Bison basketball program surges to 20-win season as Alexander embarks on fifth year
Kim Chaudoin |
Alexander enters fifth season with big goals to change lives
The old adage “before you can shoot, you must first have a goal” is particularly apropos for any basketball program. Casey Alexander, men’s head basketball coach, has a goal. Winning is definitely one of them. But he has other goals for the program such as recruiting players who are a good fit for Lipscomb as well as the program and making it one in which the fans will be proud.
Since Alexander was named the 18th head coach of the Bison basketball program in May 2013, he has infused everything he has learned in a lifetime of playing and coaching basketball to lead the team to its first 20-win season for the first time in 11 years.
But what Alexander sees is much more than a team that has achieved a 20-win season. He sees a program that is building its players to be successful not only on the court, but into young men who are being shaped to be successful husbands, business professionals, community leaders and church leaders and who will “make Lipscomb proud.”
For those who may have forgotten, Alexander was a stand-out player at Belmont University from 1992-1995, where he also served under Bruin head coach Rick Byrd for 16 seasons, learning from a coach who has taken that mid-major college program through the NAIA to NCAA transition and has reached the Big Dance seven of the last 12 years. In 2011, Alexander’s longtime dream of becoming a head coach was realized when he was named head coach at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. After two seasons there, he came to Lipscomb.
Lipscomb Now caught up with Alexander to learn more about the factors contributing to the program’s recent success, his coaching philosophy and his perspective as he enters his fifth season as head coach of the Bisons this fall.
LN: You’ve completed four seasons at Lipscomb. How has this experience gone for you so far?
Alexander: I wish we had won more games and that our success had been accelerated a little bit! But being at Lipscomb has been a joy and privilege every single day. There’s not been one moment where I haven’t been reassured that this is the best place for me to be. That makes it easy for me to do my job.
When I measure our first four years at Lipscomb, I’m mostly concerned about how we’ve performed in conference play. Our overall record hasn’t been as good as it needs to be moving forward, but we’ve still found a way to be .500 or better in the league every year. Last year’s 11-3 conference record was the best ASUN winning percentage (.786) in our division 1 (D-I) history. We’ve also won an ASUN tournament game three straight years now and played in the ASUN semifinals each of those years. We hadn’t won a tournament game in five years before this little run. There’s nothing substantial about playing in a tournament semi-final game, but it is an indication that things are going in the right direction.
LN: To what do you contribute the program’s forward momentum?
Alexander: I think the “secret sauce” is having a collective group of players who more closely embody what Lipscomb is. It is our mission to build a roster of kids who would have considered Lipscomb as a place to go to school even if they weren’t basketball players.
We are looking for guys who relate well to the student body, who believe in what Lipscomb is all about. It has taken some time to accumulate a roster that looks like that. I love that Lipscomb has such high standards at a time when it’s much easier to compromise beliefs. We want our program to reflect those same values. We aren’t necessarily doing anything better than those who have been here before. We’re just doing it in a different way. It just takes a while for you to put your stamp on a program. I certainly don’t think we’ve arrived, but I’m convinced the foundation is secure and great things are coming.
The best part about last year’s 20-win season was how we finished... Learning how to win is extremely difficult at any level and in any sport. For us to get off to another poor start last season, yet find a way to play so well and win in conference play, that’s the best part about the 20 wins to me. Now the challenge is to go win championships and play in the NCAA tournament. I think that’s a reasonable goal, every season, as we move forward.
LN: Before the 2016-17 season began, the team went on a mission trip. Did that have an impact on the team?
Alexander: It didn’t start out as a mission trip. It started out as a basketball trip that I thought would be nice for recruiting. It evolved into a mission trip because we thought the experience would better reflect to our players what Lipscomb is all about and how our team can play a role in that.
Mission trips are often life changing regardless of age, location or the work you’re doing. Without a doubt it had a huge impact in that we were doing things that didn’t have anything to do with basketball. The carryover of doing that as a team, with people we already love and care about, proved beneficial throughout the year. It got us off to a good start relationally. We referenced the trip throughout the season one way or another more times than we can count.
We are in a different place spiritually than where we were. We’re having conversations that we didn’t have when we first got here. Our players are having conversations amongst themselves that they didn’t have when we got here. That’s a by-product of how things are building in our program.
LN: Things are growing from an academic standpoint as well.
Alexander: We desperately needed academic performance to improve and better reflect what the rest of our athletic programs were already doing in the classroom. Last year our team was one of only 27 of the 351 NCAA D-I schools to finish the season with a 3.0 GPA or higher, and this past August we earned a Team Academic Excellence Award from the National Association of Basketball Coaches for the first time in program history. We should be on track for our team GPA to be 3.0 for this academic year as well.
LN: So there’s more going on than just winning more games.
Alexander: As a staff we are really excited about our program in all directions. For 98 percent of the people, success is measured by wins and losses. For us, it’s those conversations that we’re having on a Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. when a player drops by the office to hang out for a few minutes, or when they call you because they need something and they know they can count on you, or because all of the sudden a B is more important than a C. Those are real wins for coaches and programs. Quite honestly, it’s the everyday life occurrences that influence winning and losing as much as anything else we do. Doing things the right way and doing them well, that’s the only way to have sustained success.
LN: A successful program begins on the recruiting trail, doesn’t it?
Alexander: We always want to build our roster with local kids when we can. We’ve had a lot of good fortune with that so far. It’s important that we have recognizable names that those in the community are familiar with already. So we’ll keep doing that, but there’s no quota we want to meet. Our job as coaches is to get good players, and it makes sense to get them locally if we can.
I tell our recruits that there are so many factors they have to prioritize when making a college choice... What kind of school is it? Is it big or small? Is it close to home or far from home? What about the playing style? What about the conference? What about their role on the team? What about immediate playing time? What about the success of the program? What are the NCAA tournament possibilities? What about their academic major? There is a litany of things that every student athlete has to consider in recruiting. All of this is important to some degree. All of these factors will be prioritized differently by each recruit.
In my mind, the top factors should always be who they are playing with and who they are playing for. Because when it’s all said and done, when mom and dad drop them off for college their daily life and quality of life is all that’s going to matter. How happy are they? How content and fulfilled are they?
Their experience and happiness is going to be determined by who they live with, who they practice with, who they have class with, who they’re travelling with, winning with, losing with. So, we try really hard on the front end to emphasize those factors with our recruits. I think you eliminate a lot of risk with that approach. We don’t want a cookie-cutter program where everyone has to look and act the same. But we also don’t want high-risk high-reward kind of guys. We want players who would have gone to college, would have graduated and would have been interested in Lipscomb anyway. That’s just our philosophy.
LN: So, what is your coaching philosophy exactly?
Alexander: It all relates to recruiting. I’m an extremely direct coach. Not so much in the take-it-or-leave-it aspect, but I don’t appreciate false motivation. I just like to tell guys what I think and to be honest because I think that gives them the best chance to fulfill what we’re asking them to do. It starts there.
As far as on-the-floor philosophy – we recruit with a 90 percent offensive mindset. Our coaching philosophy as far as building the team is from the offensive perspective. As a coach you have to decide what kind of game you’re going to play so you know that you’re looking for players who can do a specific task. The other approach is to go get the best players I can and figure out how to use them. Both have proven successful for programs. But at Lipscomb, we’ve determined that this is who we are and how we play. So we know what kind of player we are going to look for and we know how we are going to plug them in. Then it’s our job to try to get the most out of them, and see how it works out.
LN: You played college basketball. How much does that experience inform your coaching approach?
Alexander: It has impacted me a lot. My coaching personality is very similar to my playing personality. I was not a talented player, but I was an effective player because I had to do things a certain way and do them well to set myself apart with effort, attitude and leadership. That’s how I’m wired, and it’s also the only way that I could have had any success as a player. As a coach, those are naturally the characteristics that I’m pulled toward and the type of players that I like the most. Those are the values that I want our program to reflect. Not because I have them. It’s just because that’s what I believe in. I think that’s just natural. I think most of us are a product of where we came from. So, it has a big impact on how I coach. Thankfully we have more talented players than I was!
(Junior) Nathan Moran is a prime example. Nathan had zero NCAA division I offers. He was going to go to a D-III school where he knew he could be himself. He had a lot of the characteristics that I value. I didn’t know what kind of player he would be or what kind of success he would have. But I knew we needed a winner. I knew we needed his competitiveness. I knew we needed somebody who felt they could conquer all. It’s really exciting for me to look at his three seasons so far and see what a difference he has made in our program.
LN: Talk to me about your staff.
Alexander: There’s no doubt they deserve the lion’s share of the credit for our success. I wear the white hat, but they do so much of the work. I’ve been with most of the staff for six years now. Roger (Idstrom) and I even worked together for 11 years at Belmont and Steve (Drabyn) played for us there. They’re guys who I knew would love Lipscomb the way that I do, would fit in here and be individuals of whom Lipscomb would be proud. I knew they would totally embrace what it’s all about. The continuity and cohesion on staff is a significant piece to this whole puzzle. Sean (Rutigliano) has been with us for two years and has been valuable in giving us a fresh perspective. He’s made a significant impact and deserves a lot of credit for our recent success. Our players would quickly tell you how valuable these coaches are and what difference they are making in their lives in every way. The best thing I’ve done as a head coach is to bring those three guys to Lipscomb as assistant coaches.
LU: What does the fan support mean to you?
Alexander: There is no substitute for winning, so it’s our job to win and generate fan support. There hasn’t been a day since I’ve been here that I have felt the people in this athletic office are not doing their dead-level best to help our program to be successful. The minimal success we had last season illustrates how winning can accelerate the process. We have a lot of competition in Nashville for fan interest. The more we win, the more we’re talked about. The more significant things we do, the more exposure we get, and the more people will care about how our program is doing. I love that our basketball program has such an opportunity to bring the university some attention it rightfully deserves.
Last year was very rewarding for me personally getting to see some joy brought back to people who really care about our program. One of the things I love about Lipscomb is that there are people who have been around for a long time who genuinely care about how our team does. I love the people who surround our program enough that it’s personally burdensome whether we win or lose. I think that’s a great thing. That’s exactly what you want, to be at a place where people care. It’s exciting to be at a place where I want to win because I want the people to be happy and to be able to enjoy it.
LN: When a player leaves the locker room for the last time, how do you measure their success?
Alexander: First of all, if a player graduates and wouldn’t sign up to do it all over again, we haven’t done our jobs as coaches! I want players to walk away from here thinking that they made the right decision to be here and that they would do it all over again. We work really hard to give them a first-class experience. In addition, we try really hard to integrate them into the student body as much as we can. If we have a guy leaving here who isn’t self-sufficient, dependable, responsible and ready for the world then we haven’t done our jobs either. We spend our time preparing to win games. But we also want our players to leave Lipscomb to become successful husbands, fathers, businesspeople, engaged in their communities and church leaders. That’s success to us.
To read more news from Lipscomb University click here.