Kent shows Irish why he's at Oregon.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

It took Ernie Kent almost four years to get to Notre Dame, and when he went he brought his Oregon basketball team with him.

The ironic subplot to the Ducks' victory over the Fighting Irish in the National Invitation Tournament quarterfinals Thursday night was that the Notre Dame job remains, publicly at least, the most prominent job opportunity beyond Oregon that Kent has had during his seven seasons coaching his alma mater.

Kent met with Notre Dame officials, including the school president, in Washington, D.C., in July of 2000 to discuss the job that became vacant when Mike Doherty moved on to North Carolina.

It would have meant significantly more money, and an opportunity to coach at one of the nation's most visible universities, but Kent said then, and again this week, that he spent much of the session telling Notre Dame officials about his passion for Oregon basketball.

And so, he said, it was a special feeling to watch his team gather on the floor of the Joyce Center for its postgame prayer the other day, victory in hand.

"It was a proud moment for me to take the University of Oregon back to that campus, and play in that building, and have those kids battle under those adverse conditions, and do that with class and as a team," Kent said. "It was a special moment for me, and now maybe they can understand what I was talking about, that this is who we are, and what we've built here."

In the summer of 2000, Oregon had followed its trip to the NIT semifinals in 1999 with a berth in the NCAA Tournament the following year, and it was realistic to expect that Kent would be courted by someone. At the time, Kent said he'd been contacted by Notre Dame, whose AD, Kevin White, formerly worked at Arizona State.

Was he offered the job? It was reported in Eugene and elsewhere then that he was, though Kent is somewhat circumspect now, with the job having gone to Mike Brey of Delaware, the other candidate interviewed in D.C. then.

Said Brey, as quoted Thursday in the South Bend Tribune: "Certainly, I'm happy it turned out my way. I'm glad I won that game."

Said Kent: "You could say they did, and you could say they didn't. ... You don't say someone offered or didn't offer, because they want to save face, and I want to save face, but I wouldn't have gone back there and taken Oregon and my family through that if it wasn't something concrete to talk about pretty seriously."

Whatever happened behind closed doors, it was all over within a day, and Kent never even visited South Bend, Ind., nor saw Notre Dame until this week. At the time, Luke Ridnour, Luke Jackson, James Davis and Jay Anderson were on the way, and Kent had strong professional and personal reasons to stay at Oregon.

Whatever his reasons for interviewing - genuine interest in the opportunity, the desire to remind his own bosses of his marketability, the credibility that comes with being linked to a high-profile job - Kent hasn't looked back.

"Mike Brey's passion was for Notre Dame," he said. "They hired the right coach for the right job. ... My passion was for Oregon."

The passion engendered by Oregon basketball has been evident in the response of this community to the NIT. Tuesday night's sellout for the win over George Mason was a capacity crowd in the truest sense - there seemed hardly an empty seat in Mac Court, and there usually are some, and many fans stayed afterward, to catch final autographs from senior Luke Jackson.

Tuesday night's 9,087 in Mac Court surpassed Thursday's 8,011 at Notre Dame; bring Notre Dame to Eugene for an NIT quarterfinal, Kent mused, and "there would have been people hanging from the rafters."

In South Bend, Kent reminded the Ducks of that support, about all the fans who willed Oregon back to Notre Dame.

"We talked about how (Eugene) was going to be at a standstill watching this game," he said. "Be sure we show them the right team."

It was the right team, with the right coach, both Oregon's.