Tom Green definitely fits into the category of “basketball lifer”. After playing point guard at Syracuse starting in the 1960s, he joined the coaching ranks and spent more than a decade combined at Syracuse/Tulane as an assistant coach. In 1983 he became head coach at Fairleigh Dickinson, and after more than a quarter-century in Hackensack he spent a few more years as head coach at CCNY before retiring in 2017. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Tom about working with Jim Boeheim and almost upsetting a #1-seed in 1985. Today is Tom’s 73rd birthday so let us be the 1st to wish him a happy 1!
You played basketball at Syracuse: how good a player were you back in the day, and why did you decide to get into coaching? I was a cerebral PG with good ball-handling skills and knew how to lead/run an offense. I played with 2 big-time scorers: Bill Smith (a 6’11” center) and Greg Kohls (a 6’2” SG who could shoot the lights out). Coaching was something that I knew I wanted to do early on in my playing career.
In the 1975 NCAA tourney as an assistant at Syracuse under Roy Danforth, Jim Lee scored 24 PTS in a 2-PT win over UNC: what was it like to beat Dean Smith in March? That was an incredible game, especially with the personnel that UNC had on their team. It put us in the Eastern Regional championship vs. Kansas State (which we won) and led us to the Final 4.
1 of your fellow assistant coaches was Jim Boeheim: what made him such a great coach, and could you have ever imagined at the time that he would become such a legend? I always knew that Jim was going to be successful. He really knew Xs and Os, had an incredible work ethic, knew how to communicate with players, and made great use of the people that worked with him/for him. Nobody could ever predict his Hall of Fame career and the fact that he is on his way to 1000 wins. However, I absolutely knew that he was going to be successful because he was headed on that path from the time he became my friend/co-worker.
In 1983 you were hired as head coach at Fairleigh Dickinson: why did you take the job? It was a bad job: looking back on it now I never should have taken it. They only had 2 winning seasons in the previous 11 years and had never won a championship of any kind, but I was hungry to be a head coach. I took a 3-year contract, which was crazy: you could say that I had a few extensions of my contract over the years!
In the 1985 NCAA tourney Roy Tarpley had 15 PTS/13 REB in a 4-PT win by Michigan: how close did you come to upsetting the #1-seed? We were ahead 26-20 at halftime and up by 10 PTS with 8 minutes to go. All 5 of my starters fouled out from the 8-minute mark to the 4-minute mark so we finished the game with 4 scholarship players and a walk-on. We were down by 2 PTS with 8 seconds left and missed a steal by a whisker that would have sent it into OT, but my bench was empty at this point.
You won back-to-back conference COY awards in 1985/1986: what did it mean to you to win such outstanding honors? Those honors just mean that my assistants brought in good players and we won with them.
In the 1998 NCAA tourney Elijah Allen scored 43 PTS/14-17 FG in an 8-PT loss to UConn: where does that rank among the greatest performances you have ever seen? I played in a game where Calvin Murphy scored 68 PTS vs. Syracuse (64 against our other guard and 4 against me) even though there was no 3-PT shot back then!!! I was also at an NBA game once where George Gervin scored 63 PTS to lock up a scoring championship versus the New Orleans Jazz. Elijah’s 43 was an incredible night as he was on fire and drove Coach Jim Calhoun nuts with his play! Elijah was/is a 1st-class young man.
In the 2006 NEC tourney title game Chris Kenny scored 8 PTS and made a driving layup with 2 seconds left in a 1-PT win by Monmouth: where does that rank among the most devastating losses of your career? You had to remind me…yes, that was my most devastating loss!
In 2009 you were fired by athletic director David Langford despite being the winningest coach in school history: why on earth did he fire you, and do you think that anyone will ever break your record? I have no idea why I was fired: they never told me a reason. I do not think that anyone will ever spend 26 years at FDU again. It is a tough level to keep on winning at…and very hard to keep an AD happy for that long!
You later became head coach at the City College of New York: how did you like the job? I liked working at CCNY a lot and had fun coaching there. I wanted to turn this program around because they were at “rock bottom” when I arrived: I had a great support system here from the AD on up.