Coach Fred Aura
When catching up on my email after our return from Virginia I opened an email and read through it. I was totally confused by what it said…at first. Then I noticed it was signed “Renee”. She was appreciative I guess because we’d scouted her cousin’s son (which we had although we were looking much more closely at a player on the opposing team…her relative was ok, but not for Division I basketball…maybe he could play for a Division 3 team, but no need to get into that with her). But there was nothing specifically about him or basketball or scouting in the way she wrote the email. Since I knew what she was grateful for, I understood that’s what it was about. I re-read her email, though. While it expressed she was pleased for what I had done for her, it was written in a way that could have been interpreted as sexual undertones and connotations. As I said earlier, she’s weird. I let our a few explicit epithets to myself and immediately deleted the email since I sure didn’t want anyone else seeing it and misconstruing what she was saying. I made a mental note to myself to stay as far away from her as possible and to try not to be at Eagles Soar events that she might attend. I’ll just send one of my assistants in my place to most of their events. Since we need to get back on a winning track, I focused hard on our upcoming game and tried to totally forget all about Renee McEntire and her strange ways.
Then James Pratt and Mike Williams arrived in my office. They’d gotten into a heated argument earlier in the day and had to be separated by other players. I decided to talk to them together and let them know we needed them pulling together. They both took it well and said they’d work harder. With Williams being so new to the team, I’m going to have to try to improve his relationship with his teammates.
Next to arrive was Rashon Thorn. As he’d done last season, he’d again been mouthing off again about not playing enough and my favoring Bobby Grannum over him. I tried the soft approach but he came back at me about even that. I warned him more sternly and he was combative. That ended up earning him a two-week suspension. So it won’t be a matter of him playing too little…it will be not playing at all. He’ll miss our next 4 games including our game against Duke.
This was turning out to be a pretty lousy day for me in the office.
Later than night I watched Notre Dame win on the road by a single point to drop us 1-1/2 games back. My bad day was continuing.