By Brian McCormick
Basketball Times
Perspective. It changes everything. A first-time head coach, filled with optimism, views his new program as an opportunity, a foundation to build upon - even if it won only one game versus a Division I opponent (2-27 overall) in the previous season. When Randy Bennett assumed command at St. Mary's two years ago, he immediately injected a positive attitude and work ethic into the floundering program.
In those two seasons, Bennett and staff resurrected a program ranked 316th of 320 Division I teams in the RPI rankings. After an initial 9-20 season, the Gaels finished 15-15 in 2002-03, a 13-win improvement that ties Louisville and is one win behind Weber State for the greatest two-year turn-around. The RPI improvement, from 316 to 138, leads the nation over the same span.
"The toughest part of taking over a program is changing the mental aspect, changing the way the players think," Bennett said. "We needed to be patient, set realistic goals and then evaluate where we are and if we are doing our best to reach those goals."
St. Mary's will be looking to reach one of their goals next week at the 2003 BP Top of the World Classic. The eighth annual tournament will be Thursday through Sunday, November 20-23, at the Carlson Center. Besides St. Mary's and host Alaska Fairbanks, the field includes: Virginia Military Institute, the University of Texas-San Antonio, Idaho State, Rice University, Binghamton and Washington State University.
Before each season, players make individual and team goals. Each player makes his three to four individual goals and then meets with the staff to discuss how the player is going to achieve them. As a team, the players decide on the team goals and the coaches leave those alone. However, the staff meets with the team and gets specific about how they will meet each goal, starting in the off-season and moving through the season.
Bennett and staff believe strongly in the team, but they also work to help each individual meet his individual goals. That even included Bennett's time spent this summer with departing player Ross Benson, who hopes to achieve his goal of playing professionally overseas.
In his first season, Bennett, well-regarded for his defensive work while an assistant under Lorenzo Romar at Pepperdine and Saint Louis, strove to change the work ethic of the players, especially on the defensive end.
"We wanted to establish from the beginning that we would be tough to get baskets against," said Bennett, whose Gaels have led the West Coast Conference in scoring defense in each of his two seasons.
"It takes longer to be a great offensive team, so the first year we concentrated on defense and making sure that was solid. It was going to be tough to be really good offensively because we lacked the firepower."
The players made it a goal to lead the league in defense, and the first change was in transition defense, where the Gaels realized they could be competitive simply by eliminating easy transition lay-ups by their opponents. The defensive emphasis started in pre-season individual workouts, where one-third of the three individual workouts per week was dedicated to defense. That's almost unheard of in college basketball. However, when practices began officially, the Gaels were ready defensively, moving to Bennett's team defensive system.
The Gaels immediately acquired toughness and a defensive presence by signing local junior college players Anthony Woodards and Samuel Saint-Jean in Bennett's initial recruiting class.
"The first year, we just wanted guys who wanted to be at St. Mary's," Bennett said. "We wanted guys who were excited about playing here. Now, everyone (on our roster) wants to be here."
Woodards was the 2003 WCC Defensive Player of the Year, and Saint-Jean was a first-team all-WCC selection. The rest of the initial recruiting class included three freshman guards: Adam Caporn from the Australian Institute of Sport, local product Scott O'Hara and Phoenix native Ryan Nelson.
Bennett stressed getting better every day in practice, building the player's confidence, despite the lack of results initially. "We were careful with our goals, things like getting the most out of every practice," Bennett said.
At the team's first practice, Bennett showed the team his practice notes. He said that if the staff didn't have the same detail in their plan at the end of the season, they were not doing their job.
This work ethic eventually paid dividends. A tough 41-35 loss to Utah and a 5-8 record during the initial non-conference schedule proved the Gaels were competitive, if not successful. The Gaels opened league play at 0-7, but rather than crumbling, St. Mary's upset San Diego, ending a 28-game conference losing streak. During the early stretch of losses, Bennett remained positive, choosing to focus on the good in each game, the team's competitiveness and improvement. They readjusted their goals, focusing on the remainder of the season, not the past, finishing the year going 3-4 and upsetting Bay Area nemesis Santa Clara in the WCC tournament's first round.
"Everything starts with having good players, who work hard and want to be part of a team," Bennett said.
The first season's relative success set the stage for a more surprising success in the spring signing period, as the staff landed a pair of tremendous big men to complement the guard's signed in the initial class. St. Mary's beat nationally known programs to land Daniel Kickert, a 6-foot-10 forward from Australia, and it beat Pacific10 Conference schools for 6-9 junior college transfer Frederic Adjiwanou.
In each case, St. Mary's players influenced the decisions. Caporn and Kickert were former teammates at the Australian Institute of Sport, as were Frenchmen Saint-Jean and Adjiwanou, who both played at Foothill Community College.
With a veteran, defensive-minded backcourt and a talented but inexperienced frontcourt, the Gaels demonstrated their improvement throughout the 2002-03 season. After beating Sam Houston State by 20, St. Mary's lost at the buzzer to Fresno State in the Bulldogs' tournament. They swept Brown and Yale and again played Utah close. However, the turning point in the season, and maybe the program, was a come-from-behind victory against heavily favored San Francisco to open the WCC schedule. Down 11 in the second-half at USF, Saint-Jean led the Gael comeback that righted the ship and snapped a long losing streak to USF.
Bennett, who played for his father at Mesa (Ariz.) Community College, attacked the team's attitude, building a sense of team.
"We want to be unselfish, the team greater than the individual, and it takes the right guys to buy into that," Bennett said. "The players have done a great job buying into what we want to do. There was zero resistance."
The 2002-03 season ended on national television, a remarkable achievement considering the depths of the program when Bennett took over. The WCC tournament semifinal loss to Gonzaga, and more importantly, the upset win against Pepperdine in the second round, propelled St. Mary's to second in the WCC pre-season coaches' poll.
"We've got so many new guys who haven't played together, new players in the backcourt, with E.J. Rowland (a JC transfer from Hartnell College), Daniel Waddy (a freshman from Arizona) and Paul Marigney back from a knee injury. But, if we fight through it, and stay together, we have the pieces to be a pretty good team."
With Kickert, Adjiwanou, Blake Sholberg (a 7-foot redshirt freshman) and incoming freshman 7-footer Reda Rhalimi of Morocco, the Gaels are one of the few West Coast teams with the size and skill to match Gonzaga's frontline, though they must replace the toughness and leadership of the departed Woodard and Saint-Jean.
"The league is up this year," Bennett said. "Everyone is improved. We've taken a number of positive steps, but you can always regress quickly. We need to keep improving, continue to be unselfish."
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