Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
April 18th 2008
by Marilyn McManus, SECWB.com
At this point, it’s been about 72 hours since the news broke that head women’s basketball coach Susan Walvius had tendered her resignation. The shock and disbelief, from both her supporters and her detractors, has settled down somewhat. Reality is finally starting to sink in:
Susan is leaving us. We’re going to have to find a new coach.
We were happy enough in the early years. We made allowances, for the first few years, knowing that Walvius was looking for a different caliber of athlete/basketball player (with few exceptions) than she had inherited. We had our doubts, at the start of the European Invasion–but it didn’t take long for them to win us over and prove that they could play. When the team finally hit their stride in the 2001-2002 season, with a whirlwind trip through NCAA play to the Elite Eight, we were enthralled. We were ready to max out our credit cards to follow them to the Final Four. Seriously, we were. That didn’t happen, but there were no complaints. The next season, we enjoyed similar success as the team compiled a 23-8 record, 9-5 in the SEC. We thought the framework was in place for continuing success, knowing that there could always be a bump in the road, but we were going places (namely NCAA tournament games) and it was going to be that way from now on.
Except…it didn’t work out that way.
There was a rough patch after those two wonderful years. Success did not translate into highly rated student athletes banging on the door, demanding to attend the University of South Carolina. Assistant coaches moved on to greener pastures. Still, a Top-20 recruiting class was brought in, a few of whom (so we were told) could dunk the ball, and we were willing to give them a couple of years to develop and show their stuff. Instead, the Class of 2007 went 53-66, 16-40 in SEC play. We never saw anyone even attempt to dunk a ball.
At the same time, controversy had begun swirling around Walvius. I have long been a supporter and perhaps didn’t notice the detractors and their arguments until a little later than I should have. The first time I really noticed widespread dissension in the stands was about midway through the 2006-2007 season. There was pretty much a consensus opinion, among fans, that it was time for that team to show what it had. They had come so close, the previous season, to making whatever leap it is that a team makes, when they start winning games, instead of just competing in games. They were 17-12 and had lost 7 of those games by less than 10 points. It looked like they were making positive strides. There were a few unconventional moves, a positive thing, by the coaching staff: several games were “scripted” in 4-minute segments, with different lineups and strategies planned for each 4-minute “game.” It looked like a hockey game, at times, with the players subbing in and out–but it WORKED. When players were neglecting to box out, there suddenly appeared a large box at the end of the bench.( It later acquired a name and personal possessions, but that is neither here nor there.) The point is, again, it WORKED. Just a bit too little and a bit too late…and the team made their usual tortured appearance (one and done) at the SEC tournament, but did receive a WNIT bid. It seemed to be something to build on in 2006-2007. It seemed strange to me that the 4-minute scripts were completely scrapped, once the team seemed to get on track a bit. I actually asked one of the coaches about that, because it seemed to me to build team morale, camaraderie AND allow our team to use, to their advantage, an athleticism that was superior to many of their opponents. I was told that it was “too predictable.” My own opinion was that it was quite the opposite–and it WORKED. But nobody asked for my opinion, which makes sense–I’m not a D1 coach. But I am an experienced observer, a long-time fan of the team and haven’t missed a home game since Walvius was hired.
The criticism got louder when, mid-season, the starting lineups suddenly started shifting around, in a more dramatic fashion than usual. Players who had started games for more than 3 years were spending entire games on the bench. Players with short attention spans, suspect motivation and unproven results were subbing in at crucial moments. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. One of my cohorts asked a coach why it was that one player was seeing so little playing time–and was told that “you’ve got to go with the best players that you have.” The result of that strategy was an 18-15 record and another WNIT bid.
Ironically, it was a truly exciting win that I believe marked the beginning of the end of fan support for coach Susan Walvius. There was already grumbling aplenty; fans were upset that their favorites were not playing, some even opined that the coaching staff was deliberately preventing Iva Sliskovic from reaching the 1000 point mark. (She missed it by 24 points) But when Senior Day 2007 rolled around, things got nasty. It was a great game, no doubt about that–an overtime win that required 3 free throws, with no time on the clock, to force the overtime. It seemed to herald the dawn of a new star player, Lakesha Tolliver, as well. The casual observer would not have even noticed that something was amiss–but the diehard fans most certainly did. On that fateful Senior Day, two seniors (Larissa Kulscar and Lea Fabbri) never got off of the bench. Seniors Iva Sliskovic played 4 minutes and Shannel Harris played only 2 minutes. I don’t know about the coaching staff, but nearly everyone sitting behind the bench knew that Fabbri and Sliskovic had family in the stands, all the way from Croatia, for the first time in their careers. These were not marginal players, whose presence on the floor might negatively affect the outcome of the game. Kulscar had accepted her “role player” status some time ago, but was a reliable source of aggressive and intelligent play; Sliskovic had started 86 games in her career, Fabbri had 53 starts and Harris, with 56 starts under her belt, had earned those minutes by turning herself into a defensive specialist. Yes, it was a close game, but you had to wonder if the Gamecocks might have been able to gain more of an edge if they’d utilized all of the experienced players they had sitting on the bench. And even better, give them a chance to play–even just for a few minutes–so that they could exit the game to the applause of the crowd that is watching them for the final time. But that didn’t happen–and many fans were quite openly angry about it. While the talk about it died down during the off-season, it had definitely not been forgotten. By the start of the 2007-2008 season, many fans were waiting and watching for coaching missteps. They didn’t have to wait long. When converted point guard Courtney Newton went out with an ACL injury, an old habit was revisited: shuffling every guard through the revolving door to see who could play the position. Valuable lessons were learned: senior Ebony Jones was up to the challenge of playing guard, not necessarily at point, but her 3-point shot and settling effect were very helpful; Jordan Jones needed to be free to set up for her shot, not dribble around setting up others; Samone Kennedy fit the bill of a “true” point guard. But the coaches didn’t learn the same lessons that we did. Kennedy’s average playing time was less than half a game, to the astonishment of fans, while the team suffered 20 turnovers per game, struggled against the press and kept on shuffling other players through the position. Despite her limited playing time, Kennedy finished in the SEC’s top 10 in both assists and assist-to-turnover ratio. Ashlie Billingslea, who had gone down with an ACL injury in the preseason, was rushed back onto the playing floor, nearly as soon as she was available–sending Kennedy back to the bench. From what I had heard, Billingslea (when healthy) was an amazing ball-handler and had a shooting touch that Kennedy could not match, but hearsay proved to be different from reality. Billingslea was not in shape and was not ready to compete against the experienced guards in the SEC, yet she played in 14 games, averaging nearly 12 minutes per game. Rushing her into action was yet another move that made fans go “Hmmmmmmm,” along with the not totally unexpected news that C.J. Pace was declared academically ineligible after the fall semester, further depleting the ranks of healthy players on the bench.
By the end of this season, a lot of our differences did seem to have progressed to the “irreconcilable” category. Still, we hoped that something might change–maybe during the off-season, progress would be made. We didn’t give up hope; we just didn’t know where to begin to address our differences. We were distracted from our own problems by the drama of the Final Four, but deep in our hearts, we knew that it had come to the point where a permanent separation was not a matter of if, but when. The signs were all there. When the news came, there were many conflicting feelings, but the only surprise was that she walked out on her own terms. (We suspected that such a competitive person would only go out kicking and screaming.) So, we’ll remember the good times: the jersey grab, when a player thought she could make it safely to the bench without a word with the coach; the jacket coming off and sleeves rolling up, when it was time to really get down to business; the road wins. Watching Tatyana Troina hoist up 3-pointers in Stegeman Coliseum and Susan signaling the shot “good” before it even went through the net, back to the shooter as she strutted back to the bench; stomping the 16th ranked TarHeels by 30 points in Myrtle Beach; high-fiving the team after ambushing Florida on their home court. We appreciate the strides that she made with the basketball program: establishing a mentoring program for the student-athletes, raising their profile in the community, letting us participate in Basketball 101 and luncheons with the team, graduating players, putting South Carolina on the NCAA basketball map by going farther in the championship tournament than any other USC team has ever gone. There were a lot of positives, over the years, and we thank you for that. Now it is time for us to move on.
And we wish you good luck, Coach Walvius, as you also move on, in whatever you choose to do next.