This feature was originally published in the June 2005 issue of Basketball Times and also appears on CollegeInsider.com.


What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. The Alabama A&M men’s basketball team experienced this first hand, this past season. It was a season that would eventually end in the schools’ first-ever division I NCAA tournament appearance -- Something that seemed highly improbable just a few months earlier.

Led by the junior duo of Joe Martin, Obie Trotter and some talented freshmen, the Bulldogs figured to compete for the 2005 SWAC title. Talent wasn’t the issue. Who would coach the team was.

In late July of 2004, head coach Vann Pettaway was diagnosed with Prostate cancer. But with surgery scheduled for September, it appeared that Pettaway would have time to recuperate before the first tip. That didn’t happen.

“The surgery was not successful,” says Pettaway. “I thought I would have the surgery and then return to coaching, but it didn’t happen that way.”

Ironically, Pettaway felt his team had a chance to do special things in 2004-05, if they could only stay healthy.

Competing for the SWAC championship was a difficult task to begin with, but with questions surrounding the health of the head coach, the challenge was simply to stay together as a team.

“It made us stronger as a group,” says Pettaway. “My role was going to be different because I couldn’t do nearly as much. It was something that the players, the staff and the administration fully supported.”

Essentially, Pettaway became an administrative assistant. Assistant coaches Willie Hayes and Sammy Jackson became dual head coaches. Pettaway was relegated to an onlooker, often unable to attend practice and sometimes barley able to get through a half of basketball, bordering on dehydration.

It wasn’t the most ideal of situations, but it was working.

“My goal was to see the season through,” Pettaway says. “I knew that it was going to be difficult at times, but I knew, as a group, we could see it through.”

Pettaway’s team was picked to finish fourth, as voted on by the league’s coaches and sports information directors. A&M closed out the non-league schedule with a 100-69 loss at UAB. They entered conference play with a 3-7 mark, but Pettaway liked what he saw through those first ten contests.

“I thought we played much better than our record and the results indicated,” he said. “With three-minutes remaining at Georgia we were right there. And we played Texas A&M right down to the wire. I liked where we were heading into conference play.”

Pettaway was right. The Bulldogs won 8-of-10 and seized control of the conference race. On the court they were winning, but off the court Pettaway continued to struggle. It was becoming increasingly more difficult for him to attend practice and just getting through a game was a challenge. Pettaway evened joked that his routine to get through a game did not include a contingency for overtime.

Somewhere during this stretch, Pettaway began to ask questions. Not of his team, but of his own future.

“I ran through the full spectrum of emotions,” said Pettaway. “First I asked ‘why me’ and then I began to feel sorry for myself.”

It got to the point where Pettaway was often rarely even seen during the week. Hayes and Jackson, who Pettaway refers to as “saviors,” continued to guide the team in his absence. But on Feb. 28, with Pettaway on the sidelines, Alabama A&M did something they had never done before -- They won the SWAC.

The Bulldogs were a dominant division II force in the decade of the 1990’s. Pettaway took his teams to eight NCAA tournaments, four times advancing to the elite eight. The Bulldogs joined the Southwestern Athletic Conference in the 1998-99 season and were eligible for championship status entering the 1999-00 season. Six seasons later, a 71-53 win over Prairie View clinched their first division I title.

“It was an unbelievable feeling,” says Pettaway. “The team had been through so much, but they came together and won a championship. They became a very tight-knit group and a special team.”

A&M followed up their regular season title with a first-ever SWAC tournament championship and a trip to the NCAA tournament. The Bulldogs were defeated in the “opening round” contest against Oakland. Having just completed their run in the SWAC, the Oakland game was the fourth in six days. But Pettaway was making no excuses.

“We had a special season,” Pettaway says. “It was very rewarding for everyone, not just me. My cancer messed with the entire team, but nobody let it get them down. They came together and made history. They are the first team in school history to win a SWAC regular season title and participate in the NCAA tournament. It was a pretty good season.”

Currently Pettaway is doing much better and is looking forward to a season of full duties. With both Trotter and Martin returning, A&M is thinking about a repeat. But a second championship and even a win in the NCAA tournament couldn’t supersede what happened during the 2004-05 season.

Stories from the SWAC usually stay in the SWAC because the league is not viewed as being significant in the eyes of many. It’s a shame because Pettaway’s story and that of the Alabama A&M Bulldogs was fun to follow.