Providence News, Ray Mernagh

PROVIDENCE REBOUND: IT’S CALLED COACHING

by RAY MERNAGH

Coaching is often a lot of different things.

At times it’s propping your team up.

Staying positive.

Providence coach Keno Davis told Kevin McNamara of the Providence Journal the following for a piece that ran on Sunday, January 17th, about the talent level on his team: “I like everything I see with our team,” said Davis. “I like our talent, I like how guys are improving. We’re getting better. For our senior’s sake, I hope we’re where we need to be by the time we get to Madison Square Garden.”

Davis’ quote, if you really study it, seems to be saying — yeah, we can be good and I like our effort for the most part, but there’s a lot of work our young guys, the guys with all that talent that have no clue how all this works, need to do for us to reach our potential. Davis was pointing out that things, especially in the Big East, can go south quickly. Lose focus for a few minutes and the script can get flipped.

One loss, brought on by an isolated case of brain lock, can turn into five or six.

That’s what a coach really worries about because when it happens — and it does all over college basketball — the results can be as disastrous as the brakes on a car going out while heading down a 5% grade in the mountains of West Virginia. Whole seasons can be lost. Before you know it the only bubble you find yourself worrying about is the housing one that’s long since popped in most of the country…because you’ve got a house to sell and a new job to find.

Flash forward to Saturday the 23rd, a mere six days after that piece ran, and the brain lock was in full effect for Providence. Davis watched in utter disbelief as his young team let a nine-point lead, with under a minute to go, evaporate into the Rhode Island air. The game went to overtime, Dominique Jones continued to go bananas, and Providence was inexplicably left standing on the losing end of a 109-106 South Florida victory.

Now it’s interesting that at the opening of that article I mentioned above was a quote from Marquette’s Buzz Williams talking about the talent of Providence as he watched tape preparing for them. It’s interesting because Williams is the first coach I’ve ever spoken to — and I’ve spoken to hundreds — to plead a lack of equity as a reason for not answering a question. I forget what it was about, some rule or issue within the Big East over the summer, but when I asked him about it his reply was, “I don’t have enough equity built up to talk about that.”

Williams understood the politics of big time basketball and he didn’t want to rub folks the wrong way by spouting off on a topic that others, Big East coaches specifically, had an interest in. It wasn’t important enough. He just had to keep his head down, recruit, and work hard.

As a young coach you can either try to pick your spots — like Jamie Dixon and Jay Wright did — or you can alienate others when there’s really no reason to. I’ve seen guys get mid-major jobs and become “Rick Pitino in their own minds” the day they move into their first head coaching office. Seen them ignore veteran icons like Charlie Coles at AAU events, three months after Charlie Coles endorsed them for the job! Those guys don’t last. They end up doing local Comcast games if they’re lucky.

But back to coaching. There are so many strategies coaches use to ultimately try and get the same desired result (wins). Davis chose to use a certain ploy after the South Florida loss. A strategy that he probably saw work for his father many, many times over the years. He called his team out.

“We’re not a tough enough team,” Davis said, “we have some guys who are very good scorers that are big weak spots for us defensively.”

Notice three things most of the firestorm in the aftermath failed to point out: Davis used the pronoun “we” which I believe is inclusive, he didn’t name any players specifically and…he was right! This is where I come back to Williams’ thoughts about equity and how it fits the situation Davis found himself in the last few days.

Keno Davis hit the lottery not so long ago. He did a bang-up job for one season at Drake — a job he inherited from his father — then fell into a million dollar a year gig at Providence when several other guys wouldn’t take it. Some people look at that and scoff. They see the up and down style and the constant jacking up of three’s. They see the defensive deficiencies and the good-looking guy with the Midwest accent on the sideline who seems so sure of himself — and they resent it.

So Davis called his players out and the media pounced. The locals got their shots in first (it’s their job) but the real hits came from the big guns. The “holier than thou” types really started banging on him. Jay Bilas mentioned it on ESPN’s Big Monday telecast, prompting a snide remark from play-by-play partner Sean McDonough about the Friars inept defense since Davis got the job.

Davis apologized, sort of, while admitting his team had their best practice of the season Monday.

Keno Davis had to serve his penance and he did so willingly with the hope that his team would respond.

Being the son of a big-time coach he understood this might happen. But don’t believe for a minute the critics were really all that upset with him calling out his players. It says here they just wanted to take the young coach down a peg or two. If Davis had named Greedy Peterson or Marshawn Brooks or any other Friar I’d have a problem with it, but he didn’t. He used “we” and didn’t name call,

And if you believe they really cared about the kids Davis called out then ask yourself this: Where was the outcry from these guys when the aforementioned Pitino called Edgar Sosa “Sybil” and claimed his young point guard had 2,000 personalities? If I remember correctly they all got a big laugh out of that one.

But Davis? Why he should shut up, take some responsibility and learn to coach some defense. He should have more respect for the game, for his kids. He should be accountable.

But maybe he tried to get his point across inside the locker room for the last 3 weeks. Maybe it wasn’t working. Maybe he was at his wits end with the impossible dunk attempts and the soft defense. Maybe, in the big picture, Keno Davis was holding himself accountable by doing whatever he could think of to get the best out of his team. And a funny thing happened.

That young talented team that couldn’t play defense? They just scored 81 points while holding Connecticut to 66. That’s a 15-point spanking of a team coming off a victory over then #1-ranked Texas.

There are lots of ways to coach.

Keno Davis just used one of the oldest ways in the book.

Well done coach.

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