Some George Mason Factoids…
These are pulled from a Washington Post article today that makes George Mason seem like about the most likable team in college basketball history. It’s a nice article by Mike Wise, and gives you a look at the honest, goofy, nature of this team and their head coach.
• Coach Jim Larranaga does not use profanity.
• Larranaga’s salary is 1/9th of Billy Donovan’s.
• Larranaga’s first assistant coaches lived in his basement.
• A quote from freshman Sammy Hernandez, who loves Scarface: “First, you get the money. Then, you get the Final Four. Then, you get the woman.”
• Jai Lewis is nicknamed “Giggles.”
And here’s another good one from Adrian Wojnarowski at ESPN.com. It’s a little bit more about how Mason got to where they are, the kind of people they were looking for, and how they’ve gone about things. Both quality reads.
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Will them being in the final game(and they gotta be, they just gotta) bring up ratings or will it hurt ratings???
i love this guy!1. he plays 3 innings of whiffelball each week with the big guys versus the little guys 2. he is able to both have fun with his team and still be a hard nosed coach (i.e. he is enjoying his time in the final four!) 3.i believe he said that he is gonna be the coach that has the most fun in the final four 4. finally, he called his team the connecticut assassin squad (or something like that) before the UCONN/GM game to make the guys on his team laugh and ease the tensions of playing in the biggest game of their life!
Coach L is great. He rubbed some of people the wrong way apparently at Bowling Green (supposedly coming off as arrogant at times), and never got us to the dance, but watching him these past few weeks, I’d love to have him back. (Though stories I’ve heard from those who sat directly behind the bench lead me to question the “no profanity” part of that story.)
I think it’s great to see him having as much fun as he is, for someone who has coached 20+ years at the mid-major level to get rewarded with an at-large bid and turn it into something as special as this is outstanding.
My freshman year at Mason we got the automatic CAA bid into the tourney (remember George Evans?). THe first game was in Boston so a bunch of friends of mine and I waited in line for 36 hours to make sure we got tickets to the games. It was the first time in a while Mason got in, and Laranaga was fairly new, but he came out to where we were waiting in line with pizzas and stayed talking to us for like 2 hours. Great great guy. go patriots