Matt Steinmetz

Let’s get one thing out of the way … we’re not talking about Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson, who went to Purdue and played most of his pro career with the Milwaukee Bucks. Nope, we’re talking about Glenn Robinson, the all-time winningest coach in Division III men’s basketball history.

I was lucky enough to play for two coaches — Glenn Robinson at Franklin and Marshall and the late Lloyd Wolf at Holy Name — who combined to win almost 1,600 games. They were very different gentlemen, to say the least, but both could coach.

Coach Robinson didn’t drink, smoke or swear. Mr. Wolf did all three of those things.

Robinson won 967 games at F&M, and was there for more than 50 years. He was established when I got there in the early 1980’s and he was a legend by the time he was done in 2019. I could never say it then, but I can and do now: Glenn Robinson was a great coach.

Robinson was such a contradiction: He was flexible and rigid; he gave you freedom but he also gave you rules; he’d go over the top with tough love but could forgive and move on. To say Robinson loved Dean Smith, the former coach of North Carolina, would be an understatement.

Robinson went to Smith’s coaching camps in the summer, and employed the same “open offense” Smith employed for the Tar Heels. There’s never been a better offense created than “open” or “motion” or “flex” or the “Princeton” offense. I lump those all together because they’re based on the same thing: passing, spacing, movement, screening, cutting and ball movement.

Those offenses allow for creativity, they allow for going one-one-one, they allow for hand-offs and backdoors. You have all the freedom in the world … almost. Hell, we only had about three or four “plays” that I can remember. There are some rules, but they are usually few: Big men gotta get out of the post if they’re not getting the ball; most of the time a passer has to “screen away” or cut hard down middle; all five players should be able to handle the ball. Quite frankly, it’s the perfect blend of individual and team.

Robinson could be rigid, though, and two of his rules got to me. The first was “it’s always the passer’s fault.” That meant every turnover, every bobble and every bungle was the passer’s fault, and I was too often the passer.

The second one was: “One-man must get back on defense first.” The one-man was the point guard, which was always me. If any team ever got a fast-break, one-on-zero fastbreak, it was always, always, always my fault. I could have driven, gotten knocked on my ass under the basket without a call, sprained an ankle in the process, and Robinson still expected me to get back on defense first — and not Matt Bastian, the two-man!

If an opponent got a breakaway basket, it was the one-man’s fault. If the other team scored off a two-on-one, it was the shooting guard’s fault; a three-on-two was a small forward problem, and so on. There were no exceptions. There never were. Ever.

Guess what I think are two of the biggest things when it comes to successful basketball: Valuing the ball and getting back on defense.

Bobby Knight’s a horse’s ass. But we know that, of course. I knew it long before I ever met him and you always knew it, too.

I loved Bobby Knight growing up. Remember watching that undefeated Indiana team with Scott May, Quinn Buckner, Kent Benson, Bobby Wilkerson, Tom Abernethy — the first team that I can ever recall knowing a starting lineup. We knew Knight was a horse’s behind back then, but man were his teams well-coached.

He yelled and cursed at refs, which I hated, naturally, because my dad was one. He once threw a chair across the court mid-game because he was having a temper tantrum. He was also brutal on his players. Just all over them, all the time, and sometimes it got physical. Nevertheless, when I looked back into one of my old journals, back in 1978, I see that I once wrote on a piece of paper that I wanted to play for him.

But I was a child then, and over time, I did the Bible thing and “gave up my childish ways.” That meant looking at Knight as a guy, not some iconic coach.

No chance I’d ever play for Knight. I wasn’t good enough. But I did my thing, played Division, III, got into the basketball media business and began to continue my life of basketball, basketball and only basketball, professionally. Anyway, I’d always observed Knight from afar, but never met him — until 2003. I was covering the woeful Warriors back then and Knight attended one of their practices.

The Warriors head coach was Eric Musselman, and Knight had known Musselman’s father, Bill Musselman, who had coached at Minnesota. Knight was in his second year at Texas Tech and was only starting to burn his bridges there, I assume. The Warriors’ PR director asked a couple of us writers if we’d like to talk to Knight. Of course we did.

There were about three of us surrounding Knight as he leaned against a wall. One of my colleagues asked Knight a question that he completely ignored. Instead, Knight looked out onto the Warriors’ practice court and saw Phil Hubbard, an assistant coach.

“Let me tell you something,” Knight said, interrupting the questioner. “That guy right there … Phil Hubbard. He’s one of the five greatest players to ever come out of the Big Ten. That guy could play.”

“Who are the other four?” I asked.

“That’s none of your goddamn business,” Knight spat back. “Don’t worry about that. You don’t need to know that. All you need to know is Hubbard is one of the best motherfuckers who ever came out of the Big Ten.”

That’s it. That’s the story. Bobby Knight once made a dick out of me in fewer than five minutes. So there’s that.

Neil Christel could have been in the movie “Slapshot.” He could have been one of the Hanson brothers. When Christel played at Reading High in the mid-1970s, he wore “nerd glasses.” At least that’s how I remember him. Forty-five years later, I can’t say for sure if Christel actually had the white, athletic tape connecting the frames, but I’m going to say yes.

If ever there was a player whose game didn’t show up in the boxscore, it was Christel. They didn’t keep track of charges taken; nobody charted proper defensive switches; and there was no way to measure whether a defender challenged a shot with a hand in the face or not. Christel did all these things. It took coaches like Jim Gano and Pete Carril to see Christel’s value.

In fairness, Christel could also rebound, pass and knock down the elbow or mid-range jumper. He was among the smartest players I’ve ever seen, always in the right spot defensively, always making the extra pass and always a step ahead as a thinking-man’s player.

I went back and looked at Christel’s numbers at Princeton. They’re underwhelming, but that’s the essence of Christel; he was so much more than statistics. In fact, he was the kind of player where most of what he did was hard to measure with numbers.

Back in 1981, Princeton and Penn finished in a tie for the Ivy League championship. They had to play a one-game playoff — at Kirby Fieldhouse, Lafayette College — to determine the Ivy League champion and the NCAA representative. Princeton dismantled Penn 54-40 that day, and Christel was a big part of it.

I remember one play in particular where Penn guard Angelo Reynolds came off a screen set by a bigger player. Christel, guarding the big guy, surprised Reynolds by switching in an aggressive manner. The ball came loose on the floor and Christel and Reynolds went for it. Only Christel dove, got there a split-second before Reynolds and while laying spread on the floor, slapped the ball to a Princeton teammate. It started a fastbreak.

Christel made a great defensive play, forced a turnover that was credited to another player back then, and got an extra possession for the Tigers. Christel played in 109 games for Princeton and started every game as a freshman.

Christel was on the floor during the triple-overtime classic, when Reading beat Steelton 65-63 on Pete Mullenberg’s buzzer-beater. Nobody remembers Christel hit a jumper with six seconds left in the first OT to tie that game up. And, yeah, Stevie Rossignoli hit a big one in the second OT.

By the way, it’s Dr. Neil Christel now, and he’s a chiropractor in Reading, PA. Fitting, because he did so much heavy lifting as a player.