Boston Ball

I saw this book a few months ago on a list that somebody compiled about the best upcoming sports books and when I saw it, I immediately was intrigued and threw it in my Amazon Wishlist. I use that Wishlist to keep track of books I want to read. Right now, I have 23 books on it.

I had no clue that those hall of fame coaches, started there coaching careers in Boston. Jim Calhoun at Northeastern, Rick Pitino at Boston College, and Gary Williams at Boston University. All of them were extremely successful in Boston, but they are probably more known for their coaching careers at Uconn, Kentucky, and Maryland.

Not only does this book dive into a brief biography of all three, but it also provides a lot of detail on the seasons, games, and the recruitment of players. I was a bit overwhelmed with some of the details and found myself skipping ahead in the book to see how much longer I had in that chapter. But overall, I enjoyed it.

While most basketball fans think of the NBA’s Boston Celtics when one refers to Boston as a “basketball town”, that wouldn’t tell the complete story. In the 1970’s and early 1980’s there were three colleges in Boston – Northeastern, Boston College and Boston University – that were also putting together very good basketball programs. The coaches at these schools were Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams and Rick Pitino respectively. All three of these coaches are well-known for their success elsewhere, but their time in Boston was equally impressive. Those coaches and their Boston programs are highlighted in this excellent book by Clayton Trutor.

Through hundreds of interviews with various people involved in those programs, including many former players, a reader will learn much about how all three coaches not only plied their trade at these smaller schools (save for Williams at Boston College since they became part of the Big East), but also had success when they were not expected to do so. It was an even bigger hurdle to gain recognition and draw fans for Pitino, as Boston University is considered more of a hockey school than basketball and often had to cede the arena to the hockey team. This didn’t detour Pitino, nor did a similar situation at Northeaster give Calhoun many problems. All three coaches took over their programs under less than ideal circumstances but got their teams multiple NCAA tournament invitations.

There are other aspects of the book that while keeping the central theme of the basketball programs, the reader will enjoy. There are some history lessons about the city of Boston at that time, a nice (?) description of the conditions of the Boston Garden are included and plenty of game action for all three schools. As a lover of the college game during that era, I found this book to be full of very interesting stories and information on the earlier careers of three legendary coaches and the programs they led to the “Big Dance”

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.