A Round of Goff
Josh Goff

Sometimes, people make it look too easy.

Imagine you’re a coach, and coming in to the season you have lost a three-year starter, an emotional leader who was Most Outstanding Player of the South Regional, to graduation and had your fourth-leading scorer from a year ago quit the team.

Doesn’t sound like a promising start, does it?

Once the season starts, you have one of three seniors quit the team and find yourself starting four freshmen at times.

By season’s end you have eight scholarship players and often have to use assistant coaches to be able to practice.

Doesn’t sound like a typical recipe for success, does it?

Well, Ron Marvel isn’t your typical coach. Faced with all this adversity, it wouldn’t have been hard for Marvel to call the season a wash, rest on his laurels and kick back in his comfy leather office chair.

Instead, after a tumultuous start, Marvel and company got the Sugar Bears turned around for another typical successful season.

The Sugar Bears are 21-9, second in the Gulf South Conference West division, sixth in the South region, and playing some of their best ball of the year heading into the conference tournament. They swept both archrival Arkansas Tech (for the first time in 19 seasons) and Delta State, the South’s No. 2 team.

In all, a pretty good season, but maybe short of some people’s preseason expectations.

The Bears make the tournament for the first time since 1998 and people ask “Wow Coach, how’d you do it?” The Sugar Bears accomplish what they have and people ask “Wow Coach, how’d you lose nine times?”

That’s how successful Marvel has been. Good news is no news.

But the job done by Marvel and his staff this season should not be taken for granted, as it was not an enviable task they had to undertake.

And realize it is Marvel — and his staff. While the boss has done a magnificent job, his cause has been aided by a host of able assistants. Assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Checola Seals was chiefly responsible for bringing in the quartet of talented freshmen on this year’s squad, and helps plenty with the daily coaching duties.

The graduate assistants and student assistant do not sit idly by and fetch water and hold clipboards. Graduate Assistants Jeremy Carson and Kristin Frase (the aforementioned departed senior) and Student Assistant Tramale Ealy are all hands-on in their duties. They each break down the opposition’s game film and install gameplans, they run much of the practices and even join in the fray occasionally so the team can scrimmage.

It’s been a team effort all season, and has paid off. Of course, the coaches don’t get all the credit, as the players have to go out and execute the plans given to them. While it was rocky at first, they seem to be hitting their stride at the most opportune time.

Despite the obvious gender difference, this year’s Sugar Bears team has many similarities with the national champion 1997 Arizona Wildcats team.

That Wildcats team finished sixth in the Pac 10 but peaked at just the right time and made the improbable title run.

A dynamic freshman point guard named Mike Bibby made that team go. The team also included an All-American guard in Miles Simon, a solid third scorer in Michael Dickerson, a good center in AJ Bramlett, an offensive sparkplug off the bench in Jason Terry, and a well-rounded reserve in Eugene Edgerson.

A dynamic freshman point guard named Renita Dobbins makes — well, made — this team go. The team also includes an All-American guard in Carone Harris, a solid third scorer in Traci Graham, a good center in Genai Walker, an offensive sparkplug off the bench in Ashley Hutchcraft, and a well-rounded reserve in Caronica Randle.

And of course, ultra-successful silver-haired coaches head up both squads.

Can the Sugar Bears travel the same road as that Arizona team? A week ago you could’ve made a case. But now with Dobbins out with a torn ACL, the hill just got a lot steeper. There aren’t going to be any easy games down the stretch and they’re going to be even more difficult with Dobbins gone.

The team can go one of two directions from here. They can let Dobbins’ absence shatter their confidence and pull them down, or they can rally and use Renita as added motivation.

They’ve dealt with obstacles all season, and this is another one in the course.

What they have to do now is — as they say out in Arizona — (Sugar) “Bear Down!”