Stanford, Calif. ? More than a decade ago, when Jerod Haase had just bought his own home in Kansas, his mother sent a truckload of his most precious belongings from where he grew up in Northern California.
Trophies. Souvenirs. A box filled with recruiting letters, some 50 to 60 of them still organized and intact.
The lone red folder came from Stanford and included letters from coach Mike Montgomery. There was a plaque from Haase’s team championship at Stanford basketball camp in 1991.
As soon as he scheduled his interview for the Stanford coaching job, Haase hustled to his basement in Birmingham, Ala. That box was there in storage — yes, it survived a few more moves since — and he gathered the important paperwork for his Bay Area trip. Wife Mindy was stunned he retrieved everything in a mere five minutes.
“I found the folder fairly quickly. I don’t know how. It was pretty amazing,” Haase said, speaking after being formally introduced as Stanford’s new coach Monday. “Then it would have traveled to North Carolina and made another move to Birmingham.”
Athletic director Bernard Muir didn’t discuss details of the contract other than to say he plans for the coach hired away from the University of Alabama at Birmingham to be around for the long haul, with no timetable for Stanford’s transformation.
“I’m 41 years old and I have 25 championship rings,” said Haase, who turns 42 on Friday. “Those rings are a product of the people and the coaches I’ve been around. … When I was a player I was known for an attack mentality. I am going to do everything I can to make sure that the attack mentality is part of our culture and our program.”
Haase learned from the best. After a season at California with Jason Kidd as his backcourt mate, he transferred to Kansas University and played for Roy Williams before later coaching under him for 13 years with the Jayhawks and at North Carolina.
