Bennett’s retirement still far off
PULLMAN — The question lingers over Dick Bennett and, really, the entire Washington State University basketball program. When Bennett came out of retirement in 2003 to coach the Cougars, it was generally assumed that his stay would be for the short term. But just how short was an unknown.
Bennett, 61, has maintained that he examines his position on retirement at the end of each season, but on Tuesday suggested further that he has a fairly narrow time frame in mind.
“I’d like to give whoever follows me a fighting chance,” he said, reiterating a desire to hand over the reins to his son Tony with the team in good shape. “I also want to get on with my life, and that’ll be either this year or next year. I haven’t decided.
“I’m not thinking about that right now. I think the folks here knew; they’ve been very supportive. They just said to me, ‘Give us what you can.’ And I’m doing that. At the end of the year I’ll sit down and think about some things, talk to my wife and see where we are and decide what we’re going to do. I’ve done that for a long time. I did that probably the last few years at Wisconsin and here it’s a little more dramatic only because this will probably end it for good.”
Tony, WSU’s associate head coach, said he doesn’t often discuss the issue with his father. But having witnessed his sudden and stunning departure at Wisconsin just three games into the 2000-01 season, Tony knows that very little is out of the realm of possibility. (The head coach has said that he would not retire in the middle of a season again after reviewing his exit from the Badgers.)
“To say I think this is it or I think it’s next year, you can say one or the other, but I don’t think you can say which one has a better chance of happening,” Tony Bennett said. “Why he came to Washington State is because they said, ‘Just take it one year at a time.’ That’s what he does: takes his time, evaluates if he wants to do it for another year. If he says he wants to go for two or three more years, don’t believe him. If he says five more, he may go one more. This year or next year, I think he’ll step out.”
Certainly the number of close losses this season — six by three or fewer points, including Saturday’s 69-66 loss at Oregon — hasn’t made life easier for Bennett, who is famous for agonizing over every bounce along the rebuilding path.
Before the year, the head coach said he was expecting and even hoping to be in a number of close games. That, Bennett felt, would mean his team was being competitive despite a talent and experience disadvantage against most teams on the schedule. For the most part, that has been the case this season, and while even now Bennett said it’s better to lose close than to get blown out, it’s not a fate he wants to accept.
“You can never predict the outcome of a close game. It’s not quite as prescriptive as people think,” he said. “Oregon — it was just a tough loss. We’ve had our share of those. It was like the UCLA games, the previous Oregon game. We’ve had our share of heartbreakers. Appropriate for Valentine’s week, I guess.”