Year 2: Until I Get There

I’m sure that an overwhelming majority of people who have chased a dream, have had times where they wished they could fast forward to the time where their dream is realized. I am no different. I constantly wish I could be roaming the sidelines, implementing my gameplan. I wish I could be sitting behind my desk, in my corner office, making the major decisions that shape a program. I wonder what it will be like at my first press conference? What will I wear? Hell, what will I SAY?!

Ah, I’ll figure it out when I get there…

For those that don’t know me very well, music is a big part of my life. I’m not musically gifted, but I listen to music constantly. My favorite genre is R&B/Hip-hop, and one of my favorite artists (definitely my favorite rapper) is Lupe Fiasco. I like Lupe not only for his great tracks, but because he is a lyrical genius. His lyrics speak to me, and many times make me stop and think about what I’m doing with my life.

I swear this is relevant…

Lupe has a song off of his most recent album that illustrates my feelings of wishing to be on top. The song is called, “Until I Get There”…

I come from a very small town in rural Southwest Virginia (there isn’t an urban Southwest Virginia). Not a lot of people from the town get to go on and do big things nationally. For a long time I have tried to separate myself from my country roots to get away from the stigma attached to the area I’m from.

If you talk with an accent, you’re perceived as unintelligent. If you come from a small town, you don’t belong in the city. So I distance myself from where I came from, right or wrong.

“I’m just a little old hope with his back against the ropes,

Fightin for his fans, and fightin for his folks,

But the boos from the crowd can become so loud,

If I can block em out, then I can knock em out

And dance around the ring,

But Until then I’ll sing…”

This lyric from Lupe challenges that notion. No matter how many miles I put between myself and where I’m from, I will always be representing them. I will carry them with me wherever I go. I have a lot of friends there. My family is there. And along the way, I’ve picked up a support system who will become the fans that cheer on my teams.

So the odds are against me. I don’t belong in the city. My thick southern accent makes me come off less intelligent. But I’ll fight for my fans, my family, my support system. I’ll fight for kids like me, not only in Southwest Virginia, but from small towns everywhere, who may think that their dream is too big, or that they don’t have the advantages that others may have.

Working as an unpaid graduate assistant, every day is a grind. Whether you’re tracking down 19/20 year-old kids who won’t pick up their phone, because they’re sleeping through class or a team meeting; or you’re stuffing envelopes until your fingers bleed; you begin to wonder if it’s worth it. Is it worth getting disrespected by some athletes because their time is more “valuable” than yours? Is it worth it that the time and effort you put into making their life easier is wasted when they don’t show up?

“Imma keep it cool, Imma do me

It is what it is, and that’s how it’s gonna be

Until I get there…

Until I get there…

Yeah I got flaws, I know I’m not perfect,

But all the ups and downs, will soon be worth it

When I get there…

When I get there…”

Lupe is right, it may not seem to be worth it right now, but it soon will be…I just gotta get there…

In 6^th grade, I had a history teacher who used to always complain when my friends and I would bring basketballs into the classroom. He always told us that there were more important things in life, that no one ever makes it out of the area because of basketball. I’m sure his heart was in the right place in that he wanted us to concentrate on our studies, but the impact it had on me was just the opposite. I couldn’t believe that someone would tell me I wasn’t going to make it…I mean, have you seen my jumper?!

The criticism didn’t end there. With 2 years remaining in college, I decided to break it to my parents that I wanted to pursue coaching. They put on their best supportive face, but you could tell there was a hint of panic in their tone (understandably…I just spent tens of thousands of dollars on a college degree that I’ll never use).

“Well…what is your back-up option, Drew?”

“Uhhh…I don’t have one…”

“How about taking some business courses?”

“Mom, I’m gonna coach…”

Other times, I was chastised that the work I was doing with basketball wasn’t actually work…but rather, I was “playing” all day…don’t hate because my job is fun.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that my entire family is now firmly on board the coaching train and they are genuinely proud of the work I’m doing. It just wasn’t always that way.

When I worked for Virginia Tech, I enjoyed a lot of the people there who were on staff. But there were two individuals who made it turn out to be a less than pleasurable experience (for the record, Coach Greenberg couldn’t have been nicer to me). I had a meeting with one of those people after I had been with the team for a while and he told me that coaching wasn’t for me. He told me he thought I should quit. For some reason, I listened to him…I’ve regretted it ever since.

The point is, there have been many instances in my life where I’ve been told straight up that I will not make it in this business. Part of me wants to make it to the top, and then cold call every single one of them to show them what I’ve done…

“And when I finally make it Imma stunt so hard,

Evil as Knievel, Imma jump so far

Way up in the atmosphere, I ain’t comin back

Be a jerk to them jerks,

Yeah, that’ll make em hurt..

Huh?! Says a young boy in the mirror

A young version of me, so I start to tear up

He said you need to cheer up,

Your mind need to clear up

You’re already here,

Just be yourself from here up”

Lupe is talking about looking at yourself in the mirror and getting back to the roots of who you really are. Do I really need to rub it in someone’s face when I make it? Will their pain or embarrassment help further my goals in any way?

The man who caused me to quit my job at Virginia Tech already got a dose of karma…I don’t need to pile on. What I need to do is use their criticism to fuel the fire of making it to the top. Use the cheers of those who want me to succeed, and the jeers of those who don’t. Use them to my advantage, to help better myself on my way up.

“Then he disappeared and I felt something familiar,

Something I was taught, something I had lost…

If you are afraid, a fear that you gonna change some,

All you gotta do is remember where you came from”

Then it hits me…this whole time the song isn’t about waiting until I get there. The song is about realizing that I’m already there. I’m already starting to realize my goal. I came from nothing. A podunk town in Podunk, VA. And now I’m with a program that is on top of our conference and one of the better teams in the nation. If I keep waiting until I’m at the top, I’ll never appreciate the ride. And the ride is the majority of the battle. The everyday grind to make it in this business. What I do now clears the way for who I’ll be in the future.

Hopefully the man I will be “when I get there,” is appreciative of what I’m doing now, and where I’ve come from…

I know I’ve got flaws, yeah I’m not perfect…but all the ups and downs, will soon be worth it…when I get there…when I get there

Year 2: Wins and Losses, Success and Failure

It was my first trip to Cleveland. I had lived in Akron for two years, less than 45 minutes from Cleveland, and had yet to make the trip there. The Mid-American Conference (MAC) tournament is held in Cleveland, and the previous year my grandfather on my mother’s side had died and I was at home in Virginia for the funeral, so I missed the trip.

This year’s feeling going into the tournament was much different than that of last year. Last year we had to win 4 games in 5 days to win the conference championship, having finished outside the top 4 in the conference. This year, due to a restructuring of the conference tournament and our regular season conference championship, we only had to win 2 games to get to the Big Dance.

I don’t think there are many people around the program who would disagree with the notion that this year’s team was more talented than the one we had last year, but the team obviously had their own demons to deal with. The team was incredibly young, and with that comes problems that stem from not being mentally tough enough to push through difficult parts of practices/games/seasons. Some of them didn’t want to deal with the daily grind that the latter stages of a season are. Admittedly, it is pretty tough to deal with if you haven’t had to do it before.

Regardless, we were much more talented and there was not a single game this season where I felt overmatched athletically or less skilled than our opponents. Two games and we’re in! We can do this!

Our first game came against our neighbor and arch-rival, Kent State. We came in with a measure of confidence, as we had beaten Kent State 4 out of the last 5 times we had played, including last year’s MAC Championship game. The game was tough, as Kent State is pretty talented themselves, but we controlled the game for the most part, finally winning 78-74 after thwarting a comeback attempt by the Flashes.

The championship game, Akron’s sixth in a row (a feat only Gonzaga can also claim), was to be a match-up against Ohio University. We were less confident coming into this one, having suffered a 24-point loss to the Bobcats at their place 4 games prior. Nevertheless, this was a shot at some revenge as well as a berth in the NCAA Tournament and another conference championship.

The game proved to be a heavyweight shootout, with Ohio dealing a knockout blow when D.J. Cooper hit a leaning 3-pointer as the shot clock expired from NBA 3-point range. It was just their night. We cut it close and thought we had tied the game when the ref ruled a free throw had been goaltended, only to overturn it after going to the monitors (STILL don’t think that’s legal).

That was it. A 1-point loss…1 point away from achieving our season-long goal. If one basket more had fallen for us, if we had made two more free throws, if we had gotten one more stop defensively, we’d be dancing. I never noticed how much 1 point can change your demeanor and the type of weekend I’ll have. I had made plans to go out in Cleveland and celebrate. We planned to live it up and not go home til the next morning…

I grabbed my bags immediately following the game and left the hotel. The 45 minutes home was the quietest my car has ever been…no music, no cell phone conversations, nothing but silence. It hurt the next day to watch 68 names called for the NCAA Tournament and Akron not be one of them. We were so close, but not even an afterthought to the general public because we didn’t make it.

To make matters worse, Ohio went on to beat their first two opponents and move on to the Sweet Sixteen. John Groce, the head coach at Ohio, parlayed that success into landing the head coaching job at Illinois. If we make one more shot, Groce is sitting in his office in Athens right now, and Illinois is still searching for a new coach.

One basket, one stop…

This goes to show that the margin between success and failure is miniscule. This is as true in life as it is in basketball. The difference is just that the notion of “success” in basketball can be measured to a certain degree, with wins and losses. It’s much harder to measure a win or a loss in our daily lives.

I sulked for a couple days, as I’m sure our players did the same. However, we had to regroup. Our regular season conference championship meant we got an automatic berth in the NIT. We were selected to play in Chicago against Northwestern. We didn’t have a lot of time to regroup, we were selected to play on Sunday night, and we flew out to Chicago on Monday, and played Tuesday night. We battled well in that game, but ultimately lost another close one and our season was over.

After the loss to Northwestern, I refused to sulk anymore. We had a great year, we won 22 games and won the conference championship in the regular season, which less than 10% of college basketball teams can claim this season. I’ve been a part of a conference tournament title and a regular season title in my time here, and I refuse to treat that as a “loss” on my journey.

The loss to Northwestern marked an end to my time in Akron. It was tough to say bye to everyone, I had made a lot of good friends over the course of my stay there. I looked up to each of the coaches on the staff there as well, they were all positive influences that I hope will become lifelong friends.

I’m looking forward to my next challenge however, and I’m working a couple different angles to achieve that opportunity. I’m sure in my next update I will be able to elaborate on where I will be and what that means in my journey.

This chapter has come to an end, but it certainly isn’t the end of my book. My story is much closer to the hard cover on the left than the right. I’ve had a great start though. I got to learn from a great coach in a great city with some great players.

I’ll look back when I’m done with my career with fondness, but for now I can’t afford not to look forward and prepare myself for what’s next…

Year 2: External Factors

Before each season, fans, sports writers, alumni, and even coaches, look at rosters and schedules, trying to get a sense of what the year to come will be like. You look at how many returning players you have. You look at your depth (or lackthereof) at all five positions. You look at the schedule and how difficult it will be to navigate, desperately searching for positive signs that a good season may be in order.

What many don’t realize until after the season are the external factors that cannot be accounted for, many of which have nothing to do with basketball. It would be pretty sobering to look at a roster and try to project how many players will be declared academically ineligible. How many players will transfer out? How many players will get arrested?!?

After you’ve been around basketball as much as many coaches in the business have, you begin to prepare for and sometimes even expect these things to happen. But some things can still catch you by surprise.

Tuesday morning I left for work with a runny nose, went about my day, got some work done in the office and prepared to leave for home around 6pm after class checks. All at once, it seemed as though I kept feeling weaker and weaker, hotter and hotter. My chest and nose were both congested and I felt like death. I loaded up on medicine and headed home to bed. The next morning I texted one of my co-workers to let him know I wouldn’t be coming in to work due to illness…

“You’re sick too?” he replied…

I spent the majority of that day close enough to the bathroom for the times when my nausea would get the best of me. As I found out later, so did a staggering number of others associated with the team. A week later, the total count has come to 11 people falling victim to flu-like symptoms.

This past weekend, we traveled to Athens, OH to take on Ohio University. A win there would mean we clinched the conference regular season championship. It was a big game for us, and for them too. It was their “Senior Night,” they started a campaign for a “Green Out” in which everyone was instructed to wear green. The game was nationally televised on ESPN. The stakes were high.

We were pretty confident coming in. We were 12-1 in the conference, had already beaten Ohio by 17 at home, and were riding a 9-game conference winning streak heading into the game in Athens.

By this time, the worst of my sickness had subsided. I still had some congestion and a runny nose that wouldn’t quit. But some others were just beginning their cycle of flu. A couple coaches had to drive separate from the team bus due to being sick, others couldn’t eat team meals because of the nausea. We were unprepared for the sickness making its way through the program.

I may have to double check, but I don’t think “overconfident” or “unprepared” were one of the pillars to John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. It seemed as though our counterparts, however, were very focused, driven, and put themselves and their teammates in positions to be successful. They jumped on us early and never let up. The crowd was WILD! They were organized, loud and didn’t quit, even when their team went up by as many as 30 points.

Walking out of the gym that night, I remember thinking that I felt worse after a 24 point drubbing, than I ever did at any point of having the flu.

Ohio U is worse than the flu…

I hated their fans immediately after the game. I wanted to line them up and punch every single one of them. They said some of the most disgusting and hate-filled drivel that I’ve ever come across in my years around basketball. Two days later, though, I’ve grown to appreciate what they did.

They dominated our team well before the game even began. A group of 20 of them began berating one of our players because of how he was stretching. Making many references I’m sure their mother’s didn’t teach them. They were in our heads from the get-go. They were loud when they needed to be, they picked their team up when they needed it, and they were even pretty funny at times. If the game had been close at all, it would have been difficult to pull out the win in that atmosphere, regardless.

The fans, who are many times seen as entities that don’t affect the outcome of games, really opened my eyes to how they can play a huge part in helping their team win. It’s something that is difficult to prepare for, you just have to experience it.

External factors are rarely thought about in the preseason, but can be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful season…

Year 2: Homeless

There’s nothing more nerve-wracking, to a coach, than a schedule filled with road games. Unfamiliar gyms; the monotonous hours spent driving or flying to a new city. Thousands of fans who want nothing more than for you to fail. The dynamic of playing on the road versus playing at home is drastically different, as one might imagine.

There’s a name in the basketball world for those programs who play a lot of games on the road. Teams that go on the road, in a set of circumstances that aren’t ideal, and take care of business. They’re called “Road Warriors.”

If I had to characterize my second year in Akron, I would call myself a Road Warrior.

Due to a scheduling snafu, Akron plays all but 2 of our games in January on the road. We also have to play the toughest teams in our conference, on the road, in February…

We’ll need to be Road Warriors ourselves.

I knew at the end of last year that I could not live in the same house as year 1. It was too cramped, in a bad neighborhood and just not a good experience altogether. Fortunately, some graduate assistant friends of mine were also looking for a house.

I had moved home to Virginia for the summer since I didn’t have an income to justify staying in Akron. I always assumed they would find a place and I would just move in. But as August kept getting closer we didn’t have a plan for a house. It makes life a little uneasy when you’re moving 7 hours away from home and unsure of exactly where you’ll be staying or if you’ll have a house at all!

A couple weeks before moving day, I received a call telling me we had found a house. Relief…but it was only short-lived as we didn’t close on the deal a couple days before I was to move back. Here I am, 3 days before classes start and I don’t have anywhere to live! There was only one solution…one of my friends offered to let me live with his parents until we found a house.

I’m thinking this couldn’t be more than a month, and I had no other options, so I moved into their basement. What I didn’t realize was that my friend’s sister, her fiancée, and her 2 children from a previous relationship were also living in the home. I felt like such a burden. The basement was nice, but I had to sleep on a couch for the first month.

One night, I came home from work late, only to find that the couch I had been sleeping on had been moved out. I panicked, was I going to sleep on the floor? I didn’t want to make a fuss, it is not my home after all, and they were gracious enough to take me into their home when they clearly didn’t have much room to fit me into their lives. So for 2 hours I laid with my back on the pool table, staring at the ceiling weighing my options. Finally, my friend brought down a twin mattress from upstairs and laid it in the floor. So for the next two months I slept on a mattress in the floor that my feet hung off the edge of the bed. Still better than the house I lived in last year…

The bathroom in the basement didn’t work. If I wanted to use the bathroom I had to use the one next to the family room, which meant I would feel like I’m imposing on their personal space each time I wanted to use the bathroom. I began using the bathroom at the gym, and just holding it at night until I could get back to work in the morning.

Finally in early November, we were able to move into a house. A nice house in a different part of the city, with 3 friends. The rent was very cheap. I finally had a “home” I could call my own. I didn’t have to hold my pee at night! The only caveat (and the reason the rent was so cheap), was that the house was still on the market and had a chance of being sold, and we would have to move out. We reasoned that with winter coming up, the house market would slow down and we could possibly make it through the whole season in the house.

We were wrong…

In early January the house sold. I have to find a new house…again. And I only have 2 and a half weeks to find a place, then move all of my stuff to the new place. I got lucky again as the people we were renting from were amazing and helped me find a new place to live in, as well as returned all rent paid up to that point, and negotiated the same price for the new place that we were paying at the old place. I am currently moving to the new house. It seems nice…full deck, 3 floors, carpeted, nice neighborhood and a shorter commute to work.

During all of this, I still had to go to work every day, take care of my responsibilities and go about my business. Never really having a true “home.” No more than 3 months spent in one place. Always on the move…always on the road. A true “Road Warrior.”

In March I will be moving again, back to Virginia, leaving Akron for good, taking a new job. I’m excited for the next chapter in my life, but I’m certainly not finished with this one! We are having a great season, first place in the conference. We have a great team that could steal some wins in March if we take care of business. Thanks to our scheduling mishap, we’ve had to do it on the road. We’ve been Road Warriors…

I have a great opportunity ahead of me. I have learned from some great coaches the past 2 years. I made some great friends. I learned more about basketball than I could’ve imagined. I will learn from a set of great coaches next year as well. But I gotta take care of business on the road first, it makes coming home that much sweeter…

Year 1: NCAA Tournament

As I stated earlier, we had a successful season. At one point we were 12-10, everyone (including our own fans) had counted us out. We finished the season on a 7-2 run, entering our conference tournament as a 6 seed. Meaning we had to play in the first round of the conference tournament.

It was at this time that I received a call from my family saying my grandfather was very ill. He had been in the hospital weeks prior, but he just didn't get any better. He died the morning after our first-round win and I returned home to be with family. I had to watch the rest of the tournament play out on television. Our semifinal game was actually the night of the funeral. I didn't get very many chances to check my phone, but when I did it was a welcoming comfort to see we were winning, and eventually won and earned a spot to play in the final against Kent State, our arch rival.

I stayed home and watched the final from my couch. A heavyweight battle between the two most physically talented teams in the conference. It took overtime to decide the game, but Akron won after 2 blocked shots on one possession denied Kent State the opportunity to win the game. As the buzzer sounded I remember running through my house screaming. In my first year on the college basketball scene, I get to go to the Big Dance!! A much-needed relief from the events of the weeks prior.

I returned to Akron in time to make the trip to Chicago. A 6-hour car ride with a co-worker and his girlfriend. I played Angry Birds the entire way until we reached the city. For those of you who don't know, the NCAA actually selects which hotels its competing schools will stay in during the tournament. We stayed at an extremely nice hotel in downtown Chicago, something everyone should get a chance to experience.

The day before the game we held practice at the University of Illinois-Chicago. We got a police escort on the bus, and a warm welcome from the UIC staff. We then had to have a "shootaround" at the United Center, which is more for the fans and press than it is for the players. One cool aspect of it, however, was walking into the United Center, where my boyhood idol (99% of basketball followers' idol) played.

I got to walk into the largest basketball stadium I've ever been in, and the school I worked for was the main attraction! The thrill of taking the court while the fans watch you warm-up is something I can't begin to describe. Chill bumps would be a severe understatement. The shootaround went well and we returned to the hotel for rest.

The next day we were in the lobby of the hotel, preparing to leave for the United Center, when our Director of Basketball Operations told us that we had to go to a meeting 3 floors up. If you haven't crammed 15 division-1 basketball athletes, 12 staff members, and 2 radio commentators onto 3 elevators, you haven't lived! We arrived on the third floor and were led down the hall to the left. As we got closer one of the staff members in the front opened 2 large doors leading to a ballroom.

Music started blaring, it sounded like our alma mater...

We get closer to the room, the music sounds as though our band is actually crammed into a hotel room practicing for the game that afternoon. I get closer to the doors, then I begin to hear chants and cheers from our cheerleading squad.

How cute, they've gathered to wish us off...what, all 15 of them?

I turn the corner, and to my surprise, it seems as if every Zip fan in the nation was crammed into this ballroom, a room much bigger than I anticipated. As the players made their way into the room the fans erupted with shouting and clapping. Goosebumps again...

Coach Dambrot gave a short speech and then we left to board the bus. Police escort through the city again. People stopping, turning, squinting their eyes to see if they could make out who the important people inside the bus were. "Who needs a police escort?" they had to be asking themselves. Little did they know it was a 15-seeded mid-major from Northeast Ohio...they would've been so disappointed.

The game itself was much tighter than Notre Dame wanted, with only a 4 point lead at halftime. In the second half, a poor shooting night for the Zips proved to be too much to overcome, losing 73-64.

Thus ended my first season as a Zip, and began my journey towards reaching my goals...

Year 1: Middle-aged women and The Dump

My first season in the college basketball world went very well. The Akron Zips finished 23-13, winning the MAC tournament, advancing to the NCAA Tournament in Chicago. The Zips ultimately lost to Notre Dame in the first round, but made a great showing, especially for a 15 seed. This makes 6 seasons in a row where the Zips have won 20+ games, as well as the fifth season in a row reaching the conference championship game (a feat only Butler and Gonzaga can also claim).

I spent the year as a volunteer assistant. No financial help from the school, a whole lot of burden on the parents. I took a second job on the side as a barback at a local bar that doubled as a catering company to the university. I spent my mornings in practice; my afternoons spent making sure players were in class. My nights were spent loading and unloading kegs, changing taps, taking out the garbage, and the worst part: getting hit on by drunk middle-aged women. Don't get me wrong, I'm not jaded to the notion of getting hit on, but when the pick-up line comes out of the mouth of a middle-aged woman and it involves "taking out THEIR 'trash'" and making sure I get proper "payment," the whole song-and-dance gets old.

Side Note: I've long wondered about the thought process in a pick-up line. Does it always need to be work-related? Will someone come up to me someday and ask to "coach" my "team" to a "championship"...? Can we just make an agreement, ladies of the world, if you wanna throw a pick-up line my way, that it not involve my occupation? In return, I promise I won't ask to flame-broil your burger...if ya know what I mean...

I didn't realize, until 3 months into the second job, that I was supposed to be getting tips (outside from the drunkies wanting to "tap my keg") from the bartenders. I estimated the loss to be around $300...bummer.

I had a third job...unofficially, that is. I was placed in a home with a kid we had recruited but was a non-qualifier and had to sit out his freshman season. My job was to keep him out of trouble and get him to class...make him eligible. He is an enormously talented kid, a Big East-caliber talent. But he only does things on "his" terms and if your agenda doesn't fall in line with "his" terms, then you're just out of luck.

I use quotations around "his" because many times "his" terms were not even that of his own, but an ever-changing mix of the girl he wanted to be with, his buddies from home, his new-found Akron friends, and sometimes the Akron staff....sometimes.

I thought I could balance all three jobs, but as the year went on and the season picked up, my roommate began to miss more and more classes. I couldn't leave him alone, he needed to get to his late classes. I couldn't carry all three jobs. I tried to reason my way through the problem. I didn't come to Akron to be a barback, the only paying job I had had to go...

The place we lived was a dump...

On the first day we arrived, we got a pamphlet from the landlord stating the house was filled with lead paint, and we couldn't sue if we ingested said paint. Way to set the tone...There was no living room. I had to donate my couch to a friend-of-a-friend because the doorways were too narrow to bring it in. No air conditioning. The bathroom had a peep-hole (presumably carved by middle-aged patrons of the bar). The stove stayed on the entire time we lived there, impossible to shut off, it was never used. The longest hallway was 7 feet long and just under 2 and a half feet wide. Our neighbor across from us committed suicide halfway through the year. The steps might as well have been a slip-n-slide in the winter. We had to carry our clothes outside, in the snow, to the basement, in order to do laundry. My roommate fell through the steps when one of the steps collapsed.

Fortunately for me, the people I worked with were as good as my house was bad. Genuinely good people, and a whole lot of basketball knowledge to learn from them...