Mutka: Murry Bartow carries on for legendary dad

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Alabama-Birmingham head coach Murray Bartow directs his players in the first half against Saint Louis Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2002, at the Savvis Center in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Tom Gannam)

Updated: February 25, 2012 8:11AM

East Tennessee State basketball coach Murry Bartow was a couple years short of kindergarten when his fabled father, Gene, began coaching at Valparaiso University in 1964.

Back then the Crusaders played at Hilltop Gym, a still-used relic  tucked away on the upper west side of the ARC.

There, Murry and Jon Steinbrecher, now the commissioner of the Mid-American Conference, went 1-on-1 in basketball  whenever the Crusaders weren’t busy practicing. 

“Murry could dribble circles around Jon,” said former VU athletic director Bill Steinbrecher with a chuckle.  “Jon was a wrestler and a tennis player.”

The boyhood chums separated when Bartow departed for Memphis State after winning 92 games in six years at VU, but reconnected at Indiana University in the mid-1980s. By then Jon was working towards his doctorate and Murry was serving as a graduate assistant for Bob Knight.  It was a great time for young adults to be on campus.

“We were buddies at IU,” Murry said.  “We hung out.”

Murry  knew he would be coaching long before  becoming involved with IU basketball from 1985-87. Being the son of a national coach of the year (at Memphis State, 1973), it was almost pre-ordained.

In Murry’s first year Cleveland State knocked the Hoosiers out of the NCAA tournament.  The following April they won the national title in 1987 on Keith Smart’s last-second shot from the corner.

“I loved my two years in Bloomington and obviously learned a great deal from Coach Knight and his staff,” said Murry, who has won 172 games at ETSU, starting with a 27-6  record in 2003-04. That was his first of three NCAA appearances with the Bucs. “Coach Knight’s  advice to me was to be yourself, pick out what you like from me and your dad.”

Long before they hooked up, Murry was mentored by his recently deceased dad, who was nicknamed “Clean Gene” during his Valparaiso years.

“I don’t know who started calling him that, but it stuck,” Murry said.

“Gene didn’t drink, smoke or use profanity,”  remembered Bill Steinbrecher, who was was an assistant football and wrestling coach at that  stage of his VU career.  “At cocktail parties, he’d walk around with a glass of water.”

They kept in touch after VU, mostly socializing at final fours, which the former VU athletic director attended for 33 straight years.

It’s nearly impossible to be a coach’s son without becoming a gym rat. Murry was no exception.

“I knew at a very early age I wanted to coach,” he said.

Much like Bryce and Homer Drew, who seem to be joined at the hip at VU, he watched and learned from his mentoring father, who won 647 games at six different schools. More than half of Gene’s victories came at Alabama-Birmingham, where he built an entire athletic program from scratch from 1978-96. Still beloved there, 3,000 mourners attended the visitation at the Arena named after him.

“It was pretty overwhelming,” said Murry, who delivered a touching eulogy.

Murry spent five years at UAB, playing for his father (sitting out one year), who doubled as UAB’s athletic director.   Afterward, he remained with the program as an assistant coach.

Before retiring,  Gene Bartow launched UAB’s football program.

“He crusaded for football,” said Steinbrecher, who attended the visitation with Jon, working that in around Alabama’s BCS championship victory over LSU. “He pulled it off despite the opposition of  Alabama’s Bear Bryant.”

Quite a feat to one-up Bryant,  who perched next to Zeus on Mt. Olympus when the Crimson Tide was rolling over opponents like a Tsunami.

Oddly enough, Bartow posted his best record at UCLA, but that was his least enjoyable coaching experience. In two years there, the Bruins were 52-9 and made it to the Final Four. His .852 winning percentage topped John Wooden, but wasn’t good enough for jaded boosters.

Wooden had spoiled them rotten with his unparalleled track record of eight titles in 10 years and still haunted the premises, maintaining an office on campus.

“Dad  loved Wooden,” Murry said, “but it was a tough two years because expectations were so (unreasonably) high.  He loved his relationship with Wooden, but from a fan standpoint the pressure was incredible.”

Coaching the Bruins was about as much fun as shoveling your driveway after a Northwest Indiana snowstorm.  Following a legend seldom works out well. Just ask  coaches who followed  Hobart’s Don Howell, Notre Dame’s Ara Parseghian or Lou Holtz, or Knight.

My best memory involving Gene Bartow, who lost a 21/2-year battle with stomach cancer on Jan. 3, was early in my career at the Post-Tribune. In 1967, VU belonged to the Indiana Collegiate Conference, which included Ball State, Indiana State, Butler, Evansville, St. Joseph’s and DePauw. After Bartow’s Crusaders won the Great Lakes Regional, they were shipped to Evansville for the NCAA quarterfinals.

Assigned to cover it, I made the six-hour drive in time to see future NBA great Earl “the Pearl” Monroe in action for a half,  watched Southwest Missouri State oust VU, 86-72, wrote the story and pointed my chariot north to Gary.

One last thought on the coaching family. Coming into the weekend, Murry only needs 88 more victories to the give the father-son combo a lifetime total of  1,000.