Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 9, 1991 TAG: 9104090078
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bill Brill
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The next bright, young, great coach who might have been out there and willing to come to Hokieville never was considered. When Dave Braine considers his next address, it will not be Las Vegas. The Tech athletic director is not a gambler.
Virginia has become a haven for 50-ish basketball coaches with fancy resumes. The hiring of Lefty Driesell at James Madison, Sonny Smith at VCU and Tom Young at Old Dominion has been, at best, a mixed bag.
Braine wasn't willing to take any risks, and in Foster, 55, with 24 years as a successful head coach at four schools, he isn't.
That speaks volumes to the depths that Tech basketball has plunged. Foster, known as Clem Foster when the other Bill Foster was at Duke, has a good track record. He wins right away - at Shorter College in Georgia; at UNC Charlotte, where he gave birth to a Division I program; and at Clemson, where he served for nine years.
At Miami, where he worked six years after leaving the ACC, Foster was 14-14 in resurrecting a program that had been dormant 14 years. "We won too many games right away," he said Monday at his Tech inaugural address. "That raised the expectations too high the next season."
Foster has had just three losing seasons, he's the biggest winner at those first three schools and he is, it was made abundantly clear by Braine, just what Tech needs - a quick fix.
"We needed a motivator," Braine said. "We needed to get the student body, the alumni and the fans back. We need to get those people back."
Thank you very much, Frankie Allen.
If there are any questions about Foster, it is why he would leave Charlotte after 22-4 and 23-3 records (the lure of the ACC), why he would depart Clemson after nine seasons for a school that didn't even have a team or a home court (mucho big bucks), and why he left Miami after building a strong foundation ("We won 14 games the first year and sold 1,000 less season tickets the next year. I was thin-skinned about the attendance.")
There is nothing in Foster's biography to conclude he will not win immediately at Tech. Whether he stays beyond the four years of the contract, at which time he will be 59, nobody knows. But Braine clearly figures that is a better gamble, and even if Foster retires then, the Hokies will be well off.
"I'm going to do a good job; I'm going to make Braine look good," Foster said. You can assume that he will and that is important.
Foster is financially independent. His daughters, who live in Charlotte and Chapel Hill, N.C., are grown. He can afford not to work, and he worked only 40-45 days last year (by his own count) after the countless hours of 24 years in the coaching business.
"It's tough when you win," Foster said. "It's impossible when you lose."
But he had known nothing else, and how many days can a guy play golf or tennis, anyway? One-somes aren't much fun, what with everybody else your age at work.
So Foster decided he wanted to coach again. He explained his previous moves by saying, "I'm a gut-feeling, timing guy. I was ready for a change. I can't explain it."
He is at Tech because he missed coaching on Oct. 15, when practice starts, because of his record, and because one of his best friends is Terry Holland. Guess who Braine called when he determined Allen was a goner?
Holland is another guy who has had second thoughts about his decision to leave Virginia for the AD's chair at out-of-the-spotlight Davidson. "We've talked a lot about it," Foster said. "Some days he wonders. I'll guarantee you we'll see a lot of each other in the next year."
Foster gave Clemson the best teams it ever had, competitive in the ACC, but he was 39-48 over the last three years. He was not mourned when he departed. The same situation exists now with Cliff Ellis, who won the ACC regular-season title in '90 and finished last in '91. How soon they forget.
Foster said his brother was a missionary for 26 years in Africa, Spain and Germany. Perhaps that runs in the family.
"The year off was good," he said. "I needed a change of scenery at both places [Miami and Clemson]."
But - and this is critical for the Hokies - "I'm not using Virginia Tech as a steppingstone."
Foster is, Braine said in his introduction, "the best coach for Virginia Tech at this time."
by CNB