Philly Gym Rat (The Perry “QM” McMullin Story)

[PointGuard]

My name’s Perry McMullin. I was born in 1983, the 7th of 9 children in a working-class family, and was raised in a Philadelphia row house. I played a lot of city ball in Philly. Any basketball court became my second home. But while good, I was not great. I attended a Roman Catholic High School in Philly, eventually starting but never becoming a standout. Therefore it wasn’t surprising that no college basketball programs showed any interest in me and that I was not recruited by any college.

But in May of my senior year just before graduation, Seattle University lost one of their recruits, apparently quickly perused the list of Catholic boys not yet recruited, and for some reason offered their last scholarship to me. Not wanting them to check further into my lack of high school basketball success, I jumped at the opportunity before they could rescind the offer, since without the scholarship I’d have had to follow my father’s footsteps and enter the workforce rather than going to college.

[PointGuard]

During my freshman year at Seattle U, Coach Finnegan must have got tired of my continued questions…”why this?, how that?, what about this?, etc, etc”. He nicknamed me “QM”…short in his mind for “Question Marks”. At least I preferred to think the nickname was due to my frequent questions rather than me being a question mark as far as fitting into his team. I finally became a starter midway through my junior year, but was really nothing more than a good role player on a middle of the pack team.

The best that could be said of me was that I worked and tried hard, was a student of the game. But ultimately even though defensively I was an asset, offensively I was a liability. This caused the college newspaper’s basketball reporter to write the following critique:

“I might be preaching to the choir when I say McMullin wants to aspire and has the fire, but I’d be a liar in trouble with the friar if I didn’t say I wish he’d acquire shoes to leap higher and be more of a flyer so his jumper wasn’t so dire.”

[PointGuard]

Coach Finnegan must have finally gotten used to my never-ending questions, because after my graduation he took me on as a graduate assistant for a year. He then hired me as 3rd assistant which gave me time to get my Masters Degree at Seattle U. Coach Finnegan moved on to Loyola Marymount (yes, yet another Jesuit college) a few years later and I followed, moving up to become his 2nd assistant coach.

[PointGuard]

Just after my 28th birthday, Coach Finnegan called me into his office and said he had a question for me. “QM, you think you could become a head coach this year and run your own program?” Unable to answer for a minute or so, I finally asked what this was all about (yes, I answered a question with a question). He said a friend of his was an athletic director whose head coach had come down with cancer and was quitting coaching to fight the disease. He said he’d mentioned me to the AD at the other school, but before finalizing his recommendation, he wanted to know if I was ready and willing to undertake the new challenge. I asked a bunch of questions (no surprise) and finally said, “Yes, I think I’m ready and I want to give it a go, even though I’ll miss working for you.”

[PointGuard]

Three weeks (and several interviews) later I was hired as the new head coach at Cal State Bakersfield.

Moving to Bakersfield, I quickly realized this medium-sized city was really a glorified cow town and agricultural center with the main other occupation being work in the nearby oil fields and refinery. As a big city guy, Bakersfield was far different from Philadelphia, Seattle or Los Angeles where I’d previously lived. This meant some huge adjustments in my choices of entertainment (lack of it in Bakersfield), music (country and mariachi in Bakersfield) , and restaurants (mostly low-cost chain restaurants in Bakersfield) as well as getting used to the oppressively hot, dry, dusty summers in the southern end of California’s Central Valley (and later the oppressive winter Tule fog inherent to California’s Central Valley). The other thing I found out was that the girl I thought was madly in love with me said no-way was she going from Los Angeles to Bakersfield. The relationship quickly eroded, and I went to Bakersfield solo.

My parents were proud that I’d become a head coach, but a little disappointed that it wasn’t at a Catholic college. I had to promise by mom that I’d be sure to go to mass every Sunday (a promise well-intentioned but ultimately badly fulfilled).

[Wayne23]

Welcome back, PG!

[Javakamp]

Welcome back. Looking forward to a good read. Thanks for sharing.

[CoachC]

Tell QM to stay off of icy roads!

[PointGuard]

Benson Jones, the AD at CSU Bakersfield, is a tired looking man who appears to be in his mid-60’s although I understand he is 10 or 15 years younger. In his slow ponderous way Benson gives me a recap of the basketball program which turns into a lengthy tale of woe. He tells me that he’s not going to put much pressure on me since he knows I’m inheriting players this year. He would like to see the basketball program move up from being the whipping dog of the Great West Conference, though, and begin to build a following of fans in Bakersfield. “Far too few students and fans have been attending the games and that’s hurting revenues for the athletic department. But hell, if you win 10 games this year it will be amazing!” he pronounces as if uttering his final words on this earth. While he’s talking I think, “It’s not difficult to understand that no one’s showing up for games since the team has been losing most of its games the past several years and last year’s last place finish in the conference made things worse.” Benson discusses our budget and says to try to conserve because the athletic budget for all programs is very tight and whatever costs that can be cut will help him out. In my mind I realize, “Now it’s easy to see why I, a young and inexperienced coach, was hired at this school in this city. Probably no one else was interested.”

[PointGuard]

Nickname: Roadrunners

Location: Bakersfield, CA

Academics: C-, Minimum SAT: 860

Basketball Facility: C-, Rabobank Arena, Capacity: 10800

Team Prestige: 2 (no, that’s not a typo…a prestige of TWO on a scale of 100)

Last Year’s Record: 6-19, .240

Conference: Great West Conference

Conference Prestige: 7

Budget: $125,000 (Assistant Coaches: $86,000, Recruiting: $39,000)

This year’s goals: Win 10+ games