‘Slice’ staring straight at college basketball’s pinnacle with Kentucky

INDIANAPOLIS

He remembers fondly those four years, the voracious appetite of fans for a winning team, the excitement UNLV basketball brought to a city, the feeling of what it meant to be around a major program.

And also the Bobbie sandwich from Capriotti’s.

“Without mayo,” Barry Rohrssen said. “It’s unbelievable how that shop has expanded. I should have (invested) back then.”

He is invested in something much different and momentous now, a former administrative assistant and director of operations at UNLV under Bill Bayno who is in his first season on John Calipari’s staff at Kentucky.

“Slice” has made it to the big time.

Those acting roles in major films and a brief stint with the Washington Generals are nothing compared to this current ride.

He never won with the Generals.

He hasn’t lost with the Wildcats.

The nickname was given to Rohrssen by Five Star camp founder Howard Garfinkel when the former played at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, N.Y. Rohrssen couldn’t shoot that well, so he kept slicing to the basket.

In time, he became a coach and built a recruiting pipeline from New York to Pittsburgh that earned him legendary status across the East Coast and fed some pretty darn good players to Ben Howland and Jamie Dixon when Rohrssen worked on their staffs at Pitt.

Now, he works for the man whom he roomed with at the Five Star camp 35 years ago, a friendship Calipari and Rohrssen never let get stale or lost as both went their separate ways in the profession.

Now, they have arrived at the doorstep of history.

Kentucky plays Wisconsin in one Final Four game tonight at Lucas Oil Stadium, where the Wildcats will try to continue their undefeated season in hopes of finishing 40-0 with a national championship victory Monday night.

It’s a little different recruiting to St. Francis, where Rohrssen was an assistant coach at his alma mater in the early 1990s, than the one-and-done monster of NBA talent that Calipari assembles each year.

“You mean the difference between a subway token or a chartered plane?” “Slice” said. “It’s either the subway or Air Cal.

“Personally, I feel blessed. Professionally, I know this is special. Not many coaches ever get to experience and be part of something like this. Kentucky targets the best players in the nation, but when you’re inside it, it’s incomprehensible that Cal can rebuild year after year and sustain this level of success.

“I call it succinct. I can’t spell it, but know what it means. Cal gets right to the point with anyone we recruit. Kentucky isn’t for everyone. You’re expected to play a certain way and work a certain way. He has a vision of what type of players he wants to recruit and coach. From the very first time you shook hands with him, John Calipari had coach written all over him.”

“Slice” is 54 and an interesting fellow. He laughs at the notion that you can find any good pizza in Lexington when compared to New York. Kentucky might do basketball well, but it’s not in the same stratosphere as Totonno’s on Coney Island or Grimaldi’s under the Brooklyn Bridge or Lombardi’s on Spring Street or Patsy’s in East Harlem for the best pie.

He has worked as an actor, having played a minor role in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” minor as in Rohrssen can be seen sitting down as a police detective when Al Pacino storms into an office and confronts Kevin Spacey.

“Slice” didn’t have any lines, but he appeared to be in several scenes in which people slammed doors.

His last name was also credited as Rossen.

“Mine is hard to spell and even harder to say,” Rohrssen said. “I suppose if we don’t win enough here or Cal decides to get rid of me, I might be able to do some Dr. Scholl’s commercials.”

Winning wasn’t an option with the Generals, best known for their spectacular losing streak in exhibition games against the Harlem Globetrotters. Rohrssen tells the story of how Generals owner and coach Red Klotz drove him in a new Cadillac to a park in New Jersey, took a ball out of the trunk and played him one-on-one as a tryout for the team.

“Slice” didn’t know what would help his chances more — beating Klotz or letting him win. He went with his instincts. He beat him and made the team.

“That was a long time ago, when I had a lot more hair and a lot less weight,” Rohrssen said. “It was a brief thing. It’s like dating. Not every girl you go out with you want to remember or speak about. I wasn’t there long enough to get (doused) with the confetti basket.”

A lot more of the small paper streamers will fall from the rafters Monday night in Indianapolis, where one of four among Kentucky, Wisconsin, Duke and Michigan State will be crowned national champion. It has been a long journey for “Slice,” from St. Francis to UNLV in the mid-1990s to Pittsburgh a few different occasions to Manhattan as a head coach to even time with the Idaho Stampede of the NBA’s Development League.

To here with Calipari.

To the doorstep of history.

“I’m sure there is a way if you lose a game, you can say, ‘Hey, let’s build off this,’ ” Rohrssen said. “But this was the best way to set up and prepare our team. I really feel with each win, it gave our players even more confidence than they already brought in and put them in a mindset that this is really special.

“Winning has worked out pretty well. We’re going to stick with the winning.”

Then he talked more about the Bobbie from Capriotti’s.

Some loves never fade.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 100.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.