Kevin Ollie is taking UConn and stepping out of Jim Calhoun’s shadow

We should probably get used to Kevin Ollie in these types of pictures. Mandatory Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It gives us the chance to be right about things that we would otherwise be wrong about. Which is pretty much the way everyone is currently dealing with Connecticut Huskies head coach, Kevin Ollie, who has his team in the Final Four in only his second year as the leader of the program.

Ollie’s story of taking over for the legend that is Jim Calhoun did not start this year or last, though. It began as a player under Calhoun. A college career that wasn’t particularly great, flashy or anything that would have signaled a day would once come that he would be leading the Huskies to the Final Four as a coach.

A college career high of 9.8 points per game, with an unselfish 6.4 assists per game, Ollie’s senior season was about as interesting on a individual level as it is for many players running out of eligibility. Meaning, the only interesting thing about it, at least for him, was the uncertainty it was going to bring after his college career was over.

Ollie wasn’t destined to become an NBA superstar, though. In fact, even with the ability of hindsight, it is mind boggling that he even got a chance to make it in the NBA.

Undrafted, Kevin Ollie had to start his professional playing career in the CBA. Unlike today, though, this was more or less a death sentence to a player’s dream of reaching the NBA back in 1995. The world was a much bigger place back then, and someone perceived to be as generic a player as Ollie was, could have easily been tossed around the world, playing low-level professional hoops until he tired of it or they tired of him.

He could have given up then. Nobody would have blamed him. Make a few dollars playing in the CBA, maybe overseas, then move onto the real world. That, however, was not part of the Kevin Ollie plan.

1997 would come. The year that Ollie got his chance to really make it in the NBA. It would also be a year that a pattern would develop in the NBA career that Ollie would have. Playing for two teams in his first year in the league, Ollie eventually played for 12 NBA teams over a a 13 year career. Some of which included multiple stops in Philadelphia, playing for the defunct Supersonics and even mentoring Kevin Durant for a very small time in 2009-10.

Hoop Dreams are sometimes fickle. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

That was his professional career in a nutshell. Nothing spectacular to write about. The only highlight of it really is the fact that Kevin Ollie was able to hang on and be a part of a league for 13 years, a league that no one originally thought he belonged.

However, no lasting legacy of Ollie was left in the NBA. When the annals of the NBA is written, Ollie’s impact on the game was very minimal. Outside of Durant once or twice crediting him for showing him the ropes, the NBA journeyman’s professional basketball story is that of endurance, perseverance and longevity. Very little else.

Which certainly isn’t a knock on him. It is just a way to shine a brighter light on the fact that Ollie, even as a player, was always little else other than an afterthought. But if you’re looking to add some extra flare to an otherwise ho-hum NBA career, you’re more than welcome to look for it.

Whatever you think of Ollie’s NBA journey, though, it certainly prepped him for his next career.

Because life always enjoys coming full-circle, Ollie eventually landed back with UConn as an assistant coach in 2010. Basically, immediately after his NBA career was over. Which makes perfect sense, since Ollie seems to be connected to the game of basketball and going even a minute without being involved with it might feel like a death sentence.

Even when he landed with the Huskies as a Jim Calhoun underling, not much thought was given to it. Just another former college player returning home to help his former coach in any possible way that he could. Honestly, worst case scenario called for Ollie to be able to use his life lessons as an NBA journeyman as a way to help motivate, sculpt and put Calhoun’s players in the best position possible to succeed.

By the time Ollie arrived back home, Calhoun was much older in the tooth. Still a grizzly, take no prisoners, competitive and successful basketball coach, Calhoun’s days as the face of the Connecticut Huskies were coming to a close. Which rational people assumed also meant the days of UConn basketball as we knew it.

Calhoun’s legacy casts a shadow still looming over the program. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports

Calhoun convincing kids to go to Storrs, CT. to play basketball for as long as he did might be the greatest trick in the world. One that at least rivals that of the Devil convincing people he didn’t exist. Possibly losing Calhoun, certainly at the time, felt like everything we knew about the Huskies, as well as Big East Conference basketball, was finally, maybe even irrationally, over.

Oddly enough, only part of that was true. The Big East was over. Well, the version that Calhoun helped shape, dominate and add a legacy to. Nevertheless, it was gone and a large portion of Huskies’ history with it.

But UConn was not only in a situation where it had to deal with the crumbling foundation of the Big East putting the entire league and programs in it in jeopardy, sanctions were looming over its head as Jim Calhoun was looking to retire. A perfect storm of events, really. If a perfect storm actually meant a scenario in which realists would have expected the Huskies basketball program to shrink, become less impactful and mirror more of the bottom-feeders of the Big East than the folks who regularly compete at the top.

That was Jim Calhoun’s bed, but he wasn’t going to snuggle, claw or even acknowledge it. He did his time. He spent a career making UConn more relevant than it probably ever should have been. He, regardless of the situation, was retiring — deservedly so.

Which put the athletic department in an interesting position. The way that Calhoun retired — surprisingly and on short notice — forced them to make a quick and maybe even a hasty decision. Their decision, begrudgingly, was to make Kevin Ollie the new head coach of the Huskies. And trust me when I say this, that was certainly not the original direction they wanted to go.

However, much like his basketball journey, Ollie didn’t need to be wanted, sought after or even appreciated to attempt to take advantage of the situation he was in. This situation, though, was not exactly ideal.

Ollie was taking over a Connecticut basketball team marred by transfers, early entrants into the NBA and the inability to play in the postseason. That was year one. For all of Calhoun’s greatness, he didn’t leave the cupboard full for his successor. He essentially left it bare, with some small items and a huge rat problem.

Despite not having the ability to use postseason play as motivation, Ollie led that UConn team to a 20-10 overall record. Mind you, that wasn’t only a team having all sorts of sanctions being dangled over its head, it was a team that wasn’t supposed to be that good anyway. Most players of relevance were thought to be gone. Or, at least, enough of them gone that the Huskies’ streak of 26 straight winning seasons would be put in jeopardy.

Ollie, which now feels like a natural state of doing, was having nothing to do with failure.

Then came this past season. More people started to believe, but Ollie had to deal with more than just the legacy of Jim Calhoun’s shadow always riding up his spine, he had to deal with UConn’s departure from the Big East and into something called the American Athletic Conference — and that is a league where most of its best programs became a member of it in the same fashion mobsters convince store owners to pay dues, unwillingly.

Again, this isn’t something new to Kevin Ollie. A new place, with expectations all over the place except up, the idea that Ollie would keep the Huskies in a position to matter on a national scale seemed foolish. I mean, playing in a new league, with only a few other programs of relevance, while still battling the perception of not being UConn’s guy or even as remotely as talented as Calhoun, the pressure Ollie must have felt was immense, and it would certainly be mounting if he didn’t get the team back to the NCAA Tournament in quick fashion.

Connecticut didn’t exactly dominate the AAC either. 12-6 for an in-conference record, in a league that also incorporates South Florida, UCF, Houston and a really down Temple, isn’t the record a Final Four team would have. Honestly, the AAC was thought to be a mid-major before the year began. The fact that the top of the league ended up being as good as it was can certainly be considered a pleasant surprise, but that doesn’t change the fact that the bottom of it was filled with the Club State Pool Cleaners and the University of Broken Dreams.

The depth of the AAC doesn’t really matter. Not now. Not next year. Certainly not for the Connecticut Huskies. Jim Calhoun didn’t build the program to its status as a national player to worry about a conference’s well-being. He took a once tiny Storrs college and put it on his back to make them matter come March. Which might very well be the lasting memory of Calhoun’s tenure at UConn. Taking the Huskies on historic conference and NCAA Tournament runs.

Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports

Which obviously adds more pressure on Kevin Ollie. UConn’s Big East days might have been over, but the expectations of them from fans in March did not. Most notably, with the Kemba Walker dream postseason just a couple of years behind them, UConn headed into this year’s Madness with an eerily similar feeling.

Now here we are. The Final Four having the nation’s top-four teams ready to battle it out for a chance to play in the National Title game.

Everything is all set.

Four teams that took different paths, led four coaches who took very different roads to get to their current programs, to then eventually get to this Final Four.

But, maybe not oddly at all though, Kevin Ollie still feels like he doesn’t belong in this scenario. Between Billy Donovan, John Calipari, Bo Ryan and himself, Ollie can certainly be considered the outlier of the coaches left dancing. The one who not only doesn’t belong, but might could be considered the least likely to succeed given the circumstances.

Ollie’s college, NBA and coaching careers, not only does all of that seem about right, but it seems to be the way in which the foundation of his coaching legacy should be built.

Not wanted, not originally appreciated, but always there. Always just right there. Right there mattering, when everything else says he probably shouldn’t.