Jim Christian's path to Boston College began on LI

Jim Christian always has been amazed by the places that basketball can take a person, starting with the times his dad would bring him to the park behind the Bethpage Public Library.

"I would go and shoot just about every day,'' he said. "Trust me, Bethpage was a huge football town, with coach [Howie] Vogts at the time. So the basketball court was pretty much always clear."

Like most other kids in town, Christian did learn how to run the wishbone. Yet it was the other sport that sent him to top-caliber competition at St. Dominic High School in Oyster Bay, then to Boston University with coach Rick Pitino and a transfer to the University of Rhode Island, where he experienced an unforgettable run to the Sweet Sixteen.

From there, he went all over the country as an assistant and head coach.

Now, at 49, he is at the top of his game, having become a rare Long Islander to reach the big time of major-college coaching. He is beginning his first year as a head coach in the Atlantic Coast Conference, with Boston College.

"He's where he belongs, in the Northeast, where he is from and where people know him," said Tom Penders, who coached Christian at Rhode Island and still texts him with advice.

Truth is, Christian believes that as long as he is around a court -- especially at the head of a bench -- he is where he belongs.

"It's not really a job. It's really a lifestyle that you choose," Christian said by phone from his office in Chestnut Hill. "It's not a typical work environment where you come to work and you do your job and go home. It's really with you 24 hours a day. You're really in a position to influence people around you at a very pivotal time in their lives. You've got to be available for them all the time, like you are for your own kids."

Christian and his wife, Patty, have two sons who are younger than he was when he played for the St. Martin of Tours CYO squad in Bethpage. They understand that moving around is part of the game and they saw it as an adventure that the coach left Ohio University for the challenge of rebuilding the program at Boston College.

Right away, he learned the impact a coach can make. Steve Lenowicz, his JV coach, remains one of his closest friends. Varsity coach Ralph Willard helped Christian mature, turned him into a Division I-caliber player and set him on his career arc.

"I was a really good shooter but I had awful mechanics. I wasn't shooting the ball right, but nobody wanted to change it because it would go in a lot," Christian said. "I remember when I was in 10th grade, he [Willard] told me, 'You'll never be a Division I player shooting the ball like that.' He gave me some drills. He challenged me and really made me that much better."

Pitino, a St. Dominic alumnus, recruited him but left to be an assistant with the Knicks before Christian's freshman season. Christian left after two years and had what he still calls "a limited role" on the URI team that upset Missouri and Syracuse and lost by a point to Duke in the 1988 NCAA Tournament.

"That was one of the early Cinderella teams," he said. "I refer to it a lot when I talk to our team because everybody enjoyed each other's success. There were no petty jealousies or anything."

Penders, winner of 648 games in 36 years, said Christian was a leader and an inspiration even though he didn't get a ton of minutes. The young man was a coach in the making. "I would say Jimmy was a voice of reason. I wish, when he was playing, he believed in himself as much as I believed in him. Coaching would be a hell of a lot easier if everyone was like Jimmy Christian," said the retired coach, who lives in Rhode Island and plans to drop in on BC practices.

By the time Christian was looking for a job, Willard had become head coach at Western Kentucky. He hired Christian as an assistant. That led to stops at St. Francis, Miami of Ohio and Pittsburgh (also under Willard) as an assistant and Kent State, TCU and Ohio as head coach.

Christian is embracing the opportunity at BC and happy to be closer to Long Island, where his two sisters live with their families (his parents are in Florida). He saw Pitino, now a peer, at ACC media day. Christian speaks regularly to big-time coaches with whom he worked as a fellow assistant along the way: Thad Matta (Ohio State), Tom Crean (Indiana) and Sean Miller (Arizona).

"Successful people keep changing in the way they approach things. You can continually go back to guys and see how they're evolving, and it helps you," said the man who has been on the way to his current job all his life.