By Mike Kahn
CBS SportsLine Executive Editor
Nov. 3, 1998

SEATTLE -- He is 41 years old, a disciple of both Mike Krzyzewski and Bobby Knight, and the coach of the team that came within one shot of upsetting UConn in the 1998 Sweet Sixteen round of the NCAA Tournament, but sitting down with University of Washington coach Bob Bender was like hearing Emilio Estevez talk about coaching The Mighty Ducks.

Bender

Bob Bender has put Washington back on the hoops map. (Allsport)

even looks like Estevez, despite a few flecks of gray at the temples, and carries himself with that same tank full of boundless enthusiasm that led him to a school known more for football than basketball.

Why Washington for a Duke grad and native of Bloomington, Ill., who returned home to coach Illinois State?

"It's a great place to live," Bender said. "And if you can combine what you want to do and living where you want to be, it's the best of both worlds."

BENDER'S DECISION WAS A LOT MORE complicated than that, of course. An assistant for Coach K from 1983-89, he got his first coaching job at Illinois State, taking the team to the NCAA Tournament in his rookie year. However, coaching a Missouri Valley Conference team is like treading water.

"My first trip to Seattle was in 1984 and I liked it more every time I came out here," Bender said. "I knew about the tradition Tex Winter and Marv Harshman built and saw what happened after they left. So when I left for Illinois State, I told Mike (Krzyzewski) that Washington was the one place I'd like him to make a call on my behalf if it ever came open. You don't want to go to the well too many times with your guy, but the one place I did want was Washington."

The program had essentially fallen apart under Andy Russo, and got worse with Lynn Nance, who was fired after failing to surpass .500 in any of his four seasons. They were opposite personalities. Russo was the schmoozer, who could recruit but not coach. Nance was a basketball wizard with the personality of a lamppost.

Bender strolled in the door with the concept of doing both. He also knew this had become a football school more than ever before and the prospect of recruiting to antiquated 7,900-seat Hec Edmundson Pavilion didn't help either.

"I certainly was aware that the national perception of Washington was this great history and tradition of football," Bender said. "I felt you can have that same success because it's already proven to be a great football school. Billy Tubbs did that at Oklahoma, Tom Penders did the same thing at Oklahoma and Lon Kruger took a great football school in Florida and built that into a great basketball program.

"There are plenty of examples. In the early years, it was a big help because the tradition of the football program at least got us in the door of some recruits who otherwise probably wouldn't have even listened. It's not like nobody ever heard of us. We talked about what we were going to do in basketball, but the reference point was always the football program. I wasn't going to kid myself or anybody else."

THE PLAYERS DIDN'T COME IN DROVES, THAT'S for sure. And success was hardly instantaneous. After all, he started from scratch. They were 5-22, then 10-17. This was hardly the kind of basketball experience that was typical for Bender -- as a player or a coach.

The 1975 high school Player of the Year in Illinois, he played a year for Knight at Indiana before heading to Duke and Bill Foster's Blue Devils. As a freshman, he played little for the 1976 NCAA champion Hoosiers, one of the great teams of all-time. Two years later, he was in the championship game with Duke. And as a starting point guard his senior year, the Blue Devils made it to the Elite Eight.

Drafted by the San Diego Clippers in the sixth round in 1980, Bender's pro career never really took off. Utilizing the master's degree he earned from Duke during his fifth year, he returned to his alma mater as assistant director of the Iron Dukes, the school's fund-raisers until 1983. Krzyzewski then hired Bender as an assistant. The entire approach to starting a program came from his experience of his father's structure as a high school coach in Bloomington, his season with Knight and Bill Foster's smooth approach -- then Krzyzewski's attitude toward life and basketball.

"Recruiting was all based on the character of the kids and we had to identify players who wanted to come in and play right away," Bender said. "Now that sounds simple, since you'd think all kids want to play right away. But there are two different types ... the ones who want to be at a program with great winning tradition and sustaining that success; and the ones who like the idea of building something and putting their own mark on it."

Slowly it came. The Huskies were 16-12 in 1996, went to the NIT and were 17-11, with an NIT bid in 1997 as well, then lost senior leaders Mark Sanford and Jamie Booker. The former led the team in scoring and rebounding, the latter was third in scoring, and first in assists and steals. There was no telling what would happen to that squad without their two leaders.

But with 7-footers Todd MacCulloch and Patrick Femerling, they were intimidating inside. Donald Watts became a leader at guard with Dean Luton. The team came together rapidly and blew through two rounds of the NCAA Tournament, upsetting Xavier, ousting Richmond, then losing on a fadeaway shot at the buzzer by UConn's Richard Hamilton in the Sweet 16.

"There were two ways it could have gone with us losing that way, and everything I've seen so far in practice is the guys used that to make them believe in what we're doing here," Bender said. "We've taken small steps, but they've all been steps forward. When we lost Mark and Jamie and responded the way we did, it told me the framework of the program is going in the right direction.

"Now this year's team has to define its own personality."

ALTHOUGH FEMERLING DECIDED TO return to his native Germany, all the other significant players are back. Red-shirt transfer Greg Clark could be an impact player as the athlete next to the towering MacCulloch. And ironically, there are the sons of four former Seattle SuperSonics who could help define this team, beginning with Watts, whose father was a star on the 1978 NBA championship team, along with Fred Brown, whose son Bryan is a freshman as well. Add Lonnie Shelton's son Marlon and Michael Westphal, whose dad Paul is now the Sonics coach, and there's an interesting flavor on this team.

More important, they won't sneak up on anybody anymore. A 20-10 team with a Sweet Sixteen pedigree in the Pac-10 has expectations. That's a good thing in Bender's eyes, if only because he isn't sure how good they are. The one problem Bender didn't anticipate was how rapidly the Pac-10 would improve along with the Huskies. The lean years are long gone in the wake of recent titles for UCLA and Arizona. Stanford is expected to make a run at the title this year.

"It's a big challenge for us, and the big advantage we have is experience," Bender said. "There's a competitiveness in practice we've never had here before. We've concentrated our efforts and focus on the Pac-10. We've never finished higher than fourth and that's our goal. If we do that, come March, we'll be a basketball program in pretty good shape."

More important, they are playing their final season in old Hec Ed, and playing next season in Key Arena home of the Sonics next year. As for the source of financing the gutting and refurbishing of the old building . . . well, it seems all the football season ticket holders have been assessed $50, providing more than $3 million.

Turnabout is fair play.