Seated in his office recently, Tim Sweeney, the newly hired Franklin & Marshall men’s basketball coach, was talking about starting over. About patience and persistence and staying the course.
In a roundabout way, that led to a discussion of Stephen Curry, a player with whom Sweeney worked while an assistant years ago at Davidson, one of six stops he made before arriving at F&M.
“A lot of people don’t know, his first college game, he had 10 turnovers,” Sweeney said.
Close. Curry actually coughed the ball up 13 times in his collegiate debut, against Eastern Michigan on Nov. 10, 2006. But Sweeney’s point was about how it’s not where you start, but rather where you finish. How Bob McKillop, the legendary (and now retired) Davidson coach, refused to panic as Curry continued to fire passes into the third row. And how Curry figured things out on the fly, scoring 15 points as the Wildcats erased a 16-point halftime deficit to win, 81-77.
(Perhaps you’ve heard that things have gone pretty well for Curry since then, too.)
So this is where Sweeney, 45 and most recently the head coach at Connecticut College (which provided the photo above), finds himself – at a new crossroads, and unsure what direction things might go. He is acutely aware that he is “placeholder” and “steward” of a traditionally strong program (his words), looking to continue the program’s winning ways while at the same time putting his own stamp on things.
What, exactly, that will look like remains to be seen. Sweeney is still getting to know his players, albeit via the phone and Zoom, and still reviewing videotape of last year’s games. His office in Mayser Gym still bears the nameplate of his predecessor, Nick Nichay, and on his desk is a wooden sign that one might not expect to see in a coach’s office: “Kindness Matters.”
He explained that the sign, a gift years ago from his wife Lisa, serves as a reminder to his players to be good citizens off the court, while at the same time being “ruthless on the court and tough, physical and aggressive,” as he said.
Start there, then. With a guy who once played point guard at another Division III power, Rochester, and initially had his sights set on law school. Also a guy who offsets his obvious drive with a certain polish, understanding what to say and how to say it.
Those who have encountered him in the past believe this was a home-run hire, that there is little doubt he will succeed here.
“I think he’s gonna be a really good fit for F&M,” said Rocky Parise, who has known Sweeney since jousting with him as Elizabethtown College’s point guard in the 2002 Division III national semifinals. “I think he’s a perfect guy for that job.”
“I think we’re going to be set up to be really good,” said Dips assistant Matt Walsh, a Manheim Central graduate who played for Sweeney at Hobart College, “and it’s not going to be long until we are.”
Certainly Sweeney has a promising track record. He went 84-48 in five years as the head coach at Hobart, then 71-50 in the last five of his seven seasons at Connecticut College, after a 5-24 start at the New London, Conn.-based school.
He inherits a team at F&M that besides losing Nichay to an assistant’s job at Dartmouth saw its top two scorers, Kevin Nowoswiat and Vakaris Grauslys, graduate. In addition, Bohdan Biekietov, a freshman center from Ukraine, has transferred to Amherst.
Two starters return – junior-to-be Steve Donahue, who averaged 12 points a game last season, and do-everything senior Franklin Jones, a defender par excellence. Top reserve Bryson Amos-Whitfield is also back, and while Sweeney declined to talk about his new recruits until they are enrolled, he seemed enthused about them as well.
The first order of business, though, was building bridges, which he did during those conversations with his new team.
“One thing I said was, ‘I chose you, you didn’t choose me,’” Sweeney said. “So I feel really responsible for building that connection and trust from the start.”
There is little question about his competitiveness. Parise saw that for himself all those years ago, when Elizabethtown outlasted Rochester in overtime in the D3 semis, 93-83. Sweeney missed six of seven shots from the field while scoring five points, but dished out 12 assists, many to his indefatigable post guy, Seth Hauben, who finished with 39 points and 18 rebounds.
Parise had seven points and six assists, and still chastises himself for missing two potentially clinching free throws with 16 seconds left in regulation.
Ultimately, though, it didn’t matter.
“It hurts because you lost,” Sweeney said, “but it is a great memory, and one of the things about the game, it was just a great game. It was back and forth. I don’t think either team felt like they made an error or did something that lost the game. … And it was a tremendous clash in styles.”
Hauben was the only Rochester player to crack double figures, while E-town, true to form, had four guys with 10 points or more, led by Bob Porambo with 21. As for the point guards, neither gave an inch.
“I think that’s kind of why we’ve always gotten along,” Sweeney said. “We were probably taking some shots at each other away from the ball – you know, the typical stuff you do as a competitor.”
But both men say there was respect there. And it has grown over the years, as they have continued to run into each other at AAU events and the like.
“When you play in those big games,” Parise said, “you always remember the names of guys that you played against, and they’re recognizable because they were such big moments in your lives. … The basketball world is a surprisingly small world, so you see names pop up and you see people through the years, and you recognize the names and then you’re able to remember if you played against them or you coached against them.”
Sweeney’s network runs deep. He played for Mike Neer, the now-retired long-time coach at Rochester, then served three years (2003-06) as his assistant. And Neer, he said, “made the game simple.”
“Great teacher of the game,” Sweeney added. “He was real adept at using analogies and stories to simplify and teach us.”
McKillop was a “CEO” from whom Sweeney earned “a doctorate in coaching” over two seasons at Davidson (‘06-08), while watching Curry begin his ascent.
“Steph,” he said, “has this rare blend of swagger combined with humility that I think is very rare to see in a professional athlete nowadays.”
It took root in college, at least in part because McKillop gave him plenty of rope. Still, nobody could have seen him reaching a point where he is regarded as the greatest shooter of all time, and a guy who can electrify an entire arena at a moment’s notice.
“It’s almost remarkable what he can do,” Sweeney said, “because he’s not … this dominant specimen.”
Curry, with whom Sweeney has had occasional contact over the years, soared to the NBA in 2009 and has never looked back. Sweeney’s journey took him to Bucknell for a single season (‘08-09), where he marveled at the energy Dave Paulsen brought to the gym, despite a 7-23 finish in his first season on the job.
Finally, in five seasons under Matt Matheny at Elon, Sweeney was given increased latitude and responsibility.
“I was very eager to be a head coach,” he said.
Hobart offered that opportunity in 2014. Walsh was among his first recruits, having picked the Geneva, NY-based school over F&M and Dickinson. Walsh said he was drawn by the pitch of former Annville-Cleona star Mark Linebaugh, Sweeney’s assistant at the time (and now the head coach at Lycoming). It also helped that Walsh had some aunts and uncles in the area.
And what of the head coach?
“He’s tough on guys,” Walsh said, “but like in a good way, where he’s going to expect the best out of everybody, and he’s not going to lower the standard for any guy.”
Walsh’s career was short-circuited by knee injuries – two ACL tears and a meniscus tear, all in the right knee – and because of his idle time he found himself “coaching guys without even really realizing I was coaching guys.” In time that would become his career path; he just finished his fourth year as an F&M assistant, and will remain part of Sweeney’s staff.
In fact Sweeney reached out to him to let him know he was applying for the job, but the two then went radio-silent, since Walsh also applied. But now they’re in lockstep. Walsh is well aware of his new boss’s expectations – how he wants to play the pace-and-space offensive style McKillop favored at Davidson but is also flexible in his approach. Case in point: Sweeney used a man-to-man defense at Hobart, but played a lot of 2-3 zone at Connecticut College.
But some things are nonnegotiable.
“We’re going to want guys that play the right way,” Walsh said.
Also those that are coachable and competitive. Especially the latter. During Glenn Robinson’s long run as the Dips’ coach, his watchwords were “Teamwork, Intensity, Poise.” He always scrawled them at the very top of the chalkboard he displayed for his teams at practice, and they became the very foundation of how they went about their business, game after game, season after season.
As of July 1, Sweeney had yet to speak with Robinson, though he planned to do so. But it doesn’t seem they will have to spend much time discussing any of that.
“F&M,” Sweeney said, “seems to have an ethos of aggressive, physical, disciplined play, and I think that’s something that’s very important to me to maintain and to sustain and to build on. So, from a simple standpoint, I’d start there.”
Where they finish is subject to any number of factors. But that’s the jumping-off point for Tim Sweeney. That’s the mindset he is looking to establish as he navigates his brave new world. Mistakes will occur – even Stephen Curry knows that – but it is the new coach’s fervent hope that his players’ approach never varies. That they control what they can control, boldly forge ahead (also like Curry) and ascend accordingly.