Tom Penders

Thomas Vincent Penders (born May 23, 1945) is an American retired college basketball coach, who last coached from 2004 through 2010 at the University of Houston. He is from Stratford, Connecticut and has a 649–437 career record. As a college athlete, Penders played both basketball and baseball for the University of Connecticut, and is one of the few players to have competed in both the NCAA basketball tournament as well as the College World Series.

Prior to his last job as Houston's head coach, Penders was a sports analyst for ESPN and Westwood One Radio. He also has been the head coach for Tufts, Columbia, Fordham, Rhode Island, Texas, and George Washington. Coach Penders developed a reputation as both “Turnaround Tom” and “Tournament Tom” because he proved that he could turn basketball programs into consistent winners and get the most out of his players in March. He is one of three coaches to reach three “Sweet 16s” as a double-digit seed in the NCAA basketball tournament, becoming the first NCAA head basketball coach to accomplish that feat with his 1996–97 Texas Longhorns team.

Coaching career

High school Penders posted a 59–10 record as a high school coach at Bullard-Havens Tech and Bridgeport Central High School in Connecticut. He led Bullard-Havens to a 14–6 record in his first season as a head coach. The next year, he guided Bridgeport Central to a 23–2 record and a number two ranking in the state. The following year, he was named the New York Daily News Coach of the Year after leading Bridgeport to a 20–1 mark and a number one ranking. He led the Lions to back-to-back winning seasons in the final two of his four years there.

Rhode Island Penders took over Rhode Island's program on October 4, 1986, two weeks before the regular season began. He was named the Atlantic 10 Conference Co-Coach of the Year after guiding the Rams to a 20–10 record and a berth into the NIT his first year.

Penders resigned as head coach following nearly a month of controversy surrounding the Texas program. On the heels of a 14-17 season and 9th place finish in the conference, three players met with athletic director DeLoss Dodds to voice complaints about Penders and the program. One of those players, Luke Axtell, informed Dodds at the meeting that he intended to transfer. Not long after the meeting, and despite it being the offseason, Axtell was suspended from the team for academic reasons.

Shortly after the suspension, an Austin radio station that claimed to have obtained a copy of Axtell's transcript read his grades on the air. This touched off a firestorm and an investigation into the source of the unauthorized release of academic records. Penders announced his resignation after the investigation revealed that his assistant coach, Eddie Oran, admitted to faxing the transcript to the radio station. In a deposition connected with a lawsuit Axtell brought against the radio station for releasing his records, Oran testified that Penders instructed him to fax the Axtell transcript to the media (and that a secretary had actually been the faxer). Oran sued Penders for defamation in 2002, claiming that statements Penders made when the scandal broke wrecked his career. However, a jury sided with Penders.

Coach Penders’s departure from Texas was the subject of a book, Burned Orange by Kyle Dalton.

George Washington Penders served as head coach at the George Washington University from 1998 to 2001, where he compiled a 49–42 record and led the Colonials to the NCAA tournament. Late in the 2000-2001 season, four players used the long-distance access code of his son and assistant coach, Tommy, Jr., to make $1,400 worth of long-distance calls and star guard SirValiant Brown left after his sophomore year for the NBA because he wouldn't qualify to play at GW the next season for academic reasons. Most seriously, Penders failed to tell athletic director Jack Kvancz that one of his players, Attila Cosby, had been arrested for several serious misdemeanors in January, including forcing a prostitute to perform oral sex at gunpoint and violating her with a broom. Penders ultimately resigned in 2001.

Penders said his resignation was because after 30 years of coaching, it was "time for a sabbatical," and said the resignation was not related to the off-the-court issues. The university honored the rest of Penders' contract, with GW athletic director Jack Kvancz said honoring it "was the class thing to do." When GW's Kvancz was questioned about the payout (in the area of $1M) he refused to comment. "

Houston Penders came to Houston after spending three years as an analyst for ESPN and Westwood One Radio. He has not coached since.

Playing career Penders played both baseball and basketball at the University of Connecticut, where he starred as a center fielder for the baseball team and a point guard for the basketball team from 1964 to 1967. His professional baseball playing experience lasted one year in the Cleveland organization where he split his 1968 season between the Rock Hill Chiefs and Waterbury Indians.

Family In addition to Penders and son Tommy, Jr. serving as basketball coaches, his father was a longtime baseball coach at Stratford High School from 1931 to 1968, and led the school to four state championships. His brother, Jim, is the baseball coach at East Catholic High School, and was named the national high school Coach of the Year in 1996. Like his father, Jim Penders won four state championships.

Penders' two nephews also are collegiate baseball coaches. Jim was named the head coach at Connecticut in 2003 after serving seven years as an assistant coach and playing four years for the Huskies. Rob serves as the head baseball coach at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas.

Head coaching record