New Hofstra coach Welsh has some strong endorsements

When Tim Welsh was interviewing with Hofstra University president Stuart Rabinowitz the other day, he kept getting cell phone messages from the same caller. Three times the number flashed while Welsh talked about becoming the school's basketball coach.

Welsh knew who it was. He just didn't know what the guy so badly wanted to say.

When Welsh finally did call back, Jim Boeheim practically screamed: "I heard you were there! I think it's great! If you get the job, take it, take it, take it!"

Boeheim not only is Welsh's mentor and former boss at Syracuse but one of the most respected coaches in the country. Welsh, who was introduced as the Hofstra coach Thursday, also is buddies with Connecticut's Jim Calhoun, Notre Dame's Mike Brey, UConn women's coaching icon Geno Auriemma, Villanova coach Jay Wright and a handful of other big names he dropped during his energetic news conference.

More noteworthy, and surprising, was that all of those guys had not only heard of Hofstra but thought highly of the place. Welsh, 49, had bounced his prospective new gig off the wisest heads he knew, and all of them told him to grab it. He said former Delaware coach and Hofstra rival Brey told him, "It's a home run for you and a home run for them."

Skepticism says it was all about a $600,000 salary. But Welsh did have the cachet of having been on the air at ESPN for two years. He did go 70-22 at Iona and did have a winning 10-year record despite a bumpy ending at Providence in the Big East.

That is to say he had options. Former Big East commissioner Dave Gavitt recently told Welsh about having fielded calls for him from major-conference schools.

"This was the perfect fit," Welsh said. "There's a winning feeling here. What Jay told me about this being a great place, that was important for me."

It was more important for Hofstra. The past year shook the university's athletic credibility. Welsh said he was listening to WFAN last fall when Rabinowitz came on to sadly talk about having pulled the plug on football. Yesterday's news conference erased some of that sting and restored some luster.

After Tom Pecora left for Fordham, athletic director Jack Hayes took Hofstra basketball's temperature by surveying Wright, former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese, Davidson coach (and Hofstra graduate) Bob McKillop and two-time NCAA champion Florida's coach, Rockville Centre product Billy Donovan. From what they all said, Hayes was emboldened to think big. And in a flash, here is Welsh.

There he was at the podium Thursday, with the basketball fervor he had as a kid, when he would ride down with his dad, Jerry, an accomplished high school and college coach upstate, for Rollie Massimino's clinics on Long Island. He recalled seeing the joy on everyone's faces at Iona when his team made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 13 years. He promised the Hofstra players, sitting in the front row, that he will try to bring them the same feeling.

He relished his return to New York: "I already have an EZ Pass. I know how to get to the beach. I know how to get to the gyms."

"I saw him on TV a couple times and people around the program told me about him," freshman forward Halil Kanacevic said. "The more I heard, the more I got to like him."

Hayes went further, saying, "I wish we had a basketball game tonight."

Someday they might have a game with Syracuse. Boeheim did bring that up in the call to his former assistant. Welsh recalled saying, "Down here, right?" To which Boeheim said, "Don't get cocky."