Part 3 of Zack's interview with Ryan Whalen


TROVE: Last season, you told Halldan to watch out for Dre Davis and that proved pretty prescient. I know it's still summer, but any predictions for this year? Who's impressing you in your limited time with the players so far?

WHALEN: Dan always likes to needle me about that and make me look like Nostradamus, but I think when he asked me that we were in like September practices. The guy who has really impressed me, and you kind of had an idea of watching him in high school and watching him a little bit last year, of kind of what he can be: Garwey Dual. I think he's going to have a really big year for us. I think he's got a load of potential. I don't talk about other places of where they've been or what they've done, I only talk about what they're doing with us. I think with the way that Coach coaches and the way he develops people on and off the court, I'm really excited to watch Garwey within our system.

A lot of guys have had really good summers, and I'm just talking about the new guys, Scotty Middleton's had a great summer. Chaunce Jenkins has had a great summer. I'm excited to see these guys all together when September rolls back around and it's a little bit of a different feel in the summer where classes are online and you have a formal pattern, things get a little more hectic when guys are back for Fall classes, but Garwey is a guy for sure that I'm excited to see how he plays.

We're at it again!

In June we raffled off a complimentary invite for the Onward Setonia NYC Cruise, a $3,000 value. On Tuesday, August 13, we'll raffle off a complimentary invitation to our Summer Shore Social.

The Summer Shore Social , a $1,000 value, is being hosted by Jim ‘82 and Judy O’Brien at the Bay Head Yacht Club in Bay Head, NJ. This is a unique opportunity for you to personally interact and engage with members of the team and staff. Food and drinks will be provided.

The free raffle is limited to active Guardian subscribers. Click the link below to become a Guardian Subscriber:

spotfund

Thank you for your continued support!

Mike Walsh
Onward Setonia Crowdfunding

On vacation. I'll come on the board a few times but not often.

Be back in 2 weeks.

Before we all boo next year in Queens, lets remember last year's team is probably a KenPom 130 and under .500 overall in the BE and for the season.

My guess is that we would have been 7-13 instead of 13-7 and possibly 6-14 or worse in the Big East.

Heck - Dre Davis should be thanking KR. He probably made 500K more this year, having KR on the team last year.

Because of this alone, we will be way better than last year!!!! We are not one player away from the bottom, in fact we are one/two player exploding (Dual/Middleton/Yalden) from the top.

Zack Cziryak


TROVE: You’re Coach Holloway’s right hand man in a lot of ways. In addition to running some practices, what are your other responsibilities?

WHALEN: How much time do you have? No, you know I've been very lucky. Coach Sha and I have been together for a long time. I've known him since I was six years old. We've been around each other a lot. I joke about this all the time - I've been with him longer than I've been with my wife. We know each other really well and I think part of that, what works, is I know what he wants before he even asks it. So I'm able to do a lot of the day-to-day stuff, which kind of lets him focus on what he needs to be focusing on. With this job, at this level, there's a lot that comes with it: media responsibilities, donors - he's got a full plate. So I think for him to have me as kind of a buffer where I can deal with daily schedules and I can deal with people across campus because I've worked here for a decent amount of time.

And then you get into all the other coaching stuff. He relies on me a lot with scouting. Him and I constantly, on a daily basis, are talking about what plays we're going to run defensively. You put him and I in a room to talk about defense, we could sit in there for 24 hours talking about it. The kind of thing where you open up the shades and you're like, 'Oh, it's morning time now, we've been in here so long.'

And then recruiting as well. I don't pretend to be the guy that's bringing in all the players, but I have a hand in that and I'm learning a great deal from Coach Sha, Coach Rasheen and Coach Corey [Lowery] on a daily basis. But everyone in the program has their hands involved in everything and that's the beauty of what we do - Coach Holloway is preparing all of us to be head coaches one day. While we're here working for him, you want to give it your all to the program and make it the best that you can, but he also wants that for us. You know, we say we want to be coaches, head coaches, and he gives us that platform to showcase our abilities. I know for me personally I feel ready, if that opportunity ever comes, because of him, because of the way he does allow me to do a lot during practice and relies on me for a lot of stuff that's going on in the program. Personally, I'm forever grateful to him, not only at Saint Peter's but here as well, that he trusts me, he's taken a chance on me and I don't take that that lightly at all.

Pat summerall daughter

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By Zack Cziryak


TROVE: You certainly have a new team this year. How does the coaching staff prepare for what appears to be a team with a greater depth of players that can compete at this level, but not necessarily any standout studs like you had this past year?

WHALEN: It's funny because I think going forward now every summer you're going to use the word ‘tryout,’ you're going to use it as a tryout to kind of see what you’ve got. People have been asking me 'How do you guys look?’ And my answer's been the same: I really like our pieces, and I'm interested to see how it's going to come together. I have no doubt that it will come together, but even practices over the summer guys are still trying to feel each other out and some guys might look good on one day and struggle the next time. I think the best thing that I can say coming out of this summer is the depth. I think 1 through 13, we have 13 guys that can play. You know to what degree, to what minutes? But Coach was talking about this the other day. You're never going to have a problem looking down the bench and be like, 'I can't take this guy out. I can't put this guy in.' Somebody's not doing what they're supposed to be doing, or somebody needs a break? Get your butt in there. Get in there and show us what you got, make the most of your opportunity. And that's been something that's really exciting. So even if somebody says 'Oh, well, this guy's ankle hurts today, he can't go.’ No problem. Next man up. Get that guy in there and let him go. So that's been that's been refreshing.

I think 1 through 13 every guy has a chance to contribute. Now like any other season, how much they contribute is on them because Coach is an equal opportunity guy. We don't have set anything. There's no starting lineup. We don't have our first game until November. When that first game, when that ball is up, those five that are on the court those are the five guys that earned it, but there's going to be eight other guys on the bench that are foaming at the mouth, ready to get in there. That's kind of how we did things at Saint Peter's. That's the vision Coach Sha wants to coach. He doesn't want to be married to just a 5- or 6-guy rotation. It's tough because if a guy's struggling or people go down it's not a great way to do things. So it's been a breath of fresh air to have this competition in practice every day and workouts every day over the summer. And I'm excited to see how it's going to come together, because, like I said, I really, really like the pieces.

Now August will be spent a lot trying to cultivate what we want to do. We are obviously a defensive-oriented, defensive-first team. So a lot of what we do in the summer is trying to get down the basics and get these guys comfortable with how we play. I think one of the negatives of the transfer portal, from a coaching, purely Xs and Os standpoint, is you get guys that come from different systems for two, three years that are so used to doing things one way that you really have to retrain them. At least with high school kids, it's different, right? Because some of these kids aren't being coached to the highest level in terms you can kind of change things and tilt the way they do things. Some kids that are coming from other schools, like it took Dylan [Addae-Wusu] time to learn how we play coming from Saint John's. And you know he got it and he's one of the leading forces now of kind of echoing our message of how we like to do things, especially on the defensive end.



Conclusion Wed

Harris starting with Willie Brown banged her way to the top and Dougie took a walk on the wild side and they are crituzing Trump morality like pot calling kettle black.

I hate to say it, but it is Pitino by a margin.

The guy forgot more about basketball than all the others know.

I only dislike Sean Miller more, but if I had to pick the best coach.....Pitino.

The DeSantis book made the summer reading list as option to read

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Biden, Harris and NATO weak on world stage says GOP types

Great Olympic schedule of events today

Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement in Canton

Probably the two most overlooked defensive players of the 80s Klecko and McMichael getting in