Wagner College - Kallista Yearbook (New York, NY)

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of attitude, that the ballplayers had. We just came off a good win with Fairleigh Dickinson. We played a good team ball game. Here we were going to Upsala, a team that was considered worse than us. Personnel was weak. The caliber of ball that they played was inferior to ours. And we went in there and they beat us by 20-some points, I think. This all happened because most of the fellas went in there with the idea that we're just going to-beat them, there's no doub-t about it. They canj t beat us. We're just going to go in and come back home a winner. And you can't win games on your thoughts. Or by what someone writes in the paper. And they thought that we could. And that's what happened. And another thing, most of the fellas were given dif- ferent positions from what they were used to playing. They didn't feel comfortable or confi- dent in the position that they were playing. So, they decided that since they felt uneasy, they couldn't do the job. And they went to show us that they couldn't do the job. And that's another reason for us having such a poor season. Near the end of the season, for some of us, it became very personal. We just wanted to get the 500 season for ourselves. And we tried. We fell three short, something like that. But we tried. And this is the type of feeling that you have to have from the beginning of the season, not at the end, but at the beginning. They just waited too long to get that feeling. See, it's hard for a new guy on the team to come in unless he really has the right attitude to play basketball. To come in and pick up the team. And then it's hard for a person in my position to try to keep the guys up all the time, because there are other factors involved, why they don't play well. They might not be doing well academically. They might have a cold. There might be family problems. There are a lot of factors. But I tried to get involved and see what was wrong with some guys and some I could communicate with and others I couldn't. We just didn't have an openness about us that made us a really closely knit team. And it's funny, because at the beginning of the season, I thought we would have been close. But we just drifted apart. Guys grouped together and stayed in the bands. Some of this you can blame on the coach, in the sense that he's supposed to be the Overseer. And he should be able to judge when there's friction among his ballplayers. The coach never stepped in and displayed the au- thority that he possesses. He never cracked down on anybody. I think this hurt us. I think it's going to be chaos next year be- cause there are going to be one or two guys who are going to want to become the leading scorers on the team. And then the coach is going to want certain individuals to be the leading scorers on the team. And this is going to create a competi- tion among these fellas and they're not going to play as a team. They're going to play to beat each other out. It'll be even worse than this year. Then again, attitude-wise, some of the fellas on the team might not even come out next year. I think it's really going to be a poor season. You're going to see basketball at its worst. All because some of the guys are more individual- minded than team-minded. I've always felt that a good team player can show the fans and his coach and his opposing coaches and opponents that he's a good individual player without being a star-seeker or an attention-grabber. But every- body has their own outlook of the game, their own feeling. I think that out of this year's freshman team, Kevin Quinn has an excellent chance of being one of the greatest ballplayers Wagner ever had. It's just a matter of working with him. See, in high school, he was a forward. And here, he play- ed as a guard and it was a change for him. And there's certain things that he has to improve on. If the coaching staff would work with him, and give him a program over the summer, then l think that this will help him and the team and the ballplayers on the team. But if they don't, and Kevin has to work by himself, and he doesn't improve over this past season, then he's not going to be any help to himself or the team. Anarumo was good as a freshman, but on the varsity, he can't play the way he's been playing. Heis just not big enough. Most of the shots he made against some of the freshmen ballplayers, I don't know if he could make them against guys who are 6-7, 6-8, that can play good defense. So the freshmen team has something to offer, but it's not a lot. If the coaches work with them, they can get -quite a bit out of what they're going to get. But if they don't, then there won't be any- thing.

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where you have to be in physical shape 1002, all the time. Well, you could be 85, 75, but it hinders your playing. I had to do more this year than in previous years. More or less, I had to try and run the offense and help guys on defense. That's what we were playing. At practice, it was understood since I was one of the co-captains, that I would have to set some type of example. Come to practice on time. It was understood by me and the coaches and the team, all of us. It was expected of me to be to practice every day, and if I didn't show up, to call in and tell the coach why. Be there early, on time . . . the little things that are in our training rules that we're supposed to adhere to. And if I didn't do this, then I wouldn't be a good co-captain or someone for the team to fol- low. As far as the game, we had, actually, three men on the team at the beginning of the season who had put in any amount of time on the var- sity. Myself, Van Leeuwen and Gene. Of the three, I played the most. And when the season started, and Van was playing, we could share the responsibility of controlling the team. But after Van left, then it was more on me. I think that a lot of the fellas on the team, after they made the team, just went through the motions. See, Wagner has a pretty good reputa- tion in the Middle Atlantic Conference. We're the team to beat. In the MET, we're respectable, but we're not a threat to anyone. So we'd go with the attitude - or I should say most of the fellas went with the attitude - that we can beat the MAC teams. We'd just have to try and play against the MET teams. And what they failed to realize was that every MAC team that we played was trying to knock us off. They're trying to beat us. And if we go in with a haphazard attitude about the game, then we can't win. And that happened a number of times. Fellas felt that, W'ell, I know I'm better than the guy I'm play- ing against, so anytime I want, I can do what- ever I want. And they failed to realize that basketball, to some people, is a very emotional game. And they get themselves involved mentally as well as physically. And they just want to show their opponent that for once they can beat him. For once, they can humiliate us the way we've been humiliating them. And that's what a lot of teams did this year. Washington College, Wilkes - those are two. Susquehanna has always given us a good game, even when we had good teams. When we were 21 and 8, one of the eight losses was to Susquehanna. So, you can't take anything for granted. And that's what a lot' of our players did. The other factor was that since some of them weren't starting, when they got into the game, they again were just going through the motions. I'Ve didn't have anyone, except Ed Connors, on the bench, who, when he got in, gave 1002. And therein 1-ies' the story. That's part of the story. The other part is the coach would never sit down and tell the fellas where it was at. Instead, he tried that - I wouldn't say it was a positive approach, because it didn't work - he would tfY building up the players. In other years, no mat- ter who you were, if he didn't like something you did, he would throw you off the floor. Send you downstairs and tell you to shower. M21Ybef Come back tomorrow. Or, come and see him tomorrow. Then he'd sit down and talk with you. This year, he didn't discipline too many people. He didn't throw too many people' OUII of practice. I think that the coach really didn t expect us to do well this year. He maintained, Well, if we can go at 500, we'll go at 500. The personnel we lost had something to do with it. We lost Ollie. And we didn't have any- body over 6-5. And we had three sophomores on the team. And I guess the coach felt that sopho- mores are bound to make mistakes and we just have to go along with whatever they do. But I look at it this way. If you're a member of the team, no matter what you are, sophomore, junior or senior, you're still a varsity player. It's expect- ed of you to produce. It's possible the coach considered this a rebuilding year. But then again, you can't rebuild when you have the sea- son before you. You can rebuild in the summer. You can rebuild up to the first game. But after the first game, it's no longer a rebuilding season. It's a season and you're trying to get the most out of it. And it just wasn't looked at that way. Concerning fans, I always liked playing better at away games than at home games. Because I felt that our fans at home were spoiled. They were used to us winning. And they just didn't appreciate us as much as they did in the begin- ning of the season or the years of 67-68, when I was a sophomore. It was expected that since the basketball team had won 21 games, they would come back the following year and win 18 or 19 or 20. And then my senior year, we didn't have Ollie, we didn't have Wendel or Russ, but then again, we would have a good season. And I felt that we weren't appreciated to the extent of, say, a visiting crowd where we'd come in and we'd play good basketball, and they showed it. And this, in a sense, is a little odd, because they're the home crowd of the team we were playing. And up here, if you missed a shot, or if you blew a pass, or you did something wrong, the fans sighed in disgust, really. You know, it just wasn't expected that you could make a mis- take. And that's why I liked playing at away games. Because I felt that the people there ap- preciated what you did. 'Mistakes are part of the game, and they looked at it that way. The team needs itself. The itself in the team needs the crowd. We can go out and we can play and everybody gives 1002, We'll always need that little extra something if it's a tight game, And that's what the crowd supplies. They give you that little extra initiative or push to bring a game home. It's hard to say when the turning point of the season was. There was a turning point - where we went from bad to terrible. It started at the Upsala game, the fourth game of the season. I think this, again, displays the attitude, or lack

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