Assistant’s ‘foundation’ came from his father

• By RANDY ROSETTA
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: May 17, 2008 - Page: 2C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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When Donny Guerinoni was young, he didn’t spend summers like most of his friends.

Oh, he had his free time and played enough basketball to eventually earn a college scholarship to Nevada.

But that free time came only after he had turned in a day’s work with his father, Don.

Don has been a mason since he graduated from high school, the same year Donny Guerinoni was born (1978). During those summers in northern California, Don often took his oldest son to work with him.

“That’s where my work ethic comes from,” said Donnie Guerinoni, who on May 25 will replace Butch Pierre on LSU men’s basketball coach Trent Johnson’s staff. “From the time I was in sixth grade, he took me out and put me to work.”

That work ethic stuck with Donnie Guerinoni.

And it caught the eye of Johnson when he was an assistant at Stanford in 2000 and about to take his first head-coaching job at Nevada.

So when Johnson got the Wolf Pack job, one of the his first calls was to Guerinoni’s junior-college coach, Bob Burton.

“He swooped in at last second and got me,” Guerinoni said with a laugh. “I was at a junior college 20 minutes away from Stanford’s campus and was trying to figure out what to do next and as soon as coach Johnson called and I talked to him, I knew the answer.”

That began a relationship that has blossomed.

Guerinoni was a role player at Nevada, averaging 3.9 points a in 15.2 minutes a game for the Wolf Pack, but has emerged since then as Johnson’s coaching protégé.

Johnson calls Guerinoni one of the smartest players he has ever coached and gushed about his discipline and toughness.

The two developed such a strong bond that Johnson didn’t mind the biggest night of Guerinoni’s career when he pumped in seven 3-pointers in nine tries to spur Nevada to an 86-85 triumph against Montana.