The rise of IPFW: Part 5

Now former IPFW athletic director, Tommy Bell did not waste any time in naming Dane Fife’s replacement. But this time, the decision wasn’t ludicrous to me. We didn’t need months of build up, months of searching: Tony Jasick was the right man at the right time for IPFW.

Jasick is part of what Dane Fife did so right when he blew up the dark years and brought on the new dawn of the program. Jeff Tungate, Jermaine Kimbrough, Tony Jasick: all terrific hires that Fife made. While time will still tell, Jasick may have been the best. He was young, he was hungry, he had a diverse background already coaching at North Alabama, Newberry College and most recently Middle Tennessee State. Tony Jasick was a diamond in the rough and he took on his role at IPFW at full throttle.

For the program to continue what Dane Fife started, Tony Jasick had to be the guy. The day I found out that Dane Fife was leaving, casually and not for any story, I text a former player of mine, Justin Jordan. Justin, who played locally at North Side High School and then at St. Louis, had transferred to IPFW to play for Fife. Fife and Jasick recruited Justin hard in high school, so getting him as a transfer is something I knew they hung their hat on. Like he had for me, I know Dane Fife had grown on Justin, hence the transfer, but what became apparent in that short conversation with JJ was that for all Fife was, Jasick was absolutely the perfect evolution for the program. I don’t know that I have ever heard Justin as jazzed about anything as he was about playing for Tony Jasick.

The praise from one of his future players was clearly justified. In his first year, Jasick took a step back from where IPFW had been but that was expected. He still won 11 games and competed in a tough Summit League. A year later, he improved to 16-17. Through 19 total games this year, he sits just two wins away from tying that mark. Considering he’s already led the Dons past conference favorite North Dakota State, that doesn’t seem like a very big hill to climb.

As of the time I write this, Jasick has won 41 games at IPFW over his two and a half seasons. That is the fourth most ever for an IPFW men’s basketball coach. If his coaching career ended today, only one coach in the program would have a better IPFW career winning percentage.

It has been years since I have been to an IPFW men’s basketball game. There is a disconnect between me now and what I know about the program on a deep level. Both of those are unfortunate because I used to live on knowledge about IPFW basketball, whether out of want or need. But it makes me smile every time I see them win, because they all did it: Jasick, Jordan, Fife, David Carson, Scott, Bell, Pope, Campbell, Pechota, Simon, Noll, Collins…all of those names and hoards more put IPFW in the position they are today.

It has been fun to watch over the years. I really need to get myself over to the Gates Center and see more.

The rise of IPFW: Part 4

Dane Fife was just 25 years old when he was named the head coach at IPFW.

It was a huge story on campus, a big one in the city of Fort Wayne and even had national appeal due to his high profile playing career and his new claim to being the youngest men’s head coach in Division I. No matter how I felt then, how I feel now; I will always love the fact that we, the IPFW Communicator, broke the story.

Throughout the search, myself, Justin Kenny, Nick West and Tony Maurer were all over it. We asked anyone we could, any time we could. Talked to players to find out who interviewed, called candidates, and followed every last lead. The night before the announcement, we got confirmation: Dane Fife was to be the head coach. At the time, IPFW’s web presence was slight, but we had to break the story. We had to beat Sarah Trotto at the Journal Gazette, we had to beat everyone. Just after midnight, my story, with credit to my Communicator colleagues, went live on CollegeHoops.Net. Now, the site sits as an unupdated shell, but then it was one of the biggest hit-garnering websites for college basketball anywhere. And we broke the story. And I will always love that.

The press conference went off without a hitch and Dane Fife said all of the right things, all out of the script he seemed to have written for himself in his mind. Once and now again colleague Justin Kenny and I wrote contrasting columns in the first issue of the IPFW student paper, The Communicator, just days after the hiring. I think Justin was trying to play devil’s advocate in his. In my column, I was honest. The hiring was insane to me.

Looking back to almost nine years ago when the hire was made, I have now spent a lot of time around Dane Fife. Although it has been years, he was once one of the few people that I saw pretty much every single day. I have a greater respect for Dane as a person and as a coach than I could have imagined.

But in May 2005, I was appalled and pretty well thought that IPFW AD Mark Pope was out of his mind. Why? To sell tickets? So the Memorial Coliseum would echo just a little less? To motivate the players by giving them someone who could relate to them? Didn’t you just have the guy to relate to them? I kept my column tame; I kept a lot of questions hid internally.

Mark Pope opened the press conference with a phrase. I opened my news story for the front page of The Communicator quoting the same phrase: “Dane Fife is the right man at the right time for IPFW.”

I didn’t believe a word of it.

And before we could even see who was right and who was wrong, that darkness that began a year or so earlier engulfed the program. In one full swoop, walk-on Andrew Bourne and returning leading scorers Pete Campbell and Beau Bauer were gone, decisions made what we thought to be independently at the time. The next fall, in an interview I did with Campbell about the mass exodus over two years of athletes from the school, he was pretty clear that he left in part because the writing was on the wall. What writing? Within months of Fife’s hire, he cleaned house. While the squad lost Simon to graduation and the three others before school was out, Fife’s summer cleaning list was long: Byron Malone, Jason Malone, Charles Campbell, Quintin Butler. And all of the sudden, there stood the transfers, Scott and Pompey, with returners Justin Hawkins, Quintin Carouthers and Zeljko Egeric and it looked like an atomic bomb had been dropped on the program.

When 'Soup' left,
things looked fishy.

If I questioned the hiring before, I was mortified now. So, we don’t need any starters back? Seven players are just gone? The entire backcourt?

And then Dane grew on me. His personality, his friendship, his work ethic. He didn’t always do things the way that was expected. He, like Doug Noll, drew criticism. But he pressed on. Dane Fife did things Dane Fife’s way for his entire tenure. And it wasn’t just the right way, it was the only way. He let Scott shine, becoming then one of IPFW’s all-time great scorers. He brought it strong recruits like NJCAA All-American Jaraun Burrows and Kansas State transfer Deilvez Yearby. He recruited locally hard and while not landing a big local talent for years, he was persistent.

Furthermore, IPFW had never had a winning record in its D1 tenure, but Fife took them to 10 wins in his first season. The next it was 12 wins and the following season he was where some thought we needed Dement to get us: a conference.

Dane Fife’s win total always grew. 13 wins in the first season in the new Summit League (formerly the Mid-Continent Conference), 13 more in the second year, then 16. Then in 2010-2011, Dane Fife took the Mastodons of IPFW to 18-12, 11-7 in the conference. It was the first winning record in the program since Andy Piazza took them to their best record ever, 23-6 in the 1992-1993 season. Dane Fife was 13.

When looking at the grand landscape of the program, Dane Fife was the lynchpin. Not only was Dane the “right man at the right time for IPFW,” I now believe he was the only man for the job. That’s not to say that lighting a candle wouldn’t have ended the dark years, but Dane had the testicular fortitude to drop a bomb on the dark years and say, “it’s over, let’s move on.”

Losing Dane Fife to Michigan State in 2011 looked like it was going to be the biggest loss in the history of IPFW athletics.

The rise of IPFW: Part 3

Joe Pechota kind of gets lost in the transition of things with the program. Gangster Joe, with his gold bracelet, nice suits and slicked back hair, was a total change from Noll. At this point, I was totally engrained in the story of it all, getting whatever info I could whenever I could. I was at every game and the change that came in Pechota’s first game, a win against Youngstown State was not just crystal clear, it screamed at you. ‘Coach P’ as they called him, brought out the best in his players and their personalities. During that Youngstown State game, they all seemed looser, more jovial, and happier.

It is amazing what a different atmosphere will do for a team. The Malone brother (Jason and Byron) were hustling, Simon was light on his feet and in his head and Pete Campbell broke out and showed that he was clearly the heir apparent to Simon’s reign.

Did they win a lot? No. They won just three more games, all against fellow Independents, all while Pechota was embroiled with a tough head coaching national search.

Joe Pechota did a great job. When we, at The Communicator, found out the final four candidates, I did my homework. All of us doing sports at the paper did. The pros and cons were debated often.

Joe Pechota, the current interim head coach who had a golden report with his players. He proved he could win some; can he win more with a full team back? After all, he was losing just Simon and adding red shirt guards Brad Pompey and DeWitt Scott, who was a D1 transfer.

Tracy Dildy, the unproven Ole Miss assistant coach who was a world class recruiter. Once recruiting the likes of future NBA prospects Bonzi Wells and Quentin Richardson to their respective schools. Who could Dildy bring in to IPFW? Could he make his whole thing blow up in a positive way? Can he win games at all?

 

At the time, Fife seemed like
an odd choice over (from left to right)
Dildy, Pechota and Dement.

Mike Dement, the former Southern Methodist (SMU) coach who had gone through the find-a-conference transition before at UNC-Greensboro. After all, this was the thing on the top of Athletic Director Mark Pope’s list: get IPFW to a conference. Mid-Continent Conference, Horizon League – he, as an AD, needed to be one of these places to sustain the school’s D1 status. And he can win; he was 138-120 in seven-plus seasons at SMU.

Dane Fife, the Indiana University video coordinator with no head, or really any, coaching experience on any level. Dane would bring a youthful exuberance and an ability to relate to the young players, he was young himself, shortly out of a brief pro career with Gary in the CBA. Not to mention he led IU on the court to a National Title game a few years earlier. So he had been there, and was going to put butts in the seats in the pro-IU area. But not only could he win, but could he even coach?

I had my opinion then and I won’t be shy about it. I talked to three of these four guys briefly about the search. Coach P was as he always was, candid and hopeful but didn’t go to deep. Dement was very PR-motivated and gave copy and paste answers. Dildy was full of conversation. We had multiple hour-long or so phone conversations, he was personable and polite. Dane Fife did not answer the phone, he did not return calls.

When it was time to make the decision, my opinion was clear: hit reset and take the chance on Tracy Dildy. When he withdrew his name about a week before the decision was made, there was only one answer: ride it out with Joe Pechota. Imagine my surprise when the name that came back was Dane Fife.

The rise of IPFW: Part 2

Say what you will about any coach during IPFW’s 12-plus year tenure as Division I program, but this very season is a testament to them all. The rise of IPFW has been a visionary one. Different visions? Sure. Always correct visions? No way. But they have climbed to get here. Every coach, with the exception of one year…the worst year, has avoided a back slide from their previous year.

There should have been no D1 program in 2001-2002, but yet there was. Doug Noll was not a D1 coach and Mark Pope was not a D1 Athletic Director. But I will be damned if they didn’t strap on their boots and get to work. 7-21 in the program’s first year as a D1 Independent, 9-19 the following season.

Doug Noll was the first, but not last, highly polarizing head coach in the Mastodons’ D1 era. Anyone who watched games or covered games was critical of him at times, myself included. It comes with the territory, something I am sure he was and is aware of. But he was handed a losing desk and made the best out of it those first two seasons. He also signed an Indiana All-Star in Beau Bauer and found a diamond in the rough in Loyola volleyball player David Simon.

Then came 2003-2004. There is no official name, no real long standing nightmare, but it was the start of the ‘dark years’ for the program. They went 3-25, the second worst record in the program’s history while losing leading scorer and team leader Terry Collins along the way. Despite all of that, they had a guy who averaged 18 rebounds per game, and that guy, David Simon, was widely considered the second best center in the country behind eventual top draft pick Emeka Okafor. David went on to declare for the NBA Draft, and while it was an awesome thing for the program, as was the attention he was getting, it hinted at the cracks.

 

David Simon

I interviewed both David and Coach Noll on the day that the IPFW student newspaper, The Communicator, found out about his decision. It was a day before his press conference and the two were far apart on their idea of what the plan was. For David, this was his time and he planned to go all out with it. For Noll, it was just to take a sampling and David was absolutely returning to school. The decision, lost in translation between head coach and star player, showed that there was no foundation to build on anymore.

Sadly, David Simon never went to the NBA. Invited to the prestigious pre-draft camp in his native Chicago, the IPFW center tore his ACL at camp as was never the same in my opinion. He came back the following year and the disconnect was clear.

The next year, they were worse, even with a better record. Noll was out midseason, replaced by Joe Pechota and ultimately replaced in the offseason by Dane Fife. The team showed signs of life early in 2004-2005 and won their, then biggest, game in their short D1 history beating Utah State at home. But after the win, the squad lost eight in a row, finalized by a 100-59 loss at Wyoming.

The Rise of IPFW: Part 1

I haven’t been to an IPFW men’s basketball game in years. And that is sad.

These games, at my college, were once a staple of life, as a fan or as a writer. I saw them all, I witnessed some crazy moments at the Memorial Coliseum, in the cozy confines of the Gates Center and on the road with rabid home crowds at Oakland, Purdue and Notre Dame.

And as we sit today, IPFW is atop of the Summit League. That, in itself, is somewhat shocking when you have see all of what I have seen.

The struggles, where a win would be great, let alone a sniff at a sub-winning record.

The coaching swaps, when a mid-season replacement yields happiness but a following off-season swap leaves those in the know skeptical.

The exiles, whose careers at the school ended prematurely, be it at the hands of the old coach, their own doing or one of those aforementioned coaching swaps.

The injuries, which cut down big pieces of the puzzle. As great as it would be to add Justin Jordan to this year’s team, imagine the transition phase with a healthy David Simon. Even more, imagine if he hadn’t been hurt in 2004 and ended up being the first IPFW player to go in the NBA Draft. Sadly, the letters A, C and L stop us from seeing any of those realities.

A healthy David Simon could have gone to the NBA.
And even more, helped IPFW to be better way faster.

Yet here they sit. One year after just missing out on the 12^th winning season in school history, they are kings of their own domain. Humble, fierce, coming into a 2013-2014 season after graduating arguably the best player to ever wear a Mastodon basketball jersey; they lead the Summit League in mid-January.

A school that has just 11 winning seasons, had only won 20-plus games four times and has never hauled in more that 18 wins since becoming a Division 1 program, is currently sitting at 14 wins and sure took shots at Dayton and Illinois, schools who escaped the Mastodons by the skin of their teeth.

And that is magnificent.

>I do care about IPFW

Dear Readers, I'm sorry for being right.

I am sorry that I wrote a column in the March 5 edition of the IPFW Communicator that said that Oral Roberts would eliminate both the men and women basketball teams from the Summit League Tournament. I am sorry that both the men and women basketball teams were eliminated by Oral Roberts in the Summit League Tournament. I am sorry that I exercised my right to pen a column expressing my opinion.

In all seriousness, I do apologize if I offended Dane Fife, Chris Paul and/or any of their players. That was not my intention.

But any implication, true or not, that I do not support IPFW athletics is a joke. I have been covering IPFW sports for the past six years in some way or another for four different publications. I attend every home men's volleyball game, I have written about every sport during that time and I have attended more basketball games (men and women) then probably 97 percent of the student body at IPFW over that time. Oh yeah, I have also been trying to convince players I have coached (on the high school basketball level) to play at IPFW.

I value IPFW and what the department has accomplished probably as much as anyone who really doesn't have anything to do with the department first hand.

So if anybody thinks that I believe IPFW is a joke. You are wrong.

But I was honest when I said that the chances for IPFW basketball, either gender, to get by Oral Roberts were not good. I thought the chances were low and yes, both teams lost to the Golden Eagles. Does that mean I was cheering against the Mastodons?

I am sorry for any offense taken. But I will not apologize for expressing my personal, professional and educated opinion of what events would transpire. So understand, when I say "better luck next year IPFW," it is not out of cynical spite. I mean it and I always stand by the Mastodons.

So don't second guess me.