News Scrapbook 1988

scoreless for 4½ minutes. All the Whtie, ew Mexico's band was joining in the ntual• that 1s against CAA rules. It waa Iannacone who pointed that out to court officials, who promptly m.s It U D was lrailmg, 13-0, but re- bounded for a 64-53 upset of the highly favored Lobos. It ls the dally oc1atlon with tudents that Iannacone misses. th year and try to get to many of th r games as po 1ble," Jannacon said. "That's the fun part of th JOb But I tell th m, 'If you don't e me around, ll's be- cause what I'm uppo ed to be do ng 1s bemg behind my d sk · "I ml the d y-to -day contact with th students. But I h ve the U fact on of knowing th t mo t of what I do I the 1s for their bemg out th re" 0 According to John Cunningham, who ha b n at USO for 27 year , I nn con i the chool first bu 1 n man/athlet1 director smce 1t op n d ltsdoo n 1949. Other - Fon Johnson, Bob Sex- ton, Phil Wool rt, Cunnmgham, John Kram and Thomas Burkc-hav performed the duties, but th y did so because om body h d lo. and th "I m t w1th th teams at least one

four to the campus. "lt was pretty much a unanimous choice,'' Burke said "First, he was the most sea,oned. He had already been an AD at a uruverS1ty smlilar to USD. Secondly, he had all the other things you look for when you fill any position, integnty, knowl- edge, orgarnzat1onal sk11Js, and so on. "He has a vision about what athletics is and can become at USD. When you're an mst1tut10n hke we are, athletics IS one part of the whole university. It 1 not the part. Sometimes people thmk athletics is the university It 1 v1tal, but its role 1s secondary to academics. "Someone who would come to USO with that attitude would be quickly frustrated." Hired as an experienced athletic director Iannacone will work and work as uch. He will put m th extra hours. He will go the extra mile. And he will uccecd m the eyes of others b cau e he expects so much or hunself. Whether he ucceeds m h1 own mmd, only Iannacone will know, because he doesn't pat h1msel( on the back. Bt..t he 1s keen to a Job weJJ done, even hi own. D

fairs and Iannacone's munediate boss at St. Francis. "He spends every penny you give hun but not one more. He fights for everything and usually gets 1t The amount of detail he put into hIS blldgets made them very easy to work with." In addition, Southard said, "He pushed for the conference to get a full-time commissioner and com- missioner's office. At the time, the Eastern College Athletic Confer- ence (now the ortheast Confer- ence] was known as pnmanJy a basketball conference. It was through Tom that the conference became a fully competitive athletic conference.'" On what an D1egans can exp ct, Southard replied: "He's the most organized per on I've ever met. No matter where he goes, whether it's UCLA or Anchorage, Alaska, he'll add a lot to any program. "We were sorry to ee him go but we can't compete with the sunshine." D

In 1974, he earned a master of science degree m physical educa- tion from Southern Connecticut State UruverSJty, where he also served as the football team's offen slve backfield coach The following year, he became the offensive coordinator and coached the offensive backfield at Fordham, a pnvate Jesuit school (approximately 14,000 students) in the Bronx borough of New York City. The 1977 team set an existmg school record by averagmg 34 points a game From 1977 to '84, Iannacone doubled as a coach and assistant athletic d1r<'ctor. In 1984, he had been marned to Cynthia for 16 year and had three teen agers n th<' ho ehold When he look the JOb at St. Francis. The move to central Pennsylvania was his fir t ou 1de the extended met - ropolitan area around New York City. Four years later, the family was mov ng to San Diego. "As I look back over things, I'm happy with the way things have progre d," h said. "I had only been to !;an Du~go once before for a convention B t I researched San Diego and USO. The people that make up the university are quality people. Peopl ar really the most import nt thing. "There' a strong interest tn athletics and a commitment to athletics. Everything fit. I had

HaVJng arnved m San Diego on Aug 26, with his wife, Cynthia, and ons, Tom Jr. (20) and Eric (16) and daughter, Jennifer (17). he is Just now getting "his feet on the ground." Last Saturday, the Iannacone family moved into their new house in Sabre Spnngs, a newly dcveJ. oped area between lnterstate 15 and Poway, after rentmg m nearby Rancho Bernardo lannacone's personal transition soon w111 be complete. His occupational trans1 - llon, as promrsmg as the first 4 months have been, may take Ion ger. He says, 'Tm a firm believer m, Before you know where you're gomg, you have to know where you've been.'' Iannacone was born and raised m 'orwalk, Conn. As far as sports are concerned, he said, "l did everything. I always knew my life would be in athletics in some form or other. Eventually, - I knew I would be on the admmls - trative end of it." After high Bchool, he earned a degree m physical educat10n Crom the UmversJty of Connecticut m 1964. For 11 years, he taught high school phy ical education and coached football and track tn Con- necticut.

At St. Francis. "Tom left a very big legacy," said Kevm Southard, the school's sports mformation di- rector for the past 5years. "When he cam here, we were the smallest Div, 10n I program m the nation with 1,100 tudents. We were on very shaky ground Just coming off CAA probation for not havmg enough sports competing m DIVlsion I. Tom came m and not only strengthened the exJstmg sports but added three others " Southard said Iannacone was responsible for addmg oftball and men' and woman's soccer, build mg new soccer fac1ht1es, renovat- mg the basketball facilities tn creasing budgets and personnel and, most important, givmg the athletic department stability and a future. "He really put this place on a real ohd foundation He drew up a master plan that still m use at the U IVeTSJty," Iannacone found ways to make things work w1thm budget and personnel constraints. He looked at the way other successful schools were domg things, researched ev- ery possible avenue and then sold his program to univerSity 0Cf1c1als.

did it with l1m1ted tag. U D was a univ rslty with es for m n and tea in Just five

some professional and personal goals. I thought 1t was a gOOd move professionally and for the family." [CALENDAR J ·--•Racing Noon Thot td Ague Cal,ento • O.-eylloundRo ng 7:'5- A :,a(" 10 • JaJAlo

•

He look at the big picture-the long-range plans for USO sports. He knows what he wants, and believes he knows how •r -;--------~~==~ to get there. Yet he knows he doesn't know everythmg. 8 p m.- T fftAYll on on likes to

m nc mpus.

oon the JOb :> came loo big, and Cahill wa br ght In to take the program Into vision I. Cahill s rv the pos1t1on well for 9 y ars but stepped down during the s mer to accept an ocwt pastorship at Guardian ngel Cath dral In Las Vegas. An lionwtd earch for his suc- c ssor yield d Iannacone, who had held the amc POSJtion at St Fran - cis College In Loretto, Pa. From 80 applicants, USD invited

When he got to St. Francis, th football team had a part-tim coarh and no trainer. He convinced the university that a full-time coach with a tramer and better fac1ht1es would attract more awareness to .tt;::::=:-:=:=~:-::::--::---::-~-j the program, and more students- at $11,000 per student per year.

"He was the best budget manag. er I've had here," said Jeffrey Qum, the VJce president for student af.

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Evening Tribune (Cir. D. 123,064) DEC 28 1988

, C. 8

...A/1.,.

F.sr

1888

out to end losing streak

,

second-leading scorer with 15.9

Tribune Staff Report The ,12§D ba~tball team

pomts a game.

II at-

tempt to shake a two-ga e 10s1 g streak and climb back ov~r th~ .5 mark when 1t plars the University of North Texas tonight at 7:30 at the The Toreros (4-4) dropped both games of last week's roadtrip, lo ing to Nevada-Reno and Montana. ~o:th Texas (2 5) h~s a way of bnggmg out the est ~n its opponents, however. Ask Lou1srnna Tech, Ne- bra ka, Baylor,_Montana sta te a nd U-T San An~omo Each has beaten the Eagle this season, although Bay- !or needed four overtimes for a 96-95 USO Sports Center. North Texas will be playing with- out 6-foot-8 forward Ronnie Morgan, who is on academic suspension. Mor- gan is the team's leading rebounder with 11.4 rebounds a game and its ~a It gets worse. ·

The Eagles are averagmg 76.l points a game, which isn't bad con- sidering they're shooting 37 1 percent from the field. Guard Deon Hunter leads the Eagles with 16.3 points a USO should be buoyed by what North Texas has faced this season. If the Toreros need more incentive, they may want to consider the fact that North Texas leads the series 1-0. The Eagles defeated the Toreros 83- 73 when they met durmg the 1979-80 USD's first at the DivtSion I Freshman forward Gylan Dottin leads USO with 13 points a game fol- lowed by junior forward Craig Cot- trell with 12.5. Toreros sophomore center Dondi Bell is averaging 10.4 game rasf°, ~-

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points and 7.5 rebounds.

yce----+( _

Theater in La Jolla. "I was just bowled over by the richness and the naturalness of the work and by the way his characters dealt' with great loss in their lives," . '·My love for his work contmued for two decades until, in 1981, after seeing about a dozen of his films, I finally said to myseU, 'Why_don't you make a serious effort to write a book on this man's work?'" The result is a pain takingly de- tailed book that studies Ray's films, many of them virtually frame-by- frame. To tackle such a weighty as- signment, Nyce gathered all of the articles he had written about Ray and sent them to the director in Cal- cutta. Nyce hoped to establish a rap- port with the filmmaker. "He sent me back a letter indicat- mg how much he liked the pieces I had written on him, and he gave me the names of several other people w were doing work on him al- ready I contacted these individuals, two from France, one British and the other Italian, and I decided after speaking to them that if I got going on the project right away, I could probably produce a book first. And, none of the other books was being scheduled for release m this coun- try" So Nyce began to research ~nd write, knowing it would require said Nyce of the trilogy.

much time and effort - but not knowing just how much. For one thing, only 16 of Rats 32 films are distributed in the United States. To view some of the other movies, Nyce traveled to London, t~e ~ite of the only English-language distributor of Ray's work. . . "I spent hours and hours 1~ view- ing rooms in London and ParIS, but I soon realized that, in order to really do a complete study of his work, I would have to spend a good amount of time in India," Nyce said. "I tracked several or his films down in Bombay and Delhi. In fact I s~nt t~e entire summer of 1985 trackmg his films down throughout India." Nyce said he was surprised to dis- cover that not all of India's up-and- coming directors are Satyajit Ray wanna-he's. "Indeed, they have their share of criticisms of Ray's work, speciiical- ly, that he doesn't deal dir 7 ct!y enough with the burning econom1~ is- sues of India today. And that JS a problem I have with his wor~, _too. He refuses sometimes to be pohtical, and India, of course, is a nation that has its share of political problems." i&ential to the writing of any comprehensive work on an artist is, of course, accessibility. But, Nyce

said though there was a mutual re- spedt from the beginning, he found Ray "surprisingly distant and for- mal." "I just made the assumption from watching so many of his films that he was a man of great warmth and that he was very open and down-to-earth. But I did not discover that at all. He speaks with great precision, and knows the English Language, and he was supportive of my efforts all along." Nyce said he plans to take a "bit of a break " and then get to work on a look at American film director Mar- tin Scorsese. Though the two direc- tors, Ray and Scorsese, could not seem farther apart in style and sub- stance, Nyce insisted there is one c!ertain correlation. "They have in common .a great gift, and that is really what mterests me" Nyce said. "Not as much where they are from, or their method. ~ust their unique talents and contnbu- tions to the world of film." The best part about his next project, Nyce said, is that he'll need only travel to New York and Los An- geles. Reno is a free-/1111ce writer.~

f

Tom Coat's Running column will appear tomorrow in The Tribune

continued from C-1 trac d to hIS undergraduate days at Prm eton Umvers1ty. Th Garden Theater there ran many of the great arm film of that era, aid yce, who at the time was studying Engh h hterature. "It was that wond rful early era of the art house, and I had the plea ure of _es- caping my homework by watchmg fllm."1 by me of the master , hke Cocteau, Renoir and Lang." Upon graduation from Pnnceton m !956, ye moved to L.A. and aced an uncertain future. He got a JO a script analyst at Columbia tudiot one summer then enrolled at Claremont College to begin work on hi doctorate degree in English. It was at Claremont in 1967 that y first viewed "Pather Pancbah," a qui t stunning film that many con- id to be the finest film ever made by an Indian. An ob cssion was born. •r wa immediately fascinated by thi man s approach to the medium It was such a wonderful, w~rm and down to-earth fi lm," Nyce said. Nyce's devotion to Ray's was com- plete by 1961, when he attended a r tro pective of Ray's first three film {one of which 1s "Pather _Pan- chah ') at the now-defunct Un1Corn

-~~~J- • From Page C-1 secure the win.

10th ranJcea Anzona m Tucson. The Lobos were one of only three teams to beat the Final Four Wildcats last season. Instead, the Lobos collapsed in the second hall. when San Diego came up with one clutch basket after another and the Toreros' man defense disrupted New Mexico's fastbreak offense. " I was disappointed most that we didn't take charge of the game down the stretch," Bliss said. "But that's a personality thing, and our's isn't set yet."

Bliss, who took over the New Mexico program following the forced resignation last April of Gary Colson, said the Lobos have not yet acquired a mental attitude to go along with their physical talent. " Right now, we' re just a very nice basketball team,' ' Bliss said with a touch of sarcasm. " We need to become a blue collar

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Strickland led the Toreros, 2-0, team that goes out there with with 14 points. Sophomore Dondi some true grit. We didn't have it Bell and Dottin added nine points tonight. " each. New Mexico was expected to New Mexico, 1-1, was led by use the tournament as a tuneup forward Charlie Thomas with 17 for its meeting Wednesday with points. / i - -----=-~---:::--=---:,>"""-