Skinner is just a winner
MILWAUKEE -- Al Skinner doesn't do a sideline dance (unlike most college coaches, he sits more than he stands). Al Skinner doesn't whine about Boston not being more of a college basketball town. Al Skinner doesn't offer himself as some great authority on college basketball. Al Skinner does not promote Al Skinner, not ever.
Those are a few of the Al Skinner "don'ts."
Now here is an indisputable Al Skinner "does." Give him a little time, and Al Skinner does win basketball games. Quietly and unobtrusively, the Boston College teams coached by Skinner have won more games (90) in a four-year period than any such group in BC history.
The sixth-seeded Eagles go for No. 91, and No. 25 this season, when they play No. 3 seed Georgia Tech at the Bradley Center this afternoon. A victory would put BC into the Round of 16 for the seventh time in school history, and the first time since 1994. Is Skinner excited?
Uh, no. Skinner does not really do "excitement." To say that the BC mentor is laid-back is to say that you might be able to find an Italian meal in the North End, that Paris is for lovers, and that George Steinbrenner likes being in charge. Skinner sweats neither the small stuff nor the large stuff.
He's a day-to-day content guy, so don't bother with the hypotheticals or the what-ifs, and don't bother bringing up the word "expectations," either, as in "What were your expectations for this year's team?"
"I don't deal in expectations," he explains. "Because when you do that, you will either limit yourself because your expectations weren't high enough, or because you'll be a failure if you don't meet those expectations, and if you do meet your expectations, so what? You just did what you were supposed to do. So I don't engage myself in that process. I make it a lot tighter. It's about dealing with the daily basics, and how well you meet your expectations that day."
Whatever he was or wasn't -- don't shoot me, Al -- expecting, he was going to have to do it with a far different team than the one he's had the past few years. The departure of guard Troy Bell, BC's all-time leading scorer, as well as the loss of mercurial, but troubled, Ryan Sidney, meant that Skinner would have to change a four-year modus operandi. But this change in emphasis from a guard-oriented team to the new pound-it-inside Eagles has not posed much of a problem for Skinner, because he is not locked into some Al Skinner "system." Skinner is a basketball pragmatist who deals with whatever hand he is dealt.
"You can play with a lot of different styles," he explains. "I think I've acquired a lot of basketball insight over the years because over the years I played for a lot of coaches with many different styles. There's no one system better than others. About losing Troy, one of my friends said, `Well, we know you can coach guards; now let's see if you can coach big guys.' But I reminded him that I coached Kenny Green at Rhode Island and he led the country in blocked shots."
Sometimes kids can be forced into the conclusion that the coach really doesn't respect players, or even like them. And he surely doesn't trust them. This is not an issue at BC, because they aren't involved in a coaching cult. They have a coach who simply tries to impart the accumulated wisdom of a man who was an all-time player at his college (UMass), and who was a viable professional player (337 games, 9 ppg) but who doesn't pretend to have all the answers, and who, most of all, remembers what it was like to be a thinking player himself.
"He's laid-back," reiterates team captain Uka Agbai. "He's not a yeller or, if he does yell, it's for a very good reason. What I'll always remember about playing for him is that he allows you to make a mistake on the floor and learn from it. A lot of coaches take you out as soon as you make a mistake, but we at BC never have that problem."
Agbai is an archetypical Skinner recruit, in that he was not regarded as a big-time prospect by any other college recruiter. Skinner has established a formidable reputation as a coach who can both spot and nurture the undersized or odd-sized players. Tyson Wheeler was too small. Cuttino Mobley was a nobody. Agbai was thought to be an Ivy League player. Craig Smith was too fat. Jared Dudley was, damned if I know. And there are plenty more where they came from.
"It's just worked out that way," says Skinner, who, for the record, has never hung a MCDONALD'S ALL-AMERICANS NOT WANTED sign on his office door. "But maybe it is a little bit of a reflection of myself. I was a [6-foot-3-inch] center in high school. I played every position in college. I was a 1, a 2, and a 3 in the pros. My thing is you've got to be able to play the game and think it."
A lot of people have complimented him on this surprising team, just as people have complimented him on that 2000-01 gang that went from last to first in the Big East and won 27 games. "That's fine," he says, "but to me it isn't necessarily about that. To me, it's about careers, players' careers. I don't divide it up annually. I divide it up collectively. I think of the career success Uka has had, for example.
"In all honesty," he continues, "one of my most enjoyable teams was the [1998-99] team that won six games. That was a team that lost at home to Harvard -- no knock on Harvard, but that shouldn't happen at BC -- but which won three games in the league and won a game against West Virginia with a walk-on point guard named Dwayne Pina. They continued to work hard every day and never hung their heads. They competed every night. In terms of satisfaction and emotion, that team will always be as important to me as any others I've had. Now if people want to say nice things about the 27-5 team, that's fine. That's an acknowledgment that I could coach a successful team, too."
Now he's got another successful team, one that most people were not -- close your eyes, Al -- expecting to do much. From now on, we should all probably stop expecting anything from Al Skinner's teams and just enjoy watching what he comes up with.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com.
