Small gyms don’t douse Durango ex-coach’s excitement

Do you see the photo of Northern Arizona basketball coach Jack Murphy? It shows Murphy calling out a play, exhorting his team — and one can see a fire extinguisher on the wall of the gymnasium. Along with a white stick-like device that may or may not be somebody’s cane.

Welcome to the world of midmajor college basketball.

Welcome, too, to the College Insider.com Postseason Tournament.

Not everybody can be Kentucky or Duke.

The College Insider is a tournament being held for the seventh time in relative obscurity while the college basketball thoroughbreds are dunking the ball through the hoop and missing free throws during March Madness.

It’s a tournament a team steeped in tradition, such as UNLV, probably would have turned down, because the Rebels apparently are happy watching other teams dunk and miss free throws.

It’s a tournament in which Northern Arizona and Las Vegan Jack Murphy are delighted still to be playing.

Good for them.

“The other day I was having lunch with my 3-year-old son, Dylan, and a fan came up and said, ‘Coach, if we win, when do we play our next game?’ ” Murphy, 35, said after his Lumberjacks had defeated Grand Canyon and Sacramento State to advance to the quarterfinals against Kent State of the Mid-American Conference.

“That’s the first time I ever had anybody ask me when our next game was.”

This is Murphy’s third season coaching fire-extinguisher-on-the-wall college basketball. He took over in Flagstaff for Mike Adras, another Las Vegas export, who had guided the Lumberjacks to the 2000 NCAA Tournament, where Northern Arizona, a 15-seed, lost 61-56 to No. 2 St. John’s.

That was a pretty good story.

Murphy is probably even a better story, because whereas Adras came from Bishop Gorman, where he won state championships, Murphy came from Durango, where he washed socks and jocks as Al La Rocque’s student manager.

“I used to tell him to make sure he washed our uniforms right because they were purple, and I didn’t want to see them turn pink,” La Rocque said.

La Rocque helped Murphy land a gig as student manager at Arizona, where Lute Olson, La Rocque’s old coach at Long Beach City College, was building a dynasty in the desert. Murphy went on to become Olson’s recruiting coordinator, administrative assistant, video coordinator and director of basketball operations.

While at Arizona, Murphy also met Jim Livengood’s daughter, Michelle. Livengood was Arizona’s athletic director then, the same post he would hold at UNLV. Jack and Michelle got married and have three children: twin daughters Emma and Isabella, and Dylan.

After Arizona, Murphy jumped to the NBA, where he was an advance scout for the Denver Nuggets under George Karl for three seasons. Then it was back to college basketball’s arena leagues for three more seasons as a Memphis State assistant under Josh Pastner, another Lute Olson disciple.

When the opening at Northern Arizona developed, Murphy was happy to fill it, though it meant he sometimes would be coaching in gyms where there are fire extinguishers on the walls.

During his first season, Northern Arizona finished 11-17 and 8-12 in the Big Sky Conference. Last season, the Lumberjacks improved to 15-17 and 12-8.

This season, with fellow Las Vegans Aaseem Dixon (Centennial) and Jordyn Martin (Palo Verde) playing significant roles, the Jacks are better — 22-14. They went 13-5 in the Big Sky, losing 61-59 to Montana in the conference semifinals in controversial fashion.

One of the Grizzlies ran onto the court in street clothes to celebrate the game-winning basket while the ball still was in play, which normally would have been called a technical foul.

But after a long discussion, the Montana basket was allowed to stand.

During the postgame handshake, Murphy told the Griz coach he was lucky the zebras ruled the way they did, and that led to the coaches exchanging words, and that led to the Big Sky commissioner suspending Murphy for the Grand Canyon game.

But then he came back, and now he’s still coaching.

When Jack Murphy and I spoke, it was Wednesday.

“Here is it, March 25, and we’re still playing. That’s never happened here before,” he said.

On March 27, a Friday night among the cool pines in Flagstaff, Northern Arizona outscored Kent State 6-0 in the final 32 seconds of overtime to win a 74-73 thriller. A hopped-up crowd of 3,653 rushed the court at the Walkup Skydome — after the game officially was over — to celebrate Northern Arizona’s school-record 22nd victory.

You couldn’t see any fire extinguishers on the walls with the Northern Arizona fans going crazy like that.

So to answer that fan’s question, the next game for coach Jack Murphy and the Lumberjacks will be Tuesday in the CollegeInsider.com semifinals against New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.