We built this team on...

[hollmt]

I made the journey to Williamsburg, Virginia and entered Kaplan Arena and imagined the day when all 11300 seats were full of students and alumni rooting on The Tribe. I took a tour again of the facilities and realized that this was one concern that would need rectified as soon as possible. The facilities were average at best and in order to give our big freshman class and future recruits the ability to develop to their potential, this would need to be fixed. In time I thought…in time. William & Mary was definitely not a power house in College Basketball or in their own conference (Colonial Athletic Association), but their one saving grace and the one main thing I looked at, was the importance they placed on academics.

Feeling a bit nervous sitting across from my future boss, I took pen in hand and signed where I was asked. It wasn’t the top of the pyramid, but it was definitely a start. It was a start of a new beginning where hopefully I would develop a reputation (of which I had none) and a history of graduating young men from college and at the same time making basketball players out of them.

I have always had a high ambition for coaching; have always had a high discipline, integrity, and stress with the upmost importance, the value of a good education. If I have a flaw, it is that I can let my tempter get the best of me at times and if something isn’t going my way and I sense laziness in another coach, player, or the administration, I might fly off the handle. So with careful consideration I chose a school that valued my belief in education coming first at all times. The fact that William & Mary has never once made it to the NCAA tournament, has only appeared in 2 NIT tournaments, has not once won their own conference championship and has an overall record of 1104-1281 didn’t faze me. I saw an administration that valued education and made it a priority of theirs. Of course they also wanted to remain competitive and gave me the following 2 goals to finish in the top half of the conference and to win 10 or more games. The obvious factor of having no student athlete become academically ineligible was to be expected.

The situation I came into was a little hectic. The previous Head Coach (Coach Ackerman) was a disaster at recruiting and developing players. This was in fact, the main reason that I got this position. I had a great ability to recruit (rating 60) and talk to these kids and develop them (rating 40) and keep them in check. The roster was loaded with good seniors on paper (Ackerman’s predecessor), but that coach was unable to....well, coach. So I was given a roster of 5 seniors one Junior and loads of sophomores and freshman that had some potential, but no current skillset. I had my hands full for sure to develop these young players and of course to recruit more players to take up the reins next year.

So, the first thing I did was fire one of my assistants, Antonio Barone who was just an awful recruiter and developer of players and I decided to fork out the money needed to go get the best developer I could find. My first offer was to Sam Willis who had a development rating of 61 and 9 years of experience. I gave him the money he requested ($60,000) and he became my 1st assistant coach and would lead up practices for me. He was a little low in offense and defensive rating, but I felt that was ok for now. Sam had a high ambition so the odds of him staying for another year was probably low, but his high discipline would keep things in check for practice and I felt it the pros outweighed the cons. I kept Dwayne Abrams and placed him as my recruiter (behind me) as he was actually the best option I had (rating 31) anyway even with other coaches on the board. Shane Denis rounded out my coaching staff and would scout games for me with a rating of 39.

So with that, I would hit the recruiting trail and hunt 5 recruits to take over for the 5 seniors that will leave The Tribe at the end of the year and give me a pretty young team next season. The task of developing the current roster and then the incoming roster should be quite the challenge and is one that I look forward to.

[PointGuard]

OK, good that you've moved on from Dartmouth to the sunny climes of Virginia. William & Mary should present some good challenges for you. They DO have a great campus, but it looks like you've got some work to do to get the basketball team up to the same level.

Side not: I think Williamburg has more pancake houses per capita than any other city in America (and probably the entire world).

[hollmt]

PG: I changed it up just a bit. I played a season years ago as Dartmouth with CB1 and have also done a Navy dynasty loooong ago. So, being that it was the nations holiday I felt inclined to head to the Colonial Athletic Association and try another school....and a warmer place.