City of Basketball Love

Michael Bullock (@thebullp_n)
--

(Ed. Note: This story is part of our 2016-17 college season preview, six weeks of coverage that will span everything from Division I through Division III, junior college and more. To access our entire college of preseason content, check out our Season Preview Hub.)

~~~

Earlier this offseason, CoBL spoke with each of the Division I coaches in the area for a Q&A session, and now we’re expanding it to include the various Division II programs in the CoBL coverage region.

With the first full-time D-II and D-III practices beginning on Oct. 15, we’ll be using the next few weeks to sit down with the area’s D-II head coaches and see where they’re at as they prepare for the 2016-17 season.

In five seasons at northeast Philadelphia’s Holy Family University after a stint as an assistant coach at the University of Delware, Philly native and Roman Catholic High graduate R.C. Kehoe has accomplished plenty.

Such as:

* Fashioning a winning percentage of .673 (99-48) while winning nearly 100 games.

* Leading Holy Family to a 26-6 record last season, the most wins since the program began playing at the NCAA Division II level in 2003-04.

* Piloting the Tigers to a pair of Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference championship games two of the past three seasons, prevailing last season.

* Becoming the first CACC program to be awarded a No. 1 seed and play host to the NCAA Division II’s East Regional tournament.

Yet after guiding the Tigers throughout a remarkably special 2015-16 campaign, Kehoe said goodbye to a senior class numbering nine strong and featuring such players as Reggie Charles (16.7 ppg), Marvin Crawford (14.6 ppg), Isaiah Gans (10.5 ppg), Derrick Stewart (9.2 ppg), Eric Fleming (8.6 ppg) and Hunter Wysocki (7.9 ppg).

Another of those nine seniors, Turhan Griffin, has joined Kehoe’s coaching staff and will assist in the reloading process needed since only 6-6 senior Shane Neher and 6-2 soph Maurice Smith logged any minutes a season ago. Two others, 6-2 Traijon Greer and 6-4 Ryan Corcoran, spent the season practicing but redshirted.

So, welcome to a different era of Holy Family basketball that will showcase Kehoe and his staff overseeing the development of a large yet talented recruiting class that includes 6-6 junior Dyllon Hudson-Emory of Harrisburg Bishop McDevitt by way of St. Petersburg (Fla.) College and a number of freshmen — 6-6 Austin Chabot of Philly’s Archbishop Ryan, 6-5 Maliq Sanders of Eastern (N.J.) Regional, 6-3 John Rigsby of suburban Philly’s Archbishop Carroll, 6-8 Sean Griffin of Phil-Mont Christian, 6-3 Randy Bell of Timber Creek (N.J.) Regional and 6-4 Jamai Womack of Chichester.

Young, inexperienced roster aside, Kehoe is going full bore as he prepares for the official start of preseason practice on Oct. 15. He did, however, take a few moments to talk with City of Basketball Love about last season's successful run and the challenges awaiting as another one rapidly approaches.

Here are the (copy-edited) highlights of our conversation with Kehoe:

City of Basketball Love: Before we talk about this season, I’m sure you still think about last season and all the things your program accomplished. Thoughts about all the firsts in your program, etc., etc., etc., because it had to be a real satisfying season in many respects.

R.C. Kehoe: I had a lot of time this summer to reflect from where we had come and how quickly we had come in our five years with this program. To go back and recap last year as its own entity would be a little bit unfair, in my mind, to everyone who had a hand in what we created at Holy Family and the foundation we built. There’s not many programs, Division I, II or III, that lose nine seniors that had a class that big. To put in perspective what they accomplished: One, we had only one defection in four years, only one young man left the program. And we had guys who came into our program halfway through their college careers — some junior college transfers, some Division I transfers — and for our guys to open their arms to them and to embrace them and to ultimately become a family the way they did and still are, just this weekend they were all together, it was remarkable. Not only for myself, but for the other coaches and the administration on campus. The win record, the first team ever in CACC history to host an NCAA regional, all those things are great but the lasting impression I have is what relationships those guys created and the legacy they left behind for this new crop to follow.

CoBL: With all those things tucked in there, it had to be tough, obviously, to wrap things up last year with those nine guys.

RK: It definitely was. And you know, we had so many highs and so many really lows when I talk about the games we had won or the games we had given away with that group over four years. To get that group to the point where you are the best in the region and your peers reward you with the NCAA Tournament because they see what you have done and they reward your work. Honestly, that group got stabbed in the back a little bit over the years. They should have been in the NCAA Tournament two years in a row and we weren’t. Some of it had to do with us. Some of it had to do with us and some of it had to do with the flawed NCAA system at the Division II level. But what happened with that group is you saw it, and it was about mid-January after we had a tough loss up at [American International]. In mid-January we had a week where we had three games and you could just see it in their eyes when we talked about, ‘Look, we have a chance to do something that no other program in league history has done, but it has to be a day-by-day process. We have to win each day. If you do that, you will make history.’ And you could just see kind of a switch go off in their heads and they really put their foot on the gas and they never let up. Unfortunately, again, another first in NCAA history, an NE-10 (Northeast-10) champion is the eighth seed. We don’t get a lot of coverage in Division II, but that’s comical. We host the NCAA Tournament and we get the NE-10 champion as the eighth seed. They’re the ‘ACC’ of Division II and their champion is the eighth seed. We got a bad break in that regard, but we gave it everything we had. It just wasn’t our night. Rodney Sanders and the rest of the Southern New Hampshire crew, they were tremendous and we weren’t at our best. That’s the breaks in the NCAA Tournament.

CoBL: As I move into talking about this season, it’s certainly going to be another one of those day-by-day type things given that 116 minutes of college game experience — even though you have four guys who practiced every day last year with the group that just departed. Thoughts about that.

RK: That’s something that is not just a thought, but that is a cloud that has been walking with me since really the buzzer sounded against Southern New Hampshire. When you think about this — I guess it’s logistically the way it is, but we could have gotten more junior college guys and could have gotten some Division I transfers — but we put this group together because we thought it fit what we do best. We lost every meaningful point, every meaningful rebound, every meaningful assist, every meaningful minute. So we are going to go from the oldest team in the country to the youngest team in the country. With some of that comes excitement. I’m excited for our staff to put in the hours with this group on the court, in the weight room, in the conference room just trying to add to the foundation that was left behind by that group that graduated. We are long. We are athletic. But we also so far from good, sometimes we have to catch ourselves and realize that you don’t win any games in September and October.

CoBL: In your coaching career, even going way back, have you experienced anything quite like this, not that anybody does, and how do you try to conquer this challenge?

RK: To answer your first question, is no. Not at any level have I ever experienced this. Not as a player, not as an assistant coach and, obviously, not as a head coach. Here’s what I did. I went out and talked to two or three of the best junior college coaches in the country, because I racked my brain and I talked to all the people that I’ve ever been around. I’m fortunate to have my father [Tom] on my staff, who is an immeasurable asset to me and our program, and I got all of those guys’ input and nothing really clicked for me. I talked to two or three junior college coaches, two of them probably being the best in the country, and I talked to them about reloading and how you go about that. And the one thing that was consistent in both conversations was, ‘It’s never going to be as good as it seems, it’s never going to be as bad as it seems in Year 1. You have to find a consistency to get better in all three areas of the athlete’s lives. They have to get better on the court. They have to continue to get better as students. And, ultimately, you have to help this group become men and help them become responsible adults. If you can do those things, then having four years with them you’ll be able to see the steps come out from being diligent in those three areas.’

CoBL: That said, how many newcomers did you wind up bringing in?

RK: We have eight new additions to the roster. One of the eight is a junior college transfer from Harrisburg, Dyllon Hudson-Emory. … He’s a tremendous, tremendous kid. I’ve known him for a long time and I was glad we were able to get him. And then the rest of them are freshmen. The freshmen that we got, in no particular order, we have Austin Chabot from Archbishop Ryan [in Philadelphia]. We have Maliq Sanders from over at Eastern [Regional] in New Jersey. We have John Rigsby from Archbishop Carroll [in suburban Philadelphia]. We have Sean Griffin from Phil-Mont Christian Academy. We have Randy Bell from Timber Creek. Tra Greer returns, he was a redshirt last year. He and Ryan Corcoran redshirted last year and both will play integral parts. Tra Greer will most likely be our starting point guard. We have Jamai Womack from Chichester, who came on late. We have two other guys that are fighting for spots on the team.

CoBL: The fact that Dyllon [Hudson-Emory] already has played against some college-age people and won a championship last year in Florida, how critical at this juncture to get a guy who already has two years of experience?

RK: It was really critical. We would have liked to have gotten two more junior college guys, but academically we just couldn’t make it fit at Holy Family. Speaking specifically about Dyllon, I’ve never shied away from being a big fan of guys. If they have my back, I have their back. I’ll say this, I had a former boss who always used to like to say, ‘You’re never going to average more points in high school or junior college than you do at Division I or Division II.’ And I think it’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. Now that I sit here and I’ve had, in just five years as a head coach, I’ve had seven guys average more points in college than they did in high school. Dyllon wasn’t asked to do anything other than play defense, rebound and occasionally get a couple buckets down at St. Petersburg. We need Dyllon Hudson-Emory to be a man. It’s not going to be a secret. We’re not going to wait and they’re going to have film on him. Anybody that’s going to scout us early in the season, that has any sense, will understand that Dyllon Hudson-Emory is the only guy on their team that’s scored a college basket that means anything. I’m not going to shy away from it. I think Dyllon can handle that type of pressure and I think just over the first couple weeks of having our hands on him, he is what we thought he was and more. He’s much better than what his statistics were at St. Petersburg and if he can grasp the idea of not wanting to fit in with a bunch of freshmen, but wanting to lead a bunch of freshmen, we will be OK. Because I think he has the ability to lead.

CoBL: Some of these guys that you’re bringing in as freshmen have had a lot of success already and they come from winning, successful programs. How excited are you to add guys that have that experience in their pasts?

RK: The one thing that this class has, maybe moreso than any other class that I’ve been a part of as an assistant or a head coach, is we have a group of high school recruits that are coming from real basketball programs. Sometimes you get a kid from a random prep school or maybe he’s at a school where the program isn’t important, we have kids whose basketball programs at their high schools are important. And they come from guys who are really good at their craft, tremendous high school coaches. With that comes a little bit of an advanced learning curve. Maybe what we do is different to them — one being we play 2-3 zone, Syracuse’s 2-3 zone for 40 minutes a game, we don’t practice man-to-man, we don’t do anything that resembles man-to-man in practice — so their ability to learn and what they’ve been taught by these high school coaches has really advanced and accelerated their learning curve for us in just the first month. So, it means an awful lot to have young men in our program right now that were coached by really good basketball coaches and played at programs that are really important at their high schools.

CoBL: When you talk about the 2-3 zone, I can understand why you wanted to get length, right?

RK: In five years, we’ve never played a possession of man-to-man and we have been the No. 1 defensive team in the country twice and we’ve been in the top 10 two other times. It is our hat and we wear it with pride and we are fully committed to it. The young men that we recruit understand that that’s what we do, that’s our staple and if we’re good on that end of the floor like we have been we will give ourselves a chance to win almost every single game.

CoBL: It’s really going to get interesting here in two, two-and-a-half weeks, but since your entire playing rotation is wide open, you’ve got to be anxious to get in and coach and teach with so many questions. And, with that playing-time situation obviously being so unsettled, you’ve got to be excited about having really competitive practice sessions. Are you?

RK: No question — and it’s funny you bring that up because my dad, myself, Ryan Haigh who is basically a full-time assistant with me and is my right-hand man. We’ve also added Turhan Griffin, who was a three-year captain who just graduated, he is also going to be on the staff this year as an assistant coach. We just were talking about this. I love that group that just left. I absolutely love them. But, the practices and the competition inside the gym every day, at some point it just hit a wall. Because they were together, everybody knew their role, everybody was committed to the process of getting better, competing for championships and winning championships in the role that they had settled into. Is it disappointing to me? Is it something that I did a self-check and it was a negative, yes it was a negative. I was disappointed in myself and wanted to get better at that as a head coach, because I didn’t have anything. I tried to be creative, but at some point when you have a team that’s a two- and three-year team it’s just hard. It was more for us about skill development and keeping sharp with that group, whereas with this group every single day it’s visible the competition. The competition is visible. And the competitiveness is visible, so it’s refreshing. It’s rejuvenated myself. It’s rejuvenated the rest of the staff and it’s something that we look forward to. Outside of maybe Tra Greer, the competition is wide-open and who’s going to play is up to them. I tell every recruit that. I don’t decide playing time, they do. And they do.

CoBL: Keeping that in perspective, refreshing, too, would have to come from that you guys, collectively as a staff, are going to have to teach more than what you’ve had to do the past two seasons.

RK: No question. … I was just with my father [Tuesday] night after our team workout and that’s exactly what he said to me. He said, ‘It’s refreshing. We have to be careful not to hit the fast-forward button at all with this group.’ He just kinda said, ‘It’s got to be in slow motion with this group because there’s nothing that we can leave out there as far as teaching goes. We have to cover every hole on the road. Every hole that we come to or approach, we’ve got to teach and we’ve got to use every minute we can as a teaching point for us.’

CoBL: With all those questions and all those unknowns that you’re about to face here in a couple of weeks, four weeks isn’t a long time to get a group ready to open the season. How do you go about that? How do you get the machine cranked up and ready to go?

RK: We put in what we want to put in, as far as offensive strategies and game plans and then obviously we build the foundation of the zone as quickly as possible and we’ve taken advantage of the NCAA allowing us to have full team workouts for two hours a week. That has been very beneficial to us on the defensive end. I think in the coming weeks we have to accelerate our half-court offensive plan and ideas and what we want to get done on the offensive end of the floor. Again, that will be a day-by-day process, obviously picking up on Oct. 15. Right away, we have a scrimmage on Oct. 21, so we’re going to get into it pretty quickly. So, come Oct. 15, there’s going to be a lot of film sessions and certainly a lot of standing around trying to teach these guys. I don’t like to do that. I haven’t done that. But, I think it’s a necessity with such a young group.

CoBL: Just the fact that you’ve got not only a young group, but a group that’s still trying to figure each other out as well as grow accustomed to playing for you and your staff. So, that just adds to the degree of difficulty.

RK: With every great challenge, there’s a great reward at the end. So, we are not at all intimidated by the fact that we are young. We are who we are. We will do what we do as a program. We will do what we do as a staff. And we will maximize each one of these young men’s abilities and the chips will fall where they may — just as they have for five years. I remember specifically with Turhan Griffin, who’s now on our staff, I had so many people around this city tell me, ‘I don’t know if he’s good enough. I don’t know if he’s that. I don’t know if he’s this.’ Well, go check out his winning percentage. And that’s kind of where I am with this group. There’s some guys that may have been underrecruited, but we like them, they fit what we do and I think they’ll answer the challenges that we put forth.

CoBL: With the unknowns, the uncertainties and the reconfigured roster full of newcomers, what expectations do you have for this group in getting them to accomplish what you think they can accomplish?

RK: The only expectations I have for this group is to do what we’ve done consistently since I was hired at Holy Family — and that is win the day. Just keep getting better each day. Live in the moment. Live in the process. And, at the end, you will get the results that you want if you are true to the process.

CoBL: In five seasons there, you’ve already accomplished a lot. Your next win will be No. 100 at Holy Family. This whole experience has had to have been, and still is, quite satisfying for your personally. Am I right in suggesting that?

RK: I wouldn’t trade what I’m doing or where I’m at for anything. I’ve built an unbelievable relationship with the people at the university. I think it is a place that gives you the support that you need. It has been a wonderful five years. Obviously, I couldn’t have done this without the Ryan Haighs, the Adam Dickmans, my father Tom Kehoe and all the really good players. To take over a program that a lot of people said will never win and they can’t win, and to do what we have done is more than satisfying. But moving forward, what you did yesterday doesn’t really matter. It’s what you do going forward. So, that’s kind of the way I approach this season and look at what we’ve accomplished here. It’s great. It’s great for the university. It’s great for the walls in the gym. It’s great for the trophy case. Those things can’t help us win our first game this year, but they can certainly help us to continue to build the program, recruit good players and get good players to come to Holy Family. What’s done is done. It’s great, we’ve celebrated it, hopefully we celebrate it at the beginning of this season by bringing those guys back. For me, it is where I want to be. It’s been a great start to my head coaching career and I hope we can continue the success.

CoBL: With just a few weeks before practice officially begins, any final thoughts as you get ready for season No. 6?

RK: Day by day. That’s really the only thought that’s been consistent in my mind. It’s day by day and, if this group continues to work as diligently as they have and with the energy they have, we will be just fine. That’s how I feel and that’s where my mind is at this point. … I just want them to win the little battles. Whether it be getting an A on their first test. Whether it be making new friends. Or whether it be in the weight room, where that individual instruction is, ‘Win that drill. Win that drill.’ That’s what they’ve done. They’ve tried to be the best they can be in every area. Plus, they’ve tried to be better in every area today than they were yesterday. If we continue to do that, we’ll be OK.