Brennan prefers job in Vermont Coach considered Georgia post

In these days of can-you-top-this recruiting tales, the story of how coach Tom Brennan landed the kid that Vermont’s largest newspaper calls “the state’s basketball god” might be the most improbable of them all.

“He went to class in the morning, had lunch with the team and dinner with the coaches. Might have stuck around to watch practice, too,” Brennan recalled Sunday, “but I can’t swear to it.”

The kid’s name is Taylor Coppenrath, and if you don’t know it yet, tune in Thursday night when he and the 15th-seeded Catamounts are matched against No. 2 UConn and everybody’s All-American, Emeka Okafor. It might be the only chance the rest of America gets to see him.

“And isn’t that just our luck?” Brennan snorted. “One guy in the country can guard Taylor, and we drew the guy.”

Sixty-five teams were selected for the NCAA tournament Sunday, and you can count on both hands the programs that made the cut doing things the right way. Whatever the exact number, Vermont is the thumb.

Brennan has been there 18 years, despite winning just 14 games in his first three seasons, and still runs a clean, competitive program that people across the state can rally around. He relies on real students to portray athletes instead of the other way around, because he isn’t looking to go anywhere else.

The only time he even considered applying for another coaching job was last year, right after Jim Harrick’s messy exile from Georgia left the program in need of fumigation. Brennan played basketball there almost 25 years ago and was deeply embarrassed for his alma mater. Even so, the discussion with his wife, Lynn, lasted less than five minutes.

“We were at home looking out at Lake Champlain and I said, ‘We should check into this. It’s a lot of money and they need somebody to come in on a white horse. It just might be us.’ She didn’t even look up from whatever she was reading, just pointed at the window and said, ‘This is your home. These are your people.’

“The second I heard it, I knew she was right. I have no desire to coach where you have to deal with AAU guys and sneaker reps and all that,” Brennan said. “It’s not the game that’s passed me by, but the business of the game. Without my assistants, I’d be like Col. Potter (on the old TV series ‘Mash’), walking around all the time without a clue about what was really going on.

“So maybe it’s a blessing all this didn’t come to me until late in my career. Because the truth, I guess, is that I really like being on the periphery.”

The emergence of Coppenrath – who hails from nearby West Barnet, a town of 300 where locals exchange highlight videos of the games at the general store – has made it harder to remain there.

Last season was the first time Vermont qualified for the tournament, but after waiting 103 years to get in, the Catamounts were ousted by Arizona after just a few hours. The real shame was that after a cross-country trip straight out of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” Brennan and his kids didn’t reach the tournament site in Salt Lake City until 13 hours before tip-off. That was way too late for anybody to make a fuss over them, but time enough for top-seed Arizona to send the Catamounts packing without so much as a parting gift.

At the time, Brennan was funny and philosophical about their fate, as befits a man who already enjoyed the respect of almost everybody in Vermont and whose morning-drive radio show is one of the most popular in the state. Of course, he also knew he had Coppenrath and a strong supporting cast returning, and he figured the odyssey trip would be good preparation for this season.

It was – though not in the way Brennan imagined. Vermont opened it with a four-game, 13,000-mile road trip pinballing across the country and lost all four. Then the America East Conference schedule began in January, and the Cats promptly strung together 13 consecutive wins. But just as all the pieces were falling into place, Coppenrath broke a bone in his left wrist Feb. 16.

No one talked about a comeback until the Catamounts won their first two games in the conference tourney, and even then, the likelihood that he would even play in the final against Maine wasn’t a done deal until the rock-band Phish – a collection of former Vermont students who would qualify as the state’s musical gods – finished performing the national anthem.

All Coppenrath did was outscore the Black Bears 28-23 in the opening half, en route to 43 points total and a 72-53 Vermont win.

Maine coach John Giannini explained his decision not to double-team Coppenrath until the second half this way: “I just thought that he wouldn’t be 100 percent. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he can play even better; I wouldn’t put it past him.”

And then Giannini added, “You could not script this any better. I expect I’ll take my kids to see this as a Disney movie someday.”

However this tournament go-round ends, Brennan already figures he and the Catamounts have been playing with house money all along. On top of that, he started checking flight schedules Sunday night for the trip to play the Huskies in Buffalo, N.Y., and found a couple of non-stops.

“And if we have to,” he said, “we could walk there.”

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke}ap.org