Iowa Western Community College women's basketball coach Jim Turgeon takes 30-3 record into national juco tournament.

Former Kansas point guard Mark Turgeon has coached Maryland to a second-place finish in the prestigious Big Ten and his Terps were ranked No. 8 in the nation, one spot ahead of his alma mater, heading into conference tournaments. Even so, he has not yet clinched coach of the year honors in the Turgeon family. That fierce competition is far from over.

Turge’s older brother, Jim Turgeon, 52, brings a 30-3 record in his eighth season for Iowa Western Community College into the National Junior College Athletic Association tournament, which takes place today through Saturday at the Bicentennial Center in Salina. Iowa Western, in Council Bluffs, is located just across the river from Omaha. His Reivers play their fist tourney game Wednesday.

Turgeon searches the globe to put together his roster of 13 players. Four countries (Australia, Cyprus, Hungary, United States) and eight states (California, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, South Dakota) are represented.

In coaching his international roster, Turgeon pulls from coaches with Kansas ties.

“We play aggressive man-to-man defense and we run my brother’s secondary break and then we’ll usually go into Bill Self’s high-low offense,” said Turgeon, a graduate of Washburn University.” We like to score in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock or the last 10 seconds.”

Meaning?

“We’ll try to create turnovers and score when the defense isn’t set,” he said. “When the defense is set, we try to be patient and break down the defense.”

Comparing himself to his more famous, wealthier brother, Jim said, “I’m two years older, much better looking and taught him everything he knows.”

The brothers, natives of Topeka, share a down-to-earth, Kansas vibe.

“He is (down-to-earth) and he’s brutally honest and sometimes that gets him into trouble,” Jim said. “When we talk on the phone, first we talk about family and then we talk about our teams, share frustrations and also talk about the positive things that do work.”

Jim Turgeon, 191-64 at Iowa Western, has the school record for victories. He is the second-winningest coach in Dodge City Community College, where he went 123-97. Check out these turn-around numbers: In three seasons before Turgeon took over at Dodge City, the school went 28-63. In his final five seasons before getting the heck out of dodge, his record was 105-55.

The year before going to Dodge, Turgeon was an assistant coach at a men’s junior-college program near Dallas.

“I wanted to get back to Kansas,” he said of the move to Dodge. “I never dreamed I’d be a woman’s basketball coach, but it turned out to be my niche. My dad worked with girls most of the time (as assistant at Topeka Hayden High) and it’s become my niche. I love it. I’ll never go back to coaching men, unless Mark wants to pay me a half-a-million dollars a year to be his assistant. I don’t see that happening. I don’t know if any university could take two Turgeons at the same time.”

Asked if he would be interested in becoming Kansas women’s basketball head coach, Jim Turgeon said, “I guess the best way to answer that is that I grew up wanting to be the head coach at Kansas on the men’s side, but now I’m on the woman’s side. Of course, I’d be interested.”

Turgeon isn’t campaigning for the job. He merely picked up a phone call and started answering questions honestly.

“I’m in a really good situation,” he said. “I have an opportunity to win every year and my family’s happy here. That’s coach-speak, I know, but it also happens to be true.”

Dodge City’s a tough place to build a winner, as proven by the program’s performance before and after Turgeon. The guy knows how to recruit, coach and develop talent and he does it while maintaining an enjoyable atmosphere for his players.