Family important to Matt McCall at home and at UTC

First-year UTC men's basketball coach Matt McCall tries to balance his career with family life as the husband to Allison and the father to Brooklyn, left, who turns 2 this month, and Kylie, right, who was born last month.
First-year UTC men's basketball coach Matt McCall tries to balance his career with family life as the husband to Allison and the father to Brooklyn, left, who turns 2 this month, and Kylie, right, who was born last month.

There will come a time, some point after his career is over, when Matt McCall will have a chance to reflect on the moment he became a head coach. He already knows where he'll be - relaxing on the beach in Jupiter, Fla., a fishing pole in hand.

He'll take a moment to think back to what he hopes will have been a long, successful career built more on friendships than victories and championships. But that moment has yet to arrive for the 33-year-old McCall.

Right now, the new University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men's basketball coach is very busy.

The Mocs, who begin official practice for the 2015-16 season Friday, return nearly 80 percent of their scoring and rebounding from 2014-15, and they'll be expected to compete for a Southern Conference championship in McCall's first season in charge. Since taking over for departed coach Will Wade in April, McCall's primary focus has been forging relationships with players.

Yet the seemingly never-ending days take a break the moment McCall returns home from work, be it from a recruiting trip or hours spent diagramming plays and figuring out how to make the Mocs the best they can be. That's when he briefly takes off his coaching hat to wear another one.

It's the hat he wears as husband to Allison and father to Brooklyn, who turns 2 on Oct. 22, and Kylie, who was born Sept. 7 .

"I've got a whole other job," he said. "Dad and husband, and that job is just as important as any other job, so when I'm at home, I can leave whatever is going on at work for an hour. It's tough, but I do the best I can at that. I fall short at times, but like anything else, you do the best you can at it."

Said Allison: "He's really good at it. He works so hard and has so much on his plate, so when he's able to be home, we make sure we sit down and have dinner together. He'll be there for bath time with Brooklyn or he goes to pick up the newborn. He does as much as he can to be a great husband and father figure."

'I'm not going to coach you anymore'

McCall knew before he went to college that he wanted to be a coach. That led to his decision to attend the University of Florida despite an offer to play basketball at Stetson University.

His father Wayne started at middle linebacker for the Gators, and three of Matt's uncles played high school football. That wasn't the younger McCall's desire, and despite the protests of the high school football coach - "He was always walking past the gym and yelling at me for not playing football," he recalled - he never put pads on.

Part of that was due to Wayne's decision to let his son carve his own path in life, so when McCall chose to go into coaching, his parents supported that choice.

"The two of them had been so supportive of me from day one of my basketball career, my athletic career," McCall said. "When I was 10 or 11, my dad had a conversation with me. He said, 'All right, I'm done.' I asked him what he meant. He said, 'I'm not coaching you anymore. I'm going to be your dad now and let other people coach you.'

"He wanted me to write my own path and do what I want to do, and I always respected that. When we had that conversation at that point in time, I didn't know what it meant, but he said, 'If you want my advice, ask me. If you want my opinion, ask me. But I'm never coaching you.' When I look back at that, it was a powerful message. You see parents in the stands trying to coach a kid while the coach is."

That's why calling his parents after learning he'd been hired by UTC meant so much to him.

"For them to see their son who had a dream and a goal at a young age was special," said McCall, who ended his time as an assistant at the University of Florida shortly before Gators head coach Billy Donovan became head coach of the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder.

But the call to his parents was the second one McCall made after taking the job at UTC.

'She was two feet in from the time they met'

McCall's first date with Allison (formerly Rios) was at Lemongrass Asian Bistro in Boca Raton, Fla., in summer 2009. He was an assistant coach at Florida Atlantic University at the time. She was working at a resort.

She was also an avid sports fan originally from Long Island, N.Y. She loved the Yankees and, of course, Derek Jeter. On his phone, McCall had pictures of Jeter from a trip to Yankee Stadium.

"The first night we met, we totally hit it off," Allison said. "We were talking about what he did, and I really didn't understand it. I thought he was like Jerry Maguire."

McCall kept turning to his friend, then-FAU and now UTC assistant coach Peter Gash, for advice on dating a girl from New York. Gash, like Allison, is a Long Island native.

"I had to let him know her passion was OK," said Gash, who has a four-month old daughter, Valentina. "Girls from Long Island are passionate. Allison was two feet in from the time they met."

That road took the couple north to Gainesville for four seasons and now to Chattanooga. The family doubled in size with the additions of Brooklyn and Kylie, and with Matt's schedule, that's been quite a load for Allison.

At times, she has turned to Billy Donovan's wife Christine. The Donovans have four children.

"I will still ask her for advice. She's been a great person to lean on," Allison said. "She did somewhat prepare me. She's always been there for me and still is, and I know she's been a part of helping me to transition to where I am now."

Keeping the family together

In part because of his own upbringing, Matt has worked to create a family atmosphere at UTC. In addition to his own family time, he does whatever he can to promote such an environment with his assistants, players and potential future Mocs.

He likes for the coaches' families to be around the players. Coaches' wives spend time together, and if he can, McCall will invite everyone over to the house for dinner.

When a recruit steps on campus, he meets the players and coaches, but he also meets the coaches' families.

"A lot of coaches don't value that," Gash said. "They think that business is business, but this isn't a business. It's a family, and we embody that in our actions. When a recruit comes here, (McCall) takes the visit opportunity to show we're all family here and that they are going to come into a situation where he'll have family around him."

Gash knows all too well about McCall's loyalty. The two were part of Mike Jarvis's staff at FAU, and when Gash needed a job after the 2013-14 season, McCall went to Donovan, who added him to the Florida staff.

"I owe him my whole career, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart," Gash said. "Twice in my short career, he's stuck his neck out on the line and given me a chance, and I can't say enough about his loyalty when it comes to our relationship."

'All about the team'

McCall isn't walking into a bad situation at UTC.

The Mocs won 22 games last season, finishing second in the Southern Conference, although a first-round exit in the conference tournament has made them hungry - especially considering that loss was to Furman, a team they swept during the regular season.

Casey Jones, Greg Pryor and Justin Tuoyo earned all-conference honors, with Tuoyo blocking more than 100 shots and being named the SoCon defensive player of the year. The return of so much experience plus a number of important new players - including versatile guards Dee Oldham and Johnathan Burroughs-Cook - could make the Mocs even better.

But when McCall took the job, he had to win over the returning players, a few of whom were unsure about the hire and spoke out.

McCall never panicked.

"He was going to be himself," Gash said. "He has a lot of belief in who he is as a person, and when you're surrounded by guys who are like you, you don't have to do a lot to try to convince them to come back.

"They just want to come back to play for you because you're about the right things."

Some of the group had been through a lot. McCall is the third head coach in the college careers of seniors Alex Bran, Jones and Eric Robertson. The same can be said for Tuoyo, who started his career at VCU with Shaka Smart before following Wade to UTC.

"We talk every day. Not even about basketball, we just talk," Tuoyo said. "He's developed a relationship with my family, so the relationship has been coming along."

Tuoyo, a Georgia fan, said he expects some friendly trash talk between he and McCall, who proudly supports the Gators, next week before the two teams play.

"We'll talk about it all week," Tuoyo said.

McCall has cultivated relationships all around him. He is still trying to get a final feel for the team, though, and Friday will be the first time all of the Mocs have been on the court together. It's at that point he'll start putting into play what he hopes is the game plan for a successful season.

What he does know is he's been placed in a nice situation, driven by UTC vice chancellor and athletic director David Blackburn, the athletic staff and a city that's on a high after a successful semi-professional soccer season, a visit from the U.S. women's soccer team and the announcement earlier this week that the Mocs football team is ranked No. 6 in the nation among FCS programs, its highest position ever.

McCall is just ready to help further what has already been a great sports year for the city of Chattanooga.

"The players are great people," McCall said. "They're not perfect - neither am I - but they're really good people, and I enjoy being around them. They're my family. When Kylie was born, every single player texted me congratulations. That talks to the type of people they are.

"They're excited about the season. I get joy from being around those guys, but they're just a really good group of kids."

Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/genehenleytfp.

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