Three words by Mary Mihalich — uttered at the end of a half-hour interview Monday in which she and her husband Joe shared laughs at Joe’s “This Is Your Life”-esque tour of college basketball arenas up and down the eastern seaboard and also shed some tears over just how close the celebratory tone around this season came to being a mournful one — summarized why Joe was inducted into Niagara’s Hall of Fame in December, will be honored this weekend by Hofstra and has spent this season as the most popular guest everywhere he’s visited.
“It’s everything else,” Mary Mihalich said.
As Towson head coach Pat Skerry, perhaps Joe Mihalich’s closest friend in the business, said earlier this week, head coaches are measured by two abilities, and the more important of the two — building relationships — doesn’t pay the bills.
But Mihalich — who will be the subject of a celebratory dinner tonight before Hofstra hosts “Joe Mihalich Day” during Saturday afternoon’s game against Northeastern — produced consistent winners while never compromising the other parts of the job.
Mihalich won 419 games and earned three trips to the NCAA Tournament while serving as the head coach at just two schools, an outlier in an industry defined by restless souls strolling the sidelines and impatient suits occupying the offices of athletic director and president. He was the 2013 winner of the Skip Prosser Award, which honors head coaches whose on-court success is coupled with “…moral integrity off it as well.”
He coached 17 MAAC All-Academic honorees at Niagara before Hofstra earned the NCAA APR Public Recognition Award, which is given to programs whose APR (academic progress rate) ranks among the top 10 percent nationally. Hofstra’s also had the CAA’s last two Dean Ehlers Leadership Award winners in Desure Buie and Tareq Coburn.
As anyone who ever watched him at Niagara or Hofstra knows, Mihalich ran as white-hot as anyone during a game. But after it was over? There were friendships to maintain with his opposing coaches and a mutual bond to be shared with officials.
“Sometimes you have a mutual respect for guys, especially guys that do it the right way,” Skerry said. “I got here when I was a lot younger, and as you get into it, you gain that respect.”
Mihalich also fostered relationships with the community after taking over a pair of struggling programs that were afterthoughts in their own regions — understanding that while a good Division I basketball team provided opportunities to raise the profiles of Niagara and Hofstra, neither would be as big as the Buffalo Bills or any of the metropolitan New York City-area teams and that his job was to strengthen the ties with the existing no-nonsense, blue-collar fan bases.
“He’s not a flashy guy,” said Hofstra summer camps director Terry Ryan, who served on the staffs of Jay Wright and Tom Pecora and has become close friends with Mihalich. “He doesn’t wear those Armani suits. He’s got the one brown sports coat. That was kind of like (his) whole m.o. — just to be down low, normal, quiet (person).”
The respect Mihalich engendered with how he went about “everything else” resulted in the ultimate show of respect the Mihalich family has received since the afternoon of Aug. 15, 2020, when Mary sensed something was wrong when Joe wasn’t responding to her while they talked on the phone.
Mary, who was on her way to the family vacation home on the Jersey shore, turned around and headed back for Long Island. She called Colin Curtin, who joined Mihalich as a freshman student manager in the fall of 2005 and has been on his coaching staff since 2009, and asked him to check on Joe.
Curtin headed to Mihalich’s house just off the Hofstra campus and saw him in his driveway. Joe waved to Curtin, but had a difficult time speaking.
“Something didn’t make sense,” Joe said. “It was hard to talk.”
Curtin took Joe to the hospital in East Meadow, where it was discovered he’d suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. Joe was transported to North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, where the entire Mihalich family — including their siblings, their three sons and their daughters-in-law — gathered by nightfall,
“Wow, everybody was here that day,” Mary said. “Everybody was out in the parking lots. They weren’t allowed in. They had those folding back chairs and they would just camp out.”
Mihalich underwent a complicated surgery — overseen by a doctor whom Joseph Jr., the couple’s oldest son, dubbed the “Navy SEAL” of doctors in an interview with The Niagara Gazette — in which a bone from his skull was removed and stored in his abdomen until the swelling in his skull subsided.
“We were blessed that you survived and that you’re in as good a shape as you are,” Mary said while sitting next to Joe. “Because, statistically, (the) survivor (rates) of the brain hemorrhage is not very good.”
A rare moment of levity early in Joe’s recovery convinced Mary he would be fine. Pandemic restrictions didn’t allow any visitors from states not adjacent to New York. The couple’s youngest sons, twins Matt and Tony, live in Connecticut and Virginia, respectively. When Tony was denied access, he went back outside and switched hats and glasses with Matt.
And when Tony walked in wearing Matt’s garb?
“I thought I was going to have to play along with it (that Tony was Matt) and that it was going to be confusing,” Mary said. “(Joe) winked at me. With everything going on, he winked at me. That’s when I knew he was going to be OK.”
On Aug. 26, 2020, Hofstra announced Mihalich’s leave of absence and named Mike Farrelly acting head coach. There were no updates issued about Mihalich’s health nor any outside speculation on Mihalich’s illness or his condition — a remarkable feat in a gossip-fueled social media world.
Even more remarkable were the acts of kindness bestowed upon the family. People checked in with Mary and expressed their good wishes without intruding on the family.
“I always say oh my God, if something happened to me, I’d probably get about four cards,” Mary said with a laugh. “I have boxes and boxes of cards and letters and things that people have sent to Joe.”
Asked about his friendship with Skerry, Joe paused for 17 seconds, during which he took off his glasses, pulled down his N95 mask and wiped his eyes.
“Pat’s a good guy,” someone said.
“Yeah,” Joe said.
“Great guy,” Mary said. “Great friend.”
“Yeah,” Joe said.
“He was calling everyday,” Mary said, “If not you, texting, calling one of the boys everyday.”
Mary sniffed.
“He was always checking on him,” Mary said.
Both Mihalichs shed tears when talking about the Ryan family, which lives in Bellmore, several miles south of Hofstra. In addition to cooking for the Mihalichs on a nightly basis, the Ryans — who’d benefited from the kindness of friends and neighbors when when one of their children battled cancer as a pre-teen — shopped for the family, removing from a to-do list an item that is perilous in a pandemic. And during a snowstorm last winter, Terry and his son shoveled the Mihalichs’ driveway before Joe and Mary even stepped outside.
“We never needed to go to the store once,” Mary said. “I think I was at the hospital everyday and I never had to worry about food. We had the kids around and stuff, we were always at the hospital and the Ryans (made) dinner every night.”
For friends such as Skerry and the Ryans, checking in and chipping in were small ways to try and make sense of the unexplainable.
“I consider him a friend,” Skerry said. “And you’re just like, man, how can that happen? We’re all into this coaching thing — I’m as guilty as anyone, you get blinders on, you do whatever you can to win — and you hear something like that, it knocks you back. This guy invested everything in coaching. And to unfairly, unfortunately have that knock him back from it? It just sucks.”
“You just feel for a guy that did everything right — what a tough break,” Ryan said. “Morally sound, treated people the right way.”
Joe’s recovery has bordered on the miraculous. When Joe was hospitalized, Curtin remembered talking to Mary’s brother and the two understanding Joe would be dealing with elements of the stroke for the rest of his life. But other than his slowed speech, Mihalich looks and feels as good as ever. Arduous rehab gave him back full use of his right side and he walks multiple miles a day, just as he did while coaching Hofstra.
“He was fit as a fiddle and still is and I’m sure that served him well,” Mary said, again looking at Joe. “Your personality and the way you are is what got you in that in that recovery. I mean, he is just relentless with that. But that’s your hard work.”
As his recovery progressed, Mihalich understood he’d have to permanently step aside as head coach. Mihalich acknowledged “it was hard” to come to such a realization, but he put a positive spin on retirement by declaring he’d ended his career on a make — the win in the CAA championship game on Mar. 10, 2020, which had Hofstra primed to make its first trip to the NCAA Tournament in 19 years until the pandemic forced the tourney’s cancellation two days later — when the school announced he’d transition to a new role as an assistant to athletic director Rick Cole last Mar. 19.
The upbeat approach to his retirement lifted those who asked the unanswerable questions the Mihalichs — who attend Mass every day — never pondered: Why him? Why does something like this happen to someone who’d so properly built a sustained mid-major contender? Why now, when Joe and was positioned to coach as long as he wanted at Hofstra, where he was 74 wins shy of tying Butch van Breda Kolff all-time record and comfortable as the face of the university — especially in the opening days and weeks of the pandemic, when Mihalich was able to eloquently explain how he and his players understood why the tournament was canceled but were still crestfallen?
“I mean, up until that point, he was Superman,” Curtin said. “You can’t help but ask questions.”
Invoking one of his favorite bits of advice also allowed Mihalich to punctuate a career unique in both its arc and approach. Joe said he heard Morgan Wootten use the term “end on a make” while coaching under the legend at DeMatha Catholic High School in Maryland. He continued to repeat the phrase to his sons when they played basketball as well as to his players at Niagara and Hofstra.
It also summarizes an approach to program-building that he put to use at Niagara and Hofstra. Complete every task, even those started by predecessors.
“There was never a scandal, there was never a guy who never graduated, we never had APR problems,” Curtin said. “I remember him calling Greg Springfield (who was a senior in 2000-01) and saying ‘Hey Greg, you’re three credits away from your degree. Let us help you get this degree.’ And he got his degree that first year.
“Man, the wins are great, but stuff like that? It just gives you the chills.”
Mihalich is as invested in Hofstra’s games now as he was as a head coach — one of the great sights of the season was Mihalich cackling with glee as he hugged first-year head coach Speedy Claxton following an overtime win over James Madison on Feb. 5 — but it’s the “stuff like that” which yields such as warm reception for him everywhere he goes.
“I learned a long time ago,” Mihalich said before pausing for seven seconds. “It was the right thing to do.”
When he arrived at Niagara for a dinner in his honor on Dec. 2, a group of attendees — from Ryan and Curtin to former players and even a former neighbor of the Mihalichs — couldn’t fit into the picture in the accompanying story in The Niagara Gazette.
Mary laughed when recalling the hugs Joe shared with officials last week, when Hofstra visited Drexel and Delaware.
“The referees come running up into the stands to give Joe a big hug — I’m like oh my God, we’re 12 rows up,” Mary said. “After games (he coached), I would say ‘Boy, Joe, he was really giving you a hard time.’ (And Joe would say) ‘Oh he’s a great guy.
“It just really spoke to how much respect people do have for you and that they respected you to that level.”
Hofstra has long appreciated the 141 wins and the program development template that has Mihalich’s imprint all over yet another CAA contender. Claxton was Mihalich’s first major external hire in 2013 and Claxton’s first star recruit, likely CAA Player of the Year Aaron Estrada, has been as revelatory a find as Justin Wright-Foreman and the late Zeke Upshaw.
But this weekend, Hofstra gets to thank him for everything else.
“There’s an old saying we’ve used with some of our better teams: As we drink the water, let’s be mindful who helped dig the well,” Skerry said. “Joe Mihalich dug the well up at Hofstra.”
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