Editor's Note: This is Part 2 of a three-part story on Pacers head coach Frank Vogel's life and career. Read Part 1 » Read Part 3 »

Vogel went on to play basketball at Juniata College, a Division III liberal arts school in Huntingdon, Pa., with an enrollment of about 1,500. He received several academic scholarships because of his outstanding high school grades and his diligence in filling out the reams of paperwork necessary to apply for as many as possible. Having an updated grip on his basketball potential, he shifted his goal again. He enrolled in a pre-med program, with the plan of becoming a doctor and coaching youth sports on the side.

Something happened his freshman year, though, a tipping point that eventually would alter the direction of his life. He watched Kentucky and Duke square off in an iconic NCAA tournament game, in the East Regional final, on March 28, 1992. Kentucky, in rebuilding mode after a severe NCAA probation, took the defending champion Blue Devils to overtime, where the lead changed hands five times in the final 31.5 seconds before Christian Laettner ended the madness with his historic turnaround jumper from the top of the key off a floor-length inbound pass.

Duke advanced to the Final Four and went on to repeat as national champion, but Kentucky coach Rick Pitino had won over Vogel. He had nothing against Duke or Mike Krzyzewski, but the story Pitino was writing at Kentucky was too inspiring for the kid so eager to dream. During Kentucky's tournament run, he had watched a television feature on Pitino during which the coach had declared at his introductory press conference that he would win at Kentucky, and win right away. (Years later, not coincidentally, Vogel would say the same thing at his introductory press conference and, like Pitino, back it up.)

In Pitino, Vogel saw a coach who had rebuilt a program from the ashes by “outworking everybody in sight, but doing it with positive energy and belief and a brash confidence that I admired the heck out of.” Watching Pitino's team nearly pull off that upset got Vogel to thinking of a new goal in basketball, one far more difficult than spinning a basketball on a toothbrush.

“It kind of changed my life,” he said.

Coaching was now an option. Vogel went to the Juniata gym and shot around for three hours after that narrow Duke win, to burn off the adrenaline and consider a new plan. After two more seasons at Juniata, where he had continued to mature physically and become the team captain, the frustration came to a head. Pre-med classes weren't going all that well, and the idea of becoming a doctor was losing its appeal. And, he realized if he stayed there and tried to get into coaching, he likely would wind up with a high school or Division III team. He wanted to go all-in. He wanted to be immersed in basketball 24/7, coach a team that would practice twice on Christmas Day if necessary.

He wanted to coach like Pitino coached.

Which meant he needed to work for Pitino to learn how to do it.

Which meant he needed to somehow connect with Pitino to tell him of his goal.

Getting His Foot in the Door

Back in the days before e-mail, Vogel had no hesitation about sitting down and crafting a heartfelt letter as a way of introducing himself and making a request. He was introduced to the power of that simple art form while in high school, when Bimbo wrote a letter to the founder of the renowned Five-Star basketball camp, Howard Garfinkel, to get Vogel in as a player. It amounted to pulling strings, because Vogel admittedly was “a bit overmatched” at the Pennsylvania camp that attracted the nation's elite high school players, guys like Jordan, Isiah Thomas, and LeBron James.

So, after his junior season at Juniata, in 1994, convinced more than ever he needed to break out of his comfortable but small-time surroundings, Vogel began a letter-writing campaign. With help from his father, who offered ideas and handled the typing, he wrote to Pitino as well as Bill Keightley, the longtime equipment manager at Kentucky and a beloved figure in the program known as “Mr. Wildcat,” who was in charge of the student managers. He told them of his plan to transfer to Kentucky for his senior season, of his burning desire to become a coach, of his admiration for Pitino and his willingness to do whatever was asked of him. He wanted to be a student manager, a walk-on, anything that would make him part of the program and give him access to Pitino's practices.

Dad couldn't help but wonder if he was conspiring on a big mistake.

“As a father, that's not an easy job,” he said. “How many (Division I) jobs are out there? That's how I looked at it.”

PHOTO GALLERY: Frank Vogel Career Gallery »

Form letters came back stating that nothing was available, and that only in-state students were accepted as student managers, but Vogel was undeterred.

Vogel and his father also co-authored a letter to Garfinkel and the Five-Star's director, Will Klein, seeking a counselor's position at their camp that summer. He expressed that his motives were pure, he was a student of the game and he wanted to give back to the camp that had helped him as a player. He wanted to become a coach, the kind who works around the clock and becomes part of something special, and there was no better place to learn than at a camp where so many great college coaches visited to recruit and lecture.

He got the position.

“We don't normally take guys in here we don't really know personally, but you were a camper here and you wrote a heck of a letter,” Klein later told Vogel.

Dating back to high school, Vogel had spent his summers delivering pizza for Sal's, a neighborhood restaurant, driving a beat-up Thunderbird his father had bought for him. This time, however, he immersed himself in basketball again, not only at Five-Star but other camps in the area. He made it a point to “work my tail off” at the drill stations so Garfinkel and Klein would know he was “one of the good ones.” He had made clear to them his desire to meet Pitino, and one day while Vogel was working a station at an outdoor court, Garfinkel came by with Pitino and his assistant coach, Jim O'Brien. Vogel again related his admiration and his dream, and told him of his plan to give up his senior year at Juniata to transfer to Kentucky. (He had received a letter of academic acceptance on his birthday, June 21.) Pitino replied with a verbal form letter of sorts, calling O'Brien over and telling him to take the kid's information. Pitino gave Vogel a polite blow-off, telling him he had nothing for him, but to stop by the coaches' office to say hello if he did indeed wind up in Lexington.

It wasn't much encouragement, but it was enough.

“As soon as I shook his hand, I made my decision right then,” Vogel said.

Vogel wrote letters to a few other coaches, too, such as Paul Westhead at George Mason and Lefty Driesell at James Madison. Perhaps he could walk on to their programs for one season while pursuing his coaching career. He received no encouragement from them, either.

With no guarantees, he figured he might as well go for broke and follow through on his transfer to Kentucky. It was such a daring, illogical move that the vast majority of his friends and relatives greeted it with raised eyebrows and whispers of skepticism, but nobody openly discouraged him, either. Who was to tell Frank Vogel, the overachieving point guard, straight-A student, model citizen and Stupid Human Trick rock star, not to chase his dream?

Even his teammates at Juniata endorsed the dream, particularly the backup point guard who was going to get a promotion in Vogel's absence. His coach, Jim Zauzig, for whom coaching basketball was merely a part-time position, was supportive. Rather than feeling abandoned by his would-be captain and starting point guard, he wrote a letter of recommendation to O'Brien – one that would play a role in Vogel's unlikely ascension at Kentucky.

Rick Pitino gave Frank Vogel a chance to be a part of his powerhouse program at Kentucky. (Photo: Getty Images)

Jersey Boy In the Bluegrass State

Vogel left Wildwood for Lexington in mid-August. The drive lasted about 12 hours, and took him into a new world.3 A world he couldn't have imagined, but just the world he was looking for. Still, he had to figure a way to become a part of it.

He majored in Biology to take advantage of his science credits at Juniata. If it didn't work out as he hoped at Kentucky, he figured he could always get a job as a high school coach and teacher, and a science teacher would be in greater demand than a P.E. teacher.

Because he was a late admittance, he was housed in the international dormitory, with a roommate from Greece. It was the perfect location for him, because it was in the immediate vicinity of Wildcat Lodge, where the basketball players lived, and Memorial Coliseum, the former site of the men's games, and home to the basketball offices and practices.

He paid a visit to Keightley on his first day on campus and was told – again – that he couldn't be a student manager. Keightley, though, must have been impressed by the Eastern kid's persistence. He told Vogel he was welcome to come by and watch the workouts. A foot in the door! Vogel showed up in basketball gear, hoping to get into a pickup game, hoping the day would come they needed a 10th body to fill out a full-court game. It never happened. They often had as many as 15, because former players would come back and play, too.

So, while Pitino's past and future All-Americans scrimmaged, Vogel practiced on his own at a side basket for as long as 90 minutes, going through his customary shooting routine while rebounding for himself, working on his ballhandling, and running sprints, too. He remembers two of the Wildcats, Mark Pope and Walter McCarty, looking at him quizzically, as if thinking, “Who the heck is this joker?”

After a few weeks, making no headway, Vogel decided it was time to take up the casual offer made at Five-Star and go see O'Brien. They had a built-in vibe, because O'Brien had grown up in Philadelphia and Wildwood was practically a southern suburb of Philly. They spoke the same language, so to speak. But Vogel, as eager as he was, didn't go begging. He sold himself with a spiel something like this:

“Look, I just want an opportunity to help. I'm a good guy, I won't be a problem of any kind, and I'm willing to work around the clock. Besides, none of your student managers are basketball people. I've played three years of college ball, I know the game and I want to coach. You need someone like me to help you, and I'll do anything you ask.”

O'Brien, remembering Zauzig's heartfelt letter and impressed with Vogel's energy and sincerity, went to Pitino with a positive recommendation. Pitino said OK.

Vogel's timing was good, because the basketball office needed someone to help the video coordinator, George Barber, with film exchange. That meant taping games, building a library, sending tapes to other schools for scouting purposes, and requesting tapes as well. He was given a cubicle within a small copy room.

It so happened the university had just purchased a new cutting-edge video system called Avid that made it possible to capture video into a computer for simpler editing. Kentucky was one of the first college programs in the country, if not the first, to purchase it, which meant nobody knew how to use it.

“Are you computer literate?” O'Brien asked.

“Of course,” Vogel said.

He was lying, but he wasn't about to pass up an opportunity after coming this far. He hardly knew how to turn on a computer, and barely knew how to type. E-mail was new at the time, and Vogel couldn't even wrap his head around that concept.

What he had, though, was the company's 1-800 number to call when he had questions. Vogel called it “about 50 times a day for three weeks” to learn the system from a corporate representative, who was learning it himself. They figured it out together.

Meanwhile, his parents and friends back home were asking him if he was making friends at his new school. He wasn't, other than the people within the basketball program and the Fed Ex delivery man. There hadn't been time to meet anyone else. But he had found what he had been looking for ever since watching that Duke-Kentucky game in 1992. It was college basketball at its finest and most intense, a genuine 24/7 operation, and he was loving every bit of it. It would only get better.

Vogel made a positive impression that first year while playing pickup games in the evening with the student managers and Pitino's sons, who were in high school at the time. They told their dad that this new kid who had played three years of college basketball and was still working on his game was better than any of his walk-ons.

The following season, with Vogel now entrenched as a student manager, Pitino did something he had never done in his coaching career: he organized a junior varsity team that included Vogel, the walk-ons and four scholarship players, including freshman Nazr Mohammed, who weren't going to get much time with the talent-loaded varsity squad. Assistant coach Delray Brooks, Indiana's high school co-Mr. Basketball in 1984, was put in charge of the group, and he showed no mercy. They practiced separately from the varsity and ran endlessly, just as Pitino's teams did. Every turnover was punished by still more running, until it got to the point Brooks had to end practice because the players were so exhausted they were only going to commit more turnovers. They played a 15-game schedule against the likes of Hanover College, Vincennes Junior College, and prep schools. Vogel recalls being the second- or third-leading scorer on the team.

About once a week, they were given the dubious honor of scrimmaging against the varsity. To say the least, it was a humbling experience for Vogel, the dedicated Division III point guard.

“I just remember the length,” he said. “Trying to score at the rim and Walter McCarty flying in at 6-foot-11, or getting trapped by Tony Delk and Antoine Walker and feeling like they were going to beat the heck out of me. But they didn't touch me at all. Their hands were so fast, they didn't need to be physical with me.”

Meanwhile, Vogel was taking 18 hours of classes. Science classes, mostly, with four-hour labs in the evening, to complete his Biology degree. His weekday routine was to get to Memorial Coliseum at 4 AM., be ready for a two-hour JV practice at 5, shower, and be at his first class at 8. If he had a long enough break between classes he went to the gym to help the coaches run individual player workouts, and then helped out with the varsity practice from 2 to 6. He'd sneak away on occasion to attend to his administrative duties, such as mailing and filing game tapes. Evenings were spent at a lab, such as for Organic Chemistry, film study with the team and performing other tasks for O'Brien. He often slept four hours or less, and sometimes pulled all-nighters to meet the demands.

“It was the hardest year of my life,” he said.

And one of the best. Pitino didn't disappoint.

“It was different than anything I had ever seen,” he said. “The sharpness of his intellect, his ability to see everything that happened on every play. And the ability to see what everyday life is like at a big-time college basketball program. I never in a million years could have imagined what it was like.”

By the end of his second season, Vogel's status as a student manager was such that he was given a ticket on the front row of the end zone, around the corner from the team bench, for Kentucky's national championship victory over Syracuse in 1996. His third and final season, as the video coordinator, he was on the bench for its loss to Arizona in the championship game at the RCA Dome, in the city where his wildest dream would come true.

Vogel (top row, second from left) served as a student manager for the Kentucky team that won the 1996 national title. (Photo: ukathletics.com)

The Road Less Traveled

The story of Vogel's path into Kentucky's basketball program was so unusual, so extreme, that it spawned myths. One story claims he literally camped out on Pitino's front lawn upon arriving in Lexington to get the coach's attention. He laughs at that one; he was eager, but not a stalker. Another has him sleeping on a sofa in the international dormitory lounge because his Greek roommate didn't shower and smelled horrible. That one's exaggerated, Vogel says.

But the legend of the out-of-state kid who broke the mold, found a way into the program and established a firm niche for himself with unsurpassed dedication will never die. Pope, who would go on to play in the NBA, including a season with the Pacers, and is now an assistant coach at Brigham Young, lights up at the mere mention of Vogel's name. He holds dear his embellished version of the tale.

“I've told this story at least 500 times!” Pope said, laughing, when reached by telephone. “I kid you not. I think it's the greatest story in basketball.”

The way Pope tells it, Vogel showed up at Kentucky, knocked on Keightley's door and got a good chewing-out, like the Wizard gave Dorothy and her desperate friends when they first arrived in Oz.

“I told you, the waiting list is 10 years long, you can't be here!” Keightley shouted, according to Pope.

Pope says Vogel, undeterred, then spent the night in his car outside Memorial Coliseum. Pitino arrived at 6 a.m., saw the kid who had been bugging throughout the summer and yelled at him for five minutes, for parking where he shouldn't park and just generally being where he shouldn't be. But then he invited the kid into his office.

“The next thing you know, the dude's the head manager!” Pope said. “And within a couple of months, Coach P has started a JV team. He would tell you he started it for Mohammed. That's bullcrap. He started it for Freaking Frank Vogel. I kid you not!

“It's legitimately the greatest story of all time. I don't know how much of it is true, but that's how I tell it. Every kid that comes into my office and wants to coach, I tell them that story.”

McCarty, who would coach on O'Brien's staff with the Pacers alongside Vogel, has no wild stories, but he does have a clear memory of the Frank Vogel who first showed up in Lexington.

“He fell right in line,” recalled McCarty, now an assistant coach for Brad Stevens in Boston, where he played most of his NBA career. “Early on, you saw his passion and his work ethic for the game. He'd do anything to get in the gym or help guys out – whatever it was, he'd go the extra mile.

“You have a lot of funny moments working for Coach P. If the film went down or something went wrong, he'd get after Frank, but Frank always bounced back and had it up and running. He was really good at his job, whatever he was asked to do. Coach Pitino and Jim O'Brien are really demanding and they've probably never had anyone who's done a better job than what Frank Vogel did for them.”

Editor's Note: You just read Part 2 of a three-part story on Frank Vogel's life and career. Read Part 1 » Read Part 3 »

3 — Vogel's father and brother made the drive for Frank's last game with Kentucky. Justin was driving a rental car, and had an expired license. He was stopped for speeding, and Dad received a ticket for allowing an unlicensed driver to operate a vehicle in the state of Kentucky. Justin was put in jail about 3 p.m. on the day of the game. Dad, explaining their predicament, finally asked how much it would cost to get his son out of jail. “How much money do you have?” he was asked. “About $100,” Frank said. “Well, that's what it will cost you.” They made it to the game. Justin enjoyed his one meal in jail, macaroni and cheese. When he orders it at restaurants, he asks for the “prison meal.”

Have a question for Mark? Want it to be on Pacers.com? Email him at askmontieth@gmail.com and you could be featured in his next mailbag.

Note: The contents of this page have not been reviewed or endorsed by the Indiana Pacers. All opinions expressed by Mark Montieth are solely his own and do not reflect the opinions of the Indiana Pacers, their partners, or sponsors.