The office of the most fascinating South Florida sports figure you don’t know is a spare bedroom in his townhouse. His team sometimes can’t practice on its homecourt because it’s rented out for graduations or book fairs.
Jim Crutchfield’s men’s basketball games at Nova Southeastern University aren’t televised, they’re lightly attended and his public profile doesn’t include so much as a Wikipedia page.
But Heat coach Erik Spoelstra met with Crutchfield to watch video for five hours a few years ago, then returned with his staff for more discussion this fall.
Boston Celtics General Manager Brad Stevens flew Crutchfield to talk to their staff. University of Miami coach Jim Larrañaga, after being beaten up 18-2 on offensive rebounds in an exhibition last season, took his staff to Crutchfield’s practices before this season, just to see what was at work at the Davie school.
“Unbelievably flattering,’’ Crutchfield, 64, calls such visits.
They come for a reason: He has something they’re interested in. Crutchfield’s methods fascinate these top basketball minds because he thinks differently. He has the portfolio of success: Nova is 30-0 this season and ranked No. 1 in Division II as it plays host to the South Region’s NCAA Tournament in Davie this weekend.
The team’s corresponding statistics are staggering: Nova wins by an average 26.8 points, has the largest turnover margin in Division II, takes about 13 more shots per game than opponents and is averaging more than 90 points for the fifth straight season.
Crutchfield, for the record, began coaching at Nova five years ago. His motion offense is such a talking point in coaching circles a friend called recently and said, “I see you’re finally cashing in.”
When Crutchfield asked what that meant, he was directed to a book being sold on Amazon about his offense. The friend assumed he wrote it. “You can score 100 points a game, too,’’ the book promised.
Crutchfield bought it for $20. The author had broken down Nova’s offensive sets in a couple of games, mistakes and all. The coach knew the exact games just by studying the diagrams. He wrote a comment on Amazon that began, “I’m actually Jim Crutchfield. I just bought the book and …”
That ended book sales. The chapters in Crutchfield’s life are as rare as his results, too. It started at 23 when he quit taking law-school classes in his native West Virginia to take a high school coaching job. Crutchfield didn’t play basketball beyond high school, had never coached and took the job as a one-year hiatus.
After 10 years, he advanced to the basketball assistant and tennis coach at Division II West Liberty in West Virginia. He was named the conference’s tennis coach of the year eight straight seasons, showing a management of players more than any tennis wizardry.
“I just drove the van to matches,’' he said
Basketball was his game and he finally convinced the school’s leaders in 2004 he was ready to be the head basketball coach. This was his big break. He was 48.
Crutchfield had a self-taught style, taking pieces from anywhere. Watching the 1987 Providence team coached by Rick Pitino showed him a new idea for a full-court press. He never called Pitino. He just broke it down on video and applied it.
West Liberty didn’t have a 20-win season in its previous 50 years. Crutchfield won 21 games that first year. His teams won at least 20 games in his 13 seasons there. He won a staggering 85.5 percent of his games at West Liberty for the highest win percentage of any NCAA basketball coach.
He wondered if such success could be re-created.
“I wanted to go to an unsuccessful program and try to experience the changing of the program,’’ he said.
His three prerequisites for a new job: a losing team, warm weather and a beach. Nova was the perfect match. It hadn’t won more than 17 games in its previous 34 seasons. Crutchfield won 17 the first year in 2017-18. He’s never won fewer than 23 since. He’s 61-1 the past two years.
He used another borrowed bit of his coaching philosophy with this big weekend coming. He once saw LSU coach Dale Brown in a time-out huddle ask his players, “What do you want to run?”
“I thought this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing, asking players what they should run,’’ Crutchfield said. “Then I thought he’s the LSU coach, I’m in rural high school coach in West Virginia. I learned if you can marry your players to all your concepts, they’ll try harder. My players have to think they’re part of the process.”
Before a practice this week, Crutchfield asked his players what they wanted to work on. “It’s your bodies,’’ he said. “Tell me what we need to work on to help us win.”
His players are typically from Ohio, where he has contacts from West Liberty days, or South Florida with the likes of Hallandale’s Jonathan Pierre and Pembroke Pines’ Dallas Graziani. Many have something else in common.
“I’ve got a lot of coaches’ sons on the team,’’ he said. “I need smart players who make me look smart.”
It was Florida football Steve Spurrier who said you could out-work your peers or think differently. “You’re not going to out-work coaches,’' Spurrier said.
Crutchfield wanted to see if he could build a winner at Nova. He’s won to the point where the basketball world wants to see how he thinks so differently.
