Emails. Phone calls. They come almost every day full of hope and hunger and grass-roots basketball curiosity. They want not just a piece of Jim Crutchfield’s mind, which he can offer, but a chunk of his time, too.
“There’s no time right now,” he said.
Still, a junior-high coach in New Mexico wants to talk. A high-school coach in Oregon has a pressing question. The Division II and youth league AAU coaches want tutorials on how the Nova Southeastern basketball system works.
This is the daily proof of Crutchfield’s impact, of how his Division II program without much office space and a 2,300-seat arena affects the larger game. The easier way to measure that impact is by noting Nova can set he Division II record with an 81st consecutive home win in Sunday’s 1 p.m. game on the Davie campus against rival Florida Southern.
That streak stretches back to 2021. It covers a national championship and a No. 2 finish the past two years. It’s interwoven with such piles of continued, consequential winning that, when asked what the streak means, Crutchfield says, “I’d put it third in importance for this game.”
Sunday’s most important stake is the Sunshine State Conference championship. The second consequence is how it will affect national rankings for No. 2 Nova, considering that affects seeding for the coming NCAA tournament.
“I’m sure someday when I look back on it, this streak will mean something,” he said. “Right now we just want to win this game.”
Florida’s innovative football coach Steve Spurrier said you can succeed by either outworking your opponent or thinking differently. Crutchfield thinks differently. He started down that route as a 23-year-old, high school basketball coach in Cameron, West Va., when he sat on his couch and watched Rick Pitino’s 1980s Providence teams play a fast, pressing style.
“I said, ‘We can do that,’ ” said Crutchfield, 69. “I didn’t need to call up and talk to Rick Pitino. I looked at game tape. We figured out drills. We put in a similar style.”
Sometimes, greatness takes its time getting noticed. Crutchfield was 48 when he took over Division II West Liberty in West Virginia in 2004 and made them a national power. Pitino’s former guard, Billy Donovan, was coaching Florida to a national title at that time.
“They had the same type of random pressure, chasing from behind, trapping,” Crutchfield said. “They had a player, (Corey Brewer), who was trapping on the baseline, then two seconds later at the midcourt. I remember saying to the team, ‘This is the guy you want to play with right here.’ ”
Crutchfield tweaked, personalized and perfected his system through the years. He’s found the right players like MJ Iraldi, who’s the third straight Nova player named SSC Player of the Year. Ryan Cisarik leads the country in shooting percentage (59.7). Pembroke Pines’ Dallas Graziano returned to the program after a season at Samford and leads the country in point-to-assist ratio.
“I don’t know how much this connects to winning and losing, but again, we have a crew of guys that enjoy being around each other,” Crutchfield said. “No factions in the team. No complaining — that’s our No. 1 rule.”
His second rule is, “No foul language.”
“That’s unusual for college athletics,” he said.
He can’t think of a third rule. He pauses here and calls out to Iraldi, “MJ, what other rules do we have?”
“You just make ‘em up, coach,’ ” he said.
Nova leads the country in points scored and margin of victory with its frantic style, but Sunday’s record for consecutive home wins won’t come easy. Florida Southern was the last team to win in Davie in 2021. The teams always play tight games.
“We know how good they are,” Crutchfield said.
The only comparative streak for South Florida was the Miami Hurricanes football team’s 58 consecutive wins in the Orange Bowl between 1983 and 1994. It beat teams by an average 27 points and never gave up more than 23 points. Washington then dominated them, 38-20.
“They’ll have to start another streak,” Washington quarterback Damon Huard said that day.
Maybe that happens Sunday. That’s the great part of sports: You never know what’s next. They’re constantly surprising you. How else to explain the excellence of a Division II coach who you probably don’t know but whose methods are sought by coaches across the country?