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SIX – Packing Things Up
March 7th
Sioux Falls, SD
The first time I was here was during my first year as WIU’s head coach. We were coming off a 14-12 season, barely had a winning conference record of 10-9, but hadn’t been the lowest seed in the tourney. We certainly weren’t the top-seed either. It had been a blowout loss to the IUPUI Jaguars. Two years later, we were the top seed, and played South Dakota State, the second seed, in the championship game. If not for a couple of great plays from Founding Leatherneck Marvin Cisse and a hell of a shot by Wilbur Messy, the home advantage South Dakota State always gets would have ruined our season. Thirteen years and seven league tournament championships later, it’s safe to say I’ve learned to deal with the home court disadvantage at the Denny Sanford Premier Center.
Our first invitation to the NCAA Tournament, my job-saving trip I feel, arrived after that thriller. We have played them a number of times in the Summit League Tournament since, and are 4-0 during my tenure, the last one being the worst. Leatherneck greats Phil Powell and Burton Ballinger had led us to a 101-53 victory.
When we had debuted the Quadrangle Offense, it took the nation by surprise. The open looks Giovanni, Damon, Ira, and Phil were getting in 2015 weren’t there in 2016 and 2017. The rest of the country picks up quickly to what is going on. Stage 2, they understand it, and Stage 3, they want a part of it. We still had the athletes to knock them down, though. I have learned talent is something that cannot be taught, and focused like a laser, is difficult to overcome, regardless of scheme. Lubos was special, and Phil was a 6’10” 250lbs wing. He could shoot over all the other teams in the conference. Talent and results will continue to attract talent and results. That is how we ended up with the lineup we have now. It is the reason why Bert Draughan decided to come to WIU. We didn’t chase Ime Terrell. He came to us. Najeeb Goode didn’t get that scholarship to Michigan St. And Trevor Hoyer was tired of the desert. Suddenly, a scholarship to Western Illinois has become a wanted asset.
With this team, we had brought back the freshmen versus game when they arrived on campus. The coaches who had been against it when Peace and the Gang were freshmen weren’t around anymore. The results couldn’t be any more different. With Coach Danny and Coach Garik, they were all in. Coach Danny, the more relatable of the two, took the freshmen, as he continues to do. It is the best way to give a quick humbling experience to the ones who need it, and also to find out what kind of players we have. The best thing about it is how it works like a perpetual motion machine. Every recruiting class wants to give the same kind of beating that they had received when they were the new kids around the block. They have a moment that takes time to process, then they learn how to deliver it themselves, and finally they become the ones administering the beatings.
The best part about bringing back the freshmen versus game was how it pretty much got the incoming class prepared for everything they were going to see. If they didn’t like it, they had to keep their nose to the grindstone. With all the success we’ve been having, no class wanted to be the one to see it end. It was just another reason to work harder, to outwork the competition.
Something really interesting happened before we left the locker room. My phone rang with a number I didn’t recognize. I let it go to voicemail. At the time, my thoughts were on what to say to the team. As always, there was the message to grab the banner. PURPLE REIGN is so easy to get behind. I grabbed Najeeb afterwards and told him I wanted to hold South Dakota State under 50 points tonight. A huge smile stretched across Najeeb’s face. “You got it, Coach.”
Because of how we had played the Jackrabbits in the regular season, I wanted Billy to run the offense traditionally at the beginning. Even though he had been successful against them, chances are they had spent hours scheming against him for this time. Playing the regular way would mess with that.
Billy, off the opening tip, passed to Bert at the wing and filled the corner of the box. When the defenders slid over to follow him, Bert put the ball on the floor, and dunked over the South Dakota State center. You could tell he was happy about that Mr. Leatherneck award.
After we had gone on a long enough run, the Jackrabbits adjusted. It was time for Billy-ball. Billy went on a run by himself, scoring six straight points. We were up 26-5. Najeeb was making sure everyone was locking down on defense.
I had thought of sitting the starters for the second half, but this was the Summit League Tournament. Regardless of the score, officiating would protect my players. I couldn’t see them allowing the same kind of things that happened in-season to happen now. There are too many people to answer to, powerful people who would not take it lightly. Besides, the players would have mutinied if I had. This was their last year participating in the Summit tournament.
We started to feed Trevor. After a half of defending him, the Jackrabbits wore the exhaustion on their faces. Hoyer went inside and outside. When he was at the lone ranger, he dribbled between the legs and even drove past him man for one of the most amazing dunks in Leatherneck history. He was feeling looser than I had ever seen him. By the end of the night, he was our leading scorer with 18.
Billy and Bert exited with more than ten minutes left on the clock. They had done enough. Billy scored 17, and Bert had 15. The only starters I kept in were Ime and Najeeb. Najeeb wanted to keep his word. I made sure he had help with both Raymond, and Diondre beside him. Toward the end of the game, after a TV time-out, Najeeb urged me to keep him in. I had seen enough, though. I wanted the rest of his intensity for our second game. I put Roberto in, and Orien became the defensive captain. Orien kept his promise to Najeeb, who kept his promise to me. We won, 99-46.
After the game, I got a call again from the same unrecognized number. I picked it up, and the person on the other end had explained that they were from the Northwest Foundation. They had been following my career, and wanted to see if I was interested in coaching a professional team.
March 8th
Macomb, IL
There is a belief that only the greatest players make it to the NBA. College players that do not make the jump, simply are not good enough. As a coach, I can see the errors inherent in that logic. Everyone from executives on down to commentators and sportswriters think they know what it takes to make it into the league. To a certain degree, no one can answer that they are wrong. Yet, none of those people are on the court at the same time as the players themselves. Trevor Hoyer can block almost any shot put up in the key, and yet his block percentage is far below 10%. Ime Terrell and Bert Draughan shouldn’t be such great three-point shooters, but leaving them uncovered is fatal. Najeeb Goode will never make it in the league because he is such an undersized power forward, and doesn’t hit enough from deep as a small forward. Yet, all of them have combined to be the strongest force in the Summit for years now. It’s as if that kind of experience, learning how to not only win but dominate, is not useful at the next level. As a coach, no matter what metrics a player may possess, without the right experience, without the right mindset, then all those people who never got onto the court have are numbers. Draymond Green fell into the second round, and he has been a dominant champion for the Golden State Warriors. Those drafted before him included Thomas Robinson, Royce White, Terrence Jones, Andrew Nicholson, Jared Sullinger, Fab Melo, John Jenkins, Jared Cunningham, Tony Wroten Jr, Miles Plumlee, Arnett Moultrie, Perry Jones III, Marquis Teague, Jeffery Taylor, and Bernard James. None of them are in the league any longer. No one has ever been able to measure the heart of a champion. Part of the reason why is that they aren’t interested in champions. Another reason is everyone is only using their heads to make decisions nowadays. That isn’t the most important organ needed to bring hardware home. Until that is considered, metrics will continue to fail, along with the people who use them.
That was the response I gave to the people who called me the other day. I did my own bit of snooping and discovered that I was not being trolled. There is a group planning to bring the Supersonics back to the city of Seattle. Along with thinking of removing both the Eastern and Western Conference playoff structure, the NBA has also been thinking of expanding the league to thirty-two teams, similar to the NFL. What brought me to their attention was the success I have had against the Summit. I am not the only one they have their eyes on, but I am the only one without any NBA experience. I explained to them how we are in the middle of trying to win our fourth Summit Tournament Championship in a row, and needed to invest my time and energy into achieving that goal. They thanked me for my time and asked if it would be alright to contact me at a later date. I said it would be. Just like the formula team executives used for hiring coaches is as infallible as the one they use for evaluating players, I may have just let my only opportunity to jump to the NBA go. If that isn’t the case, then what is happening at the end of the season certainly got a lot more interesting.
March 9th
Sioux Falls, SD
Oakland advanced to be our next opponent. We had recently played them a little over two weeks ago. I followed the same blueprint for substitutions that I had against IPFW, but the Golden Grizzlies proved to be much fiercer. With six minutes left in the game, they had taken the lead, and I had to put Ime, Bert, and Najeeb back in to shut down their offense. I bet they felt it was a game they should have won. The crowd at Rochester Hills all believed the streak was ending that night, or was hoping it would. We had beaten them 23 straight times. The last time Oakland had gotten the best of us was in 2009 at the Athletics Center O’rena. Instead, the starters scored ten straight, and we walked away with a 24th. They were going to come out guns a-blazin’. We knew that, and we had seen it all before.
There would be no chance for them to stay in the game this time. They had experienced the speed and size of our starters before, but maybe going against our second unit for such a long time made them forget. They couldn’t get a clean shot off on their first possession. Their next two after were also turnovers. Oakland didn’t forget about Billy, but they couldn’t do anything to contain Trevor. Trevor had his best half of the season, probably of his entire Leatherneck career. I didn’t even put him in for the second half. I’m sure he could have done better than 25 points and 10 boards, but we have to play tomorrow as well, and he has the worst stamina of the starters. By halftime, it was a silly score of 52-20.
Raymond, Orien, and Diondre did a fantastic job of finishing the game up. There hadn’t been many Oakland University fans to begin with, but after halftime, even a lot of the students had gone home. It’s a long way back to Rochester Hills. Macomb is half the distance, and we still have to drive for almost eight hours. There was no defensive goal for this game. I didn’t want to put extra pressure on the second unit. After Raymond hit double digits, Roberto came in.
I had Diondre run three straight plays for Roberto to get him into the flow of the game. I had been impressed with how he had performed against Fort Worth. If he could be just as aggressive in the playoffs where it was win or go home, then I believe I may have found the team’s next focal point. With Orien and Frye spending more of their energy on the defensive end, the scoring had to come from somewhere. Diondre is still growing, but he wasn’t like Billy. Billy Assel is a point guard on a whole different level, and it would be wrong for me to expect that Diondre could fill those shoes. Besides, Diondre has already set his sights on being the mirror-image of Ime Terrell.
I have also been fairly impressed with the growth of Borislav Grimes as well. Of all the kids, he has the most upside, and the best chance in becoming a solid two-way player. His shooting has been there, but his ability to move without the ball, partly a construct of the Quadrangle Offense, to set up his defenders in poor floor positions, like a receiver against a defensive back, has allowed the rest of his offense to open up. Like Trevor however, he has to find the willpower to play better defensively from game to game. It’s one of the reasons Bert still refers to him as Comrade and why Ime is always barking at him. Next year, Austen would be back in the line-up. If Kim ever gets it together, he could become a solid contributor with his size. And then Brandin Price would also be coming to Macomb as well. How would Borislav do against such a crowded field? On the floor, Frye is always watching out for him.
I thought by the end, Frye would have his first double-digit game. He was sitting on 8 points with over five minutes to go. He is the exact opposite of Borislav, concentrating a little too much on defense. I knew he was working on his jump shot. If it ever improves enough, perhaps he could be like Bruce Bowen, the original 3&D player. For now, the offense jams up too much because of his apprehension. Frye isn’t terrible at the triple gap, but after enough looks, his defender knows that is the only spot on the floor he plans on driving from. His presence limits the effectiveness of the lone ranger too, the offense’s ultimate advantage. Instead, in the last several minutes of games, this unit is playing four against five defenders. We end up forcing unnecessary passes, and opponents run off those turnovers. Because they only see the floor together when the game is out of reach, I’m hoping that Frye can also use those circumstances to take more chances. It is the perfect opportunity. We still outplayed Oakland in the second half 39-32, for a final score of 89-52. The Golden Grizzlies would be sharing in the experience of a long and gloomy trip back home. We’d be here for another night. I think the Peach Bottoms are staying, too.
March 10th
Sioux Falls, SD
The Summit League Tournament Finals this year is against Southern Utah. They’ve been here all week, which has allowed them to adjust to Sioux Falls. Cedar City is too far away to keep going back and forth to. Who knows what they’ve been doing to keep their minds focused on us. For years, with the league cannibalizing itself, as all leagues do, any dreams of dancing a Summit program has involves upsetting the king of the mountain. The team that did it last was Oral Roberts, in Armein Amous’ first year as a starter. The only other team to regularly knock on the door is Southern Utah. This year makes it the third year in a row that our two programs have faced off for all the marbles. I know they are tired of us going home with the Summit Tournament Trophy every year.
With Southern Utah in the finals, the three teams we faced in the tournament this year also happen to be the final three teams we played to close out the regular season. We had beaten Oakland in Rochester Hills, South Dakota State a few miles down the road, and celebrated our seniors’ final home game, along with awarding Bert Draughan as this year’s Mr. Leatherneck against the Thunderbirds. But just as things seem to be going around in a circle, upon the return, something is always slightly different.
As most games have been in the Summit this year, the first five minutes are always the closest. This one was strange, though. The Thunderbirds didn’t try to pressure us in the backcourt or try to make Billy give the ball up. Everything we did in that first five minutes was met with minimal resistance, something very different than in the other games. Oakland and the Jackrabbits seemed like they were fighting for their lives on every possession. Southern Utah seemed to take things a little too lackadaisically. There weren’t any instructions from the sidelines. The players pointed and nodded at one another, but not as if to accept blame or a lack of communication. When the first TV time-out arrived, we were up by ten points. Everyone had shared in the scoring. Yet, the Thunderbirds seemed as cool as cucumbers, as if they had figured something out.
Two years ago, when we were undefeated going up against them, they had limited us to 73 points in the game, the lowest total we had put up against a Summit team that year. They did it by letting Armein Amous go wild, and attempted to keep everyone else under control. Joseph Bowens ruined their plans when we started running him off staggered screens to the tune of 25 points. Last year, they had forced Nikola Stockman to give up the ball early, only for Bert Draughan to go off for 25 points as well. Through the first five minutes, what I noticed was that none of our starters got the chance to score back-to-back baskets. On the other hand, it was the same wing on their team that was burying jumpers, and he was doing it in different ways.
I called Najeeb over once it dawned on me that the same player was scoring regularly. Najeeb looked at me and said, “I can see that, but the way their screening and the way they’re moving off the ball, if we jump out on him, the whole middle of the lane is going to be wide open. Right now, we’ve got a double-digit lead. That dude’s taking the hardest shot we’re allowing every time down. If he hits it, I can live with that. He can’t hit all of them, and we aren’t losing the game to one dude.”
He was right, of course. And back and forth we were going. Even when I began making substitutions, the Thunderbirds kept up their strategy. They covered the redshirt freshmen the same way they covered the fifth-year seniors. It didn’t prevent us from scoring, but it did prevent our scorers from getting into a rhythm. I have to think that was what Southern Utah felt was its best strategy against us. It’s true that any of our players could go off at any given time, but time was still required. By forcing a different player to score, they were limiting touches. They were really trying to force everyone to score, to see if each one of us really could.
On the defensive end, we were letting them do just that. I could see the plays, the same plays over and over with different people. First it was their shooting guard, then it was their small forward, then it was their point guard. I have to admit that attacking in such a pattern is an efficient way to play basketball, so long as the pattern wasn’t getting disrupted. Najeeb was allowing the same hard shots to be attempted. Southern Utah didn’t seem to mind missing if we did the same on our end. It was their way of preventing either team from going on a run. The stalemate resulted in us going into halftime, with the same lead we held for the entire first half, ten points.
There was no way Southern Utah was going to be satisfied playing this war of attrition. Up to this point, we had been doing exactly what the Thunderbirds had wanted. If this kept up, I was sure the ending they were planning wasn’t going to be quite as good for us as it would be for them.
They knew us so well, having played against my starters so many times in the last four years. We have battled with them eleven times. They knew what Bert could do, what Najeeb could do, what Trevor and Ime couldn’t do, and maybe even what Billy wanted to do. And they were probably betting that a double-digit lead at halftime, and barely one at that, would be just enough for us to let our guard down. Neither team has gone on a run, but both teams knew that run was coming.
I decided to start Raymond Harper when the half began. Raymond had improved his passing in the post. If he was surrounded by shooters, he could find the open one, or even better, he could just score. Post-scoring is essentially the main pillar of the Quadrangle Offense anyway.
Najeeb didn’t like sitting, but contrary to what he believed, the defense he had anchored in the first half was quite leaky. We didn’t play great defense by challenging or limiting shots. We played great defense by causing turnovers. To do that, we needed to be disruptive. I didn’t mind if Trevor switched or didn’t at this point. He is still our biggest and most disruptive player, and the only way for him to disrupt the Thunderbirds’ rhythm was near the basket. I’d rather them try to challenge him, because the shots that are the harder ones had become too easy for them, as they knocked them down with regularity. I was switching the defense to something we haven’t really done too much all season, a zone.
I was planning on saving this for the NCAA Tournament, but there was no better time to try it out than in the second half. Coach Garik thought that if we had to play with our big lineup again, playing a 1-3-1 zone could wreak havoc. With Najeeb at the top, Trevor in the middle, Raymond at the bottom, and Ime and Bert at the wings, our length was going to make not only shots but passes difficult. With Najeeb sitting, I tweaked it, putting Bert at the top, and Billy as a wing. Bert is longer, and better defensively on the ball than Billy, able to recover quickly if he gets beaten. Also, his left hand is a real nightmarish weapon against right-handed shooters. The angle makes shooting over it that much harder.
Right off the bat, we got a steal. The zone made the Southern Utah players indecisive just enough for a pass to be off. Bert was down the court, and a Dennis Rodman-like clear out pass by Ime had set the dunk up. Raymond pulled down a long pass by the point guard OBJ-style the next trip down, and rifled it to Billy, who finished it himself.
“Settle down! Settle down!” came from the sidelines, but it was already too late. Even slowed down, with the way the game had been going, a deficit of 14 might have been a bridge too far. Their third possession of the second half ended in a 35 second violation.
Offensively, my plan to go with Raymond worked like a charm. With a wider set of shoulders, Raymond’s low-post moves were able to get the defender off his center line. Nobody can block without leverage, and Raymond made his length useless. He ended up scoring 17 points in just thirteen minutes.
They had one or two good defensive possessions when they switched the center onto Raymond, but that freed Trevor up for threes. The run had come. When Najeeb came in for Raymond, and Orien for Trevor, we went to our small ball, and switched everything. The cool resolve Southern Utah had shown in the first half was now replaced by hasty execution. Time became their worst enemy. I’m sure they had something up their sleeves when the second half had started. They most likely didn’t think I’d change anything coming out of the break. All we needed was a little momentum to turn the trickle into a roar, and that was supplied by Raymond Harper.
With four minutes left, after the TV time-out, the second unit took care of the rest. They were good enough to prevent blowing a 25 point lead. That didn’t mean the Thunderbirds didn’t try, though. When the final buzzer rang, they had cut the deficit to twelve to make the game look respectable. It was our 21st straight victory over them, and our third in the Summit Tournament Finals. It would be another year of figuring out what to do to turn things around against us. I bet this is how St. Mary’s feels every year, or any team out of the WCC. And maybe in the future, Mark Few and the Gonzaga Bulldogs will be able to take home a national championship.
Everyone who saw the game would remember what actually happened. And that scares me. Southern Utah had found a way to keep us from going off. With better competition coming up, we would struggle. When we do, will we be able to keep our cool until our run does come, or even worse, continue to grind if that run never does?
For the entire story in one file, please go here: https://gumroad.com/l/bVSqud