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From sour grapes to Sweet 16

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Posted: Wednesday March 17, 1999 08:43 PM

When my basketball team is having rocky times or facing adversity, I've learned in my many years of coaching that there are likely some attitude problems undermining the spirit of the team. Perhaps there are some players with negative views of what the boss is doing. But unless I know who those people are, there's not much I can do.

With this team about three or four weeks ago, I found out through certain sources in our program that there were two or three people in our program who were backbiting and being negative about what our system was all about. And when you're winning 21 games a year and averaging 12 Big Ten wins a year for 19 years -- like we are here at Purdue -- those people happen to be very wrong.

My response is to try and go in and cut out that cancer or that bad attitude or that young man's immaturity -- whatever it might be -- and we did that in this case. I think it really helped our work progress in practice. The attitudes are now back to normal and we are working hard and we're enjoying each other's company.

Tough questions

We lost our toughness because we weren't mentally tough at first. We also weren't focused on the system and our intensity lacked somewhat. Then our ex-players were telling us that we weren't very good and that we weren't playing hard, and I thought it was great because it was constructive input. When you're open to criticism and use it in a positive way, you figure out that the first time you make a mistake it's an error in judgement -- but from then on it's a mistake.

We try to limit those mistakes and try to come up with something that's positive. We removed the negative ideas from our players' heads and we were able to make some progress because we had some very good attitude adjustments and people got back in the fold and were able to play hard, have toughness and enjoy what they were doing -- which is what it's all about. It's not at all about being negative.

Chalk talk

Had you joined us in our locker room when we were readying for our first two NCAA Tournament games against Texas and Miami, you would have noticed our strong intentions to match their physical play. And I think we did.

Texas is a very good team and won the Big 12 regular-season title this year. But when teams accomplish something that hard, they sometimes lose intensity, they might lose their concentration and they might not respect other people like they should. I'm not suggesting that happened in Texas' case, but we felt like because of our "hungriness" we had become the "hunters," and we were able to take care of business in maybe a more focused manner.

In that locker room we talked about what we needed to do to counter physical play, and I thought we did a good job of countering their inside attacks, especially with Texas. We took away the Longhorns' inside game pretty well in the first half, and then we did a good job of keeping our offense balanced. Our kids shot the ball pretty well, too, but not as good as we can. We made some big plays in a couple spurts, and we did a good job of shutting down their center Chris Mihm, their center at other times in the game and Gabe Muoneke, their forward. We also got after their guards with good pressure and we took them out of the game pretty much.

As far as Xs and Os, I thought our effort for 40 minutes was just a little bit better than theirs. And I think that happens sometimes because they had a great year and had a great comeback from a poor start this season. Meanwhile, we had a very good start then had a horrible Big Ten season -- by our standards -- and our kids came back and overcame that with great concentration in the Texas game.

In the Miami game, I thought we did a much better job of spurting our fast break, especially at the end of the first half. We had nine shutouts in a row as part of a 15-0 run and played more like we should do with transition offense. And then in the second half, we just hung in there with good defense and made our free throws and, even though we were horrible on the offensive boards, we did a pretty good job in other facets of the game. For example, I thought the Hurricanes shot the ball pretty quickly and that kind of took them out of the game, especially when they're not making them.

Bracing for Temple

Now we're getting ready for Temple and John Chaney, one of the guys who I consider to be one of the "good guys" in the game. He is one of the people that many people have the highest respect for, if they know anything about the game, that is. The Owls are going to be a very physical team and a great match-up team. They will make you run your offense with good execution, and if you don't hit some outside shots you're probably going to get beat.

But by the same token, you better come up with some answers on defense in order to stop them because the Owls are playing very physical right now and are at the top of their game. They're a little bit like us for the season because they had a little bit of an up-and-down time during the year. But now they're not, and are playing very well. I hope we can attack their match-up and be efficient with that because it's going to be a great test for us and a great challenge and an interesting game.

The opportunity is great for both of us to move on into the Elite Eight if we can.

To the e-mailbag

Great job in Boston! Attitude is everything and you've done a great job in getting the team turned around. What challenges will Temple's zone give you and how do you prepare for the Owls?
Roger Laidig, Mishawaka, Ind.

I think more important than that is "how do they prepare for Purdue?" We spent a lot of time preparing for Temple's zone in '91 when we played the Owls, and we ended up not worrying enough about our own execution on defense, out-of-bounds plays and transition offense. We worried about Temple too much and probably took ourselves out of the game mentally. So, we hope not to do that this year even though we highly respect Temple. We know the Owls are going to be very physical, are a well-coached team by probably a Hall of Fame coach, and will be a team that will be very tough to beat. If we don't play possession-by-possession and hard-nosed basketball we will not move on to the next opportunity.

Gene, you're my favorite personality in the great game of college basketball. It's a pleasure to be able to ask you a question! I have noticed that the team plays scared a lot of the time. You don't seem to have any warrior types, especially at the guard position, although I love the improvement in Tony Mayfield's play. Do you have any good prospects at the point guard position for the next year?
Gary Jasdzewski, Carbondale, Ill.

I think that's improved lately because Alan Eldridge certainly took Miami's guards out of the game and took the great scorer from Texas out of the game. Tony Mayfield's play has really picked up, too, with more assists and good defensive pressure. I just try to sell them on being positive, not thinking any negative thoughts and learning from negative experiences. As far as prospects for the point guard position next year, we hope to have some there either through junior college or some players we think will be good for us in the future from here in the state.

Last year after the Stanford loss in the NCAA Tournament you spoke about the team having to get in the weight room and on the practice floor in the summer to get better. Some of your recent comments indicate that that didn't happen. How much control does a coach have over summer workouts? Is the coach prohibited from making any requirements as to staying on campus? Is it entirely up to the players to organize pickup games and weight lifting sessions?
Ted Cybularz, St. Louis

You have to have great leadership from your captains to make an off-season program work. You can't make people work out in the summer if they don't want to. You can't help them have pride in lifting weights and working on their game. What you have to have, instead, are kids who understand what it takes to improve without some coach looking over their shoulders and being a policeman. I certainly don't want to be a policeman. I'm not a security officer, I'm a basketball coach. But even more than that, I'm a professor of basketball who is trying to teach the kids to get better at what they do. What we hope happens this year is that our players understand how important it is: to hit the weight room on their own without us making them do that; to become better at 3-point shooting, perhaps shoot 300 3-pointers a day in the summer every day; to shoot 100 free throws every day; and to play a lot of one-on-one ball so we're working on basic ball-handling techniques and taking people to the hoop. And if that happens, we'll probably get better and that's going to take a lot of work ethic and good attitude and commitment, and a good attitude is something that we probably lacked this year in the middle of the Big Ten season. But hopefully we've developed some better understanding of each other and some better communication. It's been an up-and-down year, but a very enjoyable one in some ways because we learned some things about our players that we needed to know to make progress, not only for the end of this season, but also for the start of next season.

From the season's first tip-off to its final buzzer, Purdue coach Gene Keady files a weekly column with CNNSI.com. In his 19th year as head coach of the Boilermakers, Keady provides an exclusive peek into the highlights, lowlights and sidelights of a full college basketball season. Follow one of the nation's top coaches within one of the nation's top conferences this season "From Midnight to March."

 

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