Fred Hoiberg and Kevin Ollie are 40 minutes from the Elite Eight.
To get there, they’ll have to go through a good friend and former NBA teammate — each other.
The two coaches, who will face off when Hoiberg’s Iowa State team faced Ollie’s UConn club in the Sweet 16 at the Garden on Friday night, first met when they were in high school, as recruits on a trip to Arizona. Lute Olson, the coach at the time, told each player he had one scholarship left, and the first to commit would get it. They went their separate ways, Ollie to UConn and Hoiberg to Iowa State.
“We hit it off very quick,” Ollie recalled on Thursday. “I would’ve loved to play with him in college, but I didn’t have the chance to. We were just 17 years old, trying to make a great decision in our lives, and both of us did.”
The two longtime NBA guards reconnected several years later, as teammates on a dreadful and eclectic Bulls team that went 21-61 in 2001-02 and included former Knicks enforcer Charles Oakley, Knicks center Tyson Chandler, CBS broadcaster Greg Anthony and currently unemployed Metta World Peace, then known as Ron Artest.
Chandler, a rookie then, told The Post looking back he saw their coaching ability — how they always carried themselves with professionalism even as the losses piled up. Anthony said the two saw the game differently than most players, from each player’s point of view, not just their own.
“Losing was a way of life for those Bulls teams, but neither guy let it define who they were nor succumb to the frustrations that losing brings,” Anthony said. “Those experiences have served them just as well as the success of winning does.”
Hoiberg played just three more seasons after that year with the Bulls before retiring while Ollie held on until 2010, playing one season with the Timberwolves — partly because Hoiberg was an executive there. The team needed a mentor for its younger players and Ollie was the perfect fit.
“He owes me, because I resurrected his damn career,” Hoiberg said jokingly.
Ollie, 41, played one more year in the league after leaving Minnesota, but it was apparent then he was a coach in training. He would often sneak into the video room to watch extra film.
“You knew his passion was going to be coaching [at] whatever level, NBA or college,” said Iowa State assistant coach Matt Abdelmassih, who was an intern in the Timberwolves video department.
Both coaches walked into difficult situations in their first college job. Hoiberg, 41, was a celebrated star in his playing days at Iowa State, nicknamed “The Mayor” because he was so popular, but patience had worn thin in Ames by the time he got there in 2010.
Iowa State hadn’t reached the tournament since 2005 and had just one winning season since. Yet, three years and three NCAA Tournament trips later, Hoiberg is one of the rising stars in his business, seen as an NBA coaching candidate if he so chooses to take that path.
Ollie, meanwhile, is in his second season following the legendary Jim Calhoun, who transformed Connecticut basketball, leading the Huskies to three national championships. Ollie’s first season the postseason wasn’t possible, because of failing to meet NCAA academic standards the year before.
Yet, UConn still enjoyed a solid campaign, producing a 20-win season and playing harder on a nightly basis than most teams who had the chance to reach the Big Dance, and as a result setting up this Sweet 16 run.
Under Ollie’s tutelage, point guard Shabazz Napier has developed into one of the nation’s elite point guards, much as Kemba Walker did before him when Ollie served as his mentor while working under Calhoun. Ollie has hit the ground running on the recruiting front, landing players with brutal honesty, which has earned him the nickname “The Preacher.” He won over UConn players by being himself, rather than trying to be a Calhoun clone.
“Coach Ollie, he’ll get on you in different way, with positive stuff,” UConn junior guard Ryan Boatright said. “He’ll just challenge you.”
The two coaches have succeeded in a nontraditional way, without intimidation or by instilling fear. They are players coaches, willing to adapt to their talent, using the methods they learned in the NBA and bringing it to the college game. When Iowa State reached the Sweet 16, Hoiberg danced on camera, to the delight — and horror — of his players, one example of his offbeat style that endears him to them.
“He was a groomsman at my wedding and he was dancing with a mop on the dance floor because a drink spilled,” Abdelmassih said. “That’s who Fred is.”
Friday night, it will be The Preacher against The Mayor, two good friends and former teammates who would have rather avoided each other’s teams. Once the Sweet 16 matchup begins, however, they’ll be enemies.
“At the end of the day, when that ball goes up, there are no friends,” Ollie said. “I want UConn to come out on top. It’s going to be a great game.”
Additional reporting by Marc Berman