Monday, March 12, 2007 11:41 PM CDT
Sullivan’s Cohan turns program around quickly
By MIKE MONAHAN, Staff Writer
mmonahan@jg-tc.com
One might ask, how does a coach with a losing record finish as the 2006-07 Mattoon Journal-Gazette/Charleston Times-Courier Coach of the Year?
There are many answers for Sullivan coach Jack Cohan, who led his team to a 14-15 record. Cohan, a Sullivan alumnus, took over the program after a 2-26 season. The squad was picked to finish ninth in the 10-team Okaw Valley Conference. After losing its first five games, it appeared as though the Lady Redskins might be in for another long year. However, that was not the case as Sullivan finished tri-champions of the conference along with Central A&M and Decatur St. Teresa. Sullivan also knocked off three teams that would finish with 20 wins or more as they beat Maroa-Forsyth (20-7), Neoga (21-10) and eliminated Arthur-Lovington (21-5) in the regional semifinals to reach its first regional championship since 2001-02.
With many of the players, including some of the nine returnees, on a volleyball squad that won a school-record 28 matches, including the school’s first-ever regional championship, Cohan was hoping to carry the winning atmosphere into basketball.
Cohan took over in late April.
“When we started in the summer, expectations as far as wins, conference championships, that kind of stuff, didn’t really cross my mind, but expectations of (the fact that) I have a group of girls that really play hard and play as a team — from that standpoint I was excited and knew that we had something to work with there,” he said.
The Lady Redskins had three seniors, five juniors and a sophomore. The three seniors, Carrie Kuhns, Korey Hostetter and Shaylee Walker, proved very valuable to the team.
“We had really good senior leadership,” said Cohan. “After the first open gym, the first time I got to physically get on the basketball court with these girls, there was no doubt in my mind those three needed to be the captains.”
Sullivan averaged 45.7 points per game and allowed 45.9.
“The 14 wins don’t stand out to me as much as the 25 of 29 games we were still in the game with three minutes left,” said Cohan. “I don’t like to use winning as the goal or the objective. I like to say, ‘Let’s just go out there and battle and compete,’ and to do that in 25 of the 29 games — and three of the five were at the beginning of the season. That is what made it so much fun.”
Sullivan opened the year with five losses by an average of 15 points, but the five teams finished with a combined record of 87-53 with only one not finishing with a winning record (Altamont). The other losses were to Unity (20-9), Tuscola (18-10), St. Thomas More (21-10) and Monticello (17-11).
“Even when we were 0-5, we never really lost the fact that we know we were doing things the right way and it is going to get there and that there is a process,” said Cohan. “We never panicked. We just kept working hard in practice. We started to prepare a little better. I came into this (coaching job) not knowing the teams we were going to play and not knowing my own team in a game situation. As things started to come around I started to realize who I want to play and what positions and what time.”
After the first victory, 59-45 over Okaw Valley, the Lady Redskins lost to Tuscola for the second time in the season before embarking on a four-game winning streak, beating the four conference opponents, including Shelbyville, Meridian and Warrensburg-Latham on the road.
“Once we started to get a few wins and things started going our way, we kind of liked it and we wanted to continue to do that and not become content,” said Cohan as the five wins had already more than doubled last year’s total.
After a loss to Arthur, which was undefeated at that time, the Lady Redskins had 10 days off before the Okaw Valley Holiday Tournament.
“We had a perfect schedule done by our athletics director (Les Dillow),” said Cohan. The 10 days gave us an opportunity to reflect on what we had done well and what we had done bad and really work on it. From that point we really started to focus on one game at a time.”
After going 3-2 in the Okaw Valley Holiday Tournament, finishing fifth, Sullivan picked up its biggest win of the year to that point, knocking off Maroa-Forsyth 61-49. Kuhns scored 18 points, and Melinda Martin had 13 rebounds and 13 points.
“That was as good of a game as we had played,” said Cohan. “We really focused on one quarter at a time. That game was huge for us. It put us in the driver’s seat for the conference.”
One move that was made during the year was with Kuhns.
“Early on she wasn’t playing point guard,” said Cohan. “We tried to get her some scoring opportunities. We put the ball in her hands and let Melinda Martin try and become more of the scorer.”
Sullivan assured itself of at lest a tie for the conference title with a 56-42 win over Argenta-Oreana. After two losses in the conference tournament, one to Decatur St. Teresa and one to Central A&M, the Lady Redskins knocked off Neoga on the Lady Indians Senior Night, 50-45.
“We played really good ball against a really good team and we were without Rylee Long, who was sick,” said Cohan. “It was one of our bigger wins.”
After another two losses, Sullivan eliminated Arthur in the regional semifinals, 61-49.
“Even though we had lost the two games we felt good about ourselves and we played the best game of the year against Arthur, a very good team. We had a lot of girls step up”
Kuhns scored 15, Martin 13 and Shaylee Walker added 10 points in the victory.
Although Sullivan’s usual defense was a 2-3, the Lady Redskins played many different defenses.
“I was blessed with having Bob Lockart (current Mattoon coach) as my coach in high school, and one of the things I still use today that he taught me is how to prepare a team for another team. We would go and see the other teams and try and make it harder or more difficult to score. Fortunately, we had depth on our team, playing 8-10 girls.”
Martin, Hostetter, Kuhns, Lauren Taylor and Walker played in all 29 games, while Kayla Portwood played in 28 and Long and Alexis Tomczewski played in 24 games. Taylor led the team in scoring with an average of 11.1 points per game, while Martin scored 8.5 and Kuhns 8.1. Martin, Walker and Kuhns were the top rebounders with 6.5, 5.7 and 5.3, respectively. Kuhns, Martin and Walker were tops in assists with 3.0, 1.7 and 1.5 respectively. Martin and Kuhns were the team leader in steals with 3.3 and 1.9, respectively.
“It was a joy the entire year,” said Cohan. “It was a group of girls where as a coach, you didn’t have that one stand-out player, and it just makes it fun. Everything we accomplished we did it as a team and really got after it. To beat some of the other better teams and for the coaches to say, ‘You know, I really don’t know how you beat us because there wasn’t one girl’, I enjoy that, and that is a true compliment to the team. Even when we were not doing well we still had a lot of fun and never put our heads down. We kept playing hard. How can you not like and enjoy that? The success that came with it — that is all great, but it was an unbelievable group of girls that played hard and believed as a team you can accomplish some things, and even whenever you didn’t, they didn’t stop believing, and that is what got us to prevail.”
Cohan is the third different Sullivan coach to earn Coach of the Year honors in 29 years as Scott Thomas earned five Coach of the Year honors and Becky Clayton, also a Sullivan grad, earned the award in 1999-2000, which was the last time a coach from Sullivan earned the award.
Contact Mike Monahan at 238-6854.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
|
|
