Techtalk: Georgia tech's Paul Hewitt has the yellow jackets buzzing.

COACH: In your sophomore year at Westbury (N.Y.) High School, you took a dare from a friend that you couldn't make the jayvee basketball team. What would you be doing today if you hadn't accepted that challenge?

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HEWITT: I'd probably be coaching baseball someplace. Baseball was my first love. I played anything that had a bat and a ball, from second grade and up.

What I loved most about basketball was the friendships I made on the high school team. When I got lucky enough to be offered a scholarship to St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y., it gave me a financial reason to play basketball.

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COACH: You were a four-year letter winner and senior captain on the St. John Fisher College basketball team. You must have been a pretty good player?

HEWITT: I was the kind of player that ended up in coaching. So what does that tell you? (laughter) I was very average. I started out as a small forward and ended up at center in my senior year. I didn't score a lot. I just tried to rebound and block some shots. But it was a great experience and I wouldn't have traded it for anything in the world. I'm still very close to many of my teammates and still keep in touch with them.

And I made a lot of the friendships through basketball at St. John Fisher. One in particular is with Jeff Van Gundy, who was at Nazareth College, just a mile down the road from St. John Fisher. Over the years, he has helped me move up in the coaching profession.

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COACH: When did you first realize that you wanted to forge a career in coaching?

HEWITT: When I was in college, but I really wasn't sure. Then my high school coach, Martin Reid, asked me to help him with the team. Be his assistant and coach the jayvee.

The minute I got into the gym in November of 1985, I knew I wanted to coach. I didn't know on what level, but I knew it was what I wanted to do with my life.

COACH: Your first coaching job was as a graduate assistant for George Raveling at Southern Cal. You call him the foundation of your coaching career and have adopted many of his philosophies. What did you learn about yourself and coaching during your one-year tenure in Los Angeles?

HEWITT: I learned that I wasn't as nearly as prepared as I should have been for all the things that you have to deal with in coaching. The most important thing I learned from Coach Raveling was the ability to prepare for all possibilities.

I've never been around a guy more prepared than he. Whether it was a scouting report, a home visit, an individual instruction session, or a practice--the man was prepared, not only in terms of articulating his ideas but always searching for new and better ways to do things.

Everybody knows about his love for reading and some of that has rubbed off on me. I don't have quite the appetite for reading that he has, but I try to read a book and learn anytime that I can in order to prepare for the possibilities that may confront me down the road. I'm now actually reading some books that will help me prepare for the season.

COACH: We know that you're a big proponent of learning from others. That includes Pete Newell's belief that today's game is over-coached and under-taught. Can you expound on that statement?

HEWITT: I don't want to sound like I'm pontificating. But I've always felt like it was our duty, as coaches, to teach guys how to play as opposed to teaching plays.

Our first responsibility is to make our players realize that education should be a priority. We must also understand that if we do our job thoroughly, the best way we know how, our young men will be able to make the right decision when they graduate. ("Should I earn a living with my degree or with my basketball ability.")

When the players go out into the world and try to make something of themselves in the professional ranks, maybe they'll meet a coach with a different philosophy and system, but basketball always remains basketball. Dribbling is dribbling. Cutting is cutting. Passing is passing. Shooting is shooting. And the basic nuances of defensive are all pretty similar.

But I believe that if we just spend our time teaching our system and our methods of playing, we could be doing our players a little bit of a disservice. Because let's face it: the opportunity and the ability to play professional basketball anywhere in the world is now available to all of our kids. It has completely changed the culture of our sport. It's up to us to teach them how to play, not necessarily teach the plays that we like.

COACH: Who are your coaching mentors?

HEWITT: I've worked with people who have had a very positive influence on me. Obviously, Coach Raveling, Coach Reid, and Jeff Van Gundy.

Nick Marcarchuck, who I worked for at Fordham U. (1990-93), taught me an awful lot about giving yourself the freedom to not only help develop your thoughts but to help the head coach develop thoughts. Steve Lappas at Villanova is one of the best coaches I've ever been around in terms of teaching the motion offense. A lot of what we do offensively--secondary breaks and constant motion--I picked up from Steve.

As any coach will tell you, you have to do what you feel comfortable with and adjust to your personality as well as your team's personality. Team personality probably comes first.

There are other guys I have watched over the years: Dean Smith, Rick Pitino, and John Thompson. I was a huge Georgetown fan when I was growing up. I used to watch how Coach Thompson would handle his team and how he coached his team defensively.

The other positive thing about Coach Thompson was his social awareness. I learned from him that coaching isn't just about winning basketball games. It's also about creating opportunities for young people. To me, that's what sports is supposed be about. Winning is only about 20% of it. There's an awful lot more that kids can learn on a basketball team.

COACH: You are widely regarded for your up-tempo offensive style and relentless defensive attack. How did you come to settle on those systems?

HEWITT: From working at basketball camps and watching teams coached by the masters of the game--Smith, Thompson, Pitino, and others.

I've always felt that if you can make conditioning an important factor in each game and if you can really sell your team on working harder than the other team, you're going to have a built-in advantage.

Over the years, I've always liked teams that pressed and ran. I should really go back to my high school coach. That's the style we played at Westbury High. I was not a great player by any stretch of the imagination, but that style allowed me to get on the floor because Coach Reid believed in developing his depth and trying make conditioning a factor in each game.

COACH: How would you describe your coaching methodology?

HEWITT: I would say it's complex, but not hard to figure out. It has to do with the development of the whole person. I'm a big believer in making sure that a player is learning and gaining in all areas while they're in college: in the classroom, socially, and athletically.

It can't be just about the basketball. When they come to us they all have aspirations of playing professional basketball. But we don't know where they're going to end up. So it's up to my staff and myself, as their coaches, to prepare them for all possibilities.

COACH: Saint Joseph's coach Phil Martelli told us that he subscribes to the theory of adapting the system to the players, rather than having his players adapt to the system. Do you agree?

HEWITT: Absolutely. Because you can't make somebody into something they're not. They come to you with a blueprint that you have to work with and build on and improve.

For instance, if you get a kid from Westbury High, he's a product of the coach at that school and every coach that taught him before. And obviously if he wasn't good enough, we wouldn't have recruited him. So now we take a guy who's a product of all those coaches and we try to build on what they all taught him.

You can't say to a kid as soon as he walks in the door, "Hey, I know you've never done this before, but I need you to do this now." I think that's unrealistic. You need to work with what you have. It's the same thing socially. Your player is a product of what his mom and dad taught him and you have to help him build on that.

COACH: Your father, Burchell, owns a machine shop in Queens and is still working at the age of 70. How much of an influence has he had on your work ethic?

HEWITT: He's been a tremendous influence. He's a guy who works 12 hours a day, Monday through Friday, and then works six hours on Saturday. With the conditions that he works in, even though it's his own business, you're talking about an industrial environment with oil spills and metal chips flying all over the place. Obviously he has provided very well for our family. But he has worked hard. He has worked a heck of a lot harder than I've worked.

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COACH: You have encountered several types of team dynamics during your time at Georgia Tech--coaching a veteran team with five seniors and guiding youth movements with freshmen and sophomores. How does a coach approach each situation? How does your teaching differ, if at all?

HEWITT: I think outwardly you can't change. You still have to demand high standards from your team. Internally, when you evaluate your players and your performance, you have to be somewhat realistic.

With a veteran team, you can definitely push a little harder. Because they understand what level they have to attain in terms of effort and concentration.

With a younger team, yes, you have to push them hard and you have to demand a high level of concentration and effort, but you also have to understand that there's a little bit of a learning curve involved.

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COACH: Tell us about the vast differences between coaching in the regular season and coaching in the NCAA tournament. How does a conference like the ACC prepare you for the postseason?

HEWITT: When you reach the NCAA tournament, you're playing against teams that have a championship mentality. Now, whether you won your conference tournament or earned an at-large bid by playing in a very demanding league and you're one of the top teams in the country, you cannot afford to sit on any eight to 10-point lead because a smart opponent will assess the situation, make adjustments, and come right back at you with a terrific sense of urgency.

In the ACC, that's what we encounter in every single game--a championship environment. When we played in the NCCA's this year, we played five very close, hard fought games, up until the championship game vs Connecticut.

I think our kids were very much at ease in that environment. As we have said, that's the way they had to play all during the regular season.

COACH: What are your greatest coaching attributes? What are some of the things you feel you need to improve upon?

HEWITT: My greatest coaching attribute is that I've been lucky enough to coach some very good players. Coaching guys like Kerry Kittles, Alvin Williams, and Tim Thomas at Villanova, the players I had at Siena. And my teams at Georgia Tech--especially this past season. If you watched us play, you saw that we had some quality guys.

As for what I need to improve upon, I think I can definitely do a better job of in-game adjustments. Sometimes I find myself second-guessing my decisions.

COACH: During your three seasons at Siena (1997-2000), you developed the program into one of the nation's highest scoring teams, averaging 85.6 points per game, while shooting 38.1% from three-point land and 77.8% from the free throw line. What are the keys to getting a team to improve its offensive output?

HEWITT: Taking good shots while being unselfish really improves a team's ability to put points on the board. That's something we've carried over to Georgia Tech and it's starting to take hold. Certainly, you have to recruit good shooters. But we also do a lot of individual instruction work on shooting and ball-handling.

You can't take a non-shooter and make him into a good shooter. But you can take a good shooter and maybe turn him into a great shooter. You can take a good free-throw shooter and turn him into a great free-throw shooter. The emphasis we place on conditioning, ball-handling, and shooting, all of those facets have helped us put together teams that could score.

COACH: Because of your ability to teach and communicate without belittling your players, many people consider you a new generation basketball coach. That said, in your opinion, do you feel that the Bobby Knight coaching model is a dinosaur?

HEWITT: I think we all have different styles. What people see of me sometimes publicly may not be absolutely accurate in what I'm like privately. Your emotions run the gamut when you're coaching. There are things that we may do privately in the locker room or in practice when we get emotional, that someone who walks by may see and not understand. As long as your players understand that your No. 1 goal is their long-term benefit and development as people and players, who will move on and live productive lives, you can display your emotions to your team.

COACH: You have acquired a reputation as a savvy and skilled recruiter, especially at Villanova as an assistant to Steve Lappas and most recently, at Georgia Tech. With the flux of high school athletes opting for the riches of the NBA, how has that changed the landscape of recruiting over the short term and long term?

HEWITT: It certainly makes it a full-time job. There was a time when you could recruit a young man and know you were going to have him three or four years and stop recruiting that position.

Now you have to continue to recruit every year and also develop depth to offset your losses. I'm anxious for the NCAA to sit down and start looking at the coaches and figure out ways to improve our game and not allow it to achieve the image that it has over the last few years.

People have made it seem that it's a negative thing for a kid to turn pro. Well, everybody in the country has changed jobs at one point or another to help improve their stake in life. College kids have changed majors or transferred from one university to another.

We have done a poor job of representing the true men's college basketball player. I think we have left too much open to interpretation from the media, and sometimes fans. I don't think we, as coaches, and the NCAA do enough to tell the real story.

Interview by Kevin Newell