Since March 27, 2007, Jim Boylen has asked for one thing.
Utah’s head coach has pleaded with players, coaches and fans since his first day on the hill to buy into a system, buy into a program and buy into a family.
In one of his first proclamations as the 14th head coach in Utah’s history, he was straight to the point.
“It’s how you do it, it’s the product you put out there,” said Boylen in his introductory speech.
All it took was 707 days.
“I never projected any amount of wins, just to build a program on a solid foundation,” he said, looking back on his own hiring.
There were 13,508 people who showed up to watch Utah win its first Mountain West Conference title since 2005.
As he typically does after every significant home win, Boylen addressed the crowd, but with a share of the championship in hand, this was different.
He grabbed the microphone. With his voice already hoarse, he let out a barely decipherable scream.
“Go Utes!”
Everyone in the arena knew exactly what he said. After all, Utah’s fans are well aware at this point that this guy bleeds emotion.
The selling point
Boylen, the 43-year-old Energizer battery, exudes enough energy to light up the Huntsman Center8212;or any arena for that matter.
He had coached four of the NBA’s top 50 players of all time, and helped the Houston Rockets win back-to-back NBA championships. He was also legendary coach Tom Izzo’s right-hand man at Michigan State.
But after taking the first head coaching job of his career, the coaching vet of 22 years was caught off guard.
“I learned a ton about myself in my first year here,” Boylen said, laughing. “I learned how passionate people are about their Runnin’ Utes.”
A selling point for Boylen and his wife, Christine, was the state of Utah and the overall reception and culture they experienced in visits. Boylen estimated he spent between 250 and 300 days of his time as an NBA assistant in Utah, on account of the NBA summer leagues that take place in Salt Lake City annually.
“I’d been up to Jeremy Ranch, I’d golfed here, I’d gone to church here,” Boylen said.
He was welcomed with open arms by the community, and his time at the U has been an electrified hit.
If you build it, they will come
The process was an arduous one, to say the least.
Before Boylen became a blip on the Utah map, the Runnin’ Utes had become synonymous with NCAA tournament success. Former coach Ray Giacoletti, who took Utah to the Sweet 16 in his first season as a coach, resigned a day before the final regular season conference game against BYU in 2007. Giacoletti went 25-34 in his last two years at the U.
The Utes were 11-18 a year before Boylen took the reigns that season, 6-10 in MWC play.
As Boylen stepped in, so did change.
“One thing was missing,” he said. “Competitiveness, grit, saying we’re going to go over there and we’re going to kick this guy’s ass.”
The first few months on the job were hectic.
Local kid Daniel Deane, a star forward from Judge Memorial Catholic High School and an off-and-on starter his freshman season, was released from the team.
He didn’t buy in.
In January 2008, promising swingman Stephen Weigh decided to leave school and head back to his native Australia in an attempt to play professionally.
Boylen kept the boat afloat.
“You have to re-prove it,” he said in reference to perseverance as a coach. “Last year was a very rewarding season for me.”
In the beginning, Deane didn’t appear to be the only one who would be handed a pink slip. Boylen mentioned that he didn’t think senior Shaun Green would “make it.”
“My first month here, I was as hard on him as anyone, ever,” Boylen said.
In his freshman year on the hill, Boylen received some prime advice from Utah’s director of athletic relations, Manny Hendrix.
“He told me to keep chopping wood, since the first day I got here,” Boylen said. “I had to let a couple guys go and had to change the culture a little bit. Just keep chopping wood, that tree will fall, he told me.”
More specifically, it crashed down.
Boylen asked his players to think of one another as brothers. The Utes responded to that call and managed to become instruments in that cultural change.
“(Boylen) just wanted to make me a tougher basketball player, a complete basketball player,” Green said. “I bought in. I wanted to change. I wanted to become a winner.”
Phase one complete.
Passion and emotion
The eccentric Boylen has used his vigorous hands-on approach to the delight of the community surrounding the U. He usually receives cheers as loud as any player introduced to the crowd.
The team down south even has a rapport with the guy.
Most recently, the Utes took the annual trip down to Provo and all five of BYU’s starters eventually made their way over to Boylen to talk.
“It’s more of a “Hey, how you doing?'” he said. “As I told him before the game, “You better strap it on today, Jonathan (Tavernari). We came down here to win.'”
The outgoing and cordial Boylen has rebuilt the once-prestigious program from the ground up. While attending Friday’s 5-A high school basketball state championships about “50 or so people” approached him and told him that whether they loved or hated the Utes, they admired and appreciated him.
“I love it,” he said.
And the state loves him8212;even the most die-hard of BYU fans have a hard time booing him.
These days, it’s hard to find anyone who has a bad thing to say about Boylen. His energy and demeanor are always running and he has been known as someone who instantly “makes smiles”8212;or at least that’s what could be overheard when a 70-something-year-old woman talked to her friends about Utah’s 68-49 win over TCU.
But the guy that has been involved in basketball for the past 30 years says he has “no fear or trepidation” when it comes to anything involving the game.
“You can’t,” Boylen said.
Rewind to March 1, 2008.
Boylen took his first trip north to Laramie, Wyo. After former senior Johnnie Bryant made a basket to bring the Utes within six with six seconds remaining, former Cowboy forward Joseph Taylor stormed down the court and threw down a meaningless dunk at the buzzer.
Boylen went ape.
The unwritten rule to dribble the clock out after a secured victory had been broken. As Boylen stormed off the court, Cowboy head coach Heath Schroyer met him. A heated exchange took place and Boylen’s fiery attitude was the talk of the U campus the next day.
“I try to get my team to always be competitive8212;to compete with passion and emotion,” Boylen said. “They’re going to follow me because I love to fight. That’s it.”
Although Boylen provides enough entertainment for the price of admission with his animated sideline antics alone, he admits it’s not always on the fly. This year’s heated run-ins include midcourt showdowns with Utah State’s Stew Morrill and most recently, Tuesday’s face-off with New Mexico’s Steve Alford.
“Some of the time, it’s premeditated,” Boylen said. “If the crowd is on top of one of my guys, I try to move the attention off of him and onto me.”
The three prongs
Boylen’s swagger has carried his team onto the national spectrum this season.
After last year’s 18-15 campaign, this year’s squad feeds off of its head coach, and it’s obviously working.
Utah’s 21-9 season, which included an eight-game winning streak in conference play, has impressed skeptics everywhere. A 30-point victory over No. 12 LSU and
a win against No. 14 Gonzaga has helped the NCAA tournament cause.
And it all comes back to buying into the platform that Boylen presented and an RPI ranking of No. 9 for dessert.
“We bought into what (Boylen) was trying to preach to us and we end up winning a championship, so we can’t complain,” Green said.
It’s those relationships that Boylen prides himself on.
“These guys gave me permission to be real with them,” Boylen said. “I was real from the start, told them what they had to do, what I thought they had to do and they did it, they tried.”
When he first arrived, Boylen mentioned Luke Nevill as a bona fide “introvert,” while Lawrence Borha had a high ceiling that wasn’t being reached.
“Coach Boylen’s a great coach, but most of all he’s a good guy,” said Borha, grinning. “He just talks to us. He’s there for us, unlike most people (who) are there just to coach. He’s not just here to coach, he’s here to be a part of something. Being a father figure, coach and friend to all of us.”
As he inherited an entire roster of Giacoletti’s recruits, he had to reach out and reel back in a couple of huge fish.
Tyler Kepkay and Carlon Brown re-opened their recruiting process after Giacoletti resigned and Boylen went fishing.
“I had to go back and get them,” he said. “They weren’t my guys but I made them my guys.”
Although the Utes are now virtual locks for the NCAA Tournament, no matter what happens in this week’s MWC Tournament, the emotional Boylen spreads the credit of the job he’s done to those around him8212;his wife, his two daughters, Ashlen and Layla, to his assistant coaches and onto Utah athletic director Chris Hill8212;the man who hired Boylen.
“He took a chance on me,” said a tearful Boylen.
He walked into the program 707 days ago, had one senior on his squad and lost two vital, talented players. He had a reclusive 7-foot-2-inch center with untapped potential to go alongside a slew of other talents that he wanted and needed to get to “buy in.”
Ownership, accountability and trust8212;Boylen’s three prongs that have reshaped the path of Runnin’ Utes basketball.
“We’ve trusted,” he said. “We’ve learned to trust and that’s what it’s all about.”
At the conclusion of his speech Saturday, Boylen screamed, “Thank God, the Runnin’ Utes are back!”
As he paced around the Huntsman Center hardwood, the nets were cut down from each hoop. Starry-eyed, he embraced everyone in sight. It was when his two adoring young daughters ran into his arms that the journey was completed. He lifted them into the air and told them, “Go Utes.”
“The tree fell,” he said.
With everyone having bought in.