Boston Ball

Clayton Trutor holds a PhD in U.S. history from Boston College and teaches at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. He writes about college football and basketball for SB Nation and is the author of Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta-and How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports (Nebraska, 2022). Trutor is a regular contributor to the SABR Biography Project.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Forgotten Cradle of Coaches1. Pay Cut (Calhoun)2. You Come Highly Recommended (Pitino)3. Once Again, Not That Much Is Expected of the Eagles (Williams)4. Getting over a Hump (Calhoun)5. Great Kids (Pitino)6. Pack the Bags. We’re Off to Albuquerque (Williams)7. Northwestern (Calhoun)8. Like the Pacific Ocean (Pitino)9. They Probably Achieved as Much as They Could (Williams)10. Our Best Recruiting Year Ever (Calhoun)11. Truly a Team of Character (Pitino)12. I was Happy at BC (Williams)13. Where Did You Get That Guy? (Calhoun)14. Proper Perspective (Pitino)15. Homecoming (Williams)Epilogue: March 31, 1988NotesBibliographyIndex

“From Auerbach to Belichick, Boston has long been the home office to coaching titans in the pros. In this fascinating book, Clayton Trutor summons a time when the city was also home to three relentless college coaches whose frenetic, full-court approach mirrored the region and paved their way to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Clayton Trutor has crafted a wonderful must-read reminder that the Celtics aren’t the only ones responsible for Boston’s love affair with the city game.”-Ian O’Connor, New York Times best-selling author of Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Football Coach of All Time “Boston Ball is a fascinating journey through an underappreciated time and place in the history of college basketball.”-Pat Williams, co-founder of the Orlando Magic and author of Who Coached the Coaches “In the early 1980s the proverbial ‘pro sports town’ of Boston was home to three remarkable young college basketball coaches. . . . Clayton Trutor brings that era alive and reminds us of a time when these future Hall of Famers were unproven, ambitious, and hungry for more.”-John Gasaway, ESPN writer and author of Miracles on the Hardwood: The Hope-and-a-Prayer Story of a Winning Tradition in Catholic College Basketball “Through his essays and books, Clayton Trutor is quietly becoming one of the very best sports historians that we have. In Boston Ball he takes you for a journey in his time machine back to an era (the 1980s) and a city (Boston) that was clearly the king of the NBA but more quietly the spawning ground for three coaches (Gary Williams, Jim Calhoun, and Rick Pitino) who would soon dominate the collegiate game. The great, excavated stories and the rock-solid analysis are all part of the Trutor magic.”-Jack Gilden, author of Collision of Wills: Johnny Unitas, Don Shula, and the Rise of the Modern NFL “Boston Ball takes you on an amazing ride following the careers of Hall of Fame coaches. Trutor masterfully weaves a story of hard-working men who grew up as coaches in a city know for great ones. If you’re a basketball fan, you need to read this book.”-Jon Meterparel, ESPN college basketball and football announcer and the voice of Boston College football