Toole's Bench: Lessons Learned in Year One ...

By Paul Meyer 
www.rmucolonials.com
Oct. 20, 2011 

Meyer on Morris Link

Moon Township, Pa. - When Andrew Toole began his first season as the Robert Morris University head men's basketball coach last year, he was, at age 30, the youngest head coach in Division I basketball.

 

Suffice to say, he aged a bit during that first season.

"You're constantly trying to problem-solve,'' Toole said. "Your brain just never shuts down.''

For sure, Toole last season had plenty to think about. And mull. And ponder. And assess. And then re-assess. There was some good stuff, and some not-so-good stuff.

Let's review:

The Colonials opened the season in spectacular style, stifling Saint Peter's, 55-30, in the opener. The Peacocks' point total was an RMU record for points allowed. The Colonials established another program record by limiting Saint Peter's to an astonishingly low six field goals.

The Colonials' performance was uplifting for Toole, who had succeeded the wildly successful Mike Rice. Rice drove RMU to three consecutive 20-win seasons while Toole served as his assistant coach and then associate head coach.

Rice had galvanized the Colonials into suffocating defenders, and it appeared Toole's Colonials hadn't skipped a beat in the opener.

"Especially being a defensive, hard-nosed, tough-playing team like we are, I don't know that you could have scripted it better,'' Toole said. "Saint Peter's was a really good team. They went to the NCAA Tournament (last season). That gave us a lot of hope. It gave me credibility.

"It gave me the opportunity to say to the freshmen, 'OK. If you follow the formula, if you do what you're supposed to do, this is the result. For the last eight weeks, I have been killing you guys and you haven't seen what I see. You don't see the final puzzle.'

"And then to have all of a sudden in our first game that kind of defensive effort, it's like, 'OK. This is who we can be. This is why we do it. This is why you work so hard. This is why you run, because now when you really need it, you have it.'''

Three days later - or, really, less than three days later - the Colonials had that 8 a.m. tipoff at Kent State. They played well in the first half and led, 35-23, at the half but shot poorly in the second half and wound up losing, 62-59.

Still, the chance to play on ESPN and acquitting themselves reasonably well did a lot for the Colonials.

"As an overall experience, I was completely happy with it,'' Toole said. "I was really happy with our effort in that game. It was a game we let get away. We lost the game as opposed to them winning the game.''

A few days later, the Colonials beat Duquesne at the Charles L. Sewall Center and were off to a dandy 2-1 start.

However, only hours after that encouraging victory over the Dukes, Toole encountered his first major disciplinary decision as a head coach. He had to suspend star guard Karon Abraham for a violation of team rules.

"It was really difficult,'' Toole said. "We just had a great win against Duquesne. There was a great feeling about our team and the program at the time. It was a great team win where everybody contributed. So you're thinking really great thoughts, and then all of a sudden you have something like that hit you and now it just knocks everything down. On a personal level it's hard because I was the one who recruited Karon, so it was like, 'How could you do this to our program? Of all the things you could have done, this is what you choose?'

"It's probably in some ways similar to the way you feel as a parent at times. You're so disappointed. You're so angry. You're so frustrated because you think you've done a better job. You question (whether) you've done (enough) in terms of telling them that this wasn't a good idea. Did we not talk enough about making socially responsible decisions?''

Abraham's suspension lasted four games, a stretch that included non-conference games at Pitt and at Cleveland State and then RMU's first two Northeast Conference games at Long Island and at St. Francis (N.Y.).

"From a team aspect, (the suspension) really hurt because it almost like we froze in time,'' Toole said. "We couldn't develop. We could improve, but you're missing a big piece of what you do. And so for two weeks we're almost like in a holding pattern because when he comes back everything's going to get re-shuffled again.''

During those two weeks, the Colonials also lost junior forward Lawrence Bridges to a concussion and then senior guard Gary Wallace to a finger injury. Even so, they almost pulled off the "impossible'' - starting the NEC season with back-to-back road wins.

They won by a point at Long Island, Dec. 2, in what would prove to be a preview of the NEC Tournament championship game three months later. They also had a late lead at St. Francis (N.Y.) two nights later only to lose by two points in the closing seconds.

"With 30 seconds to go in the game,'' Toole said, "I'm thinking, 'I can't believe we pulled this off with seven guys without a junior or a senior.' We're playing with all freshmen and sophomores and we're about to go 2-0 on the road in our league and all of a sudden that falls apart.''

Abraham returned for the game at West Virginia Dec. 7, which proved a real downer. The Colonials lost, 82-49, and Abraham, who didn't start but played 27 minutes, was 0 for 5 from the field and finished with two points.

"No one's themselves because everyone's worried about what Karon's going to do,'' Toole recalled. "Karon's pressing because he's trying to play really well and he's not ready to play really well. He didn't prepare himself to come back and play really well. (Coron Williams) is taking a backseat to (Abraham) because K-Ron's back. Everything just got shuffled. Everything just got tossed all around again.

"And now you're a month into your season and you're still trying to figure stuff out and re-establish everyone's roles when you thought you had them in place early on. You were excited after the Saint Peter's game. You were excited after the Kent State game even though you lost. There were a lot of good things in that game and it was a great learning experience for our young guys.

"Then you beat Duquesne at home, so you think you have everything going in order. Then you wait two weeks where there's just chaos and you're in a holding pattern - and then it's another two weeks to kind of figure out how to get everybody back on the same page again. You lose a month of your season.''

The Colonials picked it up a bit in early January, winning four of their first five games, but Toole sensed things weren't right.

"We hadn't fully bought into all the details of winning yet,'' he said. "We won, but we weren't playing well. That was a frustrating point in the year for me because we weren't buying into all the things we needed to do to win. We weren't playing to our potential. I thought, 'Are we doing the things that are going to help us win when we really need it,' and we weren't doing it at that time.''

That showed over the next four games, three of which the Colonials lost. The final two of those were losses at Quinnipiac and at Sacred Heart, which left RMU 5-5 in the NEC.

Toole knew he had to do something.

"That's finally when we said, 'Enough's enough,''' Toole said.

After the flight back to campus after the crummy Connecticut weekend, Toole closed the locker room to his players. He made them wear whatever they could scrounge together for practice. Made them eat their meals in the laundry room. Wouldn't permit them to wear anything that would make anybody appear to be a Division I basketball player.

"We try to treat them really well, and they weren't appreciating that or living up to their end of the bargain,'' Toole said.

The Colonials responded by blowing out Bryant Feb. 3, which wasn't a big surprise. But they reverted to their January malaise two nights later. They collapsed in the second half and lost at home to Central Connecticut State, 80-58.

Toole showed his players the tape of the final 10 minutes of the CCSU game, hammering at them about mistakes with the help of his assistant coaches.

"We finally were able to prove our case (about) the things that we'd seen during the year where guys weren't all playing together, where guys were taking plays off, where guys were not doing everything they could to win,'' Toole said.

One of the more important changes Toole made was to remove redshirt sophomore Russell Johnson from the starting lineup.

"Russell was one of the main offenders of kind of just coasting,'' Toole said. "To be completely honest with you, after the Central game, I kind of said to myself, 'Let's re-evaluate. If you're not doing it the way that we need it to be done, then you're not playing.'''

That was difficult for Toole because Abraham, Johnson and Velton Jones had spent their entire college careers with Toole as either an assistant or head coach.

"I think sometimes because of my relationship with Karon or Russell or Velton or some of the guys who had been here for a long time maybe I trusted in them sometimes a little bit too much,'' Toole said. "I believed that they would do the right thing because it was the right thing.''

And that didn't always happen.

Toole re-evaluated his player rotations. It occurred to him that perhaps he kept playing certain players based on their potential.

"Because of what (they) can give us,'' Toole said. "But what (have they) given us? Let's figure out who's giving us something and give them minutes. And so all of a sudden you have to do it our way. There's something to be said for when you get to the point where you stop worrying about (stuff such as ) who's supposed to play and who's talented and who did it last year. Well, it's not last year. Start producing every day.''

Finally, the Colonials coalesced. They reeled off an eight-game winning streak that not even a season-ending foot injury sustained by Abraham Feb. 19 could stop.

"When Karon went down, Velton took the reins of the team,'' Toole said. "Velton said, 'OK, we're going this way.' And guys joined in. We had a core of guys who were on the same page, who were willing to share the ball, who were going to play as hard as they could. And that's when we started to turn it around because everyone knew that when things got really bad Velton was the guy who stepped up, and everyone followed his lead.''

That eight-game winning streak carried the Colonials to the NEC Tournament championship game at Long Island. They lost by three points in overtime, finishing 18-14 in Toole's first season as a head coach.

All in all, that seemed pretty good.

"There might be some people who were really happy and excited about being 18-14 in their first year,'' Toole said. "I'm thinking it's (weak) that we didn't win 20 games. Being in the championship game solidified our season in some aspects, but I have a high expectation level of myself. And that translates to a high level expectation level for my assistants. I have a high expectation level for my team. That's what drives me to try to get better.''

A listener asked Toole to give himself a grade for his first season as a head coach.

"That's hard,'' Toole said. "I think there were things that I did well. I think there were things I could have done better. I'd like to think as a first-year coach with a team that had no real experienced players and to get to where we got you had to have done a pretty decent job and you had to manage it pretty well.

"But I still think there were things that I maybe should have seen earlier or figured out earlier than I did. So maybe like a C-plus. Maybe a B. That's about average. It's not like it's a home run. I have high expectations for my team. I want to win a championship every year. That's what we work for.''

Toole paused, again thinking back over his first season as a head coach.

"The biggest thing was how personal you take everything,'' he said. "I thought I was a pretty good assistant. I thought I was invested. I thought I was completely involved. I thought I did everything I could to help the program and help Mike and help our players.

"But when you're ultimately responsible for everything, it is incredible how personally you take it. Like when you're standing out there and your team's not doing anything you want them to do or you expect them to do, you're thinking, 'This is me. This is what I convinced them to do. This is what they think is a good idea. Someone thinks that I'm asking them to do these things.' And it's infuriating.

"There's obviously more anxiety. You're thinking about everything you said in practice. You're thinking about everything you said in a meeting. You're thinking, 'Did they understand this? Did I convey this right? Did I get my message across? How are we going to solve the problem of injuries or depth issues or size issues?'

"You're just trying to make sure that every second you get with your guys (counts). There's only so much they can take in and so (you're trying to) make sure that each time we get together or each function we have that it's maximized. In two hours, you have to make really good decisions about what you need to get better on. And what you want to work on. That's the challenge - constantly trying to figure out better ways to teach or better ways for them to understand.''

Toole begins his second season Nov. 11 when Rider visits the Sewall Center.

His goals this season include winning a championship, of course. And perhaps, when this second season is over, being able to give himself an A.