E-mail Story
Print Friendly
Send E-mail
Reprint story
Friday, February 13, 2009
Flanagan's Results Quite Remarkable
By Rick Wright
Of the Journal
Memo to Don Flanagan, who on Wednesday won his 300th game as UNM's women's basketball coach: Congratulations.
What took you so long?
I'm kidding, of course. Then again, I'm not.
Let me explain:
Flanagan's accomplishments, without qualification, are remarkable. Inheriting a team that had won a total of 14 games the four seasons before his arrival, he has built a regional power.
When Flanagan took over in 1995, UNM women's basketball had nine (9) season ticket holders. Now, the Lobos are traditional top-10 NCAA attendance dwellers and the envy of their Mountain West Conference rivals.
Flanagan and his staff run a class program. Player-behavior problems have been few and mild. Pending release of UNM athletics' fall 2008 grade-point averages, women's basketball has maintained a GPA of 3.0 or better for 15 consecutive semesters.
How could things possibly be better?
Well ... they have been better.
Flanagan's program reached a peak during a stretch that began late in the 2002-03 season and extended through 2003-04 and '04-05. That span produced a sterling record of 60-15 overall, 30-5 in the Mountain West, and three MWC tournament championships.
In March 2003, UNM made its first and so far only trip to the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16. It was a short trip, considering the Lobos were playing on their home floor. Still, their second-round victory over 13th-ranked Mississippi State was a benchmark yet to be equaled.
In '03-04 and '04-05, the Lobos twice tied Utah for the regular-season conference title, twice entered the league tournament as the top seed and twice beat the Utes in the final.
It was heady stuff, suggesting even better things were ahead.
Since then?
While the roof has hardly fallen in, the ceiling has stayed right where it was.
Since 2004-05, Flanagan's teams have won two more Mountain West tournament titles and have made three more NCAA appearances. But the overall numbers — 83-38, 37-21 in MWC play — constitute a step back. An NCAA Tournament run to the Elite Eight seems further away and not closer than it did four years ago.
That's easy to write now, after three consecutive losses (prior to Wednesday's rout of lowly Air Force) dropped the current Lobos out of the national rankings and out of NCAA Tournament bracket projections. And I'm not foolish enough to write off this team as the one that snaps Flanagan's streak of NCAA appearances, which now stands at seven.
But what's happening, and what will it take to get this program unstuck? There's no obvious flaw.
A coaching change? Not just no, but heck no, and don't be ridiculous. For what he's already accomplished, and for the coaching and teaching expertise he still brings to the game on a daily and nightly basis at age 65, Flanagan should be made coach for life — if that's what he wants.
Better recruiting? Sure, though the difference in that department between 2005 and 2009 can be summed up in two words: Dionne Marsh. This isn't Connecticut or Tennessee.
Better late-game strategy? I sometimes wonder at Flanagan's reluctance to use timeouts at critical times. Yet, I can think of another fairly successful coach — a guy named Phil Jackson — who tends to keep timeouts in his pocket.
Stop being so negative about UNM's most consistently successful athletic program of the 21st century? I'm just saying that, 14 years after Flanagan took the reins of a broken-down nag of a program and turned it into a winner, challenges and goals remain.
If not, what's the point?
You also can send comments via our comment form
|
|
