Back for More: Morgan State's Todd Bozeman relishes getting another opportunity to be a college coach after 10 years away

Coach Todd Bozeman of Morgan State doesn't hide from his past.

Out of college basketball for 10 years -- including eight because of an NCAA ban -- he has a team back in the NCAA Tournament. And he might be more in the spotlight this week as his Bears (23-11) prepare to play No. 2 seed Oklahoma in a South Regional game today in Kansas City.

College-basketball fans might remember Bozeman, now 45, as the brash, young coach of the California Bears in the mid-1990s. He took Cal, with Jason Kidd, to the Sweet 16 with an upset of two-time defending champion Duke in the 1993 tournament.

Bozeman was 29 at the time and one of the country's hottest coaches.

But three years after that victory over Duke, he was caught giving $30,000 to the family member of a recruit, point guard Jelani Gardner. The NCAA gave him an unprecedented eight-year ban.

"I screwed up," Bozeman freely admitted last week at Joel Coliseum after Morgan State won the Mid-Eastern Athletic Tournament for the first time since 1977 and clinched an automatic NCAA berth.

Bozeman still has a fiery demeanor on the sideline, pushing and prodding his players, but he admits that he's a little mellower and has better self-control off the court.

"To me, that is what all of this is about, you have to do that as a man and be responsible," Bozeman said of his past mistakes. "With my actions when I committed the violations at Cal, I took responsibility for it, and that's what you have to do."

Bozeman hasn't had to tell his players much about his other coaching life. He said they all know, adding: "Hey, you can Google it."

What Bozeman has tried to teach his players, most of them from the Baltimore area, is to learn from their mistakes.

"I've talked to them about what I did and how I tried to cut corners, and it cost me," Bozeman said. "And I told them there are consequences for your actions, and I'm an example of that.

"The good thing about this country and in life is you can get up and you can come back, and that's what it's about."

Bozeman said that getting caught up in trying to follow his early success was difficult.

"At the time, I thought that a black coach wouldn't get another opportunity if he didn't win," Bozeman said. "And that's not true, because it's proven you can come back even if you don't win games.

"I got caught up in the competitiveness of recruiting somebody. And it was the first and only time I did that, but I got caught up in it emotionally."

Redirecting energy

While he was out of college coaching, Bozeman focused on his family and dabbled in scouting for NBA teams. He got his coaching fix through AAU ball in the Baltimore area, and when his NCAA ban ended in June 2005, he was ready to try college coaching again.

Bozeman said he hit the lowest point of his professional career soon after he resigned at Cal.

"When it first happened, I was pretty low and didn't know what to do," he said. "I just tried to keep myself busy and stay involved in basketball. I started coaching youth basketball with my son, and I wanted to share with others."

In 2007, Bozeman and his wife, TeLethea, adopted one of Bozeman's nephews, Okoye, after Bozeman's older brother, Danny, died of a pulmonary embolism. Okoye's mother had died in 2005.

Bozeman said that bringing Okoye, who was 15 at the time, into the family has been great for everybody. Bozeman and his wife also have two teenage children, Blake and Brianna. "Whenever people ask how many kids we have, I say three," Bozeman told The Baltimore Sun earlier this month.

Bozeman said that one of his biggest regrets is that his father, Ira, hasn't been around to see his return to coaching. Ira died of lung cancer on New Year's Day 2006, before Bozeman was hired at Morgan State.

Bozeman said a day doesn't go by that he doesn't think of his father.

"I think about him a lot because I feel like I let him down," he said.

Bozeman also said he thinks about what his nephew has gone through.

"When I start feeling down about my dad, I think of how (Okoye) lost both parents before the age of 16," Bozeman told The Sun. "I can't imagine what that's like."

Sharing his story

Bozeman has been the coach of the year in the MEAC the last two seasons, and at the awards banquet last year in Raleigh, he had tears in his eyes up during his acceptance speech.

Leonard Haynes, Morgan State's sports-information director, said that the speech was heartfelt.

"You could just tell it humbled him to get that award because he had been out of coaching for so long," Haynes said. "That really touched him to get that award."

At this year's banquet, Bozeman pulled out a quote from evangelist T.D. Jakes that he keeps in his Blackberry.

The quote reads: "Doing what you were born to do is the most gratifying feeling in the world. To feel like God blew his breath through your body when you do it."

Bozeman said that's exactly what coaching basketball means to him.

Fang Mitchell, the veteran coach at Coppin State, said that Bozeman's journey and his quick success at Morgan State is quite a story. The Bears also won the MEAC regular season and had nonconference wins against Maryland and DePaul.

"He's done so much in a short amount of time, and I have respect for that because you can see the love his kids have for him and how hard they play for him," Mitchell said. "That's what coaching is all about, finding kids like that who play that hard for you. He's done that."

Rogers Barnes, a senior starter for the Bears, said that all the players know about Bozeman's past.

"He might not have gone through great details with us what happened, but we know," Barnes said. "It doesn't really affect us because it's the past, and everybody messes up and he's got a second chance…. He wants to take advantage of his second chance and we know he's sorry about what happened at Cal."

Bozeman, who is in the last season of his contract, expects to be back at Morgan State next season. And with the Bears in the NCAA Tournament for the first time, he can't help but think of how far he has come.

"I'm just very thankful for this opportunity," he said, "and I'm trying to make the most of it because I can't picture myself doing anything else."

■ John Dell can be reached at 727-4081 or jdell@wsjournal.com.