Life happened and somehow got into the championship game

HOUSTON — After Connecticut’s brash sharpshooting guard Joey Calcaterra swung an open 3-pointer late in the first half of a Final Four game on Saturday, forcing a Miami defenseman to pay for an ill-advised bet, he clapped hands with coach Dan Hurley.

Calcaterra continued down, barking all the way – at an opponent, at the mob, at the moon?

As Sam Scholl watched the full Joey California experience play out, all he could do was smile and shake his head.

A year ago, Scholl and Calcaterra had an uncertain future together.

Scholl had just been fired as a coach at the University of San Diego, where he was a basketball walk-on in the late 1990s. And Calcaterra, after playing four seasons for the Toreros, had just entered the transfer portal, certain there was something different for him.

Now they’ll share the biggest stage in men’s college basketball: Calcaterra comes off the bench to immediately insult (and a little attitude) the Huskies and Scholl, a member of the San Diego State coaching staff, and plans to stop him when their teams play for the national championship Monday night in Houston.

In this shredded, inverted Division I men’s tournament, with its myriad setbacks and unpredictable endings, there are perhaps no better examples than Calcaterra and Scholl. When Scholl fed Calcaterra to celebrate his graduation last May, even the most fantastic path they imagined didn’t include it.

“I’ve had a lot of emotional moments over the last three weeks, going from the lowest of the lowest now to the highest of the highest in a year,” Scholl said. “You can’t get any higher than we get the chance to.”

“It’s crazy to see how the world works,” said Calcaterra, who posed for a photo with Scholl in their new teams’ gear near a large image of Calcaterra on a wall outside UConn’s locker room.

Calcaterra entered the transfer portal on March 9, 2022, three days after Scholl’s sacking. He met with new San Diego coach Steve Lavin but did not want to return. He heard of Weber State, UC Riverside, and Illinois Chicago, but he was convinced there was a better place waiting for him. So he waited. And waited.

“It’s been a tough couple of months,” Calcaterra said. “My parents sometimes thought I had to commit myself to something. There was just something in me that said, ‘Don’t. Wait a minute.’”

Finally, in early June, with the rosters nearly full, Vanderbilt called. And then so did Connecticut. Hurley had one scholarship available and was looking for someone who could shoot and wouldn’t play with fear. But he told Calcaterra he wasn’t sure he was good enough to get on the field.

Calcaterra immediately got on the plane.

“I knew I had what it takes to play at this level, and I wanted to see what this was all about,” he said. “I only spent one night there, but I saw everything I needed. I was on one workout and I saw the intensity – no rest, no break. I knew I would maximize my potential.”

He committed the next day.

During one of Calcaterra’s first summer workouts, Hurley nicknamed him Joey California, which might conjure up an image of a laid-back, sand-between-toes surfer—everything Calcaterra isn’t. “The first time I probably thought, what did he just call me?” said Calcaterra. “But he kept saying it and saying it.”

Soon social media did their job and now there’s a Joey California line of hoodies and T-shirts. (Friends and neighbors in Novato, California, north of San Francisco, call his parents Richie and Wendy California, according to The New Haven Register.)

“He’s exactly the type of player from a guard’s point of view you want to see coming off the bench – confident, gunfighter, Maverick with a ‘Top Gun’ kind of mentality,” said Hurley, adding that he encouraged Calcaterra to get somewhere else to go if he had. doubts that he could break into the rotation.

When San Diego State coaches delivered scouting reports to their players on the Huskies, Scholl gave the report on Calcaterra. He briefed the Aztecs on Calcaterra’s deadeye shooting — a team-high 44 percent from behind the 3-point arc — and also that while he’s a role player, averaging about 14 minutes per game, he’s not shy.

“Joey is going to take the big shot,” said Scholl. ‘He’s not afraid. He has never been afraid of the moment.”

Scholl has come to appreciate that confidence even more in the past 12 months than in the previous eight years, since he first saw a lean, energetic high school sophomore at a travel tournament in Atlanta.

His own confidence was shaken after he was fired. After the hanging texts and calls died down, the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, and Scholl was out of a job. Money wasn’t an issue as he was owed the last year of his contract, but his confidence in his career was.

Finally, San Diego state coach Brian Dutcher called Scholl in early July and suggested he come on board as a “basketball performance consultant,” a position the school created for $37,440 a year. It has turned out to be a life saver.

“When you’re let go, it’s hard not to accept that because you weren’t good enough,” Scholl said. “To have the opportunity to learn from this great coaching staff, to be a part of this team and program, when it’s shaken up a bit, it builds your confidence.”

And so there was Scholl late Saturday night, still buzzing with the euphoria of Lamont Butler’s buzzing jumper that sent the Aztecs to the title game. He took a seat with the Aztecs’ assistant coach JayDee Luster in the press row to scout their next opponent.

And then he saw a familiar scene: Calcaterra knocked in a three-pointer and let the world know. Calcaterra, not wanting to reveal what he said, understands why Scholl laughed and noted that he had collected more than a few technical data. “I’m sure he had flashbacks,” Calcaterra said.

It was one of many for Scholl this week.

“I think Joey said to his defender, ‘Don’t gamble because I’m going to make you pay for it,'” Scholl said. “Joey tends to always have something to say – at almost any time.”