JUCO Coaching Report
Feb. 27, 2003
By Tony Jimenez
Basketball Times
While juco coaches around the country wear a lot of hats while toiling near anonymity in mostly non-descript towns, none have more important duties than Newton Chelette.
Chelette is the coach at Antelope Valley in Lancaster, Calif., (his team was 27-6 as of late February after having been ranked No. 2 in the state in all of January) the president of the California Community College Basketball Coaches Association (which has 102 basketball-playing members) and an official in the NCAA Division I ranks (more specifically the Big West Conference, where he will have worked 15 games by season's end).
"How do I do it? I work with good people at my job and I have great assistant coaches and great players," said Chelette. "I have good people all around me."
How busy is he?
In January's 31 days, Chelette had games or officated 24 of the 26 nights (excluding Sundays and New Year's Day).
Chelette obviously knows the game; he is all-time winningest coach at Antelope Valley, whose most noted past player is J.R. Rider.
Tip-Ins
Former juco coaches Dana Altman and Nolan Richardson have seen
their major college coaching careers go in markedly opposite directions of
late.
Altman - who played at Southeast, Fairbury, Neb., juco, and then coached there and at Moberly, Mo. - is in his ninth season at Creighton, where he has built a consistent winner, including fielding one of the hottest collegiate teams in the nation this season.
He had a 123-24 record in four seasons at Southeast and Moberly, including a 94-18 record in a three-year run at Moberly. Two of his teams - at SE, Nebraska in 1982-83 and at Moberly in 1984-85 - earned third place in the NJCAA tournament.
"What a great job Dana has done," said Jerry Mullen, a juco talent scout based in Olathe, Kan. "He's made a really good coach out of himself. Everyone I talk to has a tremendous respect for him and the job that he has done."
Altman's forte has been getting no-name high school players into Omaha, in addition to always finding one or two juco players who help push his teams from above average to super.
Larry House of Colby, Kan. juco, a starter, could have gone elsewhere and been a big fish in a little pond, but Altman sold him on being a part of a nationally-ranked team at Creighton.
Richardson, whose Western Texas went 37-0 record en route to a national juco championship in 1980, now has a racial discrimination lawsuit in the mill against Arkansas for, he alleges, firing him unjustly a year ago.
He is the only coach in the country to have won championships at the national juco tournament, at the NIT (at Tulsa) and at the NCAA tournament (at Arkansas).
Time will tell what will happen in the Richardson case...
When Steve and Kelly Green were growing up, there was plenty of basketball talk around the supper table. Like just about all of the time.
It was a given, since their father Cletus Green was the coach at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M.
Cletus recently came out of retirment to coach the women's team at Crowder, Mo., this season and Steve and Kelly head the men's programs at South Plains and Arizona Western, respectively.
Steve, 49, had his team at 26-2 - and at No. 6 in the final NJCAA regular season poll - in his third season at South Plains, while Kelly, 40, had Arizona Western at 21-8 in his sixth season at Arizona Western as of late February.
"I piddled around and spent all of my time with basketball and so it seemed a natural progression to be a coach," said Steve.
"It was pretty much sports, basketball in particular at our house," said Kelly. "I grew up in the gym and was either playing or going to games all the time."...
While the Greens have been around for some time, a couple of new kids on the block - Scott Millin, 26, of Santa Fe, Fla., and Brette Tanner, 27, of Fort Scott, Kan. - have turned in exemplary coaching jobs and have bright futures as the season winds down on the 2002-03 campaign.
McMillin's team was 25-5 in regular season play and 8-2 while winning the six-team Mid-Florida Conference championship in his second season at Santa Fe after going 11-19 and 1-9, respectively, last year.
"Ours was a story of the whole being better than the sum of its parts," said McMillin, whose team yielded 61 points per game. "We are not the most talented team, but we havekids who have bought into what we were doing."
Tanner, 27, was a deceiving 13-15 overall in southeast Kansas in his third season at the helm.
From Aug. 31 - when projected starter Rodney Stone died in a one-car auto accident in Fort Scott, to Feb. 19, when 6-9 Robert Zuk, a wicked rebounder, fractured his ankle and was lost for the season - bad news was Tanner's companion for six months at Fort Scott; he lost player after player to injuries, suspensions or off-the-court problems.
His starting lineup was much less talented that the team he should have had at hand.
The fact Tanner saw his team win so much when, he said, it looked in the pre-season as if the Greyhounds could win 18-20 games showed his perseverance in the constant face of adversity.
"It's not a season I would wish on anyone," said Tanner. "My president told me I had more bad things happen since I've been here than some coaches have in 20 years."
What made McMillin and Tanner's efforts more shining was the fact McMillin had nine freshmen and Tanner had eight freshmen on their respective 11-player rosters...
The best three coaching jobs on the national juco circuit, according to Mullen, have been turned in by Brian Ostermann of Colby, Kan., Steve Eck of Redlands, Okla. and Joe O'Brien of Southeastern, Burlington, Iowa.
Shockingly, Colby has beaten a pair nationally-acclaimed schools in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference's Western Division. The Trojans defeated No. 4 (once at No. 1) nationally-ranked Barton County in one of two games and won over No. 12 Seward County twice in two games.
Southeastern, which won the NJCAA tournament championship in 2000, was 29-1 - won 23 games in a row before suffering its only loss. to Vincennes, Ind., 95-91.
"I remember that score well," said O'Brien, whose team gives up only 63 points per game. "We gave up 95 points....95 points."...
Speaking of O'Brien, not only does he know the x's and o's of the game and do well at meshing together consistent winning teams together, but he has made a name for himself in moving his assistants across or up the coaching ladder, be it to the NBA, an NCAA Division I school or a juco head coaching position.
Among former O'Brien aides: Steve Swanson (Brighton, England), Mike Score (Eastern Washington), Mike Vandegarde (Philadelphia 76ers), Jim Elgas (Kansas State) and Mike Riley (Illinois Valley juco)...
The annual NJCAA tournament is March 18-22 at the Hutchinson, Kan., Sports Arena and coaches Gene Bess of Three Rivers, Mo. and Dan Sparks of Vincennes, Ind., have a chance to add to their all-time best most tournament appearances; they and the late Allen Bradfield of Vincennes have a dozen appearances each...the coaches with the most national championships are Ronnie Arrow, then of San Jacinto, Texas and now of Texas-Corpus Christi, and Bradfield, with three each...Bess also has the most coaching wins with a, 34-12, record during his run...
Twenty-six years ago, Dave Holstein became an assistant coach at Kankakee, Ill., and today he is still going strong.
For the next 16 years he was an assistant coach to legendary Denny Lehnus, a NJCAA Hall of Famer; ten years ago he became the head coach and in late 2002 he earned his 200th win. As of late February he had a amassed a 214-106 record in the sleepy town of 30,000 located 60 miles south of Chicago.
"I found a place I liked and I stayed," said Holstein, 50. "It's my own small world and in my own small way I'm trying to do what I can for young people. I feel great physically and I'll keep at it as long as I can."...
And what of his 200th win? "It's just a sign of longevity," he said. "I don't think of things like that until someone else brings it up."...
When No. 1 seeded Fresno City (33-1) and No. 32 seeded Alemeda (12-18) hook up on March 1 in the California state tournament in Fresno, it'll pit coach Jason Wahlberg and his son Jason of Fresno City against Coach Myron Jordan Sr. and Myron Jordan Jr. of Alameda...
Santa Ana, Calif., coach Ray Rodriguez claimed his 100th career coaching victory when his team defeated the College of the Desert, 99-75, earlier this season. Rodriguez, in his sixth year as the school, was an assistant coach for the Dons for seven years - including the 1990-91 campaign when Santa Ana won the state championship - before moving into the top spot...
The 19 coaches in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference know their stuff.
Five months ago in a pre-season poll they picked Barton County and Seward County to win the Western Division title and Coffeyville and Cowley County to finish one-two in the Eastern Division.
Going into the final weekend of regular season games, Barton County and Seward County were in first and second place, respectively, and Coffeyville and Cowley County were tied for first.
