There’s not a cup of coffee or a can of soft drink in Ron Hunter’s Spartan office, but he’s practically vibrating as he fidgets in his chair.
A little more than a month ago, he was named Georgia State’s basketball coach. The newness hasn’t worn off.
“A month? Really?” he asks. “It feels like four to five hours.”
It’s been 30-plus days of exploration and transformation that’s part of the 90-day plan that he has followed at his previous coaching stops. Sitting down for 30 minutes for an exclusive interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is part of the plan, but Hunter acknowledges that kills him to sit still. As he speaks, his thoughts fly out of his mouth as fast as the points he hopes his team will score.
His focus is changing his players’ mindsets. To accomplish that, everything that has substance will change: The locker room will be renovated, different hotels will be used on the road and the team will sit in a different place during home games. Even his office will get redecorated.
Processes will change, too. To illustrate the pace with which he wants his team to play, he recently showed his players how fast he brushes his teeth. Water breaks for the team? Twelve seconds. Even his team meetings last only a couple of minutes.
“We want everything to be new, quick, up-tempo,” he said.
The change is necessary because the Panthers weren’t very good last season, going 12-19 and scoring a meager 61.9 points per game, among the lowest in Division I. Hunter’s IUPUI team averaged 71.6 points per game.
He is convinced his new team can score as much as his previous team. He has reviewed game film, interviewed his players and watched videos of them in high school. He said all of them were shooters before they arrived at GSU. He believes his up-tempo offense, in which he once said every basket would be either a 3-pointer or a dunk, will solve the scoring issues and help the Panthers win again.
The players say Hunter’s energy is similar to that of previous coach Rod Barnes, but his enthusiasm, desire to transform philosophies and focus on offense already is helping them feel more confident.
They haven’t been able to much team- or trust-building. The NCAA limits the time coaches can spend with players in the offseason. Instead, Hunter has been recruiting to try to find new players to mold.
He even does that quickly.
He and assistant Darryl LaBarrie visited 14 Atlanta-area high schools in one day earlier this week. He spent 10 minutes with each coach. “Twelve if they had a great player,” he joked.
The selling of the program didn’t stop there.
When they returned to campus around 8 p.m. for an hour-long break, LaBarrie went home to see his family. Hunter, an avowed “city guy,” went for a walk around his new neighborhood, meeting and greeting anyone who happened to be hanging out. He even found himself a new barber and turned him into a fan.
“He was excited about getting started,” James Green said. “It’s going to be very exciting basketball.”
Where does the energy come from? Hunter’s mom said she has no idea, but he’s always been a bit high strung. Others are baffled as well. His wife, Amy, is a counselor, and his daughter, Jasmine, is a psychologist. They gave up trying to analyze him a long time ago. They just learned how to deal with the speed at which he operates.
When they go out to eat, Hunter usually waits to order until everyone else is halfway through with their meal because he eats so fast. Amy refuses to let him go grocery shopping with her because he has a tendency to buy things on impulse.
Because his son, R.J., is a highly recruited basketball player in Indianapolis, Hunter’s family is staying behind until he finishes his senior year. Hunter said he misses them dearly and said the recruiters, which includes LaBarrie and those from Virginia Tech and Vanderbilt, are seeing his son more than he does.
However, Amy said this temporary separation probably is for the best. “His mind is three steps ahead on a slow day,” she said. “This will just allow him to sink his teeth in and not feel guilty about late hours. He needs to do what he needs to do to get it going.”
It’s all part of Hunter’s plan, which worked well for him at IUPUI, and as an assistant at Miami (Ohio) and Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
“I know I will get this done,” he said. “I know we will win here. I just can’t wait. To win, you have to prepare to win.
“I don’t think that’s happened a lot in our program. ... Everything you do in life you have to prepare for. We are winning games now, not when we start on Oct. 15.”
