Ex-USD coach Sam Scholl, now at San Diego State, and former Toreros standout Joey Calcaterra, now at UConn, took similar paths to basketball's biggest weekend
The University of San Diego fired Sam Scholl as its men’s basketball coach on March 6, 2002, two days after losing in the conference tournament and finishing the season 15-16.
Calcaterra landed at Connecticut in June, after most of the 1,000-plus transfers had found new home and options were dwindling. He worked his way into a talented rotation despite no promises from coach Dan Hurley, and the fourth-seeded Huskies have rolled through the NCAA Tournament at a frightening clip — beating teams by 24, 15, 23 and then 28 points against Gonzaga. They’ll play Miami in the second semifinal Saturday night at Houston’s 72,000-seat NRG Stadium.
Scholl texted him immediately after beating Creighton and said they had to take a photo together — if for no other reason than to have proof, a moment captured for eternity, that it really happened. But he had an extra COVID year of eligibility and, after meeting with new USD head coach Steve Lavin for two hours, opted to use it elsewhere. The initial calls came from many of the same programs that recruited him out of high school, plus other middling mid-majors: Weber State, Illinois-Chicago, UC Riverside.“I feel like I’ve been underappreciated and underrecruited, in high school and then in the portal this past offseason,” Calcaterra says.
“He’s been awesome,” says Hurley, not one to freely toss around superlatives. “His personality was big for us. He’s got that San Diego, NorCal type of vibe to him. When you’re a program that played bad in the last NCAA Tournament and came in with some question marks, you need confident people. And Joey is a really confident guy.”
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