Jankovich Experience Guides Commodores By Jonathan Drew 11/29/01

If you catch Associate Head Coach Tim Jankovich in a rare moment between practices, scouting, and game preparation, ask him about hoops.

He has stories about battling Alvin Robertson in the NCAA tournament, turning around ailing programs as a head coach, and learning the game from Hall of Fame nominee Jack Hartman at Kansas State.

However, his favorite basketball topic is this year's Commodore team, a squad that has nine freshmen and sophomores and a lot of potential.

Jankovich said that on-court success requires long hours of hard work from the players and the coaching staff. But he said that the personalities of this year's team make his job a pleasure.

"When you enjoy your team, you wake up with a lot of enthusiasm," he said. "And we really enjoy this team, so I think that we're all waking up with a lot of energy, looking forward to practice each day."

Defense is a top priority each day in practice, with man to man as the staple setup. Players endure grueling routines such as "the charge drill" or "the superman close-out" to stoke their intensity. In "superman," a defender must guard three players one-on-one until he gets three stops. If a ball handler scores, the defender must start over.

"We're trying to emphasize if you're not good on defense it's really hard to win," he said. "Offense can come and go. Sometimes you shoot it well, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you're out of rhythm, but defense is something that can be done pretty much every night. If you have the security that you can stop people, then it's easier to score at the other end. That's our big emphasis."

The team also practices competitive game scenarios. As the season progresses, the team spends less time learning plays and more time with these simulated dogfights. The losers run sprints.

"We have a lot of competitive situations in practice where running is kind of the stimulus," he said. "Despite how much they run on the court, basketball players hate to run sprints. So when sprints are on the line, the intensity goes up and usually see more toughness and more competitiveness."

As a player, Jankovich developed his own competitive streak as a three year starter for Jack Hartman's Kansas State club, making it to the Elite 8 and the Sweet 16 his final two years.

As a senior, he faced future NBA standouts Darrel Walker, Alvin Robertson and Scott Hastings in an NCAA tournament match-up in Dallas. Jankovich earned his share of hard knocks from the Hogs as his team squeaked by to advance.

"They full court pressed the entire time, and they switched off Walker and Robertson on me, just pressuring the heck out of us," he said. "That was probably the toughest game I ever played in and the most satisfying because we were able to win. They were the best defensive team I ever played against."

Jankovich also earned Academic All-America honors three times, compiling a gpa of 3.63. He credits that success to taking good notes and managing his time.

As a coach, he turns his study skills towards film of his team and opponents. He watches film on a big screen in his office, with videocassettes piled in stacks on his desk. He admits that his approach to coaching is somewhat cerebral.

"I think I'm very analytical by nature," he said. "I know that and it pretty much translates to all areas of my life. I think it carries over to basketball."

For instructional purposes, the team usually watches more film of themselves than they do of opponents, he said.

Game preparation is a daily routine. "Game preparation starts after practice," he said. "We watch pieces of film on that practice."

But film only makes up a small part of Jankovich's job. He spends time with players, whether it's helping them to perfect footwork or grabbing a bite to eat with them. His administrative duties fill some mornings with phone calls and paper work. And during the off-season, recruiting keeps him on the road.

"Sometimes the summer is the hardest," he said. "There are times when you're recruiting 21 straight days without getting home. Those are long hours. You might put in 12-hour days for three weeks straight...I can tell you that coaches pay a pretty high price in terms of the work hours. But on the other side of that, a lot of times it doesn't feel like work."

Jankovich has worked as a coach for nearly 20 years. He boasts an impressive basketball pedigree. He worked with Eddie Sutton at Oklahoma State in '92-'93 and Boyd Grant at Colorado State from '87 to '91. He spent two years on the bench with his former coach Jack Hartman.

Such a wealth of experience can be a blessing and a burden at the same time, he said.

"In coaching, the more you know, the more you realize you don't know," he said "I've spent so much time, and I've coached with all these people. I've learned so much that it gets harder because you have so much more knowledge of what is out there."

Jankovich received his first coaching job in 1983 from Lon Kruger at Texas Pan American. At the time Jankovich was a stockbroker in Beverly Hills with Cantor Fitzgerald. He said he liked the job, but when he found himself reading the sports page more often than the Wall Street Journal, he had to leave.

"I knew something was wrong, so I called Coach Kruger who was at Pan American at the time," he said. "I told him I wanted to get into coaching. So I left a tremendous paying job to go live in a dorm, eat fruit loops, and make 100 dollars a month on top of room and board."

Jankovich said that he soon knew he had made the right decision, and he appreciates the difficulty of breaking into the coaching world.

"When I got out of basketball, I missed it so much," he said. "I said 'Well, I'm not going to play for the Lakers,' so I got into coaching. But it's hard to go from the real world to the athletic world. I got lucky."

Recently, Jankovich spent six years as the head coach of the University of North Texas and Hutchison Junior college.

When Jankovich arrived at University of North Texas in 1993, the team owned a previous season 5-22 record and ranked 287 out of 302 Division-I teams, he said. He elevated them to their conference tournament championship for the next two years, missing the NCAA tournament by a game each time. At Hutchison Junior College, Jankovich's teams went 50-14.

Jankovich's long-time friend Kevin Stallings called him about working at Vanderbilt, and Jankovich jumped at the chance. The two work well together and complement each other's coaching styles.

"Kevin and I have been close friends for years and years," he said. "I can always talk to him and I know he'll see what I was talking about whether he agreed or not."