Philly Gym Rat (The Perry “QM” McMullin Story)

[PointGuard]

Age: 28

Contract: $80,000/yr for 3 years

Offense: 29, Defense: 28, Recruiting: 35, Scouting: 25, Player

Development: 33, Reputation: 10

Ambition: Low, Academics: Average, Discipline: High, Temper: High (70), Integrity: Low, Job Security: 100

[PointGuard]

Chad Williams, the prior 1st Assistant at CSU Bakersfield, decided he didn’t want to work for a 28-yr old rookie coach and quit. After talking with Omar Smiley, the 3rd Assistant, I decided his personality and ideas wouldn’t mesh well with me, so I asked him for his resignation and offered to talk with a few people about another job. He goes along with it. I then promoted Stephen Osbourne, the previous 2nd Assistant to 1st Assistant. He was ecstatic. I then went out, found, and hired two assistant coaches, one who had been a coach at the JV level but had been out of coaching for a few years and another who was a local high school coach who was tired of coaching at that level.

1st Asst: Stephen Osbourne: Age-37, Reputation-8, Contract: $32,000/yr for 3 years, Primary strength-Player Development (40). He’ll be in charge of practices.

2nd Asst: Jared Hill: Age-54, Reputation-9, Contract: $38,000/yr for 1 year, Primary strength-Recruiting (31). He’ll be in charge of recruiting.

3rd Asst: Rodney Willis: Age-46, Reputation-9, Contract: $16,800/yr for 3 years, Primary strength-Scouting (46). He’ll be my scout.

[PointGuard]

Point Guards:

Rashun Kamara, 6-5, So, Santa Clara, CA, 1.0/2.5 stars. Good ball handler and passer who is not likely to score much. A defensive liability.

Greg Bivins, 6-0 Sr, Albany, CA, 3.5/3.5 stars. Exceptional quickness making him good on defense and a real ball hawk. An excellent passer and ball handler who also should be able to put the ball in the hoop. Strong rebounder for his height. The likely leader of this team.

Carlos Holmes, 6-4, Jr, San Francisco, CA, 1.0/1.0 stars. Walk-on. Good offensively, poor defensively. Good ball handler and passer.

Shooting Guards:

Kevin Hill, 6-0, So, Sacramento, CA, 1.0/1.0 stars. Pretty raw yet. Needs improvement on most all aspects of the game.

Jason Nurse, 6-5, Fr, Irvine, CA, 1.0/3.5 stars. Focuses on offense and defense is weak. Good potential.

Andrew Powers, 6-1, So, Hemet, CA, 1.5/3.0 stars. Primarily a jump shooter, but has ability to score. Still developing.

Small Forwards:

Justin Williams, 6-8, So, Irvine, CA, 2.0/3.0 stars. Good rebounder but has yet to prove his scoring ability. Great work ethic.

Jeremy Jones, 6-8, So, Larkspur, CA, 2.0/3.5 stars. Strong rebounder. Not expected to be a big scorer. Great work ethic and personality.

Ammer Self, 6-7, Fr, Riverside, CA, 0.5/3.0 stars. Needs a lot of work on the fundamentals, so likely will redshirt this year.

Power Forwards:

Bobby Rivera, 6-8, Jr, Santa Rosa, CA, 2.0/3.5 stars. Strong rebounder and a good scrapper. Strong shot blocker. Great work ethic and personality.

Johnny Chase, 6-6, Jr, Oxnard, CA, 3.0/3.0 stars. Excellent rebounder. Great shot blocker and gets many steals.

C. J. Galloway, 6-7, Fr, Scotts Valley, CA, 1.0/3.0 stars. Good potential but needs to develop most aspects of his game. Likely redshirt this year.

Centers:

Josh Brown, 6-8, Fr, Reseda, CA, 1.5/3.5 stars. Solid player for a freshman even though he still needs to work hard on most aspects of his game.

Mike Settles, 6-10, Jr, Whittier, CA, 2.0/2.5 stars. Workman-like player with average skills. Good in the post.

David Johnson, 6-9, Jr, Oakland, CA, 1.5/1.5 stars. Walk-on. Good shot blocker and defender but inconsistent on the offensive end.
With just 1 senior and 3 juniors this is a young and inexperienced team.

Since we can’t offer scholarships to good recruits the next two years, there will not be a quick rebuild. The only sure starters this year at this point are Greg Bivins at PG and Johnny Chase at PF.

I looked over the GPA’s for the squad and nearly had a heart attack realizing we might very well lose several of them to academic ineligibility. Obviously these players weren’t chosen for the team based on their academic acumen. I immediately got tutors for every player on the roster.

The summer tutoring paid off…leaving just two players with GPA’s in the low 2’s, but those two will continue to get some tutoring to ensure they stay eligible.

[PointGuard]

In the past this team has been using 3 offensive sets: shuffle, motion, and triangle and two defenses: man-to-man and 2-3 zone. Since many of the players have a reasonable amount of experience with the 3 offenses, I will keep all 3 but am going to only use shuffle a little will make motion and triangle the primary offenses. I will keep man-to-man as my primary defense, but introduce the 1-2-2 zone while continuing to occasionally use the 2-3 zone. Initially I’ll employ a balanced offense and allow offensive freedom about 40% of the time, but that’s subject to change depending on how we do.

[Wayne23]

What Coach said!

[PointGuard]

Since there’s only one scholarship to fill this coming year (not a good thing), the starting recruiting budget of $39,000 should be more than sufficient. I decide to conserve my finances, though, and spend just $5000 by buying only the Western Region basic report. I also keep costs down by deciding to go to just one camp this summer, the Las Vegas Revue, which will cost us another $3,700, leaving us with a recruiting balance of $30,300. I don’t expect we will have had any success recruiting outside the region anyway.
Since our most talented player, PG Greg Bivins, is the player graduating this year, I’m hoping to land a talented PG, but I’ve got to consider a very strong player at any position since there really are no stars on this team right now.

Being an inexperienced coach with an unknown name at a college with no prestige means that many of my early recruiting calls end up being unanswered, ignored, or cut off. Persistence pays off with some of these players and we are able to gradually get at least some of the recruits on our list to give us some consideration.

Initially we targeted state and regional high schoolers, primarily loading up my list with point guards. But I also went after some higher rated players at other positions, particularly big men who were strong rebounders. After a few weeks I decided to add a Top 25 nationally ranked recruit, a SG from California. Slowly we began to make some inroads at getting some players interested in us, but none developed a high level of interest in CSU Bakersfield.

When the home visit period began, I visited mostly PG’s but also the Top 25 SG. To my surprise, he and his family hit it off with me and his interest in our school spiked, possibly because of my focus on location, his major concern. I offered him our only scholarship, but didn’t get any word back from him. The second week, I visited 3 PG’s and the SG. Again, I reiterated how much I’d like to have him at our school, focusing this time on discipline, another important factor for him and his family. Returning to the campus after my visits, I began to get nervous since our recruiting funds were dwindling fast. I decided I would probably have to pull back my offer and go after a lower-ranked player more likely to sign with us, since I now had 4 PG’s whose interest was high.

On Thursday, the phone rang in my office. It was the SG who said he’d made his decision. There was a long moment of silence and my heart seemed to stop. He finally spoke again saying he had accepted our offer and was excited about coming to us this coming year. I nearly jumped straight up out of my chair. What a coup!

SG Jerell Brown, 6-4, HS Sr from Middletown, CA with a 3.2 GPA. 19.9 ppg, 2.5 apg, 4.8 rpg, 3.1 spg, 0.8 bpg. Jerell is an excellent scorer and a good shot from outside but also some ability to score inside as well. He’s a great passer, although his ball handling skills are just average. His rebounding skills excite me as does the fact that he is a real ball hawk. He’s very athletic. His defense, other than his stealing abilities, needs work. He’s familiar with the triangle offense, which is one of the 3 offensive sets we will be employing. Although not exceptionally strong at it, he’s willing to put the ball on the floor to drive to the basket. He was a Top 5 player in the Las Vegas Revue. He is rated as the 20th best recruit and 3rd best SG in the country.

So our recruiting concludes in late September…fortunately since there is little money left in our recruiting treasury. Rather than exhibiting excitement about our success, Benson Jones, our AD, isn’t particularly happy since he was hoping to recoup more money from us with us having to go after only one player this year. He is quick to remind me, “I know this was your initial try at monitoring a budget, but next year, Perry, you’re going to have to be a lot more careful since you’ll be recruiting more players. By spending nearly all your money, maybe you better try to win some more games so more butts will be filling the seats in our arena and bringing some more money into the athletic department budget.” As he slowly said this, the thought that goes through my head is, “OK, so when you said 10+ wins was the goal this year, there now is an emphasis on the plus. That’s just great.”

[PointGuard]

Early in the summer I asked Benson Jones, the CSU Bakersfield AD, to try to get us a balanced schedule. He acted as if requesting such a thing is a big favor to ask and one that would inordinately weigh upon his slumping shoulders. He finally said he’d try, but was making no promises. The schedule he eventually carved out did me some favors by scheduling only a few tough teams during the pre-conference period, so I’m hopeful we can pick up some pre-conference W’s to give us a chance to meet the goal of 10+ wins and the confidence to play well in the subsequent conference games.

The schedule that Benson Jones put together looks like this:

Non-Conference:

@ North Florida
BALL STATE
@ Sacramento St.
LOYOLA MARYMOUNT
LOUSIANA TECH
SAINT MARY’S
NORTHERN KENTUCKY
EASTERN ILLINOIS
CHARLESTON SOUTHERN
@ Texas State
@ Utah
@ Mount St. Mary
@ Rutgers

Great West Conference:

NORTH DAKOTA
@ New Jersey Tech
SEATTLE
@ Houston Baptist
@ Chicago St.
UTAH VALLEY
@ TX Pan American
@ North Dakota
NEW JERSEY TECH
@ Seattle
HOUSTON BAPTIST
CHICAGO STATE
@ Utah Valley
TX PAN AMERICAN

[PointGuard]

In our first week of practice there was a lot of trash talking, one-upmanship, and bickering. Johnny Chase was involved in much of it, so I called him into my office and chewed on his butt some. He was unapologetic but we’ll see what happens as practices proceed. His personality is pretty good and he has a good work ethic. As a junior and one of our stronger players, I hope he will take more of a leadership role as the season unfolds.

Things settled down the second week of practice as the guys started working harder and bearing down and practices went well until just before the start of the season when tempers flared and I had to talk with a few players again. While I’m confident the team will pull together once we start playing games, I decide to do something to alleviate conflict.

[PointGuard]

We have a team get-away weekend to build teamwork, develop leadership, and strengthen ties amongst team members. It’s run by a professor in the school’s sociology department. I believe he does this for us to fine-tune some ideas he’s incorporating into a new text book he’s working on. This kind of stuff really isn’t what I’m into, but by the end of the weekend, I have to admit that it was a big success. Our guys seem to be a closer knit group.

[PointGuard]

I’d really prefer not to redshirt anyone and let this group of players finish their time here as soon as possible so I can fill out the team with my own recruits. But I finally decide to redshirt two freshmen, SF Ammer Self and PF C. J. Galloway, since they won’t get much playing time this year. Neither player was happy about this, but by redshirting them, hopefully they’ll be stronger players next year, more familiar with our offensive and defensive sets, and ready to work their way into the rotation.