What’s it like inside a timeout—and inside the most important timeout of the season—with new Salesianum basketball head coach Brendan Haley ’82? Not as action-‐packed as you might think.
Printed in Distinguished Gentleman, 2013You are 17 again and sweaty, wearing longer shorts than you ever have in your life, treading on an acrylic blue chicken on your way to talk with your math teacher. He hates numbers. High school is one hell of a place.
You are losing. He has thirty seconds. He looks to the assistants around him, then turns to you. Fifteen seconds.
“Be more physical,” he says. His eyes are fixed. His arms are steady. “More physical.”
Ten seconds.
And in the remaining time, Brendan Haley ’82 makes the same basic point. Use your bodies. Don’t give your guy a free pass to the CAA logo. You can repeat it over and over.
The team breaks out. There’s the chicken again under your Nikes. The scoreboard hasn’t changed, but you smile. Haley has that calming effect.
Brendan Haley developed his passion for basketball as a student at St. Joseph’s, watching Big Five rivalry games, well after he could have played at Sallies. He never donned a varsity uniform at 18th and Broom. Now, after many years as the Sals’ junior varsity coach and a short stint as head coach at Wilmington Charter, the protégé of longtime coach Mike Gallagher stands at the program’s helm.
“Mike was the one who really ignited this in me,” says Haley, who as a volunteer assistant started out eagerly learning from him. “I would have been content to be just a cheerleader, but he forced me to take responsibility and believe that I could do more.”
What amazes you and your teammates, though, is how master and pupil can share the same values but approach them from such disparate angles. While Gallagher’s fiery passion led the Sals to three state finals, your new coach’s personality is more Downton Abbey than Dick Vitale.
The school’s second accountant-turned-head-coach—baseball's Ted Godfrey is the other—Haley would catch March Madness games at airport bars during business trips before he switched to teaching algebra. But the stereotype doesn’t explain all of his trademark composure on the sideline.
“Something [St. Joseph’s coach] Phil Martelli once said made an impression on me,” says the former Hawk. “A coach is a teacher. The game is test day for the kids. You yell and prod and motivate as a teacher in the days leading up to the test, but on test day you allow them to show on their own what they’ve learned. That made sense to me.
“I think the kids feed off your demeanor,” Haley says. Especially during a timeout. “It’s not necessarily about knowledge, but commanding kids’ attention and understanding the age group. Sometimes I used to talk too long. Their attention faded.”
But one thought for each end of the floor, offense and defense, is plenty to give you during one timeout. “Even college kids, I think,” he says. “You’re doing them a disservice with information overload in a timeout.”
Much ballyhooed was Haley’s decision to switch from Salesianum Man to the 1-3-1 zone defense that rerouted the course of the state quarterfinal game against Newark. The News Journal noticed it. Even DE Preps, the incessantly acrid message boards, gushed over it.
Few are as staunch man-to-man advocates as this man. When Coach Haley changes to zone, you know it’s because the ship is sinking. Fast.
And it was. Newark’s point guard was slicing through every trap and dribbling through every crevice that others would have picked up their dribble at. “He was killing us,” says Haley. “Newark did a great job. Most teams set the ball screen with their big guy, but Brian [O’Neill, junior Sals center] usually blows that up. Newark was using a different guy and keeping Brian out of it.” Doing that, the Yellow Jackets extended their six-point halftime lead to 26-15 by mid-third quarter.
Assistant coach Brandon Baffone ’93, who had helped Gallagher for many years but joined the 2012-13 team mid-season, stepped forward. “Coach,” said the former Salesianum standout, “we’re not going to win this game playing man.”
“Desperation,” Haley says later. “And it was Baffone who first said it.” Everyone was contemplating it, but Haley needed to hear it in those grave terms. “That’s a risky move for an assistant to make, putting himself out on the line like that, especially if it doesn’t work out. He deserves a lot of credit.”
The idea was not simply the product of a good night—it was good luck as well. Spread-out Saturday scheduling meant Newark’s second-round game against St. Andrew’s took place six hours before Sallies’ matchup with Cape Henlopen. So the Sals’ coaches took their clipboards down Route 1 to neutral-‐site Smyrna. What they found, as the Jackets were dismantling their opponents and you were eating pre-game pasta, was a small weakness.
St. Andrew’s showed them the 1-3-1, and Newark didn’t handle it well. The Saints’ quick change wasn’t enough, but it brought them within five points at the final buzzer.
With that display in mind, Haley allocated some practice time to review the 1-3-1. How much? Ten minutes. That’s all.
You stand there clad in reversible practice attire as this math teacher allergic to numbers in his defenses—3-2, 2-3, box-and-one—discusses the zone. “A gimmick,” he calls it, and you laugh with the Donte and McCusker and the rest of your teammates. To him this is a pick-off play, an underhand serve. This guy? Zone? Is he kidding?
“Up to that point, we’d used it in one series all year,” Haley says. “One series. And it didn’t work. It really was for a worst-case scenario.”
Sallies’ half-court pressure stifled the Newark offense and took the ball out of their point guard’s hands. All the turnovers led to a 26-point fourth quarter and a 51-43 victory. It was your 19th this year, and it took you to the semifinals, where that Blue Hen at center court now stares back at you as menacingly as the Sanford five. There’s that pretty girl from Padua in the stands, fifth row—no, sixth—and on Friday—damn, that’s tomorrow—you’ve got an English test with Mrs. Sianni. Has she no mercy? This could be your last game at Sallies. And the students are waving huge printouts of Will Farrell’s and Mike Gallagher’s heads, Lord save us—
Because, really, Haley’s argument goes, “Who knows what you’re thinking about at 17?” Give ‘em something simple. Be physical. Back to the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment