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Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2004 > July > 11 > Entry
Biancardi rose from obscurity
By Scott Elliott, Mike Wagner and Kyle Nagel
Dayton Daily News
BOSTON - It was here, in a neighborhood considered to be Boston’s answer to Brooklyn, where Paul Biancardi the kid tossed basketballs through chain-linked hoops and ground sausage in an old Italian meat market.
It was here where Biancardi the basketball player was cut from the Salem State team as a freshman, came back for another season and was eventually named team captain his senior year.
And it was here where Biancardi the coach worked at Suffolk University, where he was paid as little as $2,000 a year doing all the little things the other coaches didn’t want to do.
Biancardi’s rise from modest beginnings, both in life and in basketball, to head coach at Wright State University was made possible by his unrelenting work ethic, an affable personality and a willingness to do whatever it took to succeed.
It’s hasn’t always been easy for Biancardi, but now the son of a bricklayer faces what may be his toughest opponent.
“I’d say Mr. Biancardi has a big problem,” said Leo Papile, director of player personnel for the Boston Celtics and founder of a renowned amateur basketball club in Biancardi’s native Boston. “You don’t have ‘innocent until proven guilty’ with the NCAA. A smoking gun is all they need.”
Biancardi has been caught up in a controversy that has already cost his mentor and former boss Jim O’Brien his coaching job at Ohio State University. The controversy stems from allegations contained in a lawsuit filed by Kathleen Salyers, a Columbus nanny.
Salyers is suing two OSU alumni, Dan and Kim Roslovic, for more than $300,000 and claims that the Roslovics reneged on a deal to pay her $1,000 a month plus expenses to house and care for former Buckeye Slobodan “Boban” Savovic during his career at Ohio State.
Salyers claims she didn’t receive any payment for that care. In a deposition for the lawsuit, Salyers allegations include that Biancardi told her to convince two professors to change failing grades for Savovic and pay thousands of dollars in international taxes for the player. She also claims that Biancardi, an assistant coach from 1997-2003, knew she was giving $200 a week in cash, providing many gifts and doing academic work for Savovic.
One allegation - that O’Brien gave at least $6,000 to former 7-foot-3 recruit Aleksandar Radojevic - cost O’Brien his job when he admitted the NCAA violation to OSU Athletic Director Andy Geiger, who fired O’Brien on June 8. Radojevic never played for OSU after he was ruled ineligible by the NCAA in May 1999 for playing professionally in Europe.
The other allegations became public after O’Brien’s dismissal. Biancardi, in two statements, has denied Salyers’ claims. He is prevented from making comments during the on-going NCAA investigation, his Pittsburgh attorney Jim Zeszutek has said. Former Buckeye Brent Darby said he wouldn’t have known anything was wrong when he worked at the WSU basketball camp last month - save for one somber moment. Biancardi started to bring up the Ohio State controversy, but Darby, who remains close with Biancardi, said they should change the subject.
“He wasn’t angry, but disappointed,” Darby said. “You could tell that upset him a lot just to have his name mentioned in that.”
Biancardi faces uncertainty in the coming months as the NCAA investigates. Wright State’s athletics staff and players are also in limbo.
“The assistants weren’t with Paul at Ohio State, they’re supporting their boss, but no one knows what is going to happen with the investigation,” said Steve Fortson, an associate professor at WSU’s College of Education and Human Services and a faculty athletics representative. “The players, it’s got to be hard on them too, in terms of their basketball futures and not knowing who their head coach is going to be.
“We are all waiting to see what happens.”
Working class to big dreams
While the people have changed in East Boston - Italian and European immigrants have been joined lately by an influx of Caribbean and central American immigrants - it maintains much of the hardscrabble feel of Biancardi’s childhood days.
East Boston, a crowded urban neighborhood of busy avenues, low-rise brick apartment buildings and ground-level shops, bustles with activity. As a boy, Biancardi shot hoops at a neighborhood park and worked in the meat market while his mother held two jobs.
He went to Pope John XXIII Catholic High School across a long bridge in neighboring Everett. While a good high school player, Biancardi sparked little interest from college programs. He attended nearby Salem State and was cut his freshman year. He tried out again, made the team and was voted team captain as a senior - even though he did not start.
After college, Biancardi focused on coaching. He served as a volunteer assistant at local high schools, colleges and camps before getting his break with Suffolk.
“He was a hard worker,” said Ken Peavey, the current athletic director at Pope John who has known Biancardi for years through coaching circles. “Clearly he was somebody who was willing to pay his dues.
At Suffolk, Biancardi was doing so well, Nelson mentioned him to O’Brien, the coach at Boston College. Nelson and O’Brien were both BC alumni and friends, and the reference led to a graduate assistant post and later a full-time job on O’Brien’s staff for Biancardi.
“He was incredibly enthusiastic and impassioned about the sport of basketball,” said Jim Nelson, who was then the Suffolk University men’s basketball coach and is now the athletic director. “He wanted to become a head basketball coach on the college level and wasn’t going to stop until he became it,” Nelson said.
Papile, a former head coach in the minor league Continental Basketball Association and founder of the Boston Amateur Basketball Club, knew Biancardi as a young coach in Boston. Biancardi was never considered a “up and comer” as a young assistant coach, Papile said. Instead, he was viewed as likeable and hard working, getting noticed more for his extra efforts to help out.
“I was surprised he became a head coach,” said Papile, who also worked as an assistant under Rick Pitino at Boston University and Kevin Mackey at Cleveland State.
But Biancardi continued to move up the pecking order of O’Brien’s assistants.
Nelson, who occasionally attended Boston College games, began to notice a closeness between the two men - especially during one game where he watched Biancardi closely.
“Anytime there was a time-out, it was always an immediate exchange of dialogue between Paul and Jim O’Brien,” Nelson said. “Jimmy trusted Paul’s judgement, in terms of what he saw on the court and what should be implemented coming out of the time-out.”
Turning it around
In 1997, O’Brien left BC to take over a Buckeye program rocked by a recruiting scandal under former coach Randy Ayers. But he would quickly turn it around, relying heavily on Biancardi for recruiting.
In O’Brien’s first season, OSU went 8-22, including an 18-game losing streak, and finished last in the Big Ten (1-15). But the next season, the Buckeyes moved into the new $115 million Schottenstein Center , and the team started to win.
Boston native and BC transfer Scoonie Penn joined future NBA guard Michael Redd, a sophomore from Columbus, to lead the Buckeyes to the 1999 Final Four. OSU began a streak of four straight 20-win seasons, ratcheting up pressure to keep recruiting at a high level.
For the next season, recruits Radojevic, Massillon Washington High School’s Slobodan “Cobe” Ocokoljic and Darby, a 6-1 guard from Detroit, signed to join the team. Radojevic and Ocokoljic, like then-sophomore guard Savovic, are Serbian.
All three are connected to Semi Pajovic, a broker of eastern European basketball players, and Marc Cornstein, the founder and president of Pinnacle Management Corp., a New York-based agency that represents more than 30 professional basketball players internationally.
Pinnacle represents Savovic, Penn and former Buckeye Velimir Radinovic.
Radojevic was supposed to be the final piece to the OSU roster, playing with Penn and Redd at guard and 6-11 Ken Johnson forward.
“I would have been the big addition there,” Radojevic said. “Coach Biancardi and O’Brien were putting a great team together. Me and Ken Johnson together, that would have been a good front line. But those people (the NCAA) took that away from me and Ohio State for no reason.”
Ineligible at OSU, Radojevic entered the 1999 NBA draft. The Toronto Raptors took him with the 12th overall pick.
One former player remembered Biancardi as a man destined for a head coaching position because of his relationships with players and his commitment to the job.
“He was the first one to help me out,” said Tim Martin, a Dunbar graduate who played for OSU from 2000-02. “If I needed anything, he was the first one that I would go to. He was younger and he was the one you could really relate to. Everybody knew that he would help you.”
WSU awaits probe
When Wright State fired coach Ed Schilling last year, Biancardi applied for the job and touted his Ohio connections.
“Over the last 13 years, I have recruited student-athletes on a national level with a great deal of success,” Biancardi wrote in a letter dated March 21, 2003. “I have developed strong ties with many high school coaches in the Midwest and have a credible reputation in my profession.”
He was quickly identified as a leading candidate among the 113 who applied. Only five applicants had Division I head coaching experience. In the end, the search committee picked him.
“He (Biancardi) was my No. 1 choice to be the coach and he has my support 100 percent now,” said Bob Mills, a member of the WSU search committee that chose Biancardi.
Mills, the president and CEO of Synergy Building Systems, said the committee was unanimous in its support for Biancardi.
In his first season, after inheriting a team that had gone 10-18 and 4-12 in the Horizon League the previous season, Biancardi guided the Raiders to a 14-14 record and a 10-6 league record using only seniors and freshmen.
WSU gave Biancardi a five-year contract in April 2003 at a $150,000 base salary. With extra money for camps, television appearances and other duties, he makes closer to $180,000.
Wright State can fire Biancardi if he is found to be in violation of NCAA rules, or for dishonesty, according to his contract. So far, Athletic Director Michael Cusack has said Biancardi assured him he did nothing wrong and Cusack is standing by him. Cusack did not return a phone message on Friday.
But one WSU supporter believes the university should make some of its own inquiries and not wait for the NCAA.
“I think he (Cusack) should be conducting his own investigation because that is the guy the coach works for - I don’t know if he is or not,” said Charles Hartmann, a professor of business law and a former faculty athletics representative.
Mostly, Wright State fans feel stuck in the middle of someone else’s mess.
“If you look at O’Brien when he was at Ohio State, he had tremendous credentials all the way up until this whole thing blew up, and at the time coach Biancardi was selected, nobody had any inkling that there was potential for these kinds of problems … none of this,” said Fortson, the WSU faculty athletics representative.
“All of that stuff happened at Ohio State, not Wright State, and everything is being handled (by WSU and the NCAA) the way it’s supposed to right now.”
As for Biancardi, his friends fear the OSU scandal could threaten all he’s worked for.
“I feel bad for coach Biancardi for the simple fact that he has moved on now to a head coaching job,” said Darby, the former OSU player. “That’s something he worked for and something he deserved. He’s coming off a successful season, winning coach of the year. So he has moved on and he has proven himself and he has something like this that’s in the way.”
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