Our coach has made his move, unfortunately
right in the heart of a critical recruiting season. Hey, these
things happen and we have to move on. Best of luck to Mr.
Montgomery and his family.
While we wait for breaking news on the
search for a replacement, let’s take a quick look back at
the last time we experienced a changing of the guard and the
recruiting situation we faced at the time. How did things stand
when Tom Davis took off for the University of Iowa in the spring
1986, setting the stage for the 18-year “Mike Montgomery Era”
at Stanford?
Dr. Tom Davis resigned on April 6, 1986
after four years of promising progress down on The Farm. Despite
clearly raising the level of Stanford’s competitiveness and
making Maples Pavilion a far less pleasant experience for
visiting opponents, Davis managed just a single winning season,
publicly citing the difficulty of recruiting with Stanford’s
stringent academic requirements. Davis had been trying hard to
make a major breakthough with Stanford admissions, to push the
edge of the envelope. Many speculated that the failure to gain
admission for highly-touted prospect Chris Munk, a 6’9”
225-pound banger with an NBA body from nearby Riordan High School
in San Francisco, may have been the proverbial straw that broke
Davis' back. The overrated Munk, whose SAT was 8-something in the
pre-centering days, ended up at USC, produced a decent if
unspectacular career with the Trojans and eventually had a cup of
coffee with the NBA’s Utah Jazz in 1990-91. Yes, Davis
whined about admissions, but the reality was that he just wanted
to win, and win frequently. He was also offered a doubling of his
salary, a gorgeous new facility former Iowa coach Lute Olson had
managed to get built, and an existing group of Hawkeye players
with top-five potential. Tom Davis’ Stanford career mark of
58-59 may have seemed decent enough for the Cardinal hoops
program of the mid-1980s, but below the surface was a very
disappointing (and hugely frustrating) Pac-10 conference record
of just 25-47. Ouch. Time to take off.
For any Booties unaware, “Dr. Tom”
(yes, he actually did have a doctorate from Maryland) left for
less challenging pastures and eventually become the winningest
coach in Iowa basketball history. At first, it seemed he had made
a move of genius. He was named the Big Ten Coach of the Year and
the AP National Coach of the Year in his very first year in Iowa
City in 1987-88. His first Hawkeyes team won 30 games that year,
starting the season an amazing 18-0 and briefly holding a #1
ranking in the polls! Davis’ teams went an impressive
269-140 from 1987-99. Unable to bring home a championship, the
good doctor got pushed out in rather indelicate fashion in 1999
despite nine NCAA tournament appearances in thirteen years. Not
one to be “put out to pasture” before his time, Davis
just completed his first season as head coach with the Drake
University Bulldogs in Des Moines (Iowa) and is faring quite well,
finishing third in the voting for the Coach of the Year in the
Missouri Valley Conference this year, despite having a very young
team and losing his best player to injury.
At the time of Davis’ resignation in
early April of 1986, Stanford Basketball had just one recruit for
the Class of 1990 that the staff had actually signed to a Letter
of Intent. Sweet-shooting 6’9” power forward Stuart
Thomas was considered by some recruiting services to be a
“Top 100” talent from highly-regarded Mater Dei High School in Southern California. Thomas had signed with Stanford in
November of 1985, during what was considered at the time the
“early signing period” (My, how things have changed!)
All three of the other members of the 1986 class would ink their
Stanford LOIs in late April and May after the new coaching
staff was announced.
A fairly quick search it was. About three
weeks after Davis bailed, Stanford Athletic Director Andy Geiger,
current AD “Dr. Ted” Leland’s immediate
predecessor, named 39-year old Mike Montgomery as the Cardinal
Basketball’s 15th head coach on April 25th.
Geiger counted on Mike’s competitiveness and tenacity,
stating at the time that he was “absolutely delighted that
[Montgomery] has accepted the challenge of coaching at Stanford.”
“The challenge of coaching at Stanford”. Yes, that is
the way it was thought of at the time. Is it still the case? Is
it is challenging to deal with kids who study, stay out of
trouble, usually stay four years, and graduate?
Montgomery arrived from Montana having gone
154-77 and made two NIT appearances in eight seasons with the
Grizzlies. His teams had won 20 games in each of the previous
four seasons. His decision to come to Stanford was not difficult
to understand. Montgomery was a young up-and-comer. The program
had some momentum. Mike and Sarah’s two toddlers, John (now
playing hoops at Loyola Marymount) and Anne (playing volleyball
for USC), were all of three years old and one year old
respectively. Montgomery was a California native with
pre-existing ties to the Bay Area. His brother Dick Montgomery
was the volleyball coach at San Jose State who had a very
respectable 191 wins in nine seasons with the Spikin’
Spartans.
The Cardinal’s 1986 basketball
recruiting class eventually consisted of Thomas, 6’4”
Southern California point guard Oliver Cunningham (now
hunting down hard core parole-violatin’ drug dealers as
supervisor of the Oakland Police Department’s Police &
Corrections Team), 6’9” forward Sean Murphy (a
Mississippi kid from whom we never heard again), and an awkward,
gangly 6’7” small forward from Austin, TX named Deshon
“Freaky D” Wingate. Wingate would start slowly, but
surprise people by developing nicely into a solid player, becoming
among other things the school’s first consistent slam
dunking finisher of alley-oops (significantly pre-dating Brent
Williams, Mark Seaton, Justin Davis, Josh Childress, etc.)
Let’s hope the Cardinal hoops class of
1986 is not indicative of the nature of “transition classes”.
Only Wingate would have a meaningful impact on the Cardinal
basketball program. Thomas sulked over PT and bolted to hoop it
up at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo before coming back to campus
intending to graduate. He got himself in big trouble (no comment)
and was expelled from school. Cunningham got impatient riding
pine behind two upperclassmen, starting guard Terry Taylor and
back-up Scott Meinert. “Ollie” surrendered his
scholarship after just two years to pay his own way through the
rest of his Stanford studies. Too bad, he likely would have
started ahead of John Patrick in 1989-90 and 1990-91. Patrick
ended up teaming with Wingate, Kenny Amman, Andrew Vlahov and Adam Keefe to lead the Cardinal to an NIT championship in 1991.
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