Rick Byrd felt relief when the school he has loved for all his life — the school that laid the foundation for his coaching career — chose Cuonzo Martin over him in March 2011.

“I didn’t really want the phone call to come,” Byrd said of an offer that would have come from then-Tennessee AD Mike Hamilton, who interviewed Byrd in Atlanta.

But…

“But when you don’t get it,” Byrd said, “you think, ‘Well, they didn’t think you were the best.’”

And Byrd, who leads East Region No. 11 seed Belmont (26-5) into the NCAA Tournament on Tuesday with a “First Four” game against No. 11 seed Temple (23-9) in Dayton, Ohio, had reason at that point to glance at his alma mater. He was 57 years old and had put in 25 superb seasons with Belmont.

He had many good years left and certainly was up to winning at the Power 5 level. The obvious Byrd comparison is Michigan coach John Beilein, who has taken that program to new heights in the past decade after spending his first 24 years as a head coach at lower levels. Both are expert developers of individual talent, offensive innovators and standard setters of class in their profession. Byrd could have been to Tennessee what Beilein has been to Michigan.

And let’s be honest, because Byrd sure will be. This is a lucrative business.

“With what coaches at that level get paid?” Byrd said. “I knew I could be set for life.”

Pistol Pete, Ernie, Bernie and Byrd

More than that, he loved Tennessee. Scratch that, loves Tennessee. Loves what Rick Barnes — who takes the South Region No. 2 seed Vols into NCAA play Friday against No. 15 seed Colgate in Columbus, Ohio — has done with the program. Things looked different in 2011, after Bruce Pearl was fired amid NCAA trouble.

“I thought the program needed a directional change,” Byrd said.

Byrd is orange to the core. He grew up painting white T-shirts that color because Vols apparel wasn’t as readily available as it is today. His late father, Ben Byrd, wrote for the Knoxville Journal from 1947 until 1991, primarily writing about Vols basketball.

Young Rick would sell programs at games and sit near his father’s press table at old Stokely Athletic Center. He got an up-close look at the 1965-66 Kentucky team that went on to lose the NCAA title game to Texas Western, which was the first major-college team to start five black players. The Vols were the only other team to beat Kentucky that season.

BRUINS:Can Belmont win a NCAA Tournament game?

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Byrd moved up to ushering a year later and got to see Pete Maravich on LSU’s freshman team. A few years after that, he was a student assistant for Ray Mears’ program, playing for the JV team and helping the Vols in practice with the scout team. He helped stars Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King — “The Ernie and Bernie Show” — get ready for games (though he mostly matched up with point guard Rodney Woods).

“I should have gotten good, right?” Byrd joked, but he was serious when he said: “It all had a profound effect on me and my career.”

Byrd on Barnes: 'I love who he is'

By 2011, Byrd had led the Bruins to the first four NCAA appearances in their history, all since 2006, and he was three years removed from a near-upset of Duke. He also had been friends for years with Hamilton, helping him raise funds for a charity golf tournament in east Tennessee among other endeavors.

“Time came we had to change (coaches), and I reached out to Rick,” Hamilton recalled. “And I said, ‘Look, I don’t know if this is the time or not, but if you want a chance to talk about the job, I want to give you a chance talk about the job because of my relationship with you.”'

They met in Atlanta. Hamilton said Byrd was a finalist. Martin, a rising young coach who excelled at Missouri State and is now at Missouri, ended up getting the call.

“After spending the time with Rick and our staff and everything and talking it through, we just felt like that wasn’t the right time,” Hamilton said. “I mean, I can’t put my finger on exactly a specific reason other than sometimes these things come down to gut reaction. Did I believe he would be successful? Absolutely. Did I think he’d represent Tennessee the right way? Absolutely. … I just had a hard time seeing him being the Tennessee coach in the context of my admiration for him as the Belmont coach. That seems really unfair, but I have to acknowledge that.”

In fact, Hamilton said, not offering Byrd the job “was a struggle I had for a long time, dealing with that.”

But they remain friends. And the fact is, no one knows for sure that Byrd would have said yes to an offer.

“It was probably a relief,” he said, that he didn’t have to wrestle with that decision.

Things have worked out pretty well. Tuesday marks Belmont’s eighth NCAA appearance — the first by way of at-large bid — in the season that saw him reach 800 career wins. He’ll be in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame some day soon. He’s a Bruin.

And Barnes is a Vol, taking that program on a historic two-year run and inspiring Byrd to set his DVR for a few of UT’s big games this season.

“I love who he is,” Byrd said of Barnes. “There were times I had a hard time pulling for Tennessee. It’s easy to be a fan now.”

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Contact Joe Rexrode at jrexrode@tennessean.com and follow him on Twitter @joerexrode.