The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
Bond Between Haase And Vaughn Still Strong
9/8/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Steve Irvine
Any question surrounding the strength of a longtime friendship between UAB men’s basketball head coach Jerod Haase and former University of Kansas teammate Jacque Vaughn was answered last week when Vaughn stepped off a plane at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.
It was his first trip to a city he thought was permanently in his rearview mirror. He squeezed his eyes shut while riding past the building that housed his biggest college basketball disappointment. He pushed back the painful memories to visit an old friend, who shares those same painful memories.
“I probably wouldn’t have come (back to Birmingham) if it wasn’t for him,” Vaughn said with a laugh.
The pain in the memory is real. Haase talked about it last spring when he returned to the Legacy Arena at the BJCC for the first time since Kansas dropped an 85-82 decision to eventual champion Arizona in a NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Regional Final in the spring of 1997 in a building then known simply as the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex. When told the Blazers used the same locker room as Kansas, Vaughn asked if his “tears were still on the floor in there?”
Even though the loss is still hard to take, both had tremendous college careers under legendary head coach Roy Williams. Vaughn was a four-year starter, who ended his career as Kansas’ all-time leader in career assists. He was a two-time Academic All-American, finishing with a 3.72 GPA in Business Administration, and the Big Eight Player of the Year in 1996. Haase started his college career at Cal before transferring to Kansas. He spent three seasons in the backcourt alongside Vaughn, helping the Jayhawks win 89 of 102 games during that span.
The success didn’t end for either after they left Lawrence. Haase had a brief stint playing basketball overseas before entering the coaching world. He spent 12 seasons on Williams’ staffs at Kansas and North Carolina before coming to Birmingham. Vaughn was a first round draft pick by the Utah Jazz in 1997. He spent 12 seasons in the NBA and was part of a NBA championship team at San Antonio in 2006-07. He served as an assistant coach for the Spurs before spending two full seasons and the majority of another season as the head coach for the Orlando Magic.
While their careers took them different directions, Haase and Vaughn’s friendship never faltered. “I think it’s always been a lot of reinforcement to each other, congratulations to each other,” Vaughn said. “All my basketball that I’ve been around, my years in college I’ll never forget and Jerod was a big part of that. You have certain relationships where you see a guy – whether you haven’t seen him in three months or three years – and there is that connection. Jerod and I have that. He’s always pulled for me and I’ve always rooted for him.”
Haase said it’s a situation he wants to use as a lesson for his UAB players.
“I’m hoping the message to our team here at UAB is that if you invest greatly, truly give up yourself for the team, those relationships last,” Haase said. “What we’re doing, it’s not just about one play, one possession or one game. It’s about each other, it’s about team success. You can call each other 20 years from now. Jacque and I talk some but we certainly don’t talk on a day-to-day basis.
"I really think I could call (former Kansas teammate) Paul Pierce tomorrow and say ‘Hey, I need something or you want to do something? And he would say absolutely.’ You do have that common bond of fighting together, being together and not just because you were on a college team but because you were on a college team that really did it the right way and were completely bought in.”
What they were doing last Wednesday was participating in a coaching clinic – that was really more of a coaches round table - inside the Green and Gold room at Bartow Arena. Haase and his staff welcomed Vaughn, former Georgia Tech and George Mason head coach Paul Hewitt, UAH head coach Lennie Acuff, UNC Greensboro head coach Wes Miller and Xavier University of Louisiana head coach Dannton Jackson.
It was a day filled with successful coaches bouncing ideas, philosophies and strategies off each other. Many of the points were punctuated with trips to a dry erase board to diagrams plays or ideas. It was also a day for fellowship, laughter and a tasty barbecue lunch from Full Moon.
“It’s a great deal,” Haase said. “In any profession, it’s so easy to caught up in the day-to-day stuff where you don’t continue to develop professionally. With this, there is a lot of great minds in here, to be able to share ideas is really a positive.”
For Vaughn and Haase, it was also a chance to catch up with an old friend. Vaughn was able to meet the players he was rooting for this past March when the Blazers won the Conference USA Tournament title and captured national attention with an upset victory over No. 3 seed Iowa State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
“I was wearing green in my household,” Vaughn said. “My kids all filled out brackets and I said they had to put UAB to advance. It was fun. It is great to see people you spent quality years with and see them have success. You want people to reach their dreams and be successful at it – a lot of cheering was going on in my household.”
Vaughn also made a promise on Wednesday, even if it means stepping inside the BJCC once again. “I’m going to have to come back,” Vaughn said. “If he gets back into the conference finals then I’ll come watch him there.”
