The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Hartford’s Gallagher lives for the positives
Although his team finally gets to play again Wednesday afternoon against Merrimack and Friday night against UConn, a piece of Hartford coach John Gallagher will never leave March 12, 2020.
“I’ve gotten over it, but I haven’t gotten over it,” Gallagher said Monday on a podcast with Hearst Connecticut Media. “I’m moving on, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.”
That is the price of COVID-19. With the start of the 2020-21 basketball season this week for UConn, UHart and state Division I schools, there are new mountains to climb, new scheduling hurdles to clear with the pandemic. Getting teams from around the nation to Bubbleville at Mohegan Sun is proving to be a significant challenge.
Yet there, too, are memories that never were made. Joys and heartbreaks that were never felt. Closure? Not last March for college basketball.
“When you take over a program like Hartford, the history hasn’t been the best,” Gallagher said. “Vin Baker was our NBA Top 10 draft pick. The most games he won here was 16.
“When you put things into context, to crawl and fight to get where we were, I’m the type of guy, I need to know why I didn’t win. Even if it creates a negative memory, I at least can go back to the drawing board and say, we need to add this piece, this piece, this piece. That didn’t happen.”
As one of only 42 schools never to get into the D-I NCAA Tournament, UHart was ripe with anticipation. The Hawks won four of their last five and overall were riding the best threeyear stretch in their D-I history. They beat UMass Lowell and Stony Brook in the America East Tournament. They had lost to Vermont, their championship opponent, by one point in their previous matchup.
I called Gallagher that afternoon when the conference and the NCAA called off March Madness. He had walked outside, gone to his car to gather himself. Forty minutes from a dream, he kept saying. He went back inside to find the student manager setting up the film for a session. Gallagher told him to stop. He turned to his 18-win team, told them the hard truth and, then, they cried together.
“A once in a lifetime thing happened, they canceled the season,” Gallagher said. “It probably took until a month ago, I’m now moving forward. But I wake up 3, 4 in the morning … probably 20 times … to go to the bathroom. You look in the mirror and you’re actually talking to yourself.
“It takes you 10 years to get to the game. We weren’t losing that game. It just wasn’t going to happen.”
He talked about how even getting five winning seasons out of 10 at Hartford hadn’t been done before in D-I. He talked about how the program has scratched and clawed and has a “lot of scars on our backs.”
He talked about how good Malik Ellison had been for him and what a great defender Traci Carter was and how he has been granted a sixth year to play. And how this will be such a crazy season. Which led us to UConn-UHart Friday night at Gampel Pavilion. No fans. Not even officially announced until Monday.
“This was a game before COVID probably would not happen,” Gallagher said. “We’re really happy. It’s good for our program. Hopefully, UConn can get something out of the game. They’re really talented.
“Tom Moore (UConn assistant) and I have been talking since COVID started. We went back and forth. We’re going to play. We’re not going to play. They got a game with some (out of state) opponent and that took us out. That game got canceled. And we were back in play.”
Gallagher says it’s the most depth and length UConn has had in a long time. He was effusive in his praise of Dan Hurley and his coaching staff for getting the talent level where “it looks” and “it feels” like UConn.
“This reminds of the glory years in UConn when they were first really, really good in the late ’90s, when they first won (a national championship),” Gallagher said. “The length, they’ve got scorers. They’re 10 deep. They can play guys multiple positions. They can play small. They can play big.
“They’re going to be a handful in that league now. If the Big East is getting six-seven teams in the NCAA Tournament, UConn will be an NCAA Tournament team.”
One guy to watch against UConn is Carter. He played at Marquette and La Salle. Gallagher said he is the best defensive guard he has ever coached and thought he was as good as any college defensive guard in college at the end of last season. It’ll be interesting to see how James Bouknight, R. J. Cole, Jalen Gaffney or Tyrese Martin do against him.
“His defensive numbers are absolutely astonishing,” Gallagher said. “If you’re sloppy with the ball around him, he’s going to get it. He’s from South Philadelphia. He has no fear.”
In the meantime, he said he’ll turn over his game plan.
“Let UConn know,” Gallagher said. “We’re doubling (Bouknight) on every catch. We actually practiced this defense, not for UConn, someone in our league.”
He pointed to a game where an NBA team ran two players at James Harden all night.
“We’re going to put our Houston Rockets-James Harden defense in on Bouknight.”
He was joking. I think. Gallagher got Moses Flowers out of Thayer Academy and Dorchester Mass., but five of his players are from outside the U.S. He has 6-foot-9 wing Hunter Marks from Australia and 6-10 freshman Thomas Webley from New Zealand. Gallagher calls Webley an “utter surprise.” The 6-11 Jakub Dombek, who has gotten his transfer waiver from Colorado, is from Czech Republic. So is 6-10 Miroslav Stafl. Gallagher said Austin Williams, another transfer from Marist, may be the best defensive wing he has had.
“When I got the job at Hartford (in 2010),” Gallagher said, “John Beilein called me and said there’s 220 schools east of the Mississippi and there were like 100 west at the time. ‘Go where nobody is. You’re in the 95 corridor. You’ve got to do it differently.’
“We’re 10 deep. We’ve got size. Quite frankly, we may not be ready for UConn Friday night, but come March and April whenever this season is going to its winding end, nobody knows, we’ll be a different team. We have a chance to be really good at the end of the season.”
This season could fall apart next week or the nonconference portion may be pieced together some way. Rick Pitino pushing for the entire thing to conference play and into May for the NCAA Tournament makes some real sense. But who, beyond COVID itself, knows?
Gallagher does like the America East format of each team playing against a conference opponent at one school site on back-to-back days. There are two off weeks built in for makeup games.
“I think it’s the best idea,” he said. “The only shot you have to get (all 18) games in. Structurally, I think it was the only way to do it.”
COVID has allowed him to get in the gym with his players, something every coach loves, and eliminated a lot of outside distractions. He also has been able to see his four young kids more. John Gallagher is a man who lives for the positives.
“What I don’t like is, going through the season without any hiccups is impossible at the current rate of 14 days (team shutdown after a COVID positive test),” he said. “If it was 6, 7 we could figure it out. The reality is the restrictions are put in because the doctors don’t think it’s healthy for the student- athletes. Until some credible doctor says you need to change it, I understand it.
“The reality is we’re all trying to work through a time in our life that no one is normal. We’re going to get through this, all of us. We all wish it was over today.”