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3/13/10
- Respect and faith – that's Billy Kennedy's
coaching philosophy in a nutshell.
Respect for
the game, for his players, and for the coaches who have
gone before him...
“I have a great deal of
respect for the old coaches and the way they handled
themselves,” Kennedy said. “Hank Iba, John Wooden, Pete
Newell, and Dean Smith got it right. You prepare your
team in practice and the games are like exams.
“We practice to play and we let the players play the
games. You shouldn't have to make a lot of adjustments
during games if you do your job in practice. If you have
good kids and they're playing hard for you there may
still be times when you have to get on them. But if you
have to do that very often then you aren't going to be
very good.
“You can't get too high or too low
either. You have to stay on an even keel. It's all about
balance, balance in your life, balance on the court, and
balance off the court.”
And underlying all of
that is faith.
“Faith is very important to me,”
he continued. “I feel like coaching is a ministry for
me. I'm here to train and develop young men. We talk
about training them physically, mentally, and
spiritually.”
Kennedy grew up in Metairie,La., a suburb of New
Orleans.
“I went to Holy Cross High School to
play football,” he recalled. “That was my favorite sport
at the time. I became interested in basketball because
Holy Cross was a powerhouse. Don Maestri was the
basketball coach there and he's the head coach at Troy
State now.
“They had packed gyms and they played
for state championships. I just fell in love with it and
jumped on the wagon. I got cut my freshman year but I
asked coach Maestri if I could be the manager. He gave
me the opportunity to do that and then I made the team
as a sophomore and started for the next three years.”
Kennedy earned all-district honors but by his own
admission he wasn't a great player.
“I was
basically just a defensive player,” he said. “I could
shoot a little bit, but I just played hard all the time.
Coach Maestri left before I graduated and I ended up
playing for Kevin Trower who took me under his wing and
nurtured me. He married my mom so he's my stepdad now.
“Coach Maestri had a big influence on my career.
He's been the head coach at Troy State for 28 years.
We're from the same neighborhood and we've remained
close over the years. His passion and his love for
basketball are what I admire the most. And he cared
about people.
“My stepfather was the same way.
And he was a great teacher of the game. I learned a lot
of X's and O's from him. He's a brilliant man. He's
written Latin books, he's an attorney, and a high school
coaching legend. He's in the Hall of Fame in the state
of Louisiana. What we do today is based more on my high
school experience than my college experience.”
After high school, Kennedy went to Southeast Louisiana
as a preferred walk-on. He didn't get to play much so he
transferred to Delgado Community College. After one
year, a broken nose, and a broken wrist he decided to
give up playing and focus on getting his degree. So he
transferred back to Southeast.
“While I was
working on my degree I started coaching AAU and I
refereed some,” he recalled. “I wanted to be like my
stepfather because he had an interest in me and he was
close with his players. I wanted to influence people the
way he influenced me. So I decided to get into coaching.
“I coached some really good AAU players – Robert
Pack who played in the NBA, Jaren Jackson who played in
the NBA, Tim Singleton who played at Notre Dame, and
Randy Livingston who played at LSU. And I made
connections in the college game because college coaches
recruited my players.”
The staff at Southeast
wanted Kennedy to help them get AAU players so they
hired him as a student assistant.
“One of the
regular assistants got in a car wreck and he couldn't
work so I kind of took over his position,” Kennedy said.
“So I was working as an assistant coach and scouting
teams when I was just 22 years old.”
From there,
Kennedy went to work for Benny Dees at the University of
New Orleans. The Privateers made it to the NCAA
tournament where they defeated Brigham Young. Dees left
to become the head coach at Wyoming and Kennedy went
with him.
“Coach Dees was a great recruiter and a
great defensive coach,” Kennedy noted. “He was probably
the best recruiter that I've been around and he took
good care of me. He was just great with people. He
taught me how to recruit and how important recruiting
was.”
After a year at Wyoming coaching future NBA
players Eric Leckner and Fennis Dembo, Kennedy took a
job as an assistant at Northwestern State in
Natchitoches, La.
“It was my first full time job
and I made $8,000 a year,” he recalled. “It was a tough
life. I was married and I had a little boy. I rode a
bicycle to work every day because we only had one car.
From there I went to Tulane as the third assistant
making $15,000 a year so I almost doubled my pay. My
strength was recruiting. That's what people hired me
for.
“Then I went to Texas A & M with Kermit
Davis and doubled my salary again so I finally had a
real job. I was there a year and then I went to
Creighton for two years.”
In 1993 Todd Bozeman,
who had been on the staff at Tulane, got the head job at
California. One of his first moves was to hire Kennedy
as his top assistant.
“That was a breakthrough
job for me,” Kennedy noted. “I was associate head coach
at an early age and we had the #1 recruiting class in
the country. We were in the top-10 for three years in a
row so we had some really good teams.
“After
Bozeman resigned I was the interim head coach. Coach
Newell and a number of people wanted me to get the job
but it didn't work out. And knowing what I know now, I
wasn't ready to be the head coach at Cal at 31 years
old.”
California hired Ben Braun away from
Eastern Michigan to replace Bozeman and Kennedy worked
under him for another year. Then he left to take the
head coaching job at Centenary even though it meant
taking a 50 percent pay cut.
“Coach Braun wasn't
comfortable with me being at Cal because a lot of people
had wanted me to get the head job instead of him,”
Kennedy explained. “And then I was trying to move my
family back toward Louisiana. It was head coaching
experience and it was really good for me.
“At the
time Centenary was the smallest Division I school in the
country and they only won six games the year before I
got there. I was 31 and Billy Donovan and I were the
youngest head coaches in the nation.
“We turned
the program around really quick and we beat Southeast
Louisiana. Then when that job came open they contacted
me about coming back to my alma mater. It was special
for me to coach at the place where I went to school.
They were trying to make basketball work and the
university president was really good to work with.”
Kennedy took Centenary from six wins to 14 wins in
just two seasons. And he rebuilt a moribund Southeast
Louisiana, leading them to consecutive Southland
Conference championships and a trip to the NCAA
tournament in 2005. He was the National Association of
Basketball Coaches District 8 Coach of the Year in 2004
and 2005.
But after six years in Hammond, La. he
left to take an assistant's job at the University of
Miami (Fla.).
“It was a good move for me
financially,” he noted. “I felt like I had done all I
could at Southeast and I felt like God wanted me to get
uncomfortable again. Jumping to the ACC and working for
a good friend in Frank Haith was very attractive to me.”
After a single season in south Florida, Kennedy got
the call that brought him to Murray.
“I wasn't
looking for a job but I got a call from Darren Boatright
(MSU's former assistant athletic director) while I was
on the road recruiting in Baton Rouge,” Kennedy
recalled. “I knew Darren and he asked me if I would be
interested in this job. I wasn't very familiar with
Murray State other than I knew they had always been
good. When he explained how committed the people here
are to winning championships that impressed me. That's
what attracted me.
“I didn't know what I was
walking into though. I didn't know I was going to have
to build a team from scratch. I did that at Centenary
and Southeast Louisiana and I didn't want to have to do
that again. I knew it was a great school with great
tradition, and great support. And I looked at the roster
and it looked like a good team coming back. I didn't
know about the problems and that was my fault. But I
think God was protecting me from seeing that because if
I had known everything I wouldn't have taken the job.”
Kennedy had to scramble just a field a team in his
first season. Only four players returned from the
previous year. And of those four, one had a broken foot,
two had played limited minutes, and the other had
redshirted.
Even so, Kennedy held it together and
led the Racers to a 16-14 record and second place finish
in the Ohio Valley Conference. He followed that with two
more second place finishes as he went about recruiting
the kind of players he needed to run his system.
This year, with all the pieces in place he led Murray
State to a 30-4 record, a 17-1 conference mark, an OVC
regular season championship, and an OVC Tournament
championship. He was also named OVC and NABC District 19
Coach of the Year.
“This team is what I
envisioned from the start,” Kennedy said. “And for it to
work out the way it has has been a blessing. We're
playing defense the way I want to and offensively we're
playing fast like I want to. We're doing it with good
kids, we're doing it with depth, and we haven't had any
injuries. Earlier I mentioned the importance of balance.
This team is balanced in every way.
“I'm thankful
for the Nashville experience and the fan support we had
there. People are passionate about basketball here. I
want our fans to know how much I appreciate what they
do. This was a special season. I'm hoping we can do it
every year. We're going to try to, but you have to
remember how many things went right for us this year.
“I'm very happy here in Murray. We have good players
coming back, we have balanced classes, and we have
back-to-back Freshmen of the Year. Our program is solid
right now.”
Next up, a trip to the “Big Dance.”
“I think we have a team that can win in the NCAA
tournament,” he continued. “My goal when I came here was
to build a team that could go into the tournament and
have a chance to win. We're going in there to win.” |
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