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We hope you are ready for a season unlike any other: testing, distancing, and bubbles, oh my! Nobody knows exactly what is going to happen, when it is going to happen, or whether anything actually will happen…but in the meantime we will try to restore some order with season previews featuring the best players/coaches/administrators in the country. We continue our coverage with Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey. He played at Wyoming/Xavier, made his 1st NCAA tourney as head coach in 2017, and is the defending Big South tourney champ. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Coach Kelsey about winning 14 games in a row last season and his expectations for this year.
You began your college career at Wyoming before transferring to Xavier: how good a player were you back in the day, and how did you get into coaching? 1 way to gauge if a player is good is to see whether he scored 1000 career PTS: I missed it by about 906! I was born/raised in Cincinnati and my dad played at Xavier so when Coach Skip Prosser got the job there I had the opportunity to come back. I started as a walk-on and ended up earning a scholarship and becoming a captain. Skip hired me to work for him at Wake Forest after my playing career was over. My value was in my work ethic/leadership: I took pride in owning the locker room and making sure that we were a buttoned-up team.
In 2012 you were hired as head coach at Winthrop, where you have become 1 of the winningest coaches in Big South Conference history (top-10 all-time): how have you been able to have so much success over such a long period of time? The history of our program precedes me by a long shot: it is 1 of the most decorated mid-major programs in the country. I think that former coach Gregg Marshall will end up on the Mount Rushmore of college coaches: he built Winthrop into 1 of the premier programs in the country. That level of excellence is the norm here, which is a big responsibility, and our players accept that. It drives us every single day.
Take me though the 2017 postseason:
In the Big South tourney title game you had a win over Campbell: where does that rank among the biggest wins of your career? That was our 1st NCAA tourney trip during my tenure. It was a special team with a pair of special players in Keon Johnson/Xavier Cooks. We had more true road wins that year than any other team in the country. I will always remember the court-storming and cutting down the nets with my son after beating Campbell: it was epic. We had a game at Illinois earlier that season (a 4-PT OT win) where Keon scored 38 PTS despite cramping up a few times: we were just pouring Gatorade down his throat. It was 1 of the most impressive performances that I have ever seen.
In the NCAA tourney you had a loss to Butler: what is your lasting memory of your 1st NCAA tourney appearance as a coach? Coach Chris Holtmann (then at Butler) is a friend of mine so it was a bit ironic. I had lunch with him earlier that year and we picked each other’s brain about X’s and O’s. The part I remember the most was just coming out onto the practice floor during the open practice: to have my son out there with me was unbelievable.
Later that month you were hired as head coach at UMass but returned to Winthrop 2 days later citing personal reasons: did you have any regrets back then, and do you have any regrets 3 years later? I am unbelievably blessed to be a coach at Winthrop and I thank God every day for this opportunity at a world-class institution. To walk into the Coliseum and look up into the rafters and see all of those banners is amazing: I love it here and as am excited today as I was at my introductory press conference.
Last year you started 4-7, then won 14 in a row (including a 3-OT win over Gardner Webb), then lost 3 of your final 6 regular season games in February: was it as much of a rollercoaster in reality as it sounds like on paper? Every team faces adversity at some point: even when we were on that 14-game roll we knew that we could not get too high or low because it is a marathon not a sprint. I give our guys credit for rebounding/adjusting in March and then playing our best basketball of the year. We played terrific in the conference tourney and thought that we would have a chance to make some noise in the NCAA tourney after hitting a speed bump in February.
In the 2020 Big South tourney title game you had a win over Hampton, then a few days later you learned that the NCAA tourney was canceled due to the coronavirus: what was your reaction when you 1st heard the news, and do you think that it was the right decision? The most disappointing thing was that our seniors did not get to experience the most exciting spectacle in American sports. I do not think there is any question that it was correct to cancel it: there was so much uncertainty about how dangerous/severe the virus could be. It was 1000% the right decision but I was still very disappointed. The underclassmen/coaches will get another chance this year but those seniors will not. The immediate question was how would we respond because every other team was going through it as well: would it make us better or become a hindrance? I am proud of how our guys responded during tough circumstances.
SO PF DJ Burns transferred from Tennessee and was named 2020 conference ROY: how did you get a guy who was the #3 South Carolina high school prospect in 2018 (behind Zion Williamson/Ja Morant), and do you think that he is just going to dominate the conference for the next 3 years? We have a very good conference with terrific coaches: I think that our league is underrated nationally. It will not be a cakewalk and everyone will try to stop DJ by throwing the kitchen sink at him but he is a talented young man. He was a 4-star recruit who started at Tennessee, but the allure of playing close to home in Rock Hill played a big part in it. He is just 1 part of this: I am as excited about this year’s team as any that I have had here. We have a good senior class and some of the toughest kids who I have ever coached. Our veterans lead the way but we also have terrific depth. We were nip and tuck with Duke last year and only lost 2 guys from last year’s team. DJ’s hands/feet are as good as any post player that I have ever coached. He knows that he is not a finished product but his future is really bright.
Your team’s 63.4 FT% last year was bottom-25 in the nation but your 54.1 FG% from 2-PT range was top-25 in the country: is there a secret to improving your FT shooting or is it as simple as getting the guys into the gym to practice their FTs as much as possible? My mentor Skip Prosser said that if you want better FT shooting then you should recruit better FT shooters! The key is repetition: 500 makes/day will make you a better shooter. Many of our best producers last year were not our best FT shooters. Chandler Vaudrin is 1 of our best players and has really improved his shooting: 1 of his weaknesses is his efficiency at the FT line but I expect him to be among the nation’s leaders in AST this year as a 6’7″ PG. We have been 1 of the best 3-PT shooting teams in America during the last several years because we play with pace and spread the floor.
You have 2 Australians and 1 Italian on your roster: what sort of recruiting philosophy do you have? We have another Australian coming in next year as well who I think will become 1 of the best shooters in the history of our program. It all started with Xavier Cooks, who is arguably the best player in school history and then returned to his home country of Australia to play pro basketball. It opened up doors over there because the people at the highest levels of the sport saw that they could trust us to take care of their kids. We invest in international recruiting as well.
What are your goals for this season, and what are your expectations for this season? It is a boring answer but our goal is to go out here in 75 minutes and then have the best 90-minute workout that we have ever had! We have a hungry group that just gets it: it is a luxury to have a veteran group that buys into the daily process of being great because if you take your eye off that then you will stub your toe. If the stars align properly and keep getting better then we could have 1 of the best teams in school history this year.