Ex-Bishop Gorman coach Mike Adras has high hopes as he begins his NAU assignment

Steve Carp

Tuesday, May 4, 1999 | 10:27 a.m.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- Mike Adras has made a move that most tend to measure in inches. But he knows better. So his measuring stick goes by years.

It has been said that when an assistant becomes a head basketball coach, his seat on the bench moves only a half a foot or so. But the responsibilities that come with the change are immeasurable.

Which is why Adras, the former Bishop Gorman head coach who dreamed of one day running his own Division I college program, makes sure he keeps it all in perspective now that he is in charge at Northern Arizona.

Hey, there's work to be done. He needs to find five players to replace the seniors-to-be at NAU. He has to finish up his 1999-2000 schedule. He still has to hire a couple of assistants to complete his staff.

One of his kids recently lost his stepfather. He's dealing with that. Another player, Joel Rieck, is a graduate of Columbine High School. He knew some of those who were killed in the massacre. Adras tries to give comfort to him.

"This isn't a five-month job like some people think," he said. "You're dealing with issues nobody has any idea about."

Adras pauses for a moment.

"You know, I was on that campus, sitting in that cafeteria," he said of the Littleton, Colo., school where the tragedy of April 20 took place. "It really hits home."

Sometimes, basketball isn't that important. But in Adras' world, there's not a lot of time to dwell on how much it weighs on life's grand scale. When you're playing Division I hoops, it's business, and if you don't attend to your business, you're going to be selling cars in Topeka, Kan., or real estate in Biloxi, Miss.

So Adras moves forward because he knows he has no choice. Too many people are counting on him. His wife Maureen and 21-month-old daughter Rachel sure are counting on him. More important, he's counting on himself to fulfill his lifelong ambition.

"It's amazing how things work out," he said.

Familiar route

Actually, his story isn't all that amazing. The 37-year-old from Las Vegas followed a very common blueprint to get the big office in the Walkup Skydome at NAU.

He put in his time as a high school coach, starting at the junior varsity level. He eventually won a couple of state titles at Gorman, then left to be a limiting earnings assistant at Drake. That led to landing a spot at Northern Arizona in 1992 with then-coach Harold Merritt.

When Merritt was let go in 1994 and former UC Santa Barbara assistant Ben Howland was named coach, he kept Adras on. All the while, Adras was entrenching himself in the community. And when the Lumberjacks turned things around in 1998 and went to the NCAA Tournament for the first time, Adras had something else in his corner. He was part of a successful program.

So when Howland left in March to take over at Pittsburgh, there was only one person to take over.

"We were all pulling for Coach Adras," said Ross Land, NAU's fine shooting small forward. "With the nucleus we had returning, it could've really gotten screwed up if they brought someone in from the outside.

"But we knew what we had with Coach Adras. He cares about us as people and he wants what's best for us."

Apparently, the administration felt the same way. It looked at Joey Meyer, the one-time DePaul coach. It considered Greg Graham, who was at Oregon.

But NAU's best candidate already was on the job in Flagstaff.

Vote of confidence

"I met with our athletic director (Steve Holton) on March 8 and expressed my interest in the job," Adras said. "He said, 'Mike, you should proceed as if you'll be the next head coach.' So I continued to recruit, we had individual workouts and I'm doing all the things that needed to be taken care of -- making sure everyone was caught up academically, scheduling, you name it.

"It was like that for 3 1/2 weeks. I considered it a test to see if I could handle it."

On April 5, Adras found out he passed the test as he was officially named Howland's successor and rewarded with a three-year contract. But that is like taking a pretest. The real test comes in the fall when the Lumberjacks tip off the Adras Era.

Will he succeed? He says it won't be from a lack of trying. Or a lack of preparation.

"I've been waiting for this chance my whole life," he said. "I've been around some great people over the years and I've been keeping mental notes the entire time.

"I know I'll make mistakes. Everyone does. But I'm going to learn and I truly believe I'm prepared for this opportunity and I'm not afraid of success. I expect to do well.

"I'm a little scared. But fear is a great motivator," he continued. "It's been eight years since I was a head coach. At Gorman, it was like, 'Can I do it?' But once I got started, I never saw that glimmer in my eye that said I was afraid.

"Once that first day of practice starts, I'm sure it will be gone."

Adras said his experience as a high school head coach may prove to be more valuable than his seven years as an NAU assistant.

"I think it's going to be a big factor," he said of his six years as Gorman's head coach. "I remember getting the best piece of advice ever from (former Gorman coach) Dave Erbach before I started my first year. He said, 'Things will happen to you that only a head coach can experience.' I asked Dave what those things were and he said, 'I can't tell you. You have to go through it yourself to find out.'

"As an assistant, you see a lot of things that the head coach goes through. But once you move over those six inches and you become the man with the big office and all the decisions are on your shoulders, you have no idea what it's like.

"I think Ben went through it when he got here. This was his first head coaching job and I told him what Dave told me. And he said to me one day that I was right. There's a lot that comes with this job that you don't know about until you actually go through it."

'Jacks are better

Adras knows he's blessed in the fact that he's coming into a program that has established itself as a contender in the Big Sky Conference. NAU isn't a shambles the way it was when he got there in '92 and the Lumberjacks owned the Big Sky cellar.

He has most of the team that went 21-8 this past year and nearly returned to the NCAAs, only to fall to Weber State in the Big Sky tournament championship game. He knows his players and they know him. Basically, it'll be business as usual, though Adras likely will put his personal touch on some of the things the Lumberjacks do next season.

"My style's very intense," he said. "But it's a more mature intensity. I know when to lean on someone and when to give him a hug.

"We have great kids here who are highly motivated and work hard. But even great kids need a hug and you can only push them so far."

NAU has led the nation in 3-point field goal percentage for three straight years. And field goal percentage-wise, the Lumberjacks have been either first or second during that same span. So Adras isn't going to change that mind set, especially with gunners like Land, Rod Hutchings and Billy Hix coming back.

"Our motto is 'Recruit to Shoot,' " Adras said. "We tell recruits, 'Come play on the best shooting team in the nation.' They have freedom to shoot it here."

So he goes out and sells dreams, knowing his had come true, and that he had not taken any shortcuts.

"Nobody handed me this job," he said. "I had to go out and earn it."

And he's proud of what he has helped build at NAU.

Grizzly discovery

"Six years ago after we played Montana, I went out with their coaches and I said, 'You have the perfect model for this league. You've got big, strong guys inside and guys who can shoot from the perimeter,' " Adras said. "Then I'm at the Big Sky tournament this year with Portland State's coaches and they said, 'We hope you're not mad at us because we copy so much of what you do.'

"I was so flattered. It was like we had come full circle."

Ironically, one of Adras' first moves as head coach was to get together with an old friend, Cimarron-Memorial coach Hank Girardi, who has had some success of his own with a couple of Nevada state championships, most recently this year.

The two were colleagues when they coached the Gorman JV in 1984. Adras picked Girardi's brain while in town over the weekend to speak at the Spartans' awards banquet.

"The game's the game," Adras said. "I'm going to incorporate some of his plays, some of the things we did at Gorman.

"You know, it seems like it was yesterday we were at the Marker Down (a Las Vegas bar) celebrating our first JV win. I remember Hank was working at that place on Spring Mountain (Play It Again Sam) and he had to leave with three minutes to go so he could go to work.

"After we won, I went by and told him we won and we're hugging and crying. We went to Marker Down to celebrate and we were there until about 5 in the morning. Then I went to school because we had class in a couple of hours and I had to teach.

"That's what I miss. Vegas was so small back then. I could get anywhere I needed to go in 15 minutes. Now, it's so big, I have to ask directions to get to some of these new high schools. How funny is that?"

His mother still lives in Las Vegas. And he loves visiting. But he also loves his life in Flagstaff. He's part of the community's fabric and he's excited about enhancing a program that is enjoying an unprecedented run of success. NAU has gone 43-23 the last three years.

"I feel there's a tremendous honeymoon right now," Adras said as he begins this new phase of his life. "But I know it's business and it's not going to be easy, even with the built-in advantages we have.

"But I'm ready for this. And no one's going to work harder than I will."

It might make that half-foot move along the NAU bench a little easier.

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