Mike Hopkins is making the biggest decision of his professional career. He’s gotta be careful. If he pays too much attention to all those pesky -isms and -ologies of thought, he’ll be so dizzy with contradictions that he can’t move forward.

Rationalism tells Hopkins he’d be crazy not to take a head coaching job at St. Bonaventure – he’d receive a bigger paycheck and embark on a bigger challenge. Nihilism tells Hopkins that it doesn’t matter what he does – he could get away with declining the job right now and never have to explain himself. And get this … there are plenty more options, plenty more -isms. Utilitarianism. Determinism. Existentialism.

One decision, and suddenly a century of philosophers are yelling.

Thirty-four years of life, and eight as an assistant basketball coach at Syracuse University, have warned Hopkins that it’s all a crock. He’ll do what he feels like. He’ll keep it so simple, so clear, so free of debate that whatever step he takes will move him forward.

Feelings – not philosophies – should guide him, because they always have. There’s no great academic list that tells him when to push his players, when to yell at them and when to put an arm around them.

Months earlier, as the Orangemen paraded toward a national championship, he’d conclude practice sessions by cursing at guard Gerry McNamara for making nine three-pointers in a row when it should have been 10. He’d jump into three-on-three guard drills and set the hardest picks of anyone. He’d yell at freshman Billy Edelin one day; he’d encourage him the next. No great reason, really. These things just [ITALICS] felt [ITALICS] right.

So watch Mike Hopkins now.

He’s checking his watch. It’s April 26, 2003. Nearly midnight. He’s at a charity gala with Jim Boeheim, but he ought to be going now. He’s tired and pale. He weighs 179 pounds – 20 pounds lighter than at the start of basketball season. ‘Emaciated,’ he calls it.

He’ll sleep a few hours, then leave the house early the next morning. See, Hopkins wants this to be perfect. His appointment in the St. Bonaventure athletic department begins at 9 a.m. Hopkins leaves at 5.

His car lights draw a line down I-90, and he arrives for his first-ever head coaching interview. He’s there six years early.

Age 40. That’s when Hopkins had always planned to have his own head coaching job. In the meantime, he thought, he’d spend a few more years learning from head coach Jim Boeheim and longtime assistant Bernie Fine, and then, he wouldn’t just be qualified – he’d be overqualified. And finally, leaving Syracuse would feel right.

‘But when you’re coming along,’ Hopkins says, ‘you want things now. You see other guys getting things and you think, God, it could have been me – I’ve done better stuff than he has. You think of these things. You want things now.’

Good news: Hopkins can take the job now if he really wants it. St. Bonaventure has looked at every available basketball mind in the country, and Hopkins seems the best choice. He’s the first person to interview for the job. The Bonnies have a good feeling about him.

Bad news: St. Bonaventure is stuck in a world of trouble. It was uncovered that team officials knew one of their players was ineligible for the 2002-03 season, but they allowed him to compete anyway. The coach lost his job. So did the university president. Soon, NCAA penalties will level the program into nothing, which is to assume that a team with a 1-15 league record is something to begin with.

Hopkins is weighing the two sides. He’s balancing reality against expectations, the relationships he’d sever against the relationships he’d create. He’s looking for a feeling.

He assures himself. ‘I know basketball. I know kids. I know how to recruit.’

He questions himself. ‘Now, can I take that to being the head guy, where I make all the calls? Young coaches, we think we can win anywhere. We think, I’m going to turn this program around.’

Soon, Hopkins is talking to the most important people on campus. He’s picturing his 2-year-old son someday wearing brown sweaters on school picture day. He’s wondering if his wife, Tricia, could leave her job in the SU alumni services department. He’s even thinking about day cares – because with another child on the way, his growing family will need these sorts of things.

‘Where do I want to live?’ Hopkins is wondering. ‘Where do I want to put my family? That’s where it comes into a feel.’

Hopkins wants to come away from St. Bonaventure loving it. He doesn’t.

Right now, St. Bonaventure is somebody else’s mess. With one handshake and one press conference, it’s his mess. Are you kidding me, he’d depart a national championship program for this? And what about leaving Jim Boeheim? Boeheim’s been there beside Hopkins for every game he’s played in or coached since 1989, when a rail-thin California kid came to SU as a freshman.

And how does Hopkins handle the questions that he couldn’t answer? Late in 2002, blue-chip recruit Terrence Roberts fell in love with Hopkins. Roberts signed with SU. So what’s Hopkins to do when Roberts’ mother calls and asks, ‘Coach, you ain’t leaving, are ya?’

Tricia calls as Hopkins is driving back home. She’s excited. She’s asking him how things went, and he tells her. Leaving SU just doesn’t feel right.

Soon, Hopkins is calling St. Bonaventure and taking his name out of the running. He’s back at his desk on the second floor of Manley Field House, sitting before a mess of Post-it notes and paperwork and scouting reports. He’s telling the players he recruited to Syracuse that he’ll still be around, and when they return for the fall semester, he’s back running individual and small-group workouts. Some are surprised to see him. They wonder why he passed on the bigger job. Hopkins tries his best to answer.

‘I want to have that special feeling about a head coaching job,’ he says. ‘And when I take it, I want to tear the world apart.’

Chico Harlan is a staff writer for The Daily Orange, where his columns appear each Tuesday. E-mail him at apharlan@syr.edu.

Published on September 1, 2003 at 12:00 pm