Ask Mark Turgeon about his team keeping turnovers to a minimum during the season, and the Texas A&M head men's basketball coach sighs and says, "Yeah ... yeah ... don't jinx us, OK?"
Ask Turgeon about how star guard Donald Sloan is starting to get some national notoriety, and he says, "Shhhh ... we're trying to keep that quiet."
Ask about how the 3-point shooting is coming around, and Turgeon says, "Come on, Rich. You know better. Don't jinx us like that."
With Turgeon's superstitious ways in mind, I held off putting the whammy on him or his squad until now:
Hey, coach, you've did a phenomenal job with your team this season, both in handling the players and the circumstances.
Phenomenal might appear a little strong for a team that didn't win 30 games and failed to reach the Sweet 16 again.
But consider the nonconference schedule littered with Top 25 teams the Aggies played. Also consider A&M's conference, the toughest in the nation, and A&M's finish in it -- tied for second after being picked to finish fifth. Then there's the fact that every one of A&M's losses came to teams that made the NCAA tournament, not to mention the fact that A&M played nearly two thirds of its season without senior starter Derrick Roland, one of the Big 12's top defender and the team leader who was showing signs of being a perfect complement offensively to Sloan.
There's more. Turgeon had to wait until Christmas before his No. 3 post could practice. Tendinitis hampered point guard Dash Harris for most of the Big 12 season, and another injury kept him out of the Big 12 tournament and slowed him down in the NCAAs.
You can add the fact that Turgeon also had to overcome the loss of 6-foot-10 Junior Elonu, who left after last season for the NBA draft. Of course, elite programs now have to handle losing players to the draft, so you could argue it's just part of the job. However you want to look at it, Turgeon has done his job regarding the loss of Elonu.
Losing Roland seemed bigger. The Aggies could've fallen apart after his leg injury. They could've easily said to themselves, "First Junior, now this." And why not? A&M had gone from four senior starters to two.
It was never part of the Aggies' mentality. Turgeon rarely mentioned it and never used it as an excuse. In fact, he came right out and said if this was to happen, it came at a good time with a couple of winnable games on the schedule next up. He let his team know Roland's injury was not the end-all, that with a little time to adjust the Aggies could get right back on track. He then made the correct strategic move -- going with a big lineup -- to make that happen.
And when things went well for the Aggies, and they reached nine then 10 then 11 wins in Big 12 play, Turgeon credited Roland whose positive attitude kept the team believing good things were going to happen. He praised the play of his two seniors, Sloan and Bryan Davis, and the team's togetherness.
All those were ingredients, but the he never mentioned perhaps the key component: the head coach.
I make that point for one reason. If it had gone south and A&M had gone 7-9 in Big 12 play and missed the NCAA tournament, Turgeon would've taken the brunt of the blame. All of those hurdles he and the Aggies had to overcome wouldn't have been seen as hurdles but rather as excuses.
Turgeon had to instill belief in his players that they could scrap their way to a good finish in conference and earn a solid seed for the NCAA tournament. And it was him that hurt, just as much as any, when it abruptly came to an end.
Thirty minutes after the overtime defeat to Purdue, Turgeon sat beside his two big men at the podium slowly shaking his head back and forth with every question. It was as if he was reliving the final sequence, still having trouble with the realization it was all over.
His team had just lost a game he had to believe it could've and should've won. After Davis and David Loubeau made their way back to the team's locker room, a red-eyed Turgeon made a point to say how much he enjoyed coaching this season's team. It wasn't end-of-the-season gibberish you get from every coach at every level. He meant it.
After all, it was only about two months ago Turgeon admitted that his first season at A&M was not much fun and more difficult than he expected. It was nothing against the players he'd inherited, just that the expectations were difficult to meet. He said if it had been his first job he probably wouldn't have made it very long, adding that it's easier to take the reins of a downtrodden program than a successful one.
One of Kansas' own had a lot of winning -- and winning over -- to do in his first season. He was following the only coach to have led the Aggies to two straight NCAA tournaments, the only one to have a winning record in the NCAAs and the first coach to have caught the imagination of the A&M fans in a very long time.
Billy Gillispie was a fan favorite, especially with the students. He had done what many thought impossible by making basketball at A&M more than just something to gripe about between football season and spring football. Gillispie also is a Texan, and that matters to a lot of people in these parts.
Three years later, Turgeon has stopped worrying about following in Gillispie's footsteps and begun to make his own. He has taken to interacting with the students on Facebook or by tweeting regularly, by getting out and delivering pizza to those waiting in the cold for front-row seats and joining fans in the stands along with his players to celebrate after big victories.
Most importantly, he's continued to win at a place where that never should be taken for granted, regardless of the circumstances.
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