by Bob Hurley
Whenever you play a team a second time, the team that loses the first game is at an advantage. At least, that’s how it almost always seems to go—especially at the high school level. The losing coach has a lot of information he can now use, a lot of ways to motivate his team, whereas the winning coach has to find a way to manage his team’s expectations and keep them from taking their opponents for granted.
Basically, we had everything to play for, everything to lose—never a good scenario heading into a big game. We hadn’t really been pressured all season, other than that one game against Solebury, but even that game went our way by a big score. Our margin of victory had been in the double digits every single game that season, and most times we won by twenty, thirty, or more. So we weren’t used to playing under pressure. Of course, I had no reason to think my kids wouldn’t respond—but that still left me with every reason to worry.
In the end, we played well enough to win—but just well enough to win, almost the same way we’d ended that first perfect season back in 1974. We came out on top by a score of 62–55, but we could never separate ourselves from Elizabeth and put the game away. Whatever we threw at them, they seemed to have an answer for it. Also, Bobby’s hamstring was bothering him. He usually set the tempo for us, and he was only at 60 percent or so, which left the rest of our guys running the floor at 60 percent or so. We were sluggish, out of rhythm. It never felt to me like we were in danger of losing the game, but at the same time I never got the feeling that it was in the bag either. We didn’t play all that well. We looked tired. It had been a long season. A lot of travel, a lot of hard work. And so, for most of those thirty-two minutes, it felt like the game could have gone either way. A couple bad possessions for us, and we could have handed the game to Elizabeth. We were just trying to hold on, to get to the finish line, and at some point in the fourth quarter I liked our chances enough to finally pull Bobby from the game. He wasn’t doing the things he was usually able to do; he was really hurting. Still, he was an important presence, extremely confident with the ball, so I’d kept him out there as long as I could, as long as I felt we needed him, and when I finally sent Danny to the scorer’s table to sub in for his older brother, the boys had a nice exchange at midcourt. I hadn’t planned it just this way, but it worked out, like something out of a movie. Bobby crossed to Danny and said, “It’s on you now.”
And that was that—but in that one brief moment, my two sons on their ways in and out of the game, Bobby passing the St. Anthony torch to Danny, I caught a glimpse of what this season might have been. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Not that the season turned out anything less than spectacular. But deep down I caught myself realizing it could have been all that and more. It was one for the record books, that’s for sure, but it could have been one for the family scrapbook as well.
Here again, the way we ended this championship season left me thinking of the importance we’ve attached to winning. It’s never about the outcome of just one game. It’s an attitude, an approach. Remember, we’d been the number-one team in the country the previous year and then stumbled with a regular-season loss at home to Ferris High School. At the end of the season, that one loss cost us the top spot in the national rankings—which went to a team we’d already beaten head to head. So of course our guys felt like they’d left something on the table, like there was unfinished business, like their accomplishments had not been fully recognized, and it worked out that this year’s team was largely the same as last year’s team.
My returning players all felt like they had a little something extra to prove, and that had become the theme of this season—to reclaim that top spot. And for a while it looked like they were about to do just that. We’d played in two national tournaments during the season and beat the second-ranked team in the country each time out. Then we ran the table the rest of the way. That was our stated goal, going into the season. With this group, it wasn’t just about winning the state championship. It wasn’t just about winning this first ever Tournament of Champions. It was about winning it all … and then some. Doesn’t always happen that you set the bar so high for a team, for a season, but you have to consider that this was a group that included three NBA first-round draft choices and a fourth player who’d go on to become the Big East Defensive Player of the Year. The talent was abundant on this team, so I don’t think we set any unrealistic goals for ourselves. I don’t think we set the bar too high. This was just our mind-set, heading into the season. It wasn’t just about winning. It was about winning big, and sending a message that we would not be denied, and this final against Elizabeth was the only game that was even close. Every other game had been decided early. And here, in the end, we could only squeak out this championship game—against a very good team, mind you, but a team we should have dominated. A team we’d beaten pretty handily earlier in the season.
I think we all would have liked to have won this game going away, but sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce the way you think it might—the way you plan for it to bounce, all season long. Sometimes you run out of gas, just a little shy of the finish line, and it’s all you can do to hang on and hope like crazy you make it the rest of the way.
A shot from my “Mr. Hurley” days. Here I am huddled with my assistant coach Jerry Dailey and members of our 1973–74 team at a home game at Dickinson High School. Get a load of my sideburns and jet black hair.
David Rivers—probably the most exciting, most charismatic player to ever play for St. Anthony.
Taro Yamasaki, Getty Images
Rodrick Rhodes—such a talented athlete, and one of the only players to ever start for me as a freshman.
Divided loyalties. Duke vs. Seton Hall, Bobby vs. Danny, 1992 NCAA regional final in Philadelphia—a traumatic moment in our family.
Bobby, playing his way back into the Sacramento Kings’s rotation following his car accident.
Andy Hayt, NBA Collection, Getty Images
Rashon Burno, the best on-the-ball defender in school history.
Tyshawn Taylor going up for a shot in his senior year, showing the potential that would take him all the way to the NBA.
Myles Mack, who joined us for his senior year and helped to lead St. Anthony to a #1 national ranking.
Kyle Anderson, the most complete player I’ve ever coached, hitting the court for the big game against #1 St. Pat’s.
On the bench with assistant coaches Ben Gamble and Jason Hassan.
Sister Alan—for decades, the heart and soul of St. Anthony, she helped to steer the school and our athletic program to great success.
Danny and family.
Bobby and family.
Melissa and family, with a proud Pa and Mimi.
With the entire Hurley clan, to celebrate my induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, Springfield, Massachusetts, 2010.
Posing for pictures in our new Hall of Fame jackets with other 2010 inductees. It was a crowded ceremony that year, because in addition to the individuals being honored, the Hall made room for members of the 1960 and 1992 Olympic teams.
With my beautiful wife, Chris, at the Hall of Fame dinner.
HARD WORK
Saturday, February 18, 2012
What a week.
First, we’ve had to get through three tough games—on Monday, at home, against a very mature team of postgrads from the Each One Teach One Academy in East Orange; on Wednesday, at Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, against Thomas Jefferson, one of the top teams in the metropolitan area, who’ll go on to play for the city championship at Madison Square Garden; and finally, on Thursday, at Bishop Eustace, all the way down near Camden.
We’ve gone from hardly playing at all over a stretch of a couple weeks to playing three games in just four days, leading up to one of the biggest games of the season for us—on Saturday, against Long Island Lutheran.
Feels to me like leaving a sports car in the garage all winter, then rolling it out to the driveway, expecting it to start.
We win the first two
games, but it ends up costing us, because Tim Coleman goes down with a season-ending knee injury against Jefferson. Tim, a six-four junior, was slotted in at small forward. He’s been playing well—especially in practice, where he’s the only one of our second-team guys who can challenge Jerome Frink and give him a run. We don’t know the extent of Tim’s injury just yet, but we know he’s out for at least the next while, which means we have to play Bishop Eustace shorthanded. They’ve already won twenty games, a magic number for a high school team. You get to twenty wins, you’re doing something right, and here Bishop Eustace has the luxury of hosting us at the tail end of a grueling midweek schedule, with one of our bigs on the shelf, so they have a bit of an edge. Our guys are tired, dragging, but Jerome has a big game for us, filling up some of the spaces Tim Coleman might have been, scoring sixteen points to lead us to another double-digit victory.
The real drama, though, comes the next day, a Friday, when it’s brought to my attention that a group from our team has been involved in an incident that will result in the expulsion of one player from the team and the suspension of three others. I want to be careful in describing the incident, because there were no criminal charges filed, but I think it’s fair to say that all four players showed monumentally poor judgment. Basically, all four of them were idiots.
Yeah, they’re just kids, and sometimes kids do stupid things, but when you play for St. Anthony, the idea is that you’re not like other kids; you’re supposed to stay out of stupid situations. I couldn’t be more clear about this, with the contract I ask each player to sign. We hold our players to the highest standards—and we expect them to pay the price for their transgressions. If they mess up, they let their team down, they let their school down, they let their family down.
They let themselves down.
Here’s what happened. We had a team meal scheduled at a nice restaurant in Jersey City—the Light Horse Tavern, on Washington, where the owner, Bill Gray, takes good care of us—which had become our routine on home game days. At St. Anthony, we depend mightily on the kindness of the community to help knit us together as a team, and here it had been a kind of godsend to have a place where we could gather as a group and get our heads around whatever we were working on as a team. Our players know these team meals are important, a big part of what we do. More than that, they know they’ll get a good meal, which is more than a lot of them get at home.
And yet four of my guys had something better to do. Jimmy Hall, Tariq Carey, Josh Brown, and Kyle Anderson skipped out on the team meal and went off to make trouble. The kind of trouble you’re not supposed to make when you wear the maroon and gold of the St. Anthony Friars. The kind of trouble you’re not supposed to make if you expect to be treated like a responsible, respectful member of the community. The kind of trouble you’re especially not supposed to get involved in or be anywhere near when you’re expected at a team event.
Kyle Anderson should have known better. This is a kid who has the basketball world in the palm of his hand. He’s headed off to UCLA in the fall. He’s widely considered to be one of the top five high school players in the country. He’s got the physical gifts and the raw talent to play the game at the highest level. And yet he still allowed himself to go against his better judgment, to put himself where he wasn’t supposed to be—until the very last moment, when he finally realized his teammates were up to no good, so he stepped away. Not all the way back to the Light Horse, which was where he should have been, but at least he knew to put some distance between himself and his buddies who were up to no good.
Tariq Carey should have known better. He came to us as a transfer, hoping to get a couple longer looks from college coaches. The kid can play. He doesn’t always make the best decisions on the court, but he can certainly play—and if he doesn’t screw things up, he’ll land a full scholarship at one of the better local colleges. He’ll get a shot at a good education. At some point, he too realized it was probably a good idea to step away from his buddies.
Josh Brown should have known better. He’s already committed to Temple, as a junior. He’s lifted his game dramatically since last season, when he was mostly a bench player for us. Made himself into one of the best perimeter defenders in the area, with the kind of quickness and instincts you can’t teach. He’s got the next five years of his life all mapped out—one more with me, and four more down in Philadelphia with Temple coach Fran Dunphy—but he was willing to risk all of that for a little mischief with his pals.
And finally, Jimmy Hall should have known better. He’s headed to Hofstra, where head coach Mo Cassara thinks he’ll be worth the hassle—and with this kid, there’s been a whole lot of hassle. I’m still hoping Mo is right on this, because when Jimmy wants it, when he’s focused, he can be a factor on the floor. He’s got good size, good presence. But off the court, he can’t get out of his own way. He’s been suspended from school for academic reasons. He’s been suspended from my team for disciplinary reasons. He’s a senior, a ringleader, so the other kids seem to want to listen to him and follow his lead—and here he was apparently able to convince three of my guys to go off with him to kick up some dust, until one by one they all realized they were better off being someplace else.
Before Jimmy could do anything too, too stupid, a security guard came by. He recognized Jimmy as one of my players and called one of my assistant coaches. That’s how it sometimes goes in Jersey City, which for a good-size city is a lot like a small town. Our players are well known, and here the guard must have thought he was helping us out. Well, he was and he wasn’t. The guard could have called the cops, which is how I would have handled it. But instead, he called one of my coaches, so it fell to us to deal with these kids internally.
There was nothing to think about as far as I was concerned. I huddled briefly with Ben Gamble to look at our options—but, really, there was only one option. Jimmy Hall would be kicked off the team. The other three would be suspended for our next game.
End of story.
But of course, there’s a little more to the story. We still have a basketball team to consider, right? We’re still undefeated on the season, still one of the top-ranked teams in the country, still looking to defend our state and Tournament of Champion titles—only now we’re looking to do so without most of our starting lineup.
And we’ve still got this next game, against a top Long Island Lutheran team. We’ve already run our practice and prepared for this opponent, so we’re up against it. Not a whole lot we can do, on the fly, so I get to the gym early to watch the JV game, and it’s like I’m on a shopping spree. I see kids I like, kids who can maybe help us, I give them a uniform. I tell the JV coach to sit these kids in the second half so they’ll be eligible to play for us.
When our guys start arriving, I lay it out for them. I don’t waste my energy on Kyle, Tariq, or Josh. I tell them not to bother getting dressed. Tell them to leave us alone, that today is for the team, for everyone who buys into what we’re doing. My focus is on the game we now have to play, not on the nonsense that happens away from the gym, so I look right through these kids. They’re three of our best players—heck, Kyle is one of the top high school players in the country—but they’re of no use to me just now, so I turn my attention to the rest of the group.
I huddle with my assistant coaches, come up with a new game plan. I decide to start Tarin Smith, a sophomore guard; Kody Jenkins, a six-five junior swingman; and Kentrell Brooks, a six-eight junior who’ll start to see more time for us now that Tim is out. They’ll join starters Jerome Frink and Hallice Cooke. Edon Molic, a senior guard from Brooklyn, becomes our first guy off the bench. Shaquille McFarland and Cheddi Mosely, two of the JV players I’ve tapped, will get some time off the bench.
Everybody’s role is changing, so what I want to do with the kids who are usually substitutes and who are now going to start, and with the kids who are deeper on the bench but are now going to be key reserves, is sit them down and go over in very defined terms exactly what we thin
k we can do with this change in personnel. We take some things out of our game plan that no longer fit and put in some other things that now make sense.
A good example for this game is Kody Jenkins—a junior guard who’s been stuck playing behind a very, very good player. We’ve been on this kid all year, reminding him that he’s playing against Kyle Anderson every day in practice, telling him what a tough assignment that is, and how it’s preparing him for the role he’ll have for us as a senior. So before this game, I pull him aside and tell him this is his shot. I say, “Listen, you’re not Kyle. We don’t expect you to be Kyle. We just want you to be the best Kody Jenkins you can be. We want you to be our poor man’s Kyle Anderson.”
He’s heard that phrase before, of course. We’ve drummed it into him, which is what happens when you play behind one of the top high school basketball players in the country. You’re always being compared to the star player, even though there’s no comparison. Even though you can still be a great player by any other measure. To his great credit, Kody doesn’t hear this as a negative, and it’s not meant that way. Not at all. Kody sees Kyle dominate players every game, and he’s been going up against him every day in practice, so he knows what Kyle means to our team. He knows all the hype and publicity that seem to follow Kyle around. At the same time, Kody also knows what he himself is capable of, so this is an opportunity for him to strut his stuff a little bit. To emerge from Kyle’s shadow.
