Hokie ClubBy Jimmy Robertson
This Saturday was to be a national holiday of sorts, with the NCAA Tournament's Final Four games slated to tip off Saturday night in Atlanta. But for the first time since 1939, the NCAA decided not to hold its tournament, as concerns related to the coronavirus forced all sports organizations to put a temporary end to play.
Most of the nation's sports fans find themselves desperately missing March Madness, and Brian Chase is certainly among them. But the former Virginia Tech basketball standout looks at the matter with a little different perspective than most.
"I'm feeling for the kids," he said via phone call last week. "You've got these guys that work so hard to get to a certain point, and it's a thing where you have the season cut short because of this pandemic, which is a bad, bad thing. But I more so feel for them. It's more devastating for me knowing that they're not going to be able to play than for me to watch them as a fan.
"I feel for them. You've got guys that are seniors that had championship aspirations, and they still have NBA aspirations, but who knows what could have happened? You're missing opportunities. It's a tough thing."
Chase played at Tech from 1999-2003, and while he never played in an NCAA Tournament, he certainly took advantage of his opportunities. A 1,000-point career scorer, the Washington, D.C. native led Tech in scoring during the 2000-01 season (12.9 ppg) and in total points that season (297) and the following season (317). All of that helped propel him toward a professional basketball career that lasted 12 years.
After he graduated with a degree in human development in December of 2003, Chase spent the next three seasons pursuing his NBA dream. He played in the American Basketball Association (ABA), the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) and the National Basketball Developmental League (NBDL), including a stint with the Roanoke Dazzle in nearby Roanoke. Later that summer in 2006, he secured a workout with the Cleveland Cavaliers, but then a call from Kevin O'Connor, the general manager of the Utah Jazz at the time and the father of former Tech women's basketball standout Katie O'Connor, led to Chase heading to Utah.
"They invited me to come for a tryout and play for their summer league team," Chase said. "I did that and played extremely well. Then they invited me to their vet camp. That was in 2006, and the rest was pretty much history after that. I made the team."
Chase spent the early part of the 2006-07 season on the Jazz roster before getting caught up in a numbers game and ultimately getting released. He landed with Los Angeles Lakers' NBA D-League team, and he averaged better than 16 points per game en route to an NBA D-League All-Star Game appearance.
"We were the only team in the D-League at the time that was owned by an NBA franchise," Chase said. "I had access to the entire facility. All our games were at the Staples Center before the Lakers games. I was fortunate enough to be able to watch Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, and watch the Lakers practice every single day. I was fortunate enough to be able to go to every single home game. We just stayed in the tunnel after our game, and that kind of catapulted my mindset and thought process about a lot of different things."
Chase went home that offseason and worked out with former NBA star Gilbert Arenas, who was playing for the Washington Wizards. Chase played in a D.C. summer league, and he happened to catch the eye of former NBA star Shaquille O'Neal, who was working in the Miami Heat front office at the time. He invited Chase to the veterans camp in Miami, and while Chase played well, he was released.
Throughout his first four years of pursuing his NBA dream, he had received offers from numerous European basketball clubs. As he made a name for himself on the NBA's summer circuit and in the developmental leagues, he found the offers from the European clubs starting to become more financially lucrative.
In 2008, he decided to sign with a team in Turkey. He headed to Instanbul and spent the next eight years playing for teams throughout Europe. His stops included Turkey, France, Russia, Spain, Bosnia, Croatia and Italy.
"I loved it," Chase said. "My wife was with me the majority of the time until we got pregnant with our son. But my daughters actually lived with me in Croatia. They visited me in Spain. They were able to experience all of these different things that I never got to experience that early, even though basketball took me all over the country and all over the world.
"I remember one year I ran into Jamon Gordon [a former Tech guard]. We scrimmaged them in the preseason one year. So to be able to come across former Hokies overseas … I was fortunate enough to see Malcolm Delaney [another former Tech guard] play. He played in our building one year, maybe the second year out. Just to come across paths with old friends, old Hokies in a totally different setting, that was a big deal for me."
Chase spent his last three professional seasons in Italy. The professional teams in Italy take care of the players, and Chase also formed a close relationship with his head coach, who signed him when he took another job with a different Italian team before Chase's final season.
Chase had planned to play a couple of more years, but a knee injury before his second season in Italy required surgery. Though he returned, he lacked quickness and his timing was off. He bounced back and played well in what became his final season.
At that point, Chase was an older player by European standards – and one with a previous knee injury.
"I felt good about myself physically, but at the time, I'm 35 or so, and you go into the next year, and they're still questioning your knee," he said. "You get the offer put on the table, and it wasn't enough for me to up and leave my family at that point. That's when I made a conscious decision to say, 'That's it. It's time to go on to the next chapter.'"
With a wife and three children, Chase decided to retire in 2016 and return to his home in Washington, D.C. He then spent two seasons as an assistant coach at Division II Bowie State before resigning in September.
He always had wanted to work with kids. A summer job at a local Boys and Girls Club in Washington, D.C. the summer before he arrived at Tech sparked that desire. Coincidentally, one of the kids in his group back then was Christian Webster, a current Virginia Tech men's basketball assistant coach.
Today, Chase works at a middle school in Washington, D.C., mentoring, coaching, and teaching young children in one of the tougher environments in the country.
"That was always the plan," Chase said. "I love kids … I wanted to give back to my community, especially in Washington, D.C. It's not easy here. My neighborhood is one of the worst. It's like that all over the country, but I've always wanted to give back to it, and I've been fortunate enough to build some relationships over the years and come across people from all walks of life here. I was able to get back into my neighborhood, and I'm working at a middle school in my neighborhood. But that was always the plan.
"Coaching is always something that I feel like I naturally did even when I was playing. Just trying to come up with solutions to win a game or put ourselves in position to win a game. Just trying to galvanize the troops. That's always been a part of who I am, both teaching and coaching. They intertwine with one another."
Chase also remains involved in a few business ventures. One of the more interesting ones centers around a mixed gender professional basketball league – the Global Mixed Gender Basketball League – in which men and women play together. He and a former high school teammate, Bernard Robinson (who played at Michigan), plan to form a team to Washington.
Exhibition games have been played to bring attention to the league, and logistics continue to be ironed out, including finding an opening as to when a season can be played.
"We don't have a launch date yet, but we're in the process of advertising for it just to showcase exactly what it is, so that when people do see it, it's not foreign to them," Chase said. "A lot of people still can't fathom the idea of men and women on the floor at the same time. Once people see it, it's very, very high quality."
Even with his job, business interests and family – his 10-year-old son plays AAU basketball – Chase keeps in contact with a lot of his former Tech teammates. That group includes Terry Taylor, Carlos Dixon, Markus Sailes and Shawn Harris, among others.
Yet he hasn't been to Blacksburg in 14 years – something he hopes to change in the near future.
"I do. I really, really do," Chase said when asked if he missed Virginia Tech. "College gave me a chance to grow up. I had a lot of growing up to do. I didn't think it when I first walked on campus, but just from an attitude standpoint, I walked in there, and I wouldn't say I was immature, but I had a lot of maturing to do. It was a different kind of situation for me by the time I left. I really, really enjoyed my entire time there."