JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- It's only minutes into practice when the raspy voice turns up the volume a few notches.

"I'm gonna give you a million dollars to make a layup," it says. "Are you going to take it in there like you just did? No. You're going to take your time and do it right. So why'd you do it like that, huh? To put on a show, that's why. Do it right!"

Two years of sitting at home in Athens and roaming the golf courses of Northeast Georgia just didn't do it for Hugh Durham. The only time he's truly happy is when he's on a basketball court.

He had to come back, so he did.

After two years on the sidelines following his dismissal from Georgia's head coaching job, which he held for 17 seasons, Durham has returned to the bench at Jacksonville University. And the bench beats the couch any day.

"From a physical standpoint, I had a lot to do, but what happens to you is, from a mental standpoint, there's really not much," he says, leaning back in a chair about a half-hour before practice starts. "You know, you play golf, and you work out, and there's not really much of a challenge. And all of a sudden, it rains and I'm not playing golf and I'm watching Jerry Springer - and I didn't even know he had a show. All of a sudden it's 5:30, 6 o'clock, and you know what comes on TV tonight. Friday night, 10 o'clock, must be 'Walker, Texas Ranger.'

"And after a while, you realize that this is not what you want to do, at least, this is not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. And I think coaches are basically competitive, and there was kind of a void there. You coach for 36 years, what are you going to do? You're not gonna go out and be a doctor - so you coach."

Durham has his hands full in the coaching department with the Dolphins. Jacksonville, which actually fielded some formidable teams in the late 1960s and early 70s, has not done well in recent years. The Dolphins were 5-23 last season, 4-14 in the Sun Belt Conference, and have only five players back from that team.

Durham was hired in mid-March, deep in recruiting season, and had to scour the country and the globe very quickly to sign eight players, seven of whom eventually came to Jacksonville. The Dolphins have players hailing from Zagreb, Croatia to Mesa, Ariz., from Nassau, Bahamas, to Loganville, Ga.

They assemble for practice each day at tiny Swisher Gymnasium on JU's small campus, home to 2,416 students. Swisher Gymnasium is old and dark. One thing enters a visitor's mind upon entering the musty building - the movie "Hoosiers" could have been filmed there. The basketball offices are a few yards outside the gym - in a double-wide trailer next to some concrete recreational courts.

It's not much to look at, especially when using Georgia's facilities as a frame of reference, but it's a start. And that's how Durham, who turned 60 two weeks ago today, views this - he's back to where he started.

"When I went to Georgia, we were in the Coliseum, you had (athletic director Joel) Eaves' office here, (then-football coach Vince) Dooley's office, Dooley's secretary's office, and my office, which was not any bigger than this one," says Durham, drawing diagrams of the office arrangements on a piece of paper as a visual aid. "Up on the fourth floor, I had one room with four assistant coaches in it, so you look up there now, and you see pretty good facilities for basketball, but when I went there...

"You look at this office - we call it an annex - but once you get in, you start looking around, we've got a pretty nice reception area. Each coach has got his own office; we got a nice conference room; I've got a bath, a shower. So when you're sitting in here, there's a lot of people - you probably would like to have an office as nice as this. So this is not bad. That facility up there, once you get inside it, for practice, it's plenty good. There's no problem with it. It's different from Georgia."

It certainly is, on and off the court. Still, Durham says he's not too far removed from his long days at Georgia, where he compiled a 298-216 record and led the Bulldogs to five NCAA Tournaments, including the Final Four in 1983. His wife, Malinda, moved down to Jacksonville after they bought a house during the summer. One of the couple's four sons, Doug, is his father's top assistant at JU.

Of course, Durham's separation from the university was not exactly smooth.

After he was fired on March 19, 1995, Durham threatened to sue Dooley and the university for breach of contract, fraud and age discrimination. He eventually settled out of court with UGA and received more than $500,000 in compensation. Despite the legal wrangling, Durham insists that he has no hard feelings toward the university itself or the fans. He was even invited to speak at a Jacksonville Bulldog Club meeting a couple of weeks ago.

"As far as my experience with the University of Georgia, I have a lot of fond memories," he said. "I really enjoyed the time that I was there, I mean, I was there a long time, coached 17 years, and I was in the community two more. So I was there 19 years. But my association with the University of Georgia and the Georgia people, I felt really good about it.

"You reflect back and, if you were in the position to make the decision that I made back in '78 (to come to Georgia from Florida State), I would make the same decision. The opportunity to be associated with the University of Georgia was an opportunity that I'll always feel good about. To tell you that I was happy about the way things ended - I wouldn't stretch that and say that I was, because I wasn't, but that is history."

And Durham's charge now is to revisit a bit of history at Jacksonville, where he appears to be a fish out of water as a veteran of 37 years of college coaching who is older than the university's athletic director and president. He points to the recent national success of small-conference schools like the College of Charleston and Chattanooga as inspiration for his cause - to be competitive, to reach the NCAA Tournament again.

The chance to rebuild a program, and possibly lead the Dolphins back to their national prominence of 25 or 30 years ago, brought him back.

"This is the 37th, 38th year I've coached, and I told Malinda this last night - I never feel like I go to work," he said. "I don't feel like I go to work. I go for the challenges, for the opportunities of working with guys, but I never feel like...you know, if you say 'Where are you going?' I'm going to the office - I never say 'I'm going to work.' I can never remember me saying, 'I've gotta go to work,' because I don't feel like it is. I'm coaching, because that's what I love to do."

The Dolphins run through some conditioning drills, and Durham wanders over to the side of the Swisher Gymnasium court.

"We've got one guy from Croatia, he's a Communist," he says. "We were eating the other day, and he looks at me and says, 'You know, humans are the only animals that hoard things - every other animal just takes what it needs to survive.' And I said, 'Yeah, well, we're also the only animals that use medicine."'

Durham cracks his standard grin, shakes his head, and ambles back under the basket. He feels at home here.