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Cal’s Brown looks back at 20 years, and ahead

By Rob Burchianti rburchianti@heraldstandard.Com 3 min read
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The year was 1996 when California University of Pa. introduced Bill Brown as its new men’s basketball coach.

Twenty years later Brown is still guiding the Vulcans and has amassed more wins than any other coach in the program’s history. His record currently stands at 365-206 at Cal U and he’s only 10 wins away from 500 for his career with a 490-333 mark with three different teams.

Brown entered the season ranked fifth in PSAC history and and 18th among active NCAA Division II coaches in victories.

Though he’s had a great run, Brown isn’t coasting. He’s striving to get the Vulcans turned back around with the team in the midst of a third losing season in four years.

“The last couple years we’ve fallen off some,” said Brown, whose teams have followed up a 17-12 mark in 2011-12 with records of 12-15, 11-16, 14-14 and, so far this season, 7-16 and currently on a five-game losing streak.

“Hopefully, we’ll finish off the season on a stronger note,” Brown said. “It’s disappointing and frustrating, but I always say, it’s too late to cancel.

“I think in general the university is going through a transition and I’m just trying to get our team back where it needs to be.”

Brown has had the team at the other end of the spectrum, having won PSAC championships in 1999 and 2008. The 2007-08 squad was Brown’s best at 28-6. The win total was the second most in program history as the Vulcans reached the Elite Eight that season.

Brown also helped discover another outstanding coach. At his first head coaching job at Kenyon he recruited a player by the name of Shaka Smart and later hired Smart as one of his assistant coaches at Cal U, where Smart stayed from 1999 to 2001.

Smart was later hired as a head coach by VCU in 2009 and took the Rams to the NCAA Final Four in 2011 before taking over at Texas in 2015.

Brown himself has earned plenty of hardware along the way.

He’s been named the PSAC West Coach of the Year five times and the NABC Regional Coach of the Year twice. In 2012 he earned the NABC Guardian of the Game Pillar Award for Advocacy.

Brown has accomplished a lot while dealing with Type-I diabetes, which led to his right leg being amputated below the knee in 2006, but he’s never let that slow him down.

“We’ve had some outstanding teams here,” Brown said. “I think the overall experience at California has been great. We’ve established a great tradition. Even in bad times, if you add it all up, I think it’s almost 19 wins every year. We’ve had a nice run.”

Not that Brown wants to look back too much, though.

“Hopefully,” he said, “the best is yet to come.”

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