D6 EZ SU K THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAy, MARCH 7 , 2020
BY EMILY GIAMBALVOInside an empty Assembly
Hall, hours before the maryland
men’s basketball team faced Indi-
ana in late January, the Te rrapins
trudged through their usual pre-
game routine. for Anthony Cow-
an Jr., that included a brief chat
with assistant coach DeAndre
Haynes, something Cowan em-
phasizes is never about basket-
ball.
This time, the two point guards
— one 22 years old and longing to
see how far he can go i n the sport,
the other 35 and trying to help
players on that path — sat down
during maryland’s shoot-around.
Those are the moments Haynes’s
former players remember, ones of
genuine investment and trust.
In that conversation, Cowan
noticed how Haynes seemed so
comfortable as they dived into
personal topics. They connected
this past summer, Cowan said,
after Haynes arrived at maryland
from his previous job at michi-
gan, “but that was the day when
we really got close.”
They talked about coaching
and about recruiting, how much
energy it involves. Haynes told
Cowan about his mother’s health
issues. She has been in and out of
the hospital. multiple knee sur-
geries have led to serious compli-
cations. Haynes reminded Cowan
he’s just playing basketball. He
wanted the senior to relax.
That afternoon, Cowan hit a
three-pointer that sparked mary-
land’s late rally. The players cele-
brated, and water flew all over the
visitors’ locker room. moments
later, the team learned Kobe Bry-
ant had died in a helicopter crash.
The jubilant players were abrupt-
ly reminded of their own mortali-
ty — and that of their heroes and
their friends.
Cowan hates flying. It w as even
harder that day. He rarely shows
emotion. on the court, that’s of-
ten a strength. But telling others
how he feels isn’t natural for him.
After Bryant’s death, Cowan
reached out to those close to him
— including Haynes, the coach
who had just talked with him
about everything but the sport he
plays.
“I appreciate you,” Cowan
wrote. “more than you under-
stand.”From Michigan to Maryland
on a monday in may, Haynes
turned on ESPN, as he does each
morning, and heard John Beilein
had accepted the head coaching
job with the NBA’s Cleveland Cav-
aliers. There had been no rumors,
no murmurs. Haynes, then an
assistant under Beilein at michi-
gan, saw his phone lighting up —
calls, texts, more calls, more texts.
In two seasons at michigan,
Haynes helped the team win
63 games and developed guards
Jordan Poole and Zavier Simp-
son. In 2018, the Wolverines won
the Big Te n tournament and
made it to the national champi-
onship game. But by the time
Beilein took the Cavaliers’ job, the
coaching carousel had turned.
few open jobs remained.
Haynes interviewed at mary-
land during the first week of
June, when the Te rps still needed
an assistant. Haynes rode with
Coach mark Turgeon to reagan
National Airport for his flight
back to Detroit.At the time, a position at mi-
ami was still in the mix, but
during the drive with Turgeon,
Haynes received a text from Hur-
ricanes Coach Jim Larrañaga,
who had decided to hire some-
body else. Haynes read the mes-
sage, then pressed the lock button
on his phone without saying any-
thing. maybe a minute later, Tur-
geon offered Haynes the job as
they neared the airport. Haynes
raised his arms above his head in
relief. He called his wife, Tierra,
before he went through security.
If anything, the way his time at
michigan ended taught Haynes
that nothing in his profession is
guaranteed. Assistants’ jobs are
typically only as safe as that of the
head coach, and even with suc-
cess, they’re at the mercy of their
coach’s aspirations.
All you can do is “keep trying to
do the right things, keep trying to
win games, keep trying to help
these kids grow,” said Haynes,
who will face his former employer
Sunday when No. 9 maryland
hosts No. 25 michigan in the
regular season finale for both
teams. “That’s in my control.
Nothing else.”‘Players love him’
Haynes understands what his
players go through. He was a
four-year starter at Kent State
and holds the program records
for assists, steals and minutes. He
played professionally in Europe
for six years. He knows what it
takes, and he has the knowledge
of the game to back it up.
“A ll good players want to devel-
op on the court,” said Kent State
Coach rob Senderoff, w ho was an
assistant when Haynes playedand later hired Haynes there for
his first college coaching job.
“The work he’s willing to put in
with those guys on the court is
where the relationship starts.”
Jon fleming, a Kent State
walk-on who is now the pro-
gram’s director of player develop-
ment, calls Haynes “the best skill
development coach that I’ve been
around.” Haynes explains drills
and movements in detail down to
where a player’s eyes should be.
Haynes’s players describe him
as relatable and charismatic. oth-
er staffers connect with the team
in different ways, Cowan said, but
“they’re not listening to the music
that we listen to.” H aynes is proud
he can still do a backflip, and he
cried when he lost his hair.
Haynes loves challenging play-
ers to games of one-on-one. Years
later, they mention how often
they beat Haynes or insist they
still could. Poole said Haynes
never wanted to play against him
at michigan, jokingly adding that
his former coach would look like
an old man at the YmCA.
“Players love him, and they
love being around him. He’s a
great teacher,” Turgeon said.
Conversations about Haynes
generally begin the same way:
“That’s my guy,” his players say.
Tre’Shaun fletcher transferred
in when Haynes was at Toledo,
the coach’s second stop after four
years on the Kent State staff. T hey
bonded over shared paths:
Haynes grew up in Detroit and
was the first in his family to
graduate from college; fletcher,
who spent his early years in rural
Arkansas, did the same. Now that
fletcher has a 3-year-old daugh-
ter, he talks with Haynes aboutparenting. They have held on to
their relationship despite cross-
ing paths for just one year, after
which Haynes left for Illinois
State, then michigan.
“He gives kids chances and
chances and chances,” fletcher
said from finland, where he plays
professionally. “He doesn’t give
up on kids.”They’re all in the family
When Haynes coached at Kent
State, his oldest son, DeAndre Jr.,
now 12, watched games from the
bench, taking advantage of open-
ings created because Tierra was
frequently preoccupied with
wrangling his younger siblings.
(Devon, 7, and Dallas, 5, were
born while their father worked at
Kent State.) Little Dre took a spot
at the end of the bench next to
fleming, the walk-on.
fleming rarely played, and if
he did, he didn’t a ggressively look
to score. But once, in fleming’s
junior season as he subbed in
during a blowout, Haynes told
him, “Dude, you’ve got to put one
in for Little Dre.” fleming made
the first basket of his career. He
still has the video of Little Dre
leaping in excitement.
Little Dre came to the gym with
his dad in the summers. fleming
spent time at the Haynes family’s
house, playing with the boys in
the basement. fleming jokes that
his best friend in college was a
kid. Little Dre always wanted a
big brother. His parents told him
they couldn’t fix that, but the
players on his dad’s team filled
the void.
Early in Haynes’s coaching
c areer, “it hit me that this was a
job that doesn’t end,” TierraHaynes said. “So we either had to
embrace that and make our fami-
ly a part of the job, or we wouldn’t
make it.”
At maryland games, Little Dre
asks for his ticket once his mom
parks, and then he’s off, finding
his friends and shooting on the
court before warmups. He r ecent-
ly recorded a TikTok in the locker
room with sophomore guard Aar-
on Wiggins. Little Dre’s b io on the
app mentions he has an older
brother in the NBA.
“He’ll want to call me when he’s
around his friends,” said Poole,
who is with the Golden State
Warriors and said he feels like the
fourth son in the Haynes family.
“Being able to take all three of
those guys under my wing gives
me a reason to stay on track and
something for them to look up to.”
Players see Haynes as a father
and husband, not just a coach.
fleming still calls Haynes about
twice a week. He talks to Tierra
just as much, and Little Dre some-
times calls, too.
Haynes wants to attend his
players’ graduations and wed-
dings. Sitting in an empty Xfinity
Center, he scrolls through his
texts, with plenty that say, “Love
you, bro,” g oing both ways, and he
mentions that a couple of former
players are about to propose.
Eventually, Haynes hopes to be
a head coach. So what happens
then, when the number of players
he has worked with grows each
year and they have lives, careers,
spouses and kids?
“You know what?” H aynes said,
thinking about when his career
reaches that point. “You’ve got to
try to make time for people.”
[email protected]His job may change, but his focus will not
‘That’s my guy’: Maryland first-year assistant coach Haynes strives to forge bonds with his players that extend well beyond basketball
college basketball
c onsecutive games and 10 of its
past 11, with eight of those victo-
ries by two possessions or fewer.
The only loss in that time came at
Louisville, 80-73 on feb. 8, when
Woldetensae scored a career-
high 27 points on 10-for-13 shoot-
ing, including 7 for 10 from
behind the arc.
“Winning close games,” Ben-
nett said with a chuckle when
asked what has enabled the Cava-
liers to right themselves. “We’ve
been in so many close games, but
I do think we’ve been getting a
little more balanced scoring.
To mas hasn’t the last couple
games, but his ability to make
some shots, just some alternate
scoring.
“Just tightening up a little bit
defensively, just a little better in
all areas. We still have room to
grow, but just a little better, and,
again, guys are making big
plays.”
None has been bigger than
center Jay Huff ’s block in the
closing seconds Saturday to pre-
serve a 52-50 win against then-
No. 7 Duke. The redshirt junior
finished with a career-high
10 blocks — two short of match-
ing the program single-game re-
cord — to go with 15 points and
nine rebounds.
He followed that performance
by scoring the Cavaliers’ first
17 points and adding nine re-
bounds in a 46-44 victory at
miami on Wednesday night. The
7-footer also equaled his single-
game high with three three-
pointers and has made seven
shots from behind the arc in the
past five games.
Huff is one of five players to
have led Virginia in scoring over
the past seven games. The others
are Woldetensae, Kihei Clark,
Braxton Key and mamadi Di-
akite.
Key, a 6-foot-8 guard-forward
who transferred to Virginia from
Alabama, and Diakite, a 6-9 for-
ward from Guinea, are set to be
honored Saturday a s the only two
seniors on the active roster.
Diakite is one of two Cavaliers
players to start every game this
season. The other is Clark, a
sophomore point guard.
“I will just say that losing
taught us a lot of things,” said
Diakite, who leads the Cavaliers
in scoring and is second in re-
bounding. “It’s not necessarily
bad. Look at us. We’re at this
point where we can finish first,
second or third, but a month ago,
we were supposed to be done.”
[email protected]VIrgInIA from D1Surge gives
Cavs shot
at another
ACC title
sessions scarce and its coaching
clearly tiptop, the lead began at
11-9, bloated to 51-30 at halftime
— at 3:01 p.m.! — and eventually
widened to 63-36.
“You know,” Steinmetz said,
“the last couple of days have
obviously been a little harrowing
and a little tough, but I think our
guys were just so focused and so
ready t o play, t hey were excited to
get out on the court. We talked
about it a little bit in the locker
room. You know, these are our
40 minutes to kind of just do
what we came for and have the
opportunity to be excited and be
energetic and get out and play.”
That they did, and Steinmetz
said: “I think it’s a bunch of guys
who had a goal when they started
the season, followed it through;
they come to every practice pre-
pared to go. Whether we’re going
contact or no contact in practice,
the mentality is the same. The
energy level’s the same. And
they’re gamers. These guys, they
just, they know how to perform.
They know how to make big
shots. You know, we’ve had our
share of very close games, and
they somehow find a way to win
every time.”
They made a good-grief 34 of
56 shots (60.7 percent) on friday,
including 15 of 28 three-pointers,
with Turell shooting 13 for
16 overall and 7 for 9 from behind
the arc and finishing with
41 points, and then the para-
mount stat: a 4 p.m. finish.
Then they set to prepare for a
second-round game Saturday
against Penn State Harrisburg,
which beat Johns Hopkins on
friday night.
The ancient texts, as it hap-
pens, don’t seem to allow Shab-
bat exceptions for march mad-
ness.
“Yeah, it’s definitely different
than everybody else because we
will not prepare over the next
25 hours at all,” Steinmetz said.
“So we’ll go back to the hotel. We
pre-prepare and scout on both
potential opponents. We’ll go
over them briefly, hopefully be-
fore the Sabbath starts. We’ll find
out at some point, I’m sure, who
won. And then we’ll try to spend
a good 20 minutes after the
Sabbath ends and have a team
meeting, go over, scout. We will
not have a chance to do film. We
will not have a shoot-around. But
we’ll be here; hopefully we’re
looking for a 9 o’clock start, but
hopefully we’ll be here at
9 o’clock ready to play.”
As he finished speaking, the
gym already had closed — for a
rare level of cleaning for a rare
type of quiet friday night game.
At least those doing the cleaning
didn’t have to gather and dispose
of the used cups beneath the
Yeshiva bench. The maccabees,
per custom, had reached beneath
the seats and taken care of that.
[email protected]maccabees have quite an esprit.
The foremost sounds during
their 102-78 win came from their
bench imploring defense and
providing loud shot-clock up-
dates, of which senior Simcha
Halpert said, “I think we made a
concerted effort, our bench mob,
as we call it.”
Their path to their program’s
highest pinnacle featured some
hard hills of distraction they
handled with aplomb.
Their orthodox Jewish school,
located along the Harlem river
in the part of manhattan that
narrows to a sliver, closed
Wednesday after a student tested
positive for the coronavirus. The
Baltimore-area hotel they re-
served up and canceled them,
forcing them elsewhere, and
Coach Elliot Steinmetz used the
word “discrimination” to the As-
sociated Press. As i f that weren’t a
tricky enough way to seek a
program’s first NCAA tourna-
ment win in its second appear-
ance, friday brought a sort of
tip-off tango.
The game’s start time went
from 1 p.m. to 2 to 2:20 as WPI
awaited clearance from its top
administrators monitoring the
outbreak. Yeshiva coaches and
others started to fret about sun-
down at 6:04 p.m., with Shabbat
beginning 18 minutes before that
at 5:46 and Yeshiva needing to
depart the premises preferably
by 5, game completed or not. At
one point in the run-up, coaches
fretted over whether there might
be official (or “media”) timeouts,
which would extend the game’s
duration. There would.
Andrew Baron, WPI’s associate
director of public relations, noted
how WPI had canceled its inter-
national projects for this spring,
which in the past have featured
students working on infrastruc-
ture in Ghana, flood mitigation in
Albania and so on. He said: “I
think we have confidence that
we’re making educated, informed
decisions. This has shifted dra-
matically over the past 36 hours,
even over the last 12.”
With tip-off finally, apparently
confirmed, players emerged for
warmups at about 1:20, then
prepared with Dreamville’s
“Down Bad,” meek mill’s “mon-
ster” and Justin rarri’s
“W2leezy” blaring through the
neat, cavernous gym. After 2, the
maccabees emerged in forma-
tion, cheered by two hospitable
Johns Hopkins Hospital guys
along the first row. Player intros
featured fist touches rather than
handshakes.
The game began at 2:20 on
what clearly would be a good day
for Yeshiva to avoid, say, octuple
overtime. If making Shabbat
gnawed at Yeshiva players’
minds, it pretty quickly gnawed
less. With Yeshiva’s wasted pos-
yeshIVA from D1
In empty gym, Yeshiva beats WPI and sundown
PHOTOS BY WILL NEWTON FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTTOP: gabriel Leifer of
yeshiva reaches for a
pass in front of Jake
Wisniewski of
Worcester Polytechnic
Institute during the first
half, in which the
Maccabees stormed out
to a 51- 30 lead.
ABOVe: Taylor Michel
prepares to disinfect the
gym between Friday’s
first and second games.
LeFT: eitan halpert,
like all of yeshiva’s
players, wears a kippah
during games.