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Sports

O'Connor Feels He's Found the Right Man

Search for new Patriots coach started long ago.

For just the second time during his 17-year tenure as the athletic director at George Mason University, Tom O’Connor found himself in the midst of a search for a new men’s basketball coach following Jim Larranaga’s departure in the spring. 
 
It didn’t take long for him to end a search that, unbeknownst to him, may have actually started back in 2007. It was in March of that year that O’Connor, a member of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, was able to watch Paul Hewitt’s Georgia Tech team practice and then play against UNLV in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Chicago. 
 
“I saw what he did in practice, I saw how the kids responded to him, I saw what he was teaching in practice and how he was teaching, and I also saw how he handled game situations,” said O’Connor, who hired Hewitt to replace Larranaga a week after the Patriots’ longtime coach left to take the same position at Miami (Fla.) in late April. “At the time, obviously we weren’t making a coaching change, but it went through my mind when we starting out with who we wanted to bring in to talk to.”
 
Just over four years later, Hewitt became available when Georgia Tech decided to go in another direction after going 13-18 during the 2010-11 campaign. 
 
“When Paul came in and met with our search committee, he kind of blew us away. So it was an easy decision to make,” O’Connor said. “When we were making this decision, we said we had gotten an excellent basketball person, and excellent teacher and an excellent person that could deal with the community as a whole. So, to me, he was the whole package.”
 
O’Connor was impressed with Hewitt’s appeal on both the national and international level (he sits on the board of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and serves as USA Basketball’s U-19 head coach), and the two have already forged a bond in their first few months working together. 
 
“He’s very engaging,” O’Connor said. “I like his style, I like his interest in the lives of the players. And I like his interest on national issues. I truly enjoy talking with him, not just on basketball, but on issues that might affect a student/athlete’s life on a national scope as well. He see’s the big picture of intercollegiate athletics. He’s focused on basketball, but he’s not narrow-minded.
 
“He has proven to me in a short period of time that he’s the type of individual who’s doing things that we want around here for a long time.”
 
It seems O’Connor’s homework has paid off for the Patriots. 

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