said.
Witecy’s name is at the top of his list of forward/centers on a whiteboard in Calhoun’s cluttered office at St. Joseph. It’s a small room, “about the size of my locker at UConn,” he joked. He left Connecticut in 2012 and became a well-paid consultant to the university.
He also did college games for ESPN, but still wasn’t happy. “I didn’t have ownership of it,” he said. “I went home neutral. I wanted that feeling of being miserable when you lose and really happy when you win.”
Then, last summer, he heard from the St. Joseph’s athletic director, Bill Cardarelli, one of his former assistants at UConn. Cardarelli wanted Calhoun’s help in building a men’s basketball program after the university decided to become coed. And the more they talked, the more Calhoun, 76, became convinced he was the right person for the job.
He signed on as a part-time consultant to the St. Joseph basketball program in September, so he would not be in conflict with his contract with Connecticut. But all along, it was assumed that he would become the full-time coach, and he is expected to be officially named to the position in the next few weeks. His contract with UConn will presumably be adjusted to accommodate his new job.
The bottom line is that come November, when the season starts, Calhoun will be the face of St. Joseph basketball.
“We thought maybe we’d get one of his former players to be the coach,” the university’s president, Rhona Free, said. “It worked out better than I thought.”
Calhoun said, “I wasn’t looking for a job.” Still, he added: “I missed the kids. I missed practice. I missed not being involved. I missed not solving problems every day. You may not like ‘em, but you gotta solve them. That, in essence, is what coaching is all about.”
It’s not unprecedented for a successful Division I coach to move to Division III. Former Boston College and Ohio State coach Jim O’Brien finished his career coaching at Emerson College in Boston. But Emerson had an established program.
Calhoun is starting something from scratch. He said he was healthy after going through three cancer operations. He hasn’t coached in nearly six years and can’t wait to do so again.
“I truly missed not having purpose every day,” he said. “I have a saying, ‘You gotta win the day.’ And after awhile, I wasn’t sure I was winning. I have defined things to do here to get it going.”
The University of St. Joseph was founded by the Sisters of Mercy religious order. Its 90-acre campus on Asylum Avenue is less than 3 miles from the state Capitol. In June 2017, the university’s board of trustees voted unanimously to admit men for the first time.
Free then went to Cardarelli and told him, “We have to do something to get on people’s radar.” She had seen the power of athletics as a graduate student at Notre Dame and thought it would help get the word out about the changes at St. Joseph. All the university needed was to make a splash in its sports program.
In bringing in Calhoun, a 2005 inductee into the Basketball Hall of Fame, St. Joseph was able to do that and then some. Initial plans called for admitting 50 men in the first class. That has doubled.
“This is what we now refer to as the Calhoun Effect,” Free said.
According to university officials, freshman applications are up by 83 percent (female applications have increased nearly 40 percent) and transfer applications have almost doubled, to 438 from 224. The officials expect a student body of 900 undergraduates, 300 of whom will be freshmen or transfers.
Calhoun has about 15 players ready to go. Many have been participating in summer leagues in Hartford. One of them is Brad Landry, who spent the last two years at Choate Rosemary Hall, a prep school in Connecticut. He was thinking of going to Brandeis, outside Boston, until he, like Witecy, heard the news about Calhoun.
“Like any other 19-year-old in Connecticut, I was in shock,” said Landry, who committed the first time he toured St. Joseph with his parents and met Calhoun and his longtime lieutenant, Glen Miller, who will be the team’s assistant. “Who wouldn’t want to learn from one of the greatest of all time?”
Two of Calhoun’s recruits are from the New York City area. Another is from Puerto Rico. Landry and Jake Sullivan, another new player at St. Joseph, captained Choate Rosemary Hall to a state scholastic title. Another new St. Joseph player, DelShaun Jackson, was named a high school player of the year by The Hartford Courant.
“The kids coming here want to be good, just like the kids at UConn,” Calhoun said. “It’s not going to be an intramural sport. They want to be successful.”
The Blue Jays have not had a practice yet, but they are shaping up to be one of the more publicized and scrutinized Division III teams in NCAA history. The flagship radio station for UConn basketball is negotiating to broadcast St. Joseph home games. ESPN is considering a documentary, and some home games may be streamed live.
The interest is so strong that Calhoun envisions having a subvarsity team, which will play primarily against local prep schools. He also envisions moving some home games down Asylum Avenue to the state armory. He has lined up former UConn stars Kemba Walker and Ray Allen to speak to the team. The schedule calls for a visit to Florida for a tournament in December. The groundbreaking for a new athletic facility is scheduled for the spring.
It may not be Division I, but the overpowering presence of Calhoun, who won 873 games at Northeastern and Connecticut, certainly gives it a D-I feel. The first practice is Oct. 15, and there are even plans for a Midnight Madness session. Jim Calhoun is back.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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