Slight variations of the same joke seemed to carom around the Champions Center Thursday like an electron.

“Would the coach show up this time?”

“Will there actually be a press conference?”

The ghost of last week’s canceled press conference was still hovering as the start of the 5 p.m. event drew near.

Rather than wait for the inevitable question about Pat Kelsey’s two-day tenure as the Minutemen’s head coach before pulling out 30 minutes before the press conference last week, UMass athletic director Ryan Bamford cracked a joke.

“I want to thank our facilities staff who is so good at what they do,” Bamford said. “They’re so good they went through a dress rehearsal here last Thursday.”

The room filled with staff, media, fans and boosters broke up laughing.

For a week UMass has been the school that had been left at the altar. On Thursday, it became the school that officially hired Matt McCall as its new coach.

The unpleasant week in the spotlight appears to have left no scars. McCall was asked whether he felt like a second choice and was clearly prepared to answer.

“In this business, it’s all about timing. It was the right time for me to be the head coach of this university,” he said. “I’m really excited about this opportunity, I can promise you that.”

Bamford said McCall was on their initial candidate list, but things progressed rapidly with Kelsey.

“We moved pretty quickly and we didn’t have a chance to talk to him,” Bamford said about the beginning of the search. “It wasn’t that he was a second choice, we just didn’t have a chance to talk to him. I’m extremely happy where we ended up. This is a great, great hire. Matt brings a lot to the table.”

Kelsey will always be a punch line in Amherst and the story will be brought up every time there’s a high-profile hire at UMass, or a coach pulls out of a job anywhere.

But for now the chapter is closed for UMass. People can move on to other things at the water cooler. McCall will be the story. The focus will be on who stays or transfers, next year’s schedule and the new coach’s parade of meet-and-greets with fans that will likely come with his first off-season. Things are going back to normal.

Bamford seemed relieved as he laughed:

“Thirty years from now maybe it’ll be a chapter in my memoirs.”

Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage

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