AJC > Sports > Tech > Blog > Archives > 2007 > December > 27 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USHewitt’s deep thoughts on coaching, McHenry
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you didn’t read the story in Thursday’s AJC about Anthony McHenry trying to become a basketball coach, I’ll summarize: Paul Hewitt couldn’t be happier.
Hewitt is a deep thinker. That’s no secret. He does not dabble in thoughts; he dives in and surrounds himself with concepts. That’s part of the reason, I guess, that he’s typically so strongly set in his opinions. They run through him like blood rather than over him like water.
He’s been thinking about McHenry as a coach since, oh, Anthony’s sophomore season at Tech, about six years ago. Not for the pursuit of victory does Hewitt think McHenry is a solid candidate for the job. He’s of the opinion that McHenry “gets it,” not to mention that he has a personality that looks like a match for recruiting.
All of Hewitt’s better teams have “gotten it.” The Final Four team “got it.” But when I asked if that team was closer than others he’s had, Paul said it was a close team, but not necessarily his closest. He wanted to make it clear that teams are not close because they win; they win because they’re close.
McHenry said he’s learned the most so far this season about trying to create team chemistry. So Anthony is on the way to “getting” this, too.
“That’s what I think the people who cover our game don’t get or understand,” Hewitt said. “I think we all realize that winning is what keeps you in the job. But if that’s the only thing you’re getting out of it, it’s a real shallow existence.
“I get so tired of reading in the paper that they went to the Final Four or whatever. That thing is long over with. If you stopped 10 people in the street and asked them who was in the Final Four in 2004, they wouldn’t know. They might know Connecticut won.
“That is constantly being thrown up as a benchmark. That really means nothing. Every year is a different year, a different season. What you’re trying to get out of it is on the way to winning, you hope that these guys understand the value of hard work, and they’re getting their education, and they’re building the kind of camaraderie that they can fall back on 10 years from now.”
Hewitt has multiple former Tech players in the coaching pipeline. I may not list all of them here because we did not talk about all of them.
But Jon Babul is assisting former Tech assistant Dean Keener at James Madison. Clarence Moore, whose daughter Ava was born recently, is helping with a high school team in Louisville. Darryl LaBarrie is assisting at East Carolina. Some resist Hewitt’s suggestion. “I thought Marvin Lewis would be a good coach, but he wants nothing to do with it,” Hewitt said. “Willie Reese hooked him up with an interview, he’s a CPA [in Atlanta], married, doing really well. I thought he’d be a great coach. He was like, ‘Coach, no way. I’m not touching it.’ He’s going to be a star in whatever he chooses to do.”
Hewitt also said, ” I’m trying like hell right now to get one of our former players hired by Tech. I’m not going to tell you who. There’s an open job in our administration. He missed one practice in four years, was a Dean’s List guy.”
As for championships, or big victories, etc., “You stash it away, and every once in a while you look at it. The things that are constant are walking in the office and seeing that kid, and saying I know that kid is going to be a great coach one day and he’s pursuing it based on my advice.”
So, does it seem like Paul’s pleased with McHenry’s decision to pursue coaching?
There wasn’t room for this in the story, but I think some of it is interesting so I decided to blog around it.
Matt
Comments
By RAMBLE ON!
December 27, 2007 11:40 AM | Link to this
Yea, but Hewitt can’t coach.
He is right 2004 doesn’t mean anything since GT’s best since then has been bubble and one-and-done teams.
Mario West gets more playing time in the NBA then he did for Hewitt
By JacketAndCoke
December 27, 2007 12:07 PM | Link to this
I hope McHenry doesn’t pick up CPH bad game management habits. He is the worst coach in the county at using TO’s and subs. DRad…might be time to put your stamp on the bball program as well.
By Pat
December 27, 2007 12:11 PM | Link to this
hewitt is a great coach and a better man—-leave this site dog trash
By Pat
December 27, 2007 12:13 PM | Link to this
j and c——i am a jacket and worked at coke for 13 years—-cool name
By yellowblood
December 27, 2007 12:59 PM | Link to this
Paul is a deep thinker. Putting his thought into practical action is his problem. He needs to relax. Even at Tickle Piles he seems to be uptight.
By ben
December 27, 2007 1:02 PM | Link to this
I’m not sure that Hewitt thinks the past few years failures have anything to do with him.
By GT
December 27, 2007 2:14 PM | Link to this
The problem with coaching in the ACC is either you are a national champion or you can’t coach. I look at the quality of players coming through this program, last year had two first round draft choices, and this year there is talent. Somebody must think this guy can coach or why are they coming here? You can’t leave out a final four, actually a final two. Then let’s look at the person. He has fire in the belly. He is still young, and he has character. That’s not the fake kind of character that impresses ESPN as long as he is winning but the real stuff that is not trying to impress anybody just trying to do the right thing. He beat a Carolina team last year that ate his lunch in Chapel Hill. He beat a Duke team that on its worse year has better talent than Tech on its best, but because of a whining coach that convinces the press he is undermanned with three McDonald All Americans instead of his usual five and some on the bench, no one noticed.
By yellowblood
December 27, 2007 2:26 PM | Link to this
Most of you think I’m a UGA fan, but I am actually in 5th grade. I have told the same joke now for 6 months, but I still think it’s funny.
By GTLoyal
December 27, 2007 2:50 PM | Link to this
Nice article. I enjoyed seeing behind the wins and losses. CPH is a class act.
By RAMBLE ON!
December 27, 2007 2:51 PM | Link to this
GT so your saying Hewitt is better than Coach K? …I hope not. I guess you’re very proud of that close loss to Kansas too. I was very impressed with that well coached last play of the game. You know, the one we called timeout to set up.
By fred
December 27, 2007 2:51 PM | Link to this
“Nice man, intelligent, a real GQ, insightful, fiery”….I never saw those characteristics as measures of JOB PERFORMANCE.
Question: knowing what you know today, and if you “owned” the GT “franchise”…..would you hire CPH to “get the job done”?
NO.
By tb
December 27, 2007 3:43 PM | Link to this
Ramble On, Hewitt didn’t call a time out to set up that last dumb play that we had hardly practiced. Remember, Hewitt had alread wasted his time out with about 4 minutes left as usual. Kansas called the time out and unfortunately gave Hewitt a chance to call the play or we might have won.
By RAMBLE ON!
December 27, 2007 4:35 PM | Link to this
tb my bad.
By addicted
December 27, 2007 6:07 PM | Link to this
Yes CPH isnt doing as great as we would like. However, you cannot underestimate his losing Crittenton. Young was expected, but no one thought Crittenton would leave us that early. Also, unlike CCG, CPH plays in the premier conference in his sport. The ACC falls behind several conferences in FB, but top to bottom is easily the best in BB. He has done moderately well most seasons, and excelled in one. Its quite an achievement considering where we were languishing before he came here. We need to give him time to pull in a true PG for back to back seasons at the very least before there is even any discussion of firing. Our team would be a LOT different if we had JC running the offense, instead of having on a inexperienced (Causey) or injured (Miller) player for PG.
By Spellcheck
December 27, 2007 7:03 PM | Link to this
How about checking the spelling of names Matt? For instance, Darryl LaBarrie…
By Braves Fan 79
December 27, 2007 10:24 PM | Link to this
If we could just get a good point guard to stay more than 1 or 2 years wed be ok!
By GM
December 27, 2007 11:07 PM | Link to this
This is the kind of talk from a coach who is not winning that much.
As for the Final 4: it was a special group of players that “got it”, not so much that Hewitt coached them to get it (hindsight of course).
Three players from last years team are in the NBA this year, 2 were 1st round picks, and the other not even a starter (usually). It’s looking more and more like Hewitt is a great man, but a poor coach.
By GT80
December 28, 2007 10:59 AM | Link to this
All you guys bashing Hewitt, did you see the game last night? Have you been watching at all this season and do you understand the dynamics of this team. Let me spell it out for you. We lost 3 NBA players from last season,, I belive more than any other team in the ACC. We have an undersized, average transfer senior PG and a freshman PG. We have two players who have seen significant playing time in the last 2 years, Smith and Morrow. Other than them, we are playing a bunch of guys who have not had a full season of playing together. Basketball is a team sport that requires the experience of knowing what your teammates can and cannot do.
Last night I saw a team that was much better at running an offense, guys knowing where they should be and actually getting good shots off set plays. That takes practice and experience to achieve. I also saw a team that was playing better team defense, rotating to help out and not leaving guys wide open. Again, this is something that takes practice and experience. I see a team that is growing and learning to play together and we will get better as the year goes on and will surprise a lot of you naysayers with our record in the ACC.
Coach Hewitt is an excellent coach, a great recruiter and well respected in the coaching community. We are lucky to have him and should support him and our team fully.
Now Matt, I haven’t seen anything about Mohammed Faye (I might have missed it) but he wasn’t even on the bench last night. What’s happened with him?
And Spellcheck, it’s a friggin blog. Matt does it quickly and we really don’t care about little inaccuracies. We all knew who LaBarrie is whether his name was spelled right or not.
By John
December 28, 2007 11:33 AM | Link to this
What a waste of an article. These writers p***-foot around our coaches instead of asking the hard pointed questions. Why not ask Hewitt about the disaster that is this season? Ask him if he plans to continue to deliver a mediocre product to GT? Ask him if he thinks he is earning his pay? And so on - and so on! And to Pat above - please, get real - he is a very BAD coach!
By OG-T
December 30, 2007 8:34 PM | Link to this
Enough kissing the a** of this coaching staff.
Matt, if you had a top-recruited staff, great equipment, and you kept turning out losing articles, would your bosses keep you? NO!
Stop writing the soft stuff, and meaningfully interview the coaches, administration about the product on the floor.
This staff is outcoached EVERY NIGHT. The current b-ball experience is an insult to every G-Tech fan, as well as James Naismith.
By Spellcheck
December 31, 2007 4:57 PM | Link to this
So because it’s a blog, these journalists are under no obligation to spell names correctly? Typos are one thing. Not knowing how to spell the names of the people you are writing about is suspect. And it’s probably why Matt went back and fixed it ;)
By Braves Fan 79
December 31, 2007 5:47 PM | Link to this
Faye has left the team…to whoever it is that wanted to know. I liked Faye and never understood why Hewitt didnt play him more!
GT is my favorite college basketball team and i remember watching their 1990final four run with dennis scott, kenny anderson..ect…. this is a program tho that has been plagued by early departures….but man have we had some talent come thru here! Bosh, Crinnenton, Jack, Kenny Anderson, Marbury, Price, ect… im proud to be a GT fan…even when we suck because we dont have a pt guard like this year!
By kshizzle
January 2, 2008 2:51 PM | Link to this
GA Tech Basketball has been hurt the most by guys leaving early. Hewitt has gotten some mad talent to come to GA Tech. The only problem is they tend to leave early when they are that good, no blaming them there. And like GA Tech in general you tend to not get enough of those talented players because of the difficulty of the school and what not, so we cannot consistantly maintain that talent from year to year like UNC can. So what a good coach (not Gailey, hopefully Johnson) does is get as much out of his talent as possible. I think this year we just are not talented enough. Lewis Clinch and A Morrow are both good offensively but lacking in defense. J Smith is good at most everything but is too short. Point guard play is (not saying they don’t try) terrible, just like it was when Kevin Morris and Zam Fredrick were running it. Mo Miller has definite potential to be solid but not great. That guy is comming next year. Shumpert is going to be the point guard next year. He will probably leave after one year, but you never know, maybe we’ll get 2 out of him.
By dave
January 3, 2008 10:40 AM | Link to this
I know that Hewitt has had some wonderful talent during the past few years, which should have had better records. Sooner or later the AD is going to recognize the obvious that he is not good enough to coach in the ACC. Dave Braine’s predictions will come true when he said Georgia Tech will never be a controling force in the ACC. He hired the coaches that could make this come true.