Bringing it home

Kellogg returns to coach UMass back to glory days

AMHERST - Here it is at last, the morning after Election Day. It is the dawn of a new era. There is the hope of a return to former greatness.

At least that's the way it feels with the University of Massachusetts men's basketball program. Tonight marks the return of Derek Kellogg to the Mullins Center to take part in a game for the first time in 13 years. When UMass takes the floor for the lone preseason game against Dowling, one thing will be clear: The native son will be home.

Once upon a time, Kellogg was the local kid from Springfield who helped guide the team to glory. Now at age 35 in his first head coaching job, he will try to do it again.

"It's great to come home and be near family and friends," he said to a gathering of local media Monday. "This has been a great homecoming thus far. If you're at a place where you're home and you do well and you're successful, just like as a player, then there's nothing better in the world."

It was back in the 1991-92 season when Kellogg came up the road from the city where James Naismith had hung his peach baskets exactly a century earlier. In his freshman year, Kellogg was part of a UMass team that won its first Atlantic 10 regular-season and tournament titles, and made its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament in 30 years. With Kellogg as the starting point guard the next three years, UMass would duplicate that feat, part of a seven-year NCAA Tournament run that ended in 1998.

The Minutemen haven't been back since.

Kellogg's hoop dreams have a decidedly retro feel. He wants to instill the sense of high expectations he learned under John Calipari, first as a player at UMass, then as an assistant coach for the past eight seasons at Memphis.

"That's the culture that I am trying to bring back," said Kellogg at a recent practice. "These guys should expect to win the Atlantic 10, to win the Atlantic 10 tournament, to get to the NCAA Tournament every year."

A nod to predecessors

During practice, Kellogg seemed at ease with his new authority. Letting assistant Vance Walberg run a series of drills, Kellogg stood at halfcourt with his arms folded, his thick brown hair combed back, wearing his preferred outfit of a T-shirt, long shorts, short socks, and white Adidas basketball shoes. He peppered in comments that showed him to be enthusiastic and needling, youthful and old-fashioned.

"Come on, White Lightning," he called out to 7-foot senior Luke Bonner. "Will you play above the rim, please?"

When senior Tony Gaffney soared high to swat away a shot, Kellogg yelled, "Get that [stuff] out of here! Come on, Tony Gaffney, get off the floor, will you? Golly!"

After one particularly crisp pass by sophomore Anthony Gurley, Kellogg merely clapped his hands and said, "Good basketball! Good basketball!"

That is, of course, what UMass fans are yearning to see.

"He's definitely a player's coach," said Gaffney, a senior from Berkley, Mass. "You can tell he played here, that he's been a student here. He relates to all of us very well."

The 21st head coach in the program's history, Kellogg takes over for Travis Ford, who left abruptly after three seasons to take the job at Oklahoma State. Last year's team, UMass's most successful in a decade, made it to the NIT finals and finished with a 25-11 record. The top three frontcourt players on that team - Gary Forbes, Dante Milligan, and Etienne Browerall - graduated.

Kellogg credits Ford with having done a fine job. He clearly is not trying to escape Ford's shadow; after all, he and his wife Nicole bought Ford's old house in Amherst.

But it's the house that Calipari used to figuratively own, the Mullins Center, that Kellogg is hoping to rock. The two men are deeply bonded, and Calipari is absolutely confident that Kellogg will succeed.

"He wants to bring UMass back to the heady days in the top 10, top 15, top 20," said Calipari. "It will happen."

While cautioning that the first year might have some bumps, Calipari is convinced his protégé will take UMass fans back to the future. Calipari cites Kellogg's abilities as a recruiter, his enthusiasm, his ability to teach the game, and his consummate cool under fire as reasons to believe.

"You're going to see, like, 'Wow: this is the way it was,' " said Calipari.

Coaching revelation

When Kellogg first came to UMass, he was anything but a high-profile recruit. A local radio personality memorably opined that Calipari should be fired for wasting taxpayer money on Kellogg's scholarship. Calipari, though, relied on the words of Kellogg's high school coach, Kevin Kennedy: "He's going to be way better than you guys think. He has something that sets him apart, and it's all within."

The adjustment from Cathedral High School to playing at UMass was, Kellogg now acknowledges, "a bit overwhelming." The first practices were unlike anything he had known before: "Three hours of nonstop, high-intensity competing at the highest level."

To many local fans, that team - the one that went 30-5 and returned to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in three decades (losing to Kentucky in the Sweet Sixteen) - was the most beloved in UMass history. For Kellogg, playing on that squad was a revelation. It was then, he says, that he first thought about wanting to coach. He saw in Calipari an uncanny ability to "get out of every player who came through this door every ounce of energy, every ounce of heart, every piece of concentration."

Kellogg became a defining case. He was Calipari's coach on the floor, the prototypical point guard who elevated the performance of his teammates. His assists weren't flashy, but they were frequent; his turnovers were rare. Off the court, he was a free spirit, singing on the bus, delighting in practical jokes. On it, he was all business.

He was a three-year starter, a three-year All-Atlantic 10 academic team member, a two-year captain. With Kellogg at the point, UMass did what it had never done before: It dominated the Atlantic 10 and became a player on the national stage.

During Kellogg's sophomore year, UMass moved into the Mullins Center and began a string of sellouts for years. (That streak ended in the late '90s - gone with the wins.)

In Kellogg's junior year, the Minutemen posted a defining victory over top-ranked North Carolina.

The next year, UMass opened the season in Kellogg's hometown of Springfield and repeated the feat over No. 1 Arkansas, a victory that vaulted the once-woeful Minutemen to the top ranking in the national polls.

That senior season of 1994-95 ended in heartbreaking fashion, though, as UMass could not hold a halftime lead against Oklahoma State, falling 20 minutes shy of the year-long goal of getting to the Final Four. Fighting back tears in the locker room, Kellogg told the returning players to use the pain to come back even stronger.

'My dream job'

The next year, 1995-96, was a lost one for Kellogg. Cashing in on his real estate/finance degree, he took a job at the State House in Boston, putting on a tie every day. He was, by his own admission, a little lost.

"The only tough thing was, now you didn't know what you were looking forward to," he recalled. "Now it's like, 'What does life hold for you?' I really didn't know."

UMass, meanwhile, made it to the Final Four that year with a 35-2 record, marking the apex and the end of the Calipari Era. Calipari left to coach the New Jersey Nets, and his top assistant, Bruiser Flint, got the UMass job. Flint offered Kellogg a chance to come back in a cobbled-together graduate assistant/color commentator role, and he leapt at the chance.

This was, he knew for sure, what he wanted to do.

After a year at his alma mater and two as an assistant at George Mason, he spent a season working for Calipari's former assistant, John Robic, at Youngstown State.

Then in 2000, Calipari returned to the college game at Memphis, and turned once again to his steady point guard.

In his eight years with the Tigers, Kellogg got a taste of coaching and recruiting at the highest level. Memphis became a national force, employing Calipari's trademark defensive intensity and relentless rebounding, combined with the innovative dribble-drive-motion offense created by Vance Walberg.

Last year, the Tigers set an NCAA record with 38 wins. They made it all the way to the NCAA championship game on April 7. With the title in their grasps, they missed four of five free throws down the stretch, and surrendered a stunning 3-pointer to Mario Chalmers of Kansas with 2.1 seconds left. The Jayhawks wound up winning in overtime, 75-68.

"We were devastated and realized that opportunity comes along maybe never again," said Kellogg. "So to let it slip away was a little surreal for us."

But if April was the cruelest month, it was also a time of new growth and hope for Kellogg. On April 23, he was introduced as the head coach at UMass. Practically glowing, he proclaimed, "This is my dream job."

Five days later, he added a second new job to the resumé, becoming a father. His wife, Nicole (also a UMass graduate), gave birth to Maximus Antonio Kellogg.

Life settled down for a bit, and now it is set to get crazy once again.

Kellogg is ready to put his stamp on the program, a stamp that will certainly have more than a little taste of Memphis. For one thing, he has Walberg with him to launch the vaunted dribble-drive-motion.

Then there is the schedule. After UMass's opening two games next week in the 2K Sports Classic, the Minutemen play their third game at 11:59 p.m. Nov. 17 against Calipari's crew. That game will be on the road, but that's just fine for Derek Kellogg, who quite clearly is right at home.