After his first year as head coach of DU men’s basketball, Terry Carroll guided the team to its first winning season in five years and currently has the team flying high with a 8-1 record in Sun Belt Conference play.

But under the adage of former DU hockey great Jim Wiste, not a minute of the turnaround can be considered work.

“One of my very best friends is Jim Wiste, a famous hockey player here back on the 1969 national championship team and later for the Chicago Blackhawks,” said Carroll. “He has always said it best, that he has never worked a day in his life and because he likes what he does, it’s not work.”

“I like what I do, so I don’t feel like I’m coming to work. I can just do my job because I’ve got great players and great assistant coaches around me,” he said.

Now in his fourth season at the helm, Carroll moved into eighth place among DU coaches for most wins all-time with 39 after his third season.

A couple hundred wins up the list, Carroll finds himself in the company of Dick Peth, who won 221 games in 12 seasons, and Hoyt Brawner, who earned 163 victories in 14 seasons.

Even more impressive is that Carroll inherited a program with only three years of NCAA Division I experience since its return to that level before the start of the 1998-1999 season.

Carroll accepted the challenge as an obstacle to overcome and he is well on his way to conquering it.

“It is going to take time to get this to where we want this program to be and it all starts with the head coach,” said Carroll.

“The foundation starts with that guy and you’ve got to be a solid guy that’s going to want to come in here and make the commitment to this university and to these players and show them that you’re here for the long haul.”

Many of his predecessors amassed their victories at the Division II level, a time when the Pioneers enjoyed a significant amount of success, including a 79-game home winning streak, an exploit that time-lined nearly six years.

With strong connections in Iowa, Carroll has recruited the finest players from the Hawkeye State and lured the talent of Colorado, such as Rodney Billups and Antonio Porch.

And it is the competition of the game as well as the learning process and interaction with the players right from the start that Carroll prides himself on.

“My biggest concern was how quickly it would take for our guys to understand what we wanted to do versus what the previous staff wanted to do,” said Carroll.

A native of Iowa, Carroll spent four years as an assistant coach at Drake University, a position sandwiched between two separate stints as a high school coach.

The next nine years he was head coach at Indian Hills Community College, steering the program to back-to-back National Junior Athletic Association titles and stockpiling a career record of 269-50.

His first taste of Division I basketball lasted for three years at Iowa State, where he began as an assistant in 1998 and became associate head coach the following season.

After enjoying success during his time at Iowa State, Carroll got the itch to be head coach again.

“I have always dreamed about becoming a head coach and I was a head coach for most of my basketball career,” said Carroll. “I was an associate head coach at Iowa State and we had tremendous success. We went to the Elite Eight and we won two Big 12 Championships, so the bug to get back and be a head coach again started biting.”

With a legacy forming in Iowa, all it took to attract Carroll to DU was a phone call and a tour.

“When Dr. Murphy called me and told me that this job was open and wanted to know if I’d be interested in talking to her about it, I said ‘absolutely’,” said Carroll.

He added, “Once I got out here and saw the facilities and met the people, I just knew it was the job that I wanted.”

Between the deep instructional bellows, the occasional loosening of the necktie and the ‘you’re mine when you come off the court’ glance possessed by any coach with heart and character, Carroll had a recipe for success from day one.

“The thing was to get to know the guys and start to build your program and get your foundation built,” said Carroll.

He added, “You just want to be sure that everyone understood what your philosophy was and how you wanted the team to be.”

His animated personality and intensity on the sidelines stem back to his high school and collegiate playing days.

After one year on the basketball squad at Oklahoma State University, Carroll transferred to the University of Northern Iowa so he could compete for both the basketball and baseball teams.

Athletic ability also runs in his family.

His daughter Stephanie is a senior on the DU golf team and his son Bill is a junior on the Heritage High School football team in Littleton.

“I like to go watch her golf tournaments and we go golfing a lot,” said Carroll. “I also like to go to as many of his games as I can go to.”

Outside of basketball and golf, Carroll finds keeping things low-key is the way to go.

“I spend a lot of time at home doing yard work and putzing around because this job consumes a lot of your time the way it is,” said Carroll. “So when you do get some free time, sometimes it’s not bad to stay at home, kind of relax and watch a little TV.”

But don’t expect any putzing around from Carroll and the Pioneers heading into the remainder of conference play, eventually striving for the SBC tournament title and a bid to the NCAA tournament.

“There is going to be bumps in the road and there are going to be good days and bad days,” said Carroll. He added, “But you’ve got to fight through all of them and eventually there are going to be more good days than bad days and that’s what we are starting to see now and hopefully in the future we’ll see more and more of it.”