Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 18, 1990 TAG: 9003182449
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk Sportswriter
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Long
Robinson knew nothing about Lawrence, Kan., but it was history and not geography that intrigued him. He knew Lawrence may not have been a big city, but it was the bigtime.
Like Robinson, you may have heard of some of the coaches with connections to Kansas basketball - James Naismith, Phog Allen, Adolph Rupp, Dean Smith, Larry Brown.
"Kansas has one of those programs where, when you have an opportunity to go there, you don't think twice," Robinson said. "I didn't even go to Lawrence to look around. When I was offered the job, I took it."
Fourteen years after he graduated from William Fleming High in his hometown, the native of Roanoke will be on the Jayhawks' bench today when fifth-ranked Kansas (30-4) plays UCLA (21-10) at the Omni in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
He's one of coach Roy Williams' two full-time assistants. His hiring in the summer of 1988 by Williams, the former Smith aide at North Carolina, was improbable. It turns out Robinson knew the right guy, and someone else knew him.
Williams is from Asheville, N.C. His top assistant at Kansas, Jerry Green, was the head coach at North Carolina-Asheville for nine years. Robinson was an assistant at his alma mater, Radford, when he met Green.
"Jerry got me involved," Robinson said. "He mentioned me to Roy, and I called Roy and we talked several times."
It wasn't as easy as it sounds. Robinson was an assistant at Cornell at the time, the Big Red coming off an Ivy League title and a 1988 NCAA Tournament trip. Williams, having taken the Kansas job in mid-summer, was back in Chapel Hill preparing to move.
"I went to Chapel Hill to meet Roy," Robinson said. "We talked on the phone the next day and he offered me the job. He was on the road, so he told me where to call him six hours later.
"I did, and I took the job. I remember I hung up the phone and threw my hands up in the air and started cheering."
Williams hired Robinson as a part-time assistant, with the promise that the Jayhawks' three top assistants would rotate among the two full-time positions and one part-time slot on an annual basis.
"Jerry Green was impressed with Steve, and Steve came and talked to me, and I think I'm a pretty good judge of character," Williams said. "We talked for about 90 minutes, and I got the feeling that here was a man who was willing to work hard, a guy with a lot of character and a lot on the ball."
Williams also asked his former volunteer aide with the North Carolina junior varsity about Robinson. Al Walker of Colorado College had worked on Mike Dement's Cornell staff with Robinson.
"Al said Steve was the kind of guy I wanted on my staff," Williams said. "That clinched it."
Robinson certainly had paid his basketball dues. After Fleming, he played at Ferrum and, at Radford, he was one of the Highlanders' first three grant-in-aid players. After graduation, he coached at Lincoln (Pa.) University, back in Virginia at Albemarle High, then at his alma mater with one of his former coaches, Joe Davis.
"I knew I wanted to be a coach when I played for Charlie Van Lear at Fleming," Robinson said. "There was just an aura about being a coach, the extra relationship and closeness you could have with people on top of teaching them.
"Charlie was my role model in coaching. I played for Grant Hudson and Joe Davis at Ferrum and Radford. I learned from all of them how to handle situations and work with people.
"I didn't just play for good coaches. I played for good people. My parents taught me to be honest and to associate with good people. The most important thing in this job is to care for people as people first and basketball players second. The programs I've been in, that's how it's been."
Robinson, 32, said he took the Kansas job for simple reasons. "It was a chance tp move up in the ranks of college basketball, and it's a place from where I can hopefully become a head coach," he said.
"I didn't see negatives. I knew when Roy hired me that Kansas was under investigation by the NCAA, that there would likely be probation (last season, the Jayhawks were prohibited from playing in the NCAA Tournament). But it was a good situation, in a good place, with good people."
Robinson and his wife, Lisa, have two children. This is his eighth year of college coaching, and he recalls talking about becoming a head coach within 10 years. But now that he's experienced success near the top of Division I, "I'd have no problem staying with Roy for 15 years, because I want to be as prepared as possible when I go out to be a head coach," he said.
"What's going to be important to me, when I reach that step, is going someplace where there's a chance of winning. If there's not that chance, then I wouldn't want it - because there aren't many chances to become a head coach."
After being at Radford and Cornell, Robinson said he finds the differences at Kansas are many. "The recruiting is even more intensified; there's so much media attention; there's more pressure from the alumni," he said, "but the big thing you notice is the 15,000 Jayhawk fans screaming at every game [in Allen Fieldhouse]."
Robinson coordinates on- and off-campus recruiting, monitors the Jayhawks' academic work and interjects his opinion into Kansas workouts with Williams' other aides.
"A lot of coaches do get labeled," Williams said. "My goal for Steve is that he not be labeled. To be really honest with you, there especially are too many black coaches who get labeled as great recruiters, when if given the chance, they could be great coaches, period.
"Our coaches work at all parts of the system. Our assistants are on the road two years and then a part-timer for one. That gives you a chance to reintroduce yourself to your family, too.
"When you label people, it limits them, definitely. Steve is a young guy who knows basketball and knows this business. I didn't know him before, but I do know now I hired the right guy."
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