Why Carleton’s basketball coach took a step back
Nothing left to accomplish in U Sports, 13-time national men’s hoops champ says
Dave, Emily, Theo and Gabe Smart have lived in six places over 71/2 months since fire damaged their Ottawa residence, and they’ll wait another few weeks before returning home.
“We’ve been lucky,” Dave says. “Friends have helped out, and we’ve rented Airbnbs. The boys have been so busy with sports, it hasn’t been too bad for them. For my wife and I, we haven’t been able to settle down, so we’re looking forward to mid-November.”
Fortunately, the Smarts were safely away from home when the fire occurred March 10: while they were in Halifax for the Canadian university men’s basketball championship. It wasn’t the first time Emily and sons Theo and Gabe had attended the U Sports Final Eight to support Dave and the Carleton Ravens, but an otherwise familiar family trip was extra special, not just because the Ravens thumped the Calgary Dinos 83-49 for their 14th national title in 17 years.
“Other than a very, very small group of people, (only) my wife and I knew that this was going to be my last game as the head coach at Carleton,” Dave says, “so it was kind of an emotional time for us.”
Nine days after that game and the fire, Carleton announced Dave would become its new director of basketball operations. Ex-Raven Taffe Charles, an assistant coach for Dave for nine seasons before a dozen more as the women’s team head coach, succeeded him.
The news surprised almost everyone. “I’m not in the inner circle to know the details, but, no, I hadn’t heard anything,” says James Derouin, the University of Ottawa head coach whose Gee-Gees gave Dave’s Ravens some of their sternest on-court tests in recent campaigns. “It caught me off-guard as much as everybody else, or at least outside the circle.”
As it turned out, conversations began last October, partly inspired by Carleton’s appointment of Kwesi Loney as director of soccer operations and men’s team head coach. Athletic director Jennifer Brenning says those eventually led to discussions with university management and human resources about a job description.
Dave gave his players a midseason heads-up about a potential change, but made a firm decision to proceed only in February. Even then, the official “need-to-know” group featured only Dave, his wife, Charles, Brenning and university management and human resources.
“Both of us have tremendous confidence in Taffe taking over our (men’s) team,” Brenning says, referring jointly to Dave. “Taffe knows he is stepping into huge shoes.”
Now 53, Dave took a sabbatical in 2015-16. While the Ravens rolled to another national title with nephew Rob as interim coach, Dave dropped in on National Basketball Association and American college teams. Gabe, not yet in school, joined him in Philadelphia to watch the Villanova Wildcats. Theo went on a Northeastern Howlin’ Huskies road trip to Florida.
Now they’re seven and 10, respectively, and Gabe and Theo have jam-packed competitive hockey and basketball schedules. Their dad is assistant coach for both hockey teams and Theo’s head coach in basketball, plus he’s checking in with other Carleton coaches such as football boss Steve Sumarah and consulting with the Ottawa Senators at the invitation of the National Hockey League team’s new head coach, D.J. Smith.
Being director of basketball operations keeps Dave in hoops, too: on-campus meetings with recruits; alumni relations; mentoring Charles and interim women’s team coach Brian Cheng; helping to hire a full-time women’s team coach for 2020. He’s also doing skill development and video sessions with individual players and attending half of the men’s practices. During home games, he’s at the end of the bench farthest from Charles.
As an example, during August pre-season contests against the Valparaiso Crusaders and Albany Great Danes, Dave remained seated as Carleton players circled around Charles during timeouts and marched to the locker-room at halftime. His involvement seemed limited to chatting with athletes who had been subbed out.
Expect that protocol to continue for at least a while during regular-season play, which tipped off Friday night at home against the Waterloo Warriors.
“Generally, they’ll talk to (Charles or an assistant). Then, if
I have something that I want to say to the guys, I’ll call them down and then I’ll say, ‘What did the coaches say?’” Dave says. “And, if they already told them what I wanted to tell them, I’ll say, ‘You’re good. Start doing it.’ If they said something different, I’ll say, ‘OK, that’s good, but I want you to think about doing this, too, in this situation.’ I don’t repeat what they already said, but just tell them, ‘What they said makes sense, you’ve got to do it.’”
So, to summarize, seemingly hard-driven Dave is still teaching basketball, denies burnout and acknowledges he’ll miss in-game adrenalin rushes, but he’s nonetheless willing to end the most successful run in Canadian university basketball: 656 victories against 101 defeats (.867 winning percentage), including marks of 65-53 (.551) against U.S. opponents and 591-48 (.925) against Canadian counterparts; 13 of those 14 national titles since 2003 and U Sports semifinals appearances in three other years.
An “awakening,” he says, came after the top-ranked Ravens edged the No. 2 Brock Badgers 80-75 in overtime in St. Catharines on Dec. 2, 2017. According to Smart, the first four post-game questions were variations of “What went wrong?” or “What happened?”
It happened again in March: two queries following that 34-point rout of the Dinos were based on the premise that a one-sided result had been expected.
“Winning by that much has to be a surprise against the second-best team in the country, but that’s how it was sort of perceived,” he says.
Since Carleton’s announced change in mid-March, Dave has had conversations with other unnamed parties, most likely U.S. colleges and universities, but he maintains none have constituted a serious full-time coaching offer. Several years ago, he accepted one south-of-the-border position, but changed his mind while meeting with Ravens players, so he had to call the supposed employers back and decline the hire.
More recently, in 2017-18, he chatted with Jay Triano when the former Canadian national team coach — Dave was Triano’s assistant for several summers — was interim head coach of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns. They would talk again if Triano got that job full time, but it didn’t happen.
There was also a discussion with John Beilein, the ex-University of Michigan boss now in his first NBA season as Cleveland Cavaliers head coach, but Dave remains at Carleton.
He says he’s not a fan of what he describes as the NBA assistant’s often nomadic lifestyle, citing the experience one of his best friends in coaching, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Bryan Gates, who moved his family five times in six years.
Never say “never,” though. Dave says he and Emily have discussed what it would take to get him back into full-time coaching.
“It was time for me to sort of see if I could pursue other things, try a different job, a different position,” Dave says. “It’s a bit of a dilemma here. Carleton, they treat me extremely well. My family loves the environment here. There are so many things outside of basketball that are positive for me and my family here. I don’t want to leave unless it’s a great situation.
“I’m not sure it was time to stop coaching basketball for me, but it was definitely time to stop coaching U Sports. We had accomplished everything. There’s nothing more to accomplish.
“And I enjoyed it every day, but, honestly, the games weren’t the same as they used to be for various reasons, so it was time to step away from U Sports coaching.”
It’s also time to spend time with two growing boys and his wife and to think about moving back in after an extended absence from a fire-damaged home.
Emily, her husband jokes, is happy he’s around more “most days,” although not so much on other days.
“The biggest thing about it is I’m still very much involved with both (Carleton basketball) programs, but when I’m with my family, I’m with my family, whereas before I felt like I was with the people close to me, but my mind was somewhere else.
“I find it’s not perfect, but my mind is where it should be most of the time.” gholder@postmedia.com Twitter.com/HolderGord