Sinclair enjoying fairy tale season
A coach with a make-believe side job, Price leads team to real-life success at 13-0.
Head coach Jeff Price and the Sinclair men’s basketball team have matched the best start in school history at 13-0,
There is not another basketball coach in America who is going to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day like Jeff Price.
Not long after the Sinclair Community College team — now 13-0 and ranked No. 4 in the nation — pushed aside the Wittenberg University junior varsity team Monday night, the Tartan Pride’s coach headed to his other job.
Today and Christmas Day he will be at one of the nation’s best-known theme parks, dressed in an oversized costume as he plays a popular storybook character to the delight of people from all over the world.
Although he’s been doing this for years — both over the summers and at the Christmas break — he’s not permitted to publicly reveal the name of the park or the characters he plays, in part because his employer doesn’t want anything to ruin the illusion.
And while all that is certainly a good story, when you consider what he and his team are doing on and off the court back here, you realize he’s involved in an even better narrative at Sinclair.
Talk about your fairy tale seasons.
With Monday night’s 84-70 victory, the Pride tied the program record for the longest winning streak in school his-
tory. The 1969-70 team coached by Kevin O’Neill and the 1997-98 team under coach Paul Bryant both had 13-game winning steaks.
O’Neill’s team also did it at the start of the season, but this year’s bunch can eclipse that mark with a victory in its next game, Jan. 2 against visitingWest Virginia University-Parkersburg.
“We want to make history here and that’s what we’re planning to do,” said sophomore guard CalebWalker.
The new rankings will come out after the holiday break and Sinclair may well move up in the National Junior College Athletic Association Division II poll.
The Pride are averaging a staggering 97.8 points per game and shooting 51.5 percent from the floor — tied for third-best in the nation.
Seven players — some already drawing interest from four-year schools — are averaging double figures.
The team is among the top 15 in the nation in eight different statistical categories, but the one of which Price is most proud is the 22.4 assists per game. That’s fourth-best in the nation.
“This team is one of the most sharing we have ever had,” Price said. “I think these guys legitimately care about each other.”
Walker agreed: “There are no big egos on this team. We know who the scorers are and who the role players are and we all jell. We all know what we’re supposed to do here.”
While the Dayton Flyers like to tout themselves as “True Team,” the Sinclair players wear that mantle just as well.
And, in one area, they do it better than anyone here.
The three C’s
“If you want young men to grow, you’ve got to help the whole person,” Price said. “You can’t just help them with hedging ball screens and boxing out. They’ve got to understand the importance of academics, how to take male mentoring and that you give back to your community.”
As Price once told me: “It’s always about the pixie dust. You’ve got to have it.”
He said it’s “not just about winning games,” which is why he stresses what he calls the three C’s — competition, classroom and community.
And the latter isn’t just some kind of self-promotion photo opportunity as some programs treat it. For Price and his team, it’s a year-round commitment.
“We are a community college — we’re right in downtown Dayton. We need to be in the community,” Price stressed. “When guys first come here, I explain things like, ‘You are not going home for Thanksgiving. You’re going to serve Thanksgiving dinner with Dr. Steve Levitt at the Feast of Giving at the Convention Center. And on that day we’re gonna see 8,000 of our best friends.’
“You talk about things like that in general terms and at first they kind of just look past you. But once they start to participate, you see they start to understand and really start feeling for our program.”
The Sinclair team visits the Dayton VA Hospital, has manned the phones at the Muscular Dystrophy telethons, taken part on the annual Generation Dayton spring cleanup of the community, and holds a Military Appreciation Day when it hosts theWright Patterson AFB base team.
“We register everybody to vote,” Price said. “We tell everybody, ‘Don’t sit there and cry about something. Get a voice and go effectively change something.’”
Price also makes sure his players get some national perspective.
Every year they take an early-season trip to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia or North Carolina. They’ll play a game — this year it was against the Naval Academy JV; in the past it’s been against JV teams at Penn, Georgetown and the University of North Carolina — and also immerse themselves in the surroundings.
This year they visited wounded soldiers at theWalter Reed Medical Center, spent time on the floor of Congress and went to the Supreme Court.
In the past, they’ve witnessed the changing of the guard at Arlington National Cemetery and gone to various memorials, including Lincoln, Martin Luther King and Vietnam.
“Players who come here seem to develop better as a person,” Walker said. “They get a better attitude … and they become betters players, too.”
Providing a chance
Sinclair’s team includes seven players from Ohio — three from the Miami Valley — two from Kentucky and one each from Michigan, Virginia and France.
“A lot of our recruiting is done kind of late after we find out who is still out there looking for a program to go to,” Price said.
“The story of each player is different. He could have played on a bad high school team and was overlooked or he didn’t have money to play on an AAU team and didn’t get noticed.
“Another guy might be 6-foot-2 and was forced to play center on his high school team and now he’s come to a junior college to learn to play guard.”
Some players slip through the cracks because of their lack of size or speed, or because of insufficient grades, and some just need a change of scenery.
The only Sinclair player to have played at another school is 6-4 sophomore Reshardd Harris, the leading scorer (21.5 ppg) and rebounder (8.5), who transferred from Schoolcraft, a junior college in Livonia, Mich.
Then there’s backup guard DeAngalo Gates, who originally came to Sinclair in the fall of 2009 after helping lead Thurgood Marshall to the Division II state title game that March.
“He had some academic struggles and went to work in a couple of factories,” Price said. “He finally got his academics in order and got re-enrolled. He’s playing well for us (averaging 10.8 points and 6.5 rebounds) and is ready to move next year to a four-year school.”
As for 6-foot-7 Steven Perriere, he was born in the Central African Republic, moved to Cameroon at age 4 and then Villepinte, France, a suburb of Paris, when he was 12. He was introduced to basketball just four years ago.
An older brother living in Kettering got him to Ohio, and Sinclair coaches discovered him. He enrolled as a student and today is a tremendous success story.
He has a GPA over 3.0, is averaging 9.9 points and 6.8 rebounds off the bench, and is being wooed by some four-year schools, including the South Dakota School of Mines, an NCAA Division II school in Rapid City.
Monday night, he was one of a couple of Pride players who caught the eye of Joseph Price, the Central State coach who was part of the sparse crowd. After starring at Notre Dame, Price played 13 years of pro ball in Europe, including in France.
College coaches know
Last Saturday the Morehead State coach and a few Division II coaches were in the stands surveying several Sinclair players. “I get four to five emails a day from college coaches asking about these kids,” said Jeff Price.
He said guard MarcellousWashington is being recruited by Montana State and already has an offer from King University in Tennessee. Point guard Manny Powell Jr. — who is just 5-foot-8, but averages 15.7 points per game and is second in the nation in assists (7.8 a game) — has drawn interest from Cleveland State. And he said Harris is being sought by Division II schools “all across the East Coast.”
Dozens of former Sinclair players have proven they can play on the next stage. Guard Trace Cureton is now at Utah State.
While college coaches have no trouble finding the Sinclair team, the crowds — even in this undefeated season — are slim. Through nine home games, the Pride are averaging just 116 fans.
Part of the problem is that Sinclair — even with 25,000 students — is a commuter school. And the team plays in a tucked-away site on campus known simply as Building 8 Arena — a name that gives no hint of the pixie dust success inside.
Price is undeterred and offered a motto he got from a friend who was the golf coach at Michigan:
“He had this up in his locker room: ‘Something well done is better than something well said.’”
And when you consider the way Sinclair has embraced the three Cs — competition, classroom, community — it’s hard to imagine any college doing it any better.
And after Monday’s game, that prompted a quiet admission from Price:
“There are only like 1,200 college basketball coaches — NCAA Division I to JUCO — in the entire nation and I’m one of them. I’ve got the keys to my own gym. I get to go to the Final Four every year, and I get to work with these kids. … Tell me that’s not the coolest job in the world!”
Even cooler than his theme-park gig this Christmas holiday.
He might be a story book character there, but at Sinclair his fairy tale is real.