January 2003			Utter Anxiety The Soul of Programming	E Line Sports Q&A Classes From the Field First-Person Letters Huskiana
		Keeper of the Fame Former Husky spotlights hoop highlights at new hall. By Paul Perillo With all the experiences sports communications bigwig Robin Deutsch, AS’83, has racked up professionally and personally, what’s the high point? Mind you, Deutsch currently has a basketball fan’s dream job. He’s the director of new media and library services at the new multimillion-dollar Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Deutsch has worked at the Hall of Fame since 1991, first as its public relations director, then in marketing, then running its website before becoming the new-media head. Before that, he was a freelance writer for Sports Illustrated and ESPN The Magazine, an editor at Golf Digest and Tennis Magazine, and in the early 1980s was the youngest-ever Division I sports information director, at St. Joseph’s University, in Philadelphia. All great gigs for a sports lover. But his pinnacle? Playing on the junior varsity basketball squad under Jim Calhoun, back in the Huskies hoop heyday. And no, he’s not kidding. “I will always remember my time on that team,” says Deutsch, a guard who doubled as assistant to longtime sports information director Jack Grinold. “Most practices, we’d get to scrimmage against the varsity for the last five minutes or so. There were times I’d be out there guarding Pete Harris or Perry Moss for two comical minutes.” Coach Calhoun took a liking to the 5-foot-2 Deutsch, even “honoring” him with an impromptu ceremony one day. “Calhoun was rummaging through a box after the season and came up with my uniform,” Deutsch recalls. “He threw the shirt at me and told me it was retired. I still have that shirt hanging on my wall at home.” His playing days aside, Deutsch says Northeastern definitely nurtured his professional path, which he was already plotting before he got to Boston. When Deutsch was a high school junior working as a student assistant in the Princeton University sports information office, he was introduced to Grinold. By then, the Kendall Park, New Jersey, teenager knew he wanted to go to NU. “I went up to him and said, ‘I’m going to come work for you soon,’” Deutsch says. “I’m not sure what Jack thought, but I knew I was going to be working for him somehow.” After Deutsch arrived on Huntington Avenue, he immediately immersed himself in the world of communications. “The journalism department taught us to do things the right way,” he says. “I got a chance to be the sports editor at the Northeastern News. And the education I received from Jack was on its own worth the price of tuition.” A pair of NCAA trips in 1981 and 1982 gave Deutsch the chance to watch the men’s basketball team win first-round upsets. So when Eastern Basketball Magazine approached Grinold looking for a freelance piece on Perry Moss, a future NBA guard, Deutsch was the logical writer. He did a good job. “They continued to ask me to write stuff, and I was just excited to get the experience. So I never stopped to think I was getting paid $12.50 per article, and it was costing me $15 to FedEx them to the magazine,” Deutsch laughs. “I was losing money.” In August 1983, the twenty-two-year-old became the St. Joseph’s sports information director. Working in one of the country’s most storied college basketball areas, Deutsch soaked up all the Big Five lore he could. He went on to Golf Digest and Tennis Magazine in the late 1980s. Then, on his way to a meeting with Nike founder Phil Knight, he happened to see a help-wanted ad for the Basketball Hall of Fame public relations director. Years later, he’s a driving force behind the scenes at the state-of-the-art facility, which opened in September. The building houses an array of permanent and revolving exhibitions, many of them interactive, that convey basketball’s rich history, including the on-court highlights of its greatest stars. Visitors can get their hands on the ball, too, in live clinics, skill challenges, and shooting competitions. “It’s an amazing tribute to the game of basketball,” Deutsch says. “It was a $103 million project, with $45 million used to construct the actual building itself. I was involved in the design of a lot of the exhibits, helping to decide how the story of basketball would be told through words and photos.” Deutsch, who lives in West Granville with his wife, Theresa, and two-year-old daughter, Jessica Ann, knows his college years gave him a good bounce. “Northeastern does prepare you for life,” he says. “You start to think about your years in school and you realize, I wouldn’t trade my experiences at NU—academically and on co-op—for anything. We were always told, ‘Boston is your campus. Experience it.’” Getting your number retired is just a nice extra. A Young Shark in Husky's clothing A few years ago, hockey coach Bruce Crowder explained how he convinces blue-chip prospects to play at Matthews Arena: He tells them that at Northeastern they’ll have the chance to be builders, not maintainers. They could be the architects of Husky dominance, in other words, instead of warm bodies on another university’s squad. Mike Morris is definitely a builder. The 6-foot, 180-pound freshman right wing arrived on campus with perhaps the best credentials of any Huskies player in history. In June, the San Jose Sharks had chosen him as the twenty-seventh pick overall in the NHL entry draft’s first round. The first high school player ever drafted by the NHL, Morris clearly impressed the Sharks, who selected him as their first pick. Even so, he never considered bypassing Northeastern for the pro ranks. “I really liked the coaches here and wanted to be part of something special,” Morris said early in November, after his team’s 4-3 win over Providence at home. “This is a great place to play, especially with our loyal fans yelling and screaming up there in the balcony. When we start winning championships and taking Beanpots, Northeastern will be considered as good as any of the other programs around.” Crowder immediately inserted Morris on the first line, alongside senior captain Mike Ryan (himself a second-round pick of the Dallas Stars) and sophomore center Jason Guerriero. Morris scored a goal in his first collegiate game, a 3-3 tie at Vermont. Through the first two months of the season, he ranked third on the team in scoring, with 14 points. Crowder, a former NHL player who understands the complexities of the professional game, says that though Morris might not have the hardest shot or the fastest skating stride among the current Huskies, he’d rank among the top three or four in every skill a player needs. “He might be one of those guys who kind of defies the NHL scouts,” Crowder says. “There’s nothing Mike doesn’t do well. He’s a very good two-way player, and he’s only going to get better as he gains strength and experience.” Growing up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Morris played in various youth and travel leagues for most of his nineteen years. His last four seasons were spent at prep league powerhouse St. Sebastian’s, in Needham, where as a junior and senior he won back-to-back Independent School League (ISL) and New England Prep championships. Last year, Morris was named ISL MVP after scoring 29 goals and adding 29 assists, and he quickly began rising within the amateur rankings. When Tim Burke, San Jose’s director of scouting, called his name late in the first round, it was a logical next step. But it didn’t affect Morris’s college plans in the slightest. “It was Northeastern all the way,” Morris says. “San Jose never put any pressure on me at all. They told me to concentrate on school and playing here, and let everything else take care of itself.” As it happens, San Jose already has two Huskies in Shark uniforms: Dan McGillis was traded from Philadelphia on December 6; Jim Fahey was called up two days later from San Jose’s American Hockey League affiliate in Cleveland. Meanwhile, back at Matthews, Morris is proving worthy of the early buzz. Of course, playing with established stars like Ryan and Guerriero hasn’t hurt. “I try to see the ice as well as I can, and guys like that make it easy,” Morris says. “As long as we can move the puck well, we’ll put the wins together.”