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...

Realizing Part of the Dream

It's been a long time since I've written. But I wanted to wait until a point in time where my destination would be concrete. And as you'll see, that was something very fluid and nerve-wracking.

I'll call this chapter..."Realizing Part of the Dream"

After the season ended with my freshmen team. I began to concentrate on landing a job on a college staff. I applied everywhere that had an opening:

JMU
Randolph-Macon
Christopher Newport
Elmira College

as well as a host of others whose names I cannot even recall. In all, I wound up applying to 30 different jobs in a 2 month span. It wasn't until I applied for a job that wasn't even available that the ball started rolling for me.

I read online that Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) had a job opening for a video coordinator position. I knew enough about Video Coordinators and how they function from my time with Virginia Tech that I thought I would like the job and would be qualified. I thought that if I had the right connections, I could have a leg up on others who may apply. I called a coach I know from Centre College in Kentucky and asked if he knew anyone on staff at VCU. Sure enough, one of the VCU assistants was a former player of his from a couple years ago. Next, I talked to a former Video Coordinator from the University of South Carolina and sure enough, he knew the other 2 assistants!

The only guy I had no connections with was the Head Coach, Shaka Smart. Until I read his bio...Coach Smart got his start as an assistant at the University of Akron, a place where I knew some people really well. I called my friend at Akron and the roller coaster began...

"Yeah sure, Drew, I'll call and recommend you, but I don't think that job is actually open"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm pretty sure they are giving that job to a former Grad. Asst. and are just posting the job to satisfy policy"

Ouch...I was devastated. I called the coach at Centre College again to see what we could do next, if anything. He told me a story about a kid in Kansas who got on the staff at the University of Kansas as a volunteer assistant. The kid was unpaid and worked a second job to pay the bills. That year the Jayhawks won the national title and that kid's coaching career was skyrocketed. He moved quickly up the ladder and is now one of the best coaches in the nation...Greg Popovich, Head Coach of the San Antonio Spurs.

My anxiety lifted, I was ready to start asking about a job as a volunteer assistant. I called back my friend at Akron to see if he could put in a good word for me as a volunteer assistant with VCU.

"Sure, I can do that"

"Do you think Coach Dambrot (Akron's Head Coach) would like a volunteer assistant?"

"Oh yeah, definitely! I can work on that for you."

I was sold! I had been to Akron twice to work summer camps and absolutely loved the city. If I could get a job there, I would be ecstatic. I was bouncing off the walls with excitement. My criteria for picking the places I would like to be went something like this:

1) winning program
2) friendliness and attitude of the staff and players
3) a city environment

Akron has won 20+ games each of the last 5 years (Coach Dambrot has been there for 6 years). Having met the staff and players from camps, I knew all of them by name and they were all friendly. Akron is a city, but it is also close to Cleveland and Canton, so there is lots to do and fills my third requirement of a city environment.

The only problem was...my parents weren't exactly on board. They weren't too keen on the idea of taking a non-paying job and having to cover me for another year. And if I was going to do that, they wanted me closer...somewhere familiar so that maybe I could live with family or a friend and cut costs.

During this time, I still applied for jobs, thinking if a paying job came along, it might be too much to turn down. However, literally none of the colleges I applied to sent me as much as an email to say I hadn't gotten the job.

Sometime in May, I was asked by my parents to drive to Washington D.C. and help move my brother into a new apartment. On the last day of moving I get a phone call...

"Drew, this is the Athletic Director from Ventura College in California. We would like for you to come in for an interview."

"Absolutely, when do I need to be there?"

"3 days from now..."

I had forgotten I even applied to the school. I had to act quick. I started to book flights, rent a car and prepare myself for my first interview. My parents seemed to be on board with it being a paying job. But there was a problem...I had to pay my own way to get there and get around. The cost would have been around $600 in total.

That night I had dinner with my dad in Baltimore. He told me after talking with my mom they decided I should turn down the interview and concentrate on Akron. They would now fully support my wish to go to Akron and work there. I turned down the interview and reluctantly said goodbye to my Southern California daydreams.

Flashback to 2008...

I had just begun working with Virginia Tech's men's basketball team. My first job was to pick up a coach at an airport. The coach was Keith Dambrot, from the University of Akron. He was coming to Blacksburg for a coaching convention. I picked him up in Roanoke and knew we had an hour drive ahead of us, so I might as well pick his brain. I asked him how he began coaching and got to the division-1 level. He told me that he got his start as a coach at a small high school in Akron, St. Vincent-St. Mary...and had a very talented freshman...LeBron James. He was able to use his stint there to propel himself into jobs at Central Michigan and ultimately, the University of Akron.

The following week I again got the assignment of picking up another coach at the airport. This time it was Akron's Director of Basketball Operations, Rick McFadden. Coach McFadden was 27 years old at the time so he was a little easier to talk to. I offered to show him around campus the next morning before his meeting with Coach Greenberg, so we exchanged phone numbers. Throughout the year I kept up with Akron and sent texts to Coach McFadden congratulating he and the Zips on making the NCAA tournament. That summer Coach McFadden called and asked me to work a camp for them, and that's where it all started.

Now back to June 2010...

I decided to go to Akron and work a camp in the summer. I arrived on a Sunday for an Elite Prospect camp in which their top targets for underclassmen were coming in to get further evaluated. I was standing around watching some of their prospects when Coach Dambrot saw me out of the corner of his eye. Keep in mind, I had not seen Coach Dambrot in over a year, and I had only seen him twice in my life for about an hour and a half total. As soon as he saw me he came over and exclaimed, "Drew! How ya doin buddy?" and gave me a big hug.

That blew my mind. Here is a successful basketball coach (who are notoriously self-absorbed) who not only remembers me from a long time ago, but takes time out of his camp to walk across the gym and make me feel welcome. I knew then Akron was where I belonged. That week I stayed in Coach McFadden's new house and slept on a blow-up mattress in his living room. He had been moved up from DBO to an assistant in the past year and he was well on his way in the coaching game. He and his wife could not have been nicer and I knew this guy wasn't going to let me fail if I did decide to come to Akron.

At that point I stopped applying for jobs...I had found a home. The NCAA had other plans...

Apparently the NCAA in their infinite wisdom did away with volunteer assistants for football and basketball, making it illegal. Coach McFadden decided to see if we could create a position for me, give me a small amount of money and circumvent the NCAA.

All they had to do would be for Coach Dambrot to write out a job description, take it to the AD, then post the fake job online and interview other applicants all the while knowing they created the position for me and would ultimately give it to me (much like what VCU did with the video coordinator position).

Then there was a phone call...again.

"Drew, I don't think it's gonna work out...Coach Dambrot's dad is in the hospital and not doing well...so he doesn't want to take the time away from his father to create the job for you"

"Is this a 'we might not do this right now' sort of thing...or 'we might not do this AT ALL' sort of thing"

"We might not do this at all..."

I was crushed...again...but understood Coach Dambrot's position. I wouldn't want to fool with creating a job in his position either. It just sucked. So I was back on the job market...

I applied for a job at Piedmont College in Georgia. A school in Jackson, Mississippi and another in Minnesota. I didn't think I was going to get a job. I thought I would have to spend another year in Gate City.

Then I came up with an idea. If I took one class at Akron, I could qualify as a student and a job would not have to be created for me...I would be classified by the NCAA as a student assistant and could join the staff immediately. Coach McFadden agreed and we started working on getting me into classes.

A week ago, I got a phone call from Piedmont College in Georgia. They said I was one of their top 3 candidates for their job opening as an assistant coach and wanted me to come interview. At that time, I had already firmed everything up with Akron and had to decline. If you had told me a year ago that I would be offered two job interviews and would turn both of them down, I would have said you were crazy...but that's just the way things worked out.

Akron has found me a house and a roommate, so it has cut my costs way down. They have also found me a second job working for a catering company to pick up some extra cash. This coming year will certainly be an interesting one, as I'm sure I'll be working all hours of the day to make this work. I'm looking forward to the challenge though, and I'm very appreciative of the opportunity. There's no way I'm letting this slip away.

I'm here...ready to start the next chapter...Akron, let's see what you've got...

Basketball Purgatory

As I stated in my first update, I am coaching the Freshman team at my former high school. I was reluctant at first to take the position, because coming from coaching college athletes ranging from 19 to 25 years of age, makes for a difficult transition to coaching kids who can’t even drive to and from practice.

Coaching the JV team at Virginia Tech had its advantages and disadvantages. One of the big advantages was that I got to coach kids who were good athletes and skilled enough fundamentally that I could get them to fly around and make plays without having to coach them up a whole lot. While at the same time, they were not athletic enough to be D1 caliber and have the attitudes that typically come with that talent. We had a good mix of talent and great attitudes, and when that happens the sky is the limit.

On the flip side of that, since they weren’t on scholarship, it meant that they came to VT not for basketball but for academics and other attractions of the university. Some of them already belonged to fraternities and school clubs that ate up a large chunk of their time. Others were in majors (such as engineering) that had curriculums that demanded a lot of time be spent studying. Then, you obviously have the social life of college students. These were all obstacles that I had to work around every single day. In the time I spent at Virginia Tech as the coach, we NEVER had every single player in the same practice at the same time…not once! Some practices were spent going over 5-on-0 offense because we only had 6 players in practice.

Coaching that team was a great experience. It challenged me to be creative and come up with ways to get the ball in the hands of our playmakers and put the others in position to make plays and help us win. Probably the greatest part of it was that I was coaching a good number of my close friends. Playing on the team in the 3 years prior to my taking over allowed me to build relationships with a lot of the guys on the team, which made for an easy transition to being the man in charge.

We were successful, but certainly not as successful as we could have been. We had the talent, size and athleticism to be one of the top teams in the nation, when it comes to JV programs. I guess relatively we were among the top teams, but we could have removed all doubt by having more of a commitment. I don’t blame many of them, because like I said, they did not come to VT because they wanted to play basketball, so I always took a back seat. We had a 2-year win-loss record of 43-12. We got to play great programs such as Hargrave Military Academy, Fork Union Military Academy, The Patterson School and Laurinburg Prep. We were able to play against many athletes who went on to get division 1 scholarships from basketball powerhouses, some players who transferred from small colleges and everyone in-between.

So that brings me to now, and the team I’m coaching at my old high school. At the beginning of the year we coached both the JV and Freshmen together, because the football players were still in the playoffs and could not be with us. We had some kids who were pretty good and it looked like we might be pretty successful. However, once the football team was knocked out of the playoffs, the JV took those who were our best players and moved them up to play with the JV. What we were left with is a mix of players who could be pretty good down the road if they kept working and listened to what we were telling them. The problem though, is that it wasn’t “down the road.” It was 2009 and they are what they are and its something we have to work with.

They moved our practices to a nearby Elementary School. We were practicing on a court that had no 3-point line. On top of that, every day at 3:45 the third grade class of the school came into the gym and got on stage to practice their Christmas play. If you’ve never tried to explain press offense while 18 children are butchering “We Wish You A Merry Christmas,” then you’ve never known frustration. I remember thinking that this HAS to be the lowest point of my career. If I get any lower than this I may have to find another profession. This is basketball purgatory. We aren't low enough to be in Basketball Hell (rec-league for children or middle school girls...only kidding...ish), but we're certainly not alive or in Heaven.

To add to those problems, we found out that none of the schools in Southwest Virginia even have Freshmen teams, so our entire schedule consists of Tennessee schools, many of which have enrollments of 1,500-2,000 kids. Gate City has an enrollment of somewhere between 500-600. I’ll admit, after losing our first 2 games by a combined 70 points I was a little frustrated and thought for sure we would not win a single game all year. We were on the road to our third game. I had already marked up the game as a loss. We were playing in a 9,000-seat arena that hosts the Arby’s Classic, against another school with a large enrollment.

Then the kids on our team really surprised me. All those practices where it seemed as though they weren’t listening; all the times we played poorly and didn’t compete; those instances seemed like a distant memory watching these kids compete and execute against a much larger team. We jumped out to an early lead, and going into halftime our talking point was to control the things we can control (which is ALWAYS a talking point).

When I talk about “things we can control,” I am talking about those things that cannot be dictated by any outside forces. For instance, we alone control our attitude. You make a conscious choice every day to have a good or bad attitude. These kids could choose to listen, or they could choose to think we’re full of it and do it their own way. Then in-game situations like boxing out on rebounds, turning the ball over and playing sound defense are all things we can control every possession of every game. We cannot control if our shots will fall, we cannot control the refs, we cannot control what sets the other team will run. I am a firm believer that if you do control the facets of the game that you are able to, then you will be successful.

If we take care of the ball, play sound defense, box out and limit them to (maximum) one shot per possession we were going to win this game. Fortunately, we took care of business and got our first win of the season. I’m not sure I’ve been more proud of a group of kids in my admittedly short basketball career. No one gave them a chance. I didn’t give them much of a chance and I was their coach! It was at that point that I realized that I’m not the only one teaching about the game of basketball. It seems as though these kids are teaching me a thing or two along the way as well. I won’t count us out again. The resiliency of these kids is amazing. I may be a teacher, but I’m still learning, and it will be a long process.