Caught your attention didn’t I? I doubt that there are very few true UD basketball followers that do not have an opinion on this topic. It seems that collegiate sports place a great deal of pressure on the coach to perform — probably even more than the players they recruit. It is not unusual for a coach universally loved by his players and his school to be looking for a new job because he or she did not win enough games. We don’t have to look too far from home to find a coach that we once pursued that’s currently out of a job. Mike Deane won 100 games in a five-year span, was invited to two NCAA tournaments and two NITs, yet was unwanted by Marquette. Our own Ron Jirsa was able to parlay his well-documented recruiting skills into a highly visible job at Georgia, yet two years later he too was unemployed and willing to take an assistant’s job just to get back into coaching. The profession has turned into a quick-fix-or-out mentality.

There is a five-step plan that every coach falls into when he is hired. He may or may not start off at number 1 on the list, but they all eventually face the same issue if they are part of the top 100 basketball schools in the country:

1. Get the team to respectability.
2. Get the team into the NCAA.
3. Get the team into the NCAA every year.
4. Get the team into the final four.
5. Win a national championship

If you don’t begin to move down the list fairly quickly, you can find yourself on the hot seat and eventually out the door. That is unless you work at the University of Dayton.

At the University of Dayton, we’re accustomed to being the only game in town. It has been that way for 50 years and does not look to change any time in the near future. Wright State may throw a winning season at the locals on a semi-regular basis, but they cannot take over the city. We will have minor league baseball next year but by its very nature it will never be in the national spotlight. UD football, professional indoor football, professional hockey, professional indoor soccer, and everything else the city has entertained over the last several years has had a momentary grip on the community but nothing like the attention UD basketball continues to possess. UD fans are a loyal group.

We have the best facilities, we continue to show up in five digit numbers even when we are an embarrassment, we always root for the home team, and live and die with every win and loss. We love our players and our ex-players. We even love our coaches, even when they never complete the list above. But I must ask the question, “When is enough, enough?” Since 1985 we have been to the NCAA tournament exactly one time. Since then Dayton has posted 183 wins and 227 losses — hardly acceptable.

At the time of his departure, Don Donoher had been the head coach of the Dayton Flyers for 25 years. He guided us to the NCAA tournament eight times and the NIT seven times. He finished runner-up to unbeatable UCLA in 1967 and won the NIT in 1968. We could look forward to a tournament trip almost every year. Then things began to happen; we were not winning as much and the trips to the tournaments had all but stopped. In his last 15 years, we went to the NCAA tournament exactly twice. In the spring of 1986, Donoher recruited quite possibly the second best class of freshmen in his 25 years of coaching. With the addition of Negele Knight to this group, great things were expected. It appeared that we were going to be back where we belonged — in the tournament. During the last three years of his tenure however, the Flyers only won 43% of their games. Tom Frericks faced the toughest decision he would ever have to make as Athletic Director of the University of Dayton — he was going to have to fire Mickey Donoher. It appeared that the game had passed Donoher by and as the sole money maker for all of UD sports, habitual losing was not acceptable.

The decision was made to bring in new blood to revive the program and Jim O’Brien was quickly hired. O’Brien exploded onto the scene in his first season, becoming the anti-Donoher and letting the Flyers run and gun at will. It appeared to work as the NCAA came calling and UD lost on a tip-in at the buzzer to eventual Final Four participant Arkansas. The following season, O’Brien made a stop in Columbus to speak to alumnae and I remember asking him if he was going to be around long enough to be our third straight coach to win 350 games. He stated that you never know what might happen but he certainly enjoyed his stay to that point. I was worried that a big name school would steal him away in a few years as we rode his brilliance into several NCAA tournament appearances. But O’Brien quickly showed that he couldn’t recruit the type of player needed to make his game plan work. He was one dimensional in his coaching scheme and could not adjust to a half-court attack. As wins and attendance dwindled, he too, was fired. Oliver Purnell was chosen to replace O’Brien and take us to a place that we only had faint memories of — the Top 20.

Purnell was not dealt as many cards as other hired coaches however. He quickly found that the cupboard was bare. Except for freshman Ryan Perryman, the remainder of the Flyers were not capable of taking the team to the upper echelon of college basketball. Other blows were on the horizon too. The new conference affiliation that was going to allow us to improve our recruiting was short-lived and we were out on our own after two years with the Great Midwest Conference. And the death of Chris Daniels was one of the most shocking and crushing blows the program and those in it could be dealt. After an exciting 1997-1998 season that saw UD playing in the post season for the first time since 1990, anticipation was high for the new season.

Allegations of fights with other students and teammates, missed curfews, a late transfer, and season-ending injuries highlighted a season of disarray and begged the question of who was in control. Shortly after the season mercifully ended, a new and potentially damaging discovery was made: the father of the highest-rated recruit of the Purnell years received a signifncant loan by a trustee of the University. Through no fault of the coaching staff, fears of NCAA probation, loss of scholarships and the loss of Brooks Hall plagued the athletic department throughout the offseason.

I cannot imagine anyone associated with the athletic department that is pleased with our progress on the court. Oliver Purnell would be the first to state that he did not intend to be 11-17 in year five of his tenure — by now we all expected a winner. Certainly UD expected a winner or they would not have awarded Purnell a ten year contract and charge varying amounts for seat licenses. It now costs me $100 for tickets alone to take my family of four to a game against IUPUI and sit behind one of the baskets. We have been patient, but the next nine months will give us all a much better indication as to who our coach will be in 2000-2001.

Coach Purnell and his entire staff are an extremely hard working group of individuals. They are constantly working at making the program better. They are always eager to talk to Joe Fan and help us gain better insight on the innermost workings of the program. As Joe Fan, I appreciate everything that they have done and will do in the future but I have to be honest in saying that I am tired of losing. I am tired of driving nearly 200 miles round trip to walk away disappointed. I once was able to console myself with each mounting loss with the knowledge that we ran a clean program with kids that never got in trouble. That is no longer the case.
The next nine months are extremely important for two reasons. First, the program cannot withstand another losing season. The last 13 seasons have given us only two quality turnouts. A program can only stay down for so long without losing its past, no matter how positive. The players we recruit today were three years-old when Donoher had his last winning season and seven when O’Brien had his 20-win season. We don’t need to win 20 games but we do need to win more than we lose.

More importantly, there are six scholarships that must be filled to map our course for the future. Step back and realize that we could turn over almost half of the 13 scholarship players in one year. We’ve come up nearly empty each of the last three years. A Tony Stanley here and a Brooks Hall there is not enough. This is a year where Dayton needs a number of recruits that will make an immediate impact. Purnell has failed in his quest for several big men since Mark Ashman arrived. Keith Waleskowski was recruited with the goal of redshirting him in 1999-00. Because of recruiting failures last year we not only have one scholarship unused, but three once you add the vacancies of Nucleus Smith and Andy Metzler. As a result, there is a good chance Keith will see action before he is ready. For three years, we have been looking for someone to take over the center spot so Ashman could play his natural power forward position and it hasn’t happened. We no longer can wait until next year — it has to happen with this recruiting class. There are certainly other needs including point guard, but the entire class needs to be filled with quality players without the temptation of awarding scholarships just to have practice players.

It is an important year for Dayton men’s basketball and the future of Oliver Purnell — the man hired to lead us through the steps that all coaches must face. If he doesn’t get it done this year, how much longer will the administration wait? With some luck, Purnell will answer all of the whispers with success both on the court and in the recruiting battleground.