Juco helped season younger Spoonhour

Steve Addy

Friday, Jan. 18, 2002 | 10:05 a.m.

When you're a coach's son, you are issued unique baggage that can get awfully heavy.

People expect you to be the best player on your team. When dad is the coach, they suspect your opportunities are owed to your last name and blind loyalty.

And if someday Pop hands you a coaching job, daddy-o, the whispers of nepotism can be deafening -- unless your resume is airtight.

That caveat explains the lack of apparent protest last spring when UNLV basketball coach Charlie Spoonhour, 62, added his son Jay, 31, as an assistant.

Charlie racked up 319 Division I victories before retiring from Saint Louis in 1999, but the family reputation didn't suffer in his absence. Jay added to it last year when he coached Wabash Valley College of Mt. Carmel, Ill., to the national junior college championship.

In Jay's first season as a head coach on any level, his team's 36-1 record earned him two Juco coach of the year awards.

It also made him an automatic pick to join the Rebels after Charlie was hired March 29. Jay had been an assistant to his father at Saint Louis from 1996-99.

"There's that initial blush that people might say, 'Why did he hire his son?' But I hired him because I thought he was the best person for the job," Charlie said. "I think he's obviously a very good coach. And our thoughts are compatible. That's important."

Jay said, "I wouldn't have left (Wabash Valley) to go just anywhere. I would've only gone to UNLV or wherever my dad went, because I enjoyed head coaching that much."

Jay had been an assistant since 1994 at Central Missouri State, Saint Louis and Valparaiso, but Charlie advised him to expand his knowledge by becoming a head coach, no matter the level. After all, Charlie served as a high school coach for seven years and a Juco coach for eight.

"Too many young coaches think you finish playing, put in two years as a grad assistant and get a head coaching job," Charlie said. "It doesn't work that way. You have to learn how to do things.

"I thought referees were assigned by God when I first started. You don't know about fundraising. You don't know about discipline problems. You have to learn how to deal with 14 or 15 different guys. Coaching doesn't just happen on game night."

Jay quickly absorbed those lessons at Wabash Valley, winning all the while.

"As an assistant, you're riding in the passenger seat. As a head coach, you're forced to make decisions every day," he said. "You have to organize practice. You have to figure out what we did wrong in the last game and how to correct it. But X's and O's are well down the list.

"Being a head coach made me a better assistant. I have a better feel for what an assistant needs to do, and I hope I do those things without being asked."

On Spoonhour's staff, all three assistants share equal billing. Neither Jay, nor Derek Thomas, nor Deane Martin has been labeled the No. 1 assistant. They're listed alphabetically in the media guide, and participate equally in practice and on game nights.

Charlie stresses that he lends equal credence to their suggestions, too.

"When I was an assistant, I never liked the idea that one guy was above the others," he said. "When Jay was with us at Saint Louis, he deferred to the other coaches. But now he has solid opinions and good ideas, and I listen to him like the others."

He beams with pride in Jay's accomplishments and clearly enjoys having him around.

"I was extremely happy his team won the tournament. Being an old junior college coach, I could really appreciate it," Charlie said. "But I was more happy that coaches told me they liked the way Jay handled things. They said he was a nice person and he didn't try to act like he knew everything about basketball."

Some UNLV insiders have even posed a scenario that if the elder Spoonhour gets the program back on track and decides to re-retire in a few years, Jay might be ready to become head coach. Jay refuses to entertain the notion.

"If we have success, then everything will work itself out. But if you get caught looking ahead, boy, you will go down in a hurry," he said. "A lot of coaches get caught up in positioning their careers instead of caring about the actual work they have to do. I won't do that."