Interview by Jeff Mayfield LCC Wraps up 19-Win Season [MARCH 2, 2000] Six returning players did not try out for the team; that left 10 players to navigate the season. Injuries, colds and the flu made it tough to practice with less than two full units. Couple all that with a brutal schedule, and the stage was probably not set for a .500 season, much less a 19-win campaign. Coach Randy Kirk shook off most of the early obstacles and fused that with outstanding senior leadership to fashion a great year. |
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Q: During the pre-season you did not indicate to me that this team would get to something like 19 wins. How did you do it? A: From the first day of practice I was obviously concerned about our numbers. The first question I got was from senior Terry Goodwin from Streator. He asked, "since we have so few players, does that mean we get more meal money?" We only had 10 come out. Fortunately all 10 could play. I was discouraged back in September. I didn’t think we were going to have enough talent or enough size. Then, my attitude shifted as I watched us in November as the season began. I saw that we were going to be much more athletic, especially at the wings. We had Lincoln High graduate Gabe Rutledge coming back from an ACL injury; we picked up a nice player out of Danville, Adrian Davis. Mike Shepherd from Owasso, Mich.; Matt Clark from Evansville, Ind.; and Tom Gibson from Dee-Mack are all very athletic players at this level. Although we weren’t very big in the post, even after we added a Millikin transfer, Jonathan Woods out of Palmyra, our athleticism on the wing made up for some of that. I began to think then, that maybe we could be pretty good. Q: Was it the schedule, the senior leadership or the team’s chemistry that launched this season?
A: Primarily, our senior leadership was there in the form of work ethic. I give Chris Foster, of East Peoria and Tyson Graber of Montgomery, Ind., our co-captains, a lot of credit for that. They are neither one the most gifted athlete that we’ve had here, nor were they the most gifted athlete on this team, but they both brought a great work ethic. From day one, they set the tone of hard work that made us a better basketball team. The second thing that this team had going for it was that it might have been the most unselfish team I have ever had the privilege to coach. They were guys who were willing to sacrifice for the sake of the team. We didn’t have those little petty things that sometimes come up. Who’s taking what shots, or how many shots is someone getting during the games...we didn’t have to deal with those kind of things. I think the work ethic and the unselfishness took this team to a level that it probably could not have attained. Q: You guys had a great ride. What were some of the highlights? A: The first game of the year, isn’t a bad place to start. We stood on the court at Kentucky Christian College and watched their players receive their National Championship rings from the year before. They returned 11 out of 13 players from that championship team, including four starters. Stepping out on that floor and beating them by ten is not a bad way to start your season. Over the next month, we had wins over Philadelphia, who advanced to Nationals this week...over Multnomah, Ore., who was picked to win their regional. Another highlight, which also involved Kentucky, was winning our own tournament. At that time, they were ranked 2nd in the country. The night before, we had beaten Crown College of Minnesota and they were ranked eighth in the country...they also advanced to the National Tourney this week. Those are a few of the highlights that I’ll remember from this season. Q: Talk a little about your personnel. A: Although local product Gabe Rutledge was in his second year of school, he was only a freshman due to tearing his ACL early last year. We received a medical red-shirt for him. Gabe had some high points. He was the MVP of our tournament. He had 19 and 25 points in those two games. So, he had some of those types of games, even though he was struggling with his knee throughout the season. He also endured an ankle sprain that cost him two or three games and an Achilles problem that cost him some more time. So, Gabe battled the injury bug much of the year. I would say that in our last game, Gabe was our offensive leader once again, including hitting a dramatic 3-point bomb with :09 seconds left tying the game and giving us a chance for the win. Probably the player that most would see as our best player would be Matt Clark. Matt’s a 5’10" sophomore guard. The coaches voted him this week as the co-MVP of the Midwest Region. He averaged 16.5 points per game, shot 40 percent on 3's, 80 percent on free throws and close to 50 percent from the field. Matt also had 70 steals showing that he’s not just an offensive player. Adrian Davis is a really nice freshman. He played the post in high school and we moved him to the 3-spot in our system. He averaged 12 points a game, which isn’t bad for a freshman.
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Q: What does the future hold for LCC’s team? A: We’ll have six players off of this team back. The good news is that all six are very good players including Gabe, Clark, Davis, Gibson, Shepherd and Zach Below from Evansville, Ind.. The not-so-good news is that all six of those guys are perimeter players. We lose all four of our post players. We may slide Gabe to the 4-spot next year because offensively he can create a lot of trouble for people there, but by gift he is best at the 3-spot. We’ve got to go find three or four big kids, to be what we want to be. Who knows who we're going to get? Brook Brotzman, LCC’s former soccer coach is presently in the Dominican Republic, where he hopes to bring me Rafael Martinez. He’s 6’3" and weighs about 210. He currently plays in the super elite league in the Dominican. He’s already had conversations with schools like Georgetown, Ky., which is a NAIA power, and with the University of Louisville. We may get him here for this fall. Locally, we’re looking at Brett Williams down at Central A & M and Ryan Widenburner at St. Joe. Q: Randy, I believe that this was your fifth year as LCC’s head coach. You’ve told me about your team’s work ethic and it’s leadership, but you haven’t told me about the coaching adjustments that you made to be this successful. I felt you did your best coaching job, maybe ever, this season. Please respond to that. A: Well, I think you learn something every year. Every year brings it’s own set of challenges. What a coach does--what B.J. (McCullum) does at Lincoln College and what Neil (Alexander) does at Lincoln High School-- is that you take the cards you’ve been dealt and then you determine how you’re going to play that hand to maximize your opportunities. We were dealt athleticism on the wings, decent shooting on the perimeter. We were not as athletic in the pos, but we had kids who would work hard in the post. We tried to create opportunities where our athleticism would work to our advantage on the perimeter by pressuring the basketball, denying in the passing lanes and by doing those things maybe people couldn’t pass the ball into the post quite as much. We were only 6’5" and 6’3" in the paint often going up against 6’7" or 6’9" in the post. I thought that this particular team did a good job of handling the basketball as evidenced by a number of games where we had less than ten turnovers. We had two games where we had five or less. This team just did a good job of managing the ball. Since we weren’t very big and weren’t going to out-rebound very many people, we had to win the turnover battle. Q: Our online readers might not be familiar with the uniqueness of LCC or its sports program. Tell us what makes your basketball program so distinct. A: We can compete with most of the NCAA Division III teams in the state, athletically. Rutledge, Davis or Clark could have played for anybody in the SLIAC (a conference includes Greenville, Blackburn, MacMurray, Fontebonne and others). Those three could probably even make the team at Illinois Wesleyan. So, we do have some athletes that can play at that level. But the thing that makes Lincoln Christian College unique is that we place the emphasis on the spiritual, which they don’t get other places; and we don’t apologize for that. We believe that if you’re going to develop the whole person, then you need to develop the whole person. There are some programs that focus on just the physical. Sadly, some of them are not even concerned about the academics. There are many more programs that focus on the physical and the academics. But we believe that we want to create the "whole" man. So, we pay attention to their emotional growth as well as their mental, physical and spiritual growth. I believe that basketball serves as the greatest laboratory experience on our campus in terms of developing character. We approach the whole basketball context as a character building experience. We learn things like team play and sacrifice and accepting roles. We learn how to deal with adversity and success, how to persevere through tough circumstances and we try to put that all in a context, that’s going to carry on in their lives. We probably emphasize those things considerably more than most other programs.
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