Telephonic Fast Break : New Cal Lutheran Coach Putting In Lots of Recruitment Overtime

Mike Dunlap’s ears are red and burning. Not that he hasn’t been a hot topic of conversation around Thousand Oaks, but he’s been putting in substantial time at the receiving end of a telephone.

For the better part of three weeks Dunlap says he has dialed “just about everyone I know” to leave the following messages:

1) I’m the new basketball coach at Cal Lutheran University.

2) Helllp!!!

Dunlap’s problem is rather basic--a shortage of players. Cal Lutheran’s roster is only seven deep, a predicament its new coach is literally searching the ends of the Earth to resolve.

Among the players Dunlap is recruiting is a 6-foot-5 forward from Australia. Another possibility lives in Alaska.

“If I’m not on the phone, then it’s usually ringing,” said Dunlap, who was hired May 26. “Right now, a telephone is the most valuable tool I have.”

The 30-year old former assistant at Loyola Marymount, Iowa and USC, who has never been a head coach, has taken the reins of a program in transition from the NAIA to NCAA Division III, a program embroiled in a measure of turmoil.

Dunlap replaced Larry Lopez, who guided the Kingsmen to a 37-49 record over three seasons on a part-time basis while teaching science full-time at Frontier High, a continuation school in Camarillo. Although his record was under .500, Lopez succeeded in making his team competitive. Cal Lutheran had won only five of 28 games in 1986, the season before Lopez took over.

When CLU committed a full-time staff position to its basketball program and advertised it nationally, Lopez was forced to apply for his own job.

The popular Lopez was a finalist among some 90 applicants, but that distinction didn’t soothe the ire of Kingsmen players, a few of whom cried foul when their coach was passed over.

Dunlap read the reaction in local newspapers and was reminded of a similar situation when he was a first-year assistant at USC. Three top players left that Trojan team after George Raveling replaced Stan Morrison as coach.

It was time for a few more phone calls.

“They were upset, but with young individuals you find that’s usually pretty temporary,” Dunlap said. “They have to realize that I can’t control the fact that a change was made. I can only control what’s ahead of us now. I think they will accept me at face value, which is all I ask.”

To that end, Dunlap enlisted the aid of Jeff deLaveaga, the only player he knew on the Cal Lutheran team he inherited. Dunlap, who had worked with deLaveaga at USC’s basketball camp, asked him to help ease any uncertainty the returning players might have about the plans of their new coach.

DeLaveaga, whose older brother Steve finished his senior campaign last season as the school’s all-time leading scorer, said the reaction was mostly positive.

“Some players weren’t on the best of terms with Coach Lopez and were glad to see the change,” deLaveaga said. “Others loved him and were hesitant about the change. Personally, I have a good, positive, image of Coach Dunlap from the camp. He’s a real fire plug. He goes full speed with everything he does.

“He seemed real positive with the kids at the camp. He’d yell and get in your shorts if you didn’t hustle. I remember every kid would sprint to his group because they knew if they didn’t run then, they’d be running even more later.”

Ironically, Steve deLaveaga was among the most outspoken critics of Dunlap’s selection over Lopez.

“Actually, when I first called Jeff it was Steve who answered the phone,” Dunlap said. “I told him I understood why he was upset. I told him that I would want my players to feel the same way about me if the situation was different. I think he was happy to hear that.”

That settled, it was back to recruiting, a task Dunlap became familiar with in his four years--one at Iowa and three at USC--as an assistant under Raveling.

“I have an affection for this level because there’s a lot of coaching involved,” Dunlap said. “But don’t get me wrong--you still need players. Coach Raveling says he’s seen a lot of very good coaches who got fired because they didn’t pay enough attention to whom they were recruiting.”

Dunlap doesn’t plan to be one of them. He considers the Cal Lutheran job an “appropriate maturation” after nine seasons as an assistant.

“I’ve always wanted to be a head coach and, as a friend of mine told me, ‘If you’re a head coach, you’re a head coach no matter what level you’re at,” Dunlap said. “It’s a little like going to graduate school. You learn your trade and at some point in time you jump out of the nest and try it on your own.”

Dunlap reports that he has found three players “very interested” in coming to Cal Lutheran.

“We’ve come in real late on some kids, but I think we’ve at least muddied the waters on a few of them that were about to make a decision to go somewhere else,” Dunlap said. “This would have been considerably easier if I had this job in April.”