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Q&A with Billy Kennedy   The Racer Insider's Will Aubrey

(August 22, 2007)

In his first year as head basketball coach at Murray State University Billy Kennedy led the Racers to a 16-14 record and a tie for second in the Ohio Valley Conference. With practice starting in less than two months we took the opportunity to sit down with him and talk about the season ahead.

Racer Insider: You've been in Murray for about a year and a half now. Is it starting to feel like home?

Billy Kennedy: No question. My family and my staff have gotten great support from the community. We feel very comfortable here and we're anxious to bring a championship to this community and reward them for how good they've been to us.

RI: Speaking of your staff, you had some turnover during the off-season.

BK: When you hire good people it's hard to keep them and I lost Chad Dollar and Dusty May. But we were able to get Isaac Chew and Jamal Walker to come on board.

Isaac has great connections in the Kansas area. He helped us get Isacc Miles. He also has good contacts at the junior college level and I think he'll be a force in recruiting for us.

Jamal is from St. Louis and played for Charlie Spoonhour, a coach I really respect. He also has a good junior college background and he will help us in a lot of different ways.

Coach (Steve) Prohm and I know the south well and now we've brought in guys who know the Chicago area as well as Missouri and Kansas. So that expands our recruiting base.

RI: You make a point of mentioning junior colleges with both Chew and Walker. How important is it to get junior college players at this level?

BK: Well, we would always like to get high school kids. But you can't always get impact players right out of high school, particularly big guys. So if we can get a junior college guy who can step in and fill a need we will always do that.

We think we need to get an impact post player a year from now so we'll probably look at JUCOs to fill that need.

RI: Other than additions to your staff, what's been going on with Murray State basketball this summer?

BK: Well we were fortunate to have all the players here including Isacc Miles who transferred from Creighton in July. They've been working out and playing and getting a lot of shooting in. But the biggest thing is that our players really know each other. And we didn't have that last year.

RI: What else can you tell us about Miles?

BK: He's a player that I was aware of when I was at the University of Miami. Missouri and Kansas initially recruited him so he was a high profile player.
He signed with Creighton and started just about every game for them as a freshman. He's very talented and with us losing Bruce Carter and Ray George at the end of this year taking a big, strong guard like Isacc was a no-brainer.

RI: Is he a point guard or a shooting guard?

BK: He can play either position. I talked to Dana Altman, the coach at Creighton, and they used him at the point but they played him off the ball too. He can really defend and he can score, but he also has a good feel for the game and has good court presence. He really does everything well.

RI: With eight returning players you have to feel more confident than you did at this time last year.

BK: We're confident with our perimeter players. We really believe we have four to six guys that we can play at the 1, 2, and 3 who can help us win games. We have depth, we have talent and we have more experience than we did a year ago.

So, we think we're very solid at those positions.

But we really need Tony Easley, George Fotso and Marvin Williams to play well at the 4 and 5 spots and they are all sophomores who don't have much Division I experience.

We also hope Tarod Sanders can help us there because he will give us some maturity and bulk.

However, we'll play four guards a lot of the time. But at least we know what we have, what our weaknesses are, and how we want to play.

RI: Late last season Williams was the starting center. Could he do that again or would you rather he play power forward?

BK: Ideally I would rather he play the 4. But if you look at the top two teams in our league last year, Austin Peay and Eastern Kentucky, neither of them had a true post player. They had guys like Marvin.

So we think we can win with him if we have to go small.

RI: But you would hope that Tony Easley, George Fotso or Tarod Sanedrs steps up and wins the job at center?

BK: That's right, yes. And if two of those guys develop we may eventually be able to play Marvin some at the 3. That's thinking long term because this year we have so many talented guards we need to play three or four of them.

RI: What do you do with a guy like Ivan Evans who is basically a power forward in a guard's body?

BK: He's an undersized 4 who can play the 3, and if he had to he could play guard. But we brought him in to fill the role Shawn Witherspoon and Dwayne Paul did last year.

RI: What did you learn about the OVC last year?

BK: That you just have to put your five best players on the floor. Austin Peay showed that if you have five guys who play together well you don't have to have a lot of size.

I also learned that it's a very balanced conference. The top six teams were very evenly matched. On a given night anyone could beat anyone. So you can't ever afford to relax.

RI: Samford leaves the OVC after this season. I spoke with commissioner John Steinbrecher and he says they aren't planning to replace them at this point. How do you feel about that?

BK: I think that makes sense. With Samford leaving we'll have 10 teams and that will mean we play 18 conference games instead of 20 so we'll have more flexibility with our non-conference schedule.

To be honest, I never thought Samford fit the league any way.

RI: How do you feel about the schedule you were able to put together for this season?

BK: I think it's competitive. We play Mississippi State and many people think they'll be among the contenders in the Southeastern Conference. We play Western Kentucky and they'll be favored to win the Sun Belt. And we play Arkansas State who played in the Sun Belt's championship game last year.

There's also Rider and they have an excellent big man.

Then we play in a tournament at Chattanooga along with Belmont and Wright State, two teams that played in the postseason last year. And of course Chattanooga has a good tradition as well and it's close enough that our fans can make the trip.

It's a tough schedule. But I think it's fair.

RI: Are the premier tournaments with teams from major conferences hard to get into?

BK: They are difficult to get into and then of course last year by the time I got the job they were all full.

Now, I don't want to go to Alaska. But we're looking at tournaments in Orlando, Puerto Rico and Las Vegas for next year. Those tournaments are filled well in advance and things just have to fall into place for it work out.

RI: Western Kentucky is back on the schedule this year. Are you happy about that?

BK: Yes, I think that's good for us. I've only been here a year but everyone i talk to says that it's a great traditional rivalry.

Of course this should be a big year for them. They've won 22 or 23 games each of the past three years and they have a lot of players back from last year's team. But I think it will be good for us and we're looking forward to going to Bowling Green.

RI: While that rivalry is being resumed another comes to at least a temporary end, as you don't have Southern Illinois on the schedule this year. Why is that?

BK: Well we had a conflict over dates. We just weren't able to find a date that would work for both of us so they initially suggested that we push it back a year and that was fine with us. But that didn't work out. So we'll just see if we can resume the series at some point in the future.

RI: Once the fall semester starts you'll be able to begin individual workouts.

What will you be trying to accomplish before regular practice starts in October?

BK: We'll just work on getting better. Now that we have our system in place we can work on chemistry, work ethic, toughness and unselfishness.

We pretty much know what to expect from the guys who were here last season. But a year ago we didn't know if Marvin Williams was a 3 or a 4. We didn't know if Ed Horton was a 1 or a 2 or if Tyler Holloway was a starter or a bench player.

We didn't know if Kevin Thomas or Shawn Witherspoon was going to be able to play. And we didn't have Ray George yet.

RI: Is there anything else you'd like the fans to know?

BK: I really think we're building a foundation for success. Last year we were trying to just field a team with guys we didn't know much about and we were fortunate enough to be successful. We wound up with three starters (Marvin Williams, Danero Thomas and Ed Horton) who had never even visited Murray State. The first time they were in Murray was when they came to school last fall.

And that's because we didn't have any visits left.

Now we're looking to shore up rough areas to help us win a championship and we're excited about that.

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