In his one season as a West Virginia University basketball player, Nick Patella hoisted 21 shots. All but one were 3-pointers.
"Was it a layup?" Patella said this week. "It had to be a fast-break layup or my toe was on the line. The ref didn't see my toe was behind the line."
Patella, an all-state hoops player at Elkins High School who played the 2002-03 season for John Beilein's Mountaineers, is about to take his biggest shot. It was announced this week that the West Virginia native is the head men's basketball coach at Davis & Elkins, and there isn't an offseason to prepare to run his first program.
Practice begins in less than two weeks.
"They wanted to move quick," Patella said of the school's hiring process.
The school had to after Chris Cottrell abruptly resigned last week. The athletic department didn't have to look far or long for a replacement, as the 31-year-old Patella was prepping for his inaugural season coaching his high school alma mater.
By last Friday night, Patella broke the news on his Facebook page.
"This is really a dream come true," Patella said. "I know it's Division II, but to me this is a major-college program with major responsibility. That's how I was taught and that's how I learned. That's what I want to carry over."
Patella studied under Beilein, who averaged nearly 21 wins over five seasons at WVU and led the program to the Elite Eight, Sweet 16 and NIT championship in his final three seasons. Patella was around at the beginning as a walk-on freshman point guard in 2002, when Beilein's bench was short on talent and people.
The Mountaineers had five freshmen - Patella, Patrick Beilein, J.D. Collins, Joe Herber and some guy named Pittsnogle - three sophomores, zero juniors and three seniors.
That meant Patella had to work with the scout team while doubling as a reliable backcourt body, so he was learning Beilein's system and getting familiar with the opposition.
"I was getting fed twice the information that the average player was," Patella said. "I'm learning both. That was very helpful and beneficial. I got to see all kinds of perspectives."
Patella never stopped absorbing information while with Beilein. It continued when he was forced to sit out the 2003-04 season because of repeated concussions, and then in December 2004 he retired from hoops after he collided with Frank Young during practice before WVU's game at LSU and sustained another blow to the head.
"You learn to appreciate things and you've got to take everything and make the best out of it," Patella said. "I knew at the time if I was going to stay involved, it was going to be coaching."
He worked as an assistant under Bill Lilly at West Virginia Wesleyan, and then headed out of state to shift his focus to AAU hoops in North Carolina. Patella returned to the Mountain State and planned to join another Beilein, his former teammate Patrick, at Wesleyan before Beilein departed for a job with the Utah Jazz. Patella worked there as a sports information director and men's and women's golf coach. He also teaches a spin class at the Elkins/Randolph County YMCA.
He says he'll have to stop his weekday evening spin classes, but he wants to keep the Saturday morning session.
"I got hooked on it," Patella said. "Twice a week. At first I didn't want to sit on a bike for 45 minutes, but a friend told me there were songs and a teacher and you get to ride up mountains."
Patella, who is married and has a young son, is embracing the next climb. He feels he's prepared himself for this opportunity, and reached out to WVU's widespread coaching community, like Rob Summers at Urbana and even his former coach Beilein, who is at Michigan.
"We texted back and forth on Saturday after I got the job," Patella said. "I never try to bother him because he's got so many people and so many things on his plate, but he's always been there for me."
Beilein, too, provides a blueprint. The 62-year-old, who has won 642 career games, has coached at the Division I, Division II and Division III level. He started at Nazareth in 1982, beginning his first season on the sidelines at 29 years old.
"He's done it at this level and I've emulated his style the whole way," Patella said. "This is a big challenge, I know. That's the way it should be."