Joey Meyer Has Learned Lessons Well--Just Look at His Record

ROSEMONT, Ill. — Joey Meyer stood on the balcony, his chin cupped in his hand, his face blank. The Horizon, DePaul University’s home, was packed. But it was quiet, most of the fans waiting for the Temple-Louisiana State game to end so the game they had come to see, DePaul-St. John’s, could start.

Just then, the crowd erupted. The fans had spotted the DePaul players walking through the runway that runs directly beneath where Meyer stood. Most of them were standing. “Everybody loves the Blue Demons,” someone said nearby.

Meyer smiled wryly. “Yeah,” he said. “They do now.”

DePaul was 28-2 before its game Friday against LSU in the NCAA Midwest regional semifinals. Most places, Meyer is a candidate for national coach of the year. No one, with the possible exception of his wife, Barbara, understands the irony of this better than Joey Meyer.

Little more than a year ago, in the same building, he was booed. Ray Meyer, his father and predecessor at DePaul, where he coached for 42 years, heard the boos and cringed. “It killed me,” he said last Sunday. “I hate being here and hearing it. Joey holds things in but I knew how much it hurt him.”

The booing was the climax of two years of frustration. When Joey Meyer succeeded his father in 1984, the move made complete sense. It was no coincidence that his arrival as an assistant coach in 1973 had coincided with DePaul’s basketball revival.

Before 1973, the basketball program seemed moribund and there was even talk of dropping the sport. But Joey Meyer, his father’s first full-time assistant, got the Chicago players DePaul had not been getting. In 1976, the Blue Demons made it back to the NCAA tournament. In 1979, they made it to the Final Four.

Ray Meyer was America’s Grandfather. And, even though there was consistent disappointment in the NCAA tournaments in the early 1980s, Meyer retired with an image that bordered on sainthood.

“Everybody in Chicago loves Coach Ray,” said Kenny McReynolds, a DePaul assistant under both Meyers. “People would never question him. But when Joey didn’t win, people questioned him. And Joey questioned himself.”

With four starters back from a 27-3 team in Ray Meyer’s last season, great things were expected of DePaul in 1985. But the team struggled.

“I can remember that first season sitting in his office one morning,” McReynolds said. “Joey was sitting at his desk and we (the assistants) were sitting around the round table in his office. He looked at us and said, ‘Guys, I’m scared and I think I’m coaching scared.’ That scared me. He was our leader and he was questioning his leadership.

“There was never any doubt in my mind about Joey Meyer’s ability. But after a while, I think he started to doubt himself. And I thought if he did that he could be in trouble.”

DePaul finished that season 18-11 and lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Syracuse. Things got no better last season. The Blue Demons began losing regularly, even at home. At first, Meyer laughed off the booing. “Part of the business,” he said. But after a while it began to take its toll.

Then came Cleveland State. Although the Vikings would prove later in the NCAA tournament that they were a legitimate team, they were unknown in Chicago the night they came into The Horizon last February and whipped DePaul.

Joey Meyer went home that night and stopped holding it all in. “Other than the night my mom died, it was the worst night I can ever remember,” he said softly. “It just all caved in at once. I guess I had to get everything out once and for all.”

Joey Meyer remembers going down to the basement and crying. Barbara Meyer remembers him not quite making it all the way down the steps. “He sat down there and I sat down with him,” she said. “It just all crashed at once.”

Barbara Meyer is her husband’s sounding board. They were high school sweethearts and have been married 12 years. The unflappable Joey Meyer the public sees is very different from the one Barbara Meyer sees.

“Joey is very emotional,” she said. “That’s why I wasn’t surprised by the way he reacted the night of the Cleveland State game. The frustration had been building for a long time. It was one of those things that we just had to get through.”

Quitting crossed Meyer’s mind. He wondered if maybe it was all too much: Succeeding his father, who is a legend, who still has an office across the hall, who is on radio all the time and who is still perhaps the most beloved man in Chicago. He knew that many of the players still went to his father’s office to seek his advice. He knew when he did things differently from his father, they questioned that, too.

“It was like, ‘We won doing it Coach Ray’s way, why are we changing?’ ” Joey Meyer said. “It was not an unreasonable way for them to feel.”

The problem was adjustment, not so much the coach’s adjustment as the players’ adjustment. Joey Meyer was the one who had recruited them. He was the one who came to their rooms to comfort them at night after a loss on the road. He was the go-between. Now, he was the disciplinarian.

“I think it was hard for everyone,” said Jim Molinari, the No. 1 assistant and a close friend of the younger Meyer. “Joey was always a player’s coach. You can’t be that as a head coach. It took a while for everyone to adjust to new roles. Joey and I used to joke about how we spent so many nights sharing a room on the road recruiting. Head coaches don’t share rooms. It was different for all of us.”

And difficult. Cleveland State was Meyer’s crash landing, but it wasn’t the end. Barbara Meyer remembers a road trip shortly after that when the phone rang four times. Each time, it was her husband. “I needed to be kicked in the butt because I was feeling sorry for myself,” Meyer said. “Things just hadn’t turned out the way they were supposed to and I was questioning everything. Barbara wouldn’t let me do it.”

Barbara Meyer’s light blue eyes flash when she talks about the last two years. “I’m a fighter,” she said, “and I just didn’t want Joey to give up without a fight. He waited all his life for this job and now he was wondering about whether he could do it before he had given himself a fair chance. I told him he couldn’t judge himself until he had a chance to coach his own players.”

Joey Meyer listened to his wife. And the Blue Demons rallied at season’s end to reach the NCAA round of 16. Two years into a four-year contract, Meyer asked DePaul for an extension. The school said no. Meyer will not criticize his alma mater publicly, but friends say he was hurt by that response.

“I think after they did that, it kind of cleared Joey’s mind a lot,” McReynolds said. “Until then, he was trying to be the nice guy. He didn’t want to get people upset with him. He wanted the assistants to feel important. He didn’t want to be a tough guy. But when that happened, I think he just decided that if he was going to fail, he was going to fail doing it his way.”

Joey Meyer says he thought a lot during the summer about the job he had done the first two years. The only player left who had played for Ray Meyer was Dallas Comegys, who just happened to be his best player. But Comegys had to be more consistent and he had to be a leader. And there had to be no doubt about who was in charge.

“All the guys now know my ways,” he said. “The other guys had been used to Coach yelling when he was angry. When I didn’t yell, they couldn’t tell I was angry. Then I tried to yell and it wasn’t really me so it didn’t work. These guys know when I’m upset without me wearing a sign. They have confidence in me and I have confidence in them. It makes a difference.”

This season, no one picked DePaul to do anything. Four starters had graduated and Comegys had yet to live up to his massive potential. Meyer admits that he would have been happy to go 18-10 and sneak into the tournament like last year’s team. Instead, the Blue Demons won 17 straight and finished the regular season 26-2. There is no doubt now about who is in charge at DePaul.

“He’s come a long way from that first year,” McReynolds said. “He knows now he’s a good coach and he really doesn’t care what anybody says. You watch him now. He’s the boss. Period.”

Joey Meyer admits the past two years have changed him. “Even if I hadn’t gone through hell the last two years, I would be different now because I would have more confidence in my ability just from experience,” Meyer said. “But because of what happened, I tend to worry only about the job I’m doing with the players. If I feel I’m doing a good job, that’s what matters. After you’ve been booed in your own arena, you’re bound to feel a little bitterness.”

Barbara Meyer agrees. “It may sound selfish but you get a little harder,” she said. “I remember what John Wooden used to say, ‘In this profession never get too high in victory or too low in defeat.’ I understand that now. Either way, there is always another game. What’s important to me now is that inside, I know Joey is satisfied with himself. That’s what is most important.”

Now, Joey Meyer is enjoying what this team has accomplished. He knows the Blue Demons kicked away a 14-point lead last Sunday en route to beating St. John’s 83-75, and he knows the critics would have been out in force in Chicago again had his team lost.

When the season ends--whether this weekend or next in New Orleans--Joey Meyer will ask for a contract extension. This time, there is little question he will get it.

“There is no question that when you go through hardship you appreciate the good times more,” he said. “I’ve really enjoyed coaching this team. We’re in the final 16 now. From here on in, this is gravy time for all of us.”