D8 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, JUNE 7 , 2022
fresh leadership. NCAA
President Mark Emmert is
scheduled to step down by June- There has been even more
recent change among the
conference commissioners. If
meaningful, equitable, smart
reform is ever going to happen, it
must occur now. This is the 11th
hour. Delay any longer, and the
whole system will be destroyed.
As Coach K exited, he reserved
time to make one last call to
action for his sport. He wants
everything to be reimagined, and
he wants people with skin in the
game to lead the way.
“You should always talk to the
people that are being affected by
what’s going on now, not by
people who are retired or people
who are on a committee who
don’t have a feel for it,” he said
during his last Final Four run.
“How do you get a feel for it? You
have to talk. And a lot of the
young coaches would be great in
this.”
But for the young coaches to
lead, they have to win, and they
have to succeed in a new way. In
college and in the pros, you’re
starting to see the impact of a
new breed of coaches who can
relate to players differently,
meeting them where they are
and commanding respect
without being so
uncompromising.
Still, in college athletics, the
challenge now involves more
than teaching the game and
making an emotional
connection. Money is an
unavoidable subject. Even the
coaches who support players
receiving NIL compensation
worry about the current
lawlessness. It’s an opportunity
to take charge, not whine.
“What are we trying to do
here?” Drinkwitz asked
rhetorically. “If it’s for student-
athlete health and welfare and
protecting the student-athletes,
then we’ve got to make decisions
in the best interest of them and
not necessarily in the best
interest of us.”
Is it hard? Absolutely.
Do coaches owe the sport
more than jokes threatening to
trade or cut players? Absolutely.
November to sign a landmark
1 0-year deal that will pay him
$95 million plus incentives.
When he told the Fighting Irish
players he was leaving, he spoke
for 31 / 2 minutes, then fled, and
the next thing you knew he was
doing a really lousy job faking a
Southern accent in a weak
attempt to impress his new fan
base.
For almost $100 million, it’s
fair to expect Kelly to be more
than a great coach. He is a
leading voice who could help
inspire positive change. But he
would rather be an ineffective
comedian.
Obstinance and bluster won’t
solve anything. Kelly, 60, sounds
too grumpy to be part of the
revolution. His thinking is too
ancient. The generational divide
in college coaching has never
been more recognizable than it is
now. It has little to do with on-
field strategy. Instead, it’s a
failure to adapt off the field and
see the bigger picture in society.
It seems the sport’s most
established voices would rather
engage in petty wars such as
Saban vs. Jimbo Fisher. They
would rather air grievances than
suggest pragmatic policies. They
would rather live in the past.
Mike Brey, the Notre Dame
men’s basketball coach, doesn’t
want to live that way. He’s 63 and
approaching 600 career
victories. He recently offered a
strong message to his peers.
“This is the world we’re in, and
last time I checked, we make
pretty good money,” Brey said.
“So everybody should shut up
and adjust.”
Actually, everybody should
amplify the rising young
coaches. Their perspectives are
essential now. Coaches such as
Ohio State’s Ryan Day and USC’s
Lincoln Riley have long careers
ahead of them. They’re not old
enough, or accomplished
enough, to know of only one way.
They are built for adaptation.
With legendary basketball
coaches Mike Krzyzewski and
Jay Wright joining Roy Williams
in retirement, there’s significant
hoops turnover afoot — and
there are many opportunities forreframes the conversation. Like
all college coaches, Drinkwitz
has concerns. The environment
is anarchy right now, but coaches
shouldn’t look at themselves as
innocent leaders who have lost
some of their authority for no
good reason. On the contrary, the
control freaks are complicit in
creating this mess because many
of them lacked the foresight
necessary to wield all the power
they demand from their schools.
They helped to maintain an
antiquated, exploitative amateur
model with their rigidity, greed,
lack of self-awareness and
myopia.
They could’ve used their
influence to persuade their
presidents, their conference
commissioners and the NCAA to
start forging a new, more
sensible path. They did nothing
proactive. Now the lucrative con
of big-time college sports is
fraying. The Supreme Court took
apart a piece of it. State
lawmakers have damaged it even
more. With NIL legislation
causing chaotic unintended
consequences — blurring the
lines between endorsements and
pay-for-play schemes, and
threatening to turn recruiting
and the transfer portal into
auctions — there needs to be
some kind of thoughtful
regulation. But complicated
tasks seem impossible when
supposed leaders lack
perspective and imagination.
It’s a hard time to be a
dictatorial sourpuss in college
athletics. LSU football coach
Brian Kelly tried to employ
public scare tactics to warn
players against what he
considers the professionalization
of his sport.
“I don’t think they want
contracts,” Kelly said last week.
“I don’t think they want to be
traded. I’m sure they don’t want
to be cut. I’m sure they’re not
going to like getting a call at
3 p.m. in the afternoon saying:
‘Hey, I don’t know, but we traded
you today to St. Bonaventure. Oh,
they don’t have a football team.’ ”
Kelly left Notre Dame inBREWER FROM D1JERRY BREWERCollege coaches must embrace c hangeSean Heine, who plunked T.C.
Simmons with his first pitch,
then yielded Matt Donlan’s grand
slam — Connecticut’s only hit in
the inning — to make it 6-1.
Vaughn mixed and matched all
night, sending nine pitchers to
the mound. David Falco Jr., who
pitched a season-high 3^1 / 3 innings
a day earlier in an elimination
game against Wake Forest, was
understandably not as sharp but
still coaxed two innings out of his
right arm. So did Saturday night
starter Jason Savacool, who
worked the fifth and sixth.
Long a baseball afterthought,
Maryland was in its second
straight NCAA tournament and
its fifth since 2014. And with only
two seniors in their slugger-hap-
py lineup, the Te rps’ window to
make a deep June run remains
open.
But Connecticut slammed it
shut for this season.
“Now that it’s over, I think
we’ll be able to look back at a
team that broke every record,
from wins to homers,” Vaughn
said. “Records were shattered
this year by this group, and they
set the standard for what it
means to play here. My job is to
help this next group realize that,
appreciate that and take as much
as pride in this program as these
guys have here, and we’ll build
this thing and be back.”Ten regular season title in large
part because of its stellar play in
College Park. T he Terps went 27-4
at home, but two of those losses
came in a three-night span
against the Huskies. Maryland
allowed 10 and 11 runs in those
defeats, totals that tested even its
potent offense’s ability to match.
The Terps began the day sec-
ond in Division I with 135 home
runs, behind only No. 1 seed
Tennessee (150), and their logical
strategy in a game featuring a
pair of taxed pitching staffs was
to mash their way past the Hus-
kies. It looked like a sound ap-
proach when Luke Shliger belted
a leadoff homer to right-center
against Connecticut freshman
Ian Cooke.
But the ultra-cozy bandbox
nestled in the center of Mary-
land’s campus was also an asset
for the Huskies’ hitters. Mary-
land used nine pitchers in a pair
of victories Sunday to extend the
regional to a winner-take-all
game Monday, leaving its staff on
fumes in the finale.
To start, the Terps turned to
freshman left-hander Andrew
Johnson, who pitched a scoreless
11th inning against Connecticut
on Sunday. He retired the first
two Huskies, then walked four in
a row to force in a run and bring
an abrupt end to his outing.
Things didn’t go better forhave been a run off the board. A
groundout ended the inning,
stranding Keister and leaving the
Terps’ deficit at two.
“I was just trying to get down
the line and get that run in and
just kind of collided there,” Al-
leyne said. “The guy made the
call he thought was the right call,
and that’s just baseball. It’s out of
my control and out of our con-
trol.”
After Connecticut added an
insurance run in the bottom of
the eighth, Willis retired the side
in order in the ninth and was
mobbed by his teammates as the
Terps stared in resignation from
their dugout.
The Huskies (49-14) will face
No. 2 seed Stanford or Te xas S tate
in a super regional beginning
Friday or Saturday. Those teams
met late Monday night.
Maryland was denied its first
super regional trip since 2015
and had a n otherwise memorable
season end on a home field that
had treated it so well all year. The
Terps hosted a regional for the
first time and played to raucous
crowds throughout the weekend
in a facility bolstered by tempo-
rary bleacher seating in left-cen-
ter field.
Maryland set a school record
for victories and claimed the BigMARYLAND FROM D1Terps can’t complete rally vs. HuskiesKATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST
Chris Alleyne was called out for being out of the running lane after nubbing a grounder in the eighth.