Tim McConnell couldn’t remember how many WPIAL titles he’d won on the grounds of Duquesne University, back when they played the championship games at the Palumbo Center.
“I’m not sure, maybe four or five,” he said.
That’s how much winning the man did — he couldn’t even peg the exact amount! And the guy sitting to my left, Danny Holzer, well, he’s done a bit of winning, too, including four WPIAL titles in the past six years and six overall at Upper St. Clair.
At least Holzer remembered how many championships he won at the Palumbo Center — two, including one with future NFL linebacker Sean Lee averaging 21 points, nine rebounds and three assists per game.
Listen, it’s not every day you randomly show up to a basketball tournament on a colleague’s invite and wind up sitting with two of the winningest high school coaches there have ever been, anywhere, but that’s what happened Wednesday night at Duquesne’s UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse.
The event was the NCAA Division II quarterfinals. I was there to watch Daemen University from Buffalo, N.Y., because I attended that school and because my late father taught there for 30 years. I grew up a block away from the campus.
Holzer and McConnell were there because they are basketball junkies, and, as it turns out, nearly lifelong friends. They talk every day. McConnell isn’t coaching these days, but Holzer will ask him to come to his games and scout his team to identify weaknesses. They’re always up for a good road trip, and they’ll take another one when they travel to the Final Four in Indianapolis next weekend.
I’d never spoken with either at length, but there they were, intently watching the games while intermittently busting each other’s chops. Holzer got his first big coaching break at Duquesne, as an assistant under John Carroll in the early 1990s.
Related
• Cup of Joe: Every game is Penguins’ biggest of the year now – starting in Ottawa
• Joe Starkey’s Mailbag: Will Steelers take 1st-round game-breaker for 1st time in nearly 20 years?
• Joe Starkey: Forever Young: Ex-Pitt star Sam Young a reminder of the good ol’ days
It was fascinating to imagine the action through the eyes of two men who’ve combined to win 15 WPIAL championships and around 1,200 high school games (McConnell won six WPIAL titles coaching boys basketball at Chartiers Valley and three with the girls before stepping down in 2023 after one season at Bishop Canevin). In Western Pennsylvania, their resumes belong near the very top, with Ed McCluskey at Farrell, John Miller at Blackhawk and a handful of others.
As such, I couldn’t very well pass up a column opportunity, could I?
At halftime, I wedged myself into the seat between them for a 10-minute talk.
The two met in the 1980s while working at a local basketball camp run by McConnell’s brother, Tom. Tim McConnell was playing for Waynesburg University at the time. Holzer was playing at Alliance College near Edinboro before it closed after his junior year …
McConnell: “I gotta tell you, when I was at Waynesburg, we loved playing Alliance because they were the worst team in the league. And then they closed down because Danny Holzer went there and couldn’t win enough. They closed the college down!” (Holzer laughs).
Me: “So you guys talk all the time?”
McConnell: “Yes. We hang out. I go to his house, he comes to my house. We watch games together, talk basketball. We’ve been good friends for a long, long time. … You know, when we first started coaching against each other, we beat Danny pretty good one night, showed up at the Ground Round after and I said, ‘Danny, you gotta get it to these big guys, you gotta run this play. You need to get it to them.’ We called it ‘Nets,’ an isolation play for a big. So we sat there and drew it up and he’s run it ever since. He claims it saved his career. I don’t know.”
Holzer: “I needed another play where we could get the ball inside to our bigs to score. He showed me the play. That was in 1996. I still use it to this day. It helped us get a lot of wins. … That’s what coaching is, sharing ideas and getting stuff from people. Every time we run it in a game and Tim’s at the game, I point up to him and thank him.”
McConnell: “He’ll point up to me and laugh.”
Me: “Did either of you guys know that (McConnell’s son) T.J. would become a really good NBA player?”
McConnell: “I gotta be honest, I wasn’t sure my son would ever make it to the NBA. When he went to Arizona (for a visit, after beginning his career at Duquesne), T.J. went off with some of the players, and (Arizona coach and former Pitt player) Sean Miller sat down with me, and he said, ‘Your son will have a 10-year NBA career.’ I’m not sure I believed him. T.J. loved Duquesne, but he transferred out, sat out a year and got faster, got stronger, went to a big-time program and just developed. Sean was wrong. He’s not a 10-year pro. This is his 11th year (laughs). Sean knew from the beginning.”
Holzer: “To think that would happen would be hard to figure, but it’s not surprising because of how hard he works — and his basketball IQ is through the roof. He’s such a special player, really, in Pittsburgh basketball history. I love being able to say I know him. T.J.’s a lot like his dad. When he got into the WPIAL Hall of Fame — I was there — he was thanking people, and he said, ‘I’d like to thank Coach Holzer because a lot of the wins I got were against his team.’ ”
Me: “All right, we’re running out of time. You two have won something like 1,200 games combined. I couldn’t find two people to sit between who have won more basketball games. What is the single biggest key to winning?”
Holzer: “Having a team that’s connected and wants to play together. I really believe that. Sometimes you have big teams, sometimes you have small teams. It’s the connectivity of your team, trying to win as one. The styles of play will change. It’s the connectivity of the players that is the No. 1 key.”
McConnell: “I agree. I look back on my teams when you ask that question and start thinking about it, it’s the teams that don’t care about the accolades, that don’t care who got the points. I know parents this day and age care about how many points their kids get, who gets the recognition, but our success came on kids not caring about that and buying into the team. When you got guys caring about the team more than themselves and playing hard and playing together and caring about each other, that’s what brings all the success.”
McConnell: “One other story. Danny and I used to play each other right before Christmas every year, and we’d have a deal: Whoever loses has to pay for lunch (at South Hills Village). I remember we played them at Char Valley when he had Sean Lee, place packed, their fans chanting. Just a great rivalry. I wanted to beat him more than anything, and he wanted to beat me, but after the games we were still really good friends no matter what happened.
“We have a greater friendship than we had a rivalry.”