In Bobby Gonzalez’s mind there is ‘bad pressure,’ and then there is ‘good pressure’ when it comes to coaching basketball.

‘Bad pressure’ is when a coach is on the hot seat and in desperate need of a winning team. ‘Good pressure’ accompanies a coach whose team is expected to perform well because of previous accomplishments.

Heading into his fourth season as the head coach at Seton Hall, Gonzalez realizes that there is, in fact, pressure on him. He did, after all, receive a contract extension before practice began on Sept. 10.

He just wants to make it clear that the pressure he’s feeling is the ‘good pressure’ he speaks of.

He is not on the hot seat.

‘I’m not going to get fired, and if we don’t win 20 games this season, I still won’t be bought out or fired,’ Gonzalez said at Big East media day at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 21. ‘I’m going to be back at Seton Hall next year.’

Gonzalez has been faced with questions about his job security for much of his tenure with the Pirates, following his appointment on April 7, 2006. Even with the contract extension through the 2014-15 season, he still is battling the critics who still believe his role as the head of the Pirates bench is far from secure.

But with one look at Gonzalez, it’s hard to tell that there is any pressure squarely on his shoulders to produce this season. With his sanguine strut and genial smile, Gonzalez appears assured he is with the Pirates for at least a handful of years to come.

More importantly, though, Gonzalez also has come to realize that instead of this being a make-or-break year for his job security, it is a make-or-break year for the future of the program, as Seton Hall appears to be on the verge of breaking out in the Big East.

‘We are trying to turn the corner,’ Gonzalez said. ‘I got my extension, so now we are trying to separate from the other teams, and in order to do that, we have to put our money where our mouth is. We have got to get into the NCAA (Tournament).’

Gonzalez, who is 47-46 in his three years at Seton Hall, knows it. With a tournament appearance this year, things will become much easier for him in the Big East — especially in recruiting. Without it, he won’t get a pink slip, but it will be another delay in his ability to convince area recruits that SHU is climbing out of the doldrums of the Big East.

To Lou DeMello, former head coach at Rice (N.Y.) High School, recruiting is exactly the reason why Monsignor Robert Sheeran from Seton Hall gave Gonzalez the extension. DeMello, who undertook Gonzalez as an assistant in 1992, doesn’t think Sheeran made the decision because he was trying to extinguish the flame under Gonzalez’s supposed hot seat.

No, DeMello feels it was purely business. And the most important aspect of the business that is Seton Hall basketball is recruiting New York talent.

‘At that level, it is strictly a business decision,’ DeMello said. ‘No one wants to recruit with a coach in limbo.’

Over the past three years, Gonzalez has been, and this season will be, attempting to reach the NCAA Tournament with what DeMello refers to as ‘B and C-level recruits’. A far cry from the ‘A-level recruits’ Gonzalez hopes to bring in.

‘When you invest money, you are going to invest it in IBM, not the bodega down the block,’ Gonzalez said. ‘But every once in a while you can get a kid to take a chance.’

For the last few seasons, Seton Hall’s squad was made of mostly ‘C-level recruits.’ But things are starting to change. Four starters return this year, headlined by perhaps the Big East’s most surprising player from last year in Jeremy Hazell, who finished second in the Big East at 22.7 points-per-game. The Pirates also boast a solid crop of newcomers.

Depth is the word everyone is throwing around for Seton Hall this year, as many coaches expect the Pirates to improve vastly from 2008.

‘I think they are definitely an NCAA Tournament team,’ Villanova head coach Jay Wright said. ‘They are one of those teams who have earned their right to be a good team. They have taken those lumps.’

There is no denying, though, that this team’s fate, the program’s fate, and Gonzalez’s ultimate fate (be it is this year or another year), depends on whether or not the team will be able to mesh. Hazell thinks it will.

‘We got great cohesiveness and chemistry right now,’ Hazell said. ‘We are just on each other right now. A lot of people don’t know how good we can be.’

Luckily for Seton Hall, getting a team to gel despite high expectations is something Gonzalez has dealt with before.

Gonzalez latched on with Pete Gillen at Xavier in 1993. The following year Gonzalez followed Gillen to Providence, where in 1997 they brought the small private school to the Elite 8. Then too, Gonzalez almost single-handedly rounded up a group of lesser known players from the inner boroughs of New York as a lead recruiter.

Five years prior to 1997, he did the same as a little-known junior varsity coach at St. Nicholas of Tolentine in the Bronx.

Back in 1992, DeMello contacted the 29-year-old Gonzalez and asked him to assist him at Rice following Tolentine’s closing. The passionate JV coach gladly accepted and proceeded to help infuse the transfers of a handful of players from the defunct former powerhouse that was the Tolentine program.

Two years later, thanks in large part to Gonzalez’s transfers, DeMello led the Harlem high school program to a national championship.

It’s an experience in his coaching career Gonzalez would like to parallel.

‘I have to get to the NCAA Tournament,’ Gonzalez said. ‘I’m not going to sandbag and play make believe.’

With the season days away, Gonzalez is starting to feel that ‘good pressure’ more and more. He maintains that no matter what, this will not be his final year.

Gonzalez was reminded of that in early October, when he met up with the only coach who has ever brought Seton Hall to a national championship game: P.J. Carlesimo. In the 80’s, Carlesimo was in a similar situation as Gonzalez — feeling the strain of ‘good pressure.’

It ultimately worked out for Carlesimo and the Pirates. It’s now up to Gonzalez to duplicate it.

‘He told me, ‘Bobby, I almost got fired,” Gonzalez said. ”It was my fifth year before I had a winning record,”

aolivero@syr.edu

Published on November 3, 2009 at 12:00 pm