Jensen: Fork in road led McLaughlin to Penn success

Penn women's coach Mike McLaughlin wasn't always a winner. For a few years, McLaughlin couldn't seem to win a basketball game at all.

That was his time playing for the Washington Generals, taking on the Harlem Globetrotters around the world. As McLaughlin looks at all the forks in the road that led him to this point - coaching the Quakers, making the NCAA tournament for the second time in three years after Tuesday's 62-60 win over Princeton in a winner-take-all Ivy finale - a big fork was the simple act of getting on a plane for Moscow, staying at a hotel next to the Kremlin.

"I had really never been out of the state. Just a couple of days of practice. I didn't know if I belonged," McLaughlin said. The Globetrotters were the Saturday morning cartoon he always watched; he knew their names and routines.

Maybe he lost all the games, but McLaughlin still had to make shots and guard the Trotters when they weren't doing their comedic bits. The rest was legit hoops.

"To be able to play the first couple of games, very intimidated," McLaughlin said. "Having the realization that I belonged out there."

That wasn't even the biggest fork for McLaughlin as a player. Getting to Holy Family out of Father Judge was the big step for the Northeast Philly native, from St. Dominic's parish on Frankford Avenue in Torresdale.

"I didn't have the high school career on the court that I would have liked to have had," said McLaughlin, who turned 50 in January, recalling how he didn't start much until his senior year at Judge, then promptly broke his foot.

Holy Family coach Danny Williams gave him a shot anyway. McLaughlin ended up scoring 1,710 points, making 57.7 percent of his three-pointers.

"It was 30 years ago, but that drove me more than I probably ever thought it would," McLaughlin said of his high school struggles.

Holy Family entered his life again after he was done touring with the Generals. After a stint as a women's assistant - right time, right place - he moved up to the top spot. All McLaughlin did in his 14 seasons was go 407-61, taking league coach of the year honors 13 times.

Still, it was a leap of faith for Penn to hire a Division II coach. Former Penn associate athletic director Mary DiStanislao met McLaughlin for a cup of coffee at the Melrose Diner, which turned into a three- or four-hour conversation. DiStanislao, a former women's coach herself at Notre Dame, sold Steve Bilsky, then Penn's athletic director, that McLaughlin was the right hire.

That was 2009. The forks in the road never stop, of course. When you beat Princeton twice by two points to finish a game ahead of the Tigers, you know there were other roads available - one different possession in either game sending everything in another direction.

"You can just only hope, for a coach, hope that they're prepared, that they can handle the emotional part of it, stay really solid as we run a set," McLaughlin said Wednesday morning. "To have that level of confidence, I think that's where we can make the biggest difference as coaches. It's up to them to make the play."

What McLaughlin saw Tuesday night, he said, was a team playing stress-free or about as close as it could under the circumstances.

"I just don't want them to get tense," McLaughlin said. "I want them to go play. I think that's what happened."

The latest fork, leading to cutting down some nets.

mjensen@phillynews.com

@jensenoffcampus