'She made you feel important': Doug Novak reflects on relationship with Pat Summitt

Jan. 20—STARKVILLE — Mississippi State will join the rest of the SEC in honoring legendary Tennessee coach Pat Summitt this week.

MSU will host 'We Back Pat' night on Thursday at Humphrey Coliseum with No. 13 Georgia in town — a night with special meaning for interim head coach Doug Novak.

Summitt's legacy speaks for itself as an eight-time national champion, but that isn't where Novak's admiration for the basketball giant stems from.

It doesn't even stem from Novak's undergraduate days at Tennessee in the late 1980s — a time where Summitt earned her first two titles.

His Summitt story comes from a small Division II gym two decades ago when Novak was the head coach for Anderson University's men's team.

Summitt was intrigued by some of the stuff he ran, so they talked before she eventually brought her entire staff to watch two day's worth of practice.

They weren't there to tell Novak — who was in his early 30s — what he was doing wrong.

Summitt was there to learn from him.

"She would steal an inbounds play from an eighth-grade coach," Novak said. "She had no ego."

Novak says Summitt spent no time talking about herself, but instead she was relentless in the questions she had for him:

How long does this take? How do you teach this? Why did you run this?

"When she talked to you, she made you feel important," Novak says. "She was never looking over your shoulder. She was never looking for somebody more important to talk to. You were it. She looked you right in the eye and made you feel like a million dollars."

Summitt's interest in Novak stemmed even before Anderson, going back to his junior college coaching days. She'd often catch a game and find something she liked that Novak ran, so she'd ask about it or she'd just congratulate him on an important win with one of her iconic letters.

"I've kept those along the way, too, for when I'm feeling bad about myself," Novak says. "Pat Summitt thought I was pretty good at one point."

In their early conversations, Summitt and Novak realized a connection they had through Novak's wife, Tonya.

Novak and Tonya were living in married student housing at Tennessee where Tonya was a graduate assistant in marketing for the UT athletic department — often working with women's basketball.

Novak and Tonya had one car between them. So when Summitt was hosting a holiday party at her nearby lake house while Novak was using the car, Tonya couldn't attend.

"(Summitt) made the top assistant drive back and pick Tonya up," Novak said. "That was a GA — lowest person on the totem pole. And Pat cared enough to have her assistant come back and get my wife."

Novak's tenure after Anderson took him to The Citadel before he ended up as a top assistant at Tulane in the early 2010s.

Former Tennessee great Tamika Catchings happened to be in New Orleans, so Tulane allowed its facilities for her to work out.

Novak brought his daughter, who was about eight years old, to watch the legend at work. The way Catchings spoke to him and his daughter, Novak saw shades of the legendary coach she once played under in Knoxville.

While balancing her role as the Indiana Fever's general manager and vice president of basketball operations, Catchings is calling games for the SEC Network including Thursday's broadcast of Kentucky and Florida.

It wasn't common before pioneers such as Summitt for the women's game to be broadcast. But Catchings remembers being in eighth grade and seeing Summitt and the Tennessee women's program on national TV for the first time.

She saw the stern presence Summitt had on the sidelines, but like Novak, Catchings eventually got to see the unmatched compassion and drive to learn the SEC is looking to honor this week.

"There's not a person Pat would come in contact with that she would not spend time with," Catchings says.

STEFAN KRAJISNIK is the Mississippi State athletics reporter for the Daily Journal. Contact him at stefan.krajisnik@djournal.com.