Monmouth’s King Rice Talks Bench Celebrations and Basketball
Posted by Kenny Ocker on December 4th, 2015Kenny Ocker (@kennyocker) is a national columnist.
That bench. Those big upset wins over major conference teams. That bench.
Monmouth has had a surprising start to the 2015-16 season, beating UCLA in overtime at Pauley Pavilion (where even top-ranked Kentucky fell last night), and then Notre Dame and USC on a neutral court in Orlando during a Thanksgiving week tournament. And the Hawks have had a ton of fun doing it, with their bench becoming nationally known for their hilarious and diverse set of celebrations. We talked with fifth-year coach King Rice about where his program’s been, where it’s going and (on accident) where he plans to retire to when he hangs up the whistle.
Where did this season-opening run come from?
We’ve been going after this for a while. This is my fifth year as the head coach. Every year, we’ve played high majors. My first three years, the average margin of loss was 36 points. We played three or four of them a year, and everybody told me, “King, you’re crazy for playing schedules like this. What are you doing? What are you doing?” I just thought it was the right thing to do. Last year, our average margin of loss was nine points, and last year we played West Virginia, we played Maryland, we played SMU and Rutgers, so I felt like we were getting closer.
But to have this much success this early, no one could have imagined that. But we do have an older team now, most of our guys are juniors, and we’ve been in those situations for three years – and now it’s time for us to have a chance in those games.
You have that experience, yet you only have one senior…
I don’t want you to tell anybody that, because I don’t know if people understand. We’ve been building this program – this is our fifth year – and when we first started, we didn’t have a lot of success. My athletic director, Dr. Marilyn McNeil, believed in what she was seeing and what we were doing. And now it’s time for us to have some success, and the program is set up for us to be in a good place, because we do only have one senior. And then the following year, we’re going to lose five or six guys, but the guys that are in the program that will still be in the program are getting valuable minutes right now. So we truly feel like we’ve set it up the right way so we won’t be a one-hit wonder.
Speaking of wonders, your bench has turned into kind of a sensation. How do you build a team culture that lets something like that form.
Well, I think that in college athletics, they’re kids. We are working with young men who are 18 to 22 years old. And when you think back to when you were that age, everything became a joke, a funny thing. If your friend dropped his drink, everybody would laugh for an hour. If anything happened, if somebody slipped and fell down, you’d laugh with your buddies. When you’re that age, you come up with funny things, you do funny things. The coolest thing about these young men is that they’re great young men, and they’re great students, and they’re great basketball players. Unfortunately, with the makeup of our team, they’re not going to play a lot of minutes this year. Their role is just as important as mine or the starters – and that’s what we say on a daily basis – so these kids have started the energy on the bench just to have energy for our teammates. Then you have some success, those guys are creative kids, and then it’s kind of taken on a thing of its own. I’m happy for those young men because they do it the right way, it’s all in fun, and now they’ve created something that’s really got people talking about our team, our bench and, most importantly, our university.
Would Dean Smith have put up with that?
Dean Smith Had a Profound Influence on King Rice’s Coaching Style (SI Vault)
Nah, Coach wouldn’t. And I said that the other day, as we all know, I’ve learned from Coach Smith. The things I try to do in this program – how we do study hall, how we try to make sure they’re going to their classes, the punishments when you miss a class – are all from Carolina. Coach Smith never wanted us to be the first ones to be out there like that. If other people were doing it on campus, then he felt like it was good for the basketball players to do it. He did not want us to be the trendsetters, so he probably would not want the bench going that far. But Coach Smith, sometimes people didn’t understand he wanted us to have fun, and as long as it was the right type of fun, he was OK with it. We’ve just taken it probably to the next level.
How do you balance what you learned when you played for him with the differences in the game now?
I do think that even though Coach didn’t want us to be the first ones doing things, Coach Smith was the first one doing a lot of things. Saying “thank you” for the pass, standing up for your teammates, running off the court into timeouts, running onto the court. Coach Smith was definitely a trendsetter and, like I said, I take everything I learned from him and do it the way that fits my personality the best. Usually, it’s fun-loving, and I like to have fun. When I was younger, that got me in trouble some, but I’m still that guy. I want to have fun with these men. I don’t expect them to act like a 46-year-old man. I expect them to act like 18- to 22-year-olds, and a lot of times you’ll step out there a bit when you’re that age. I think it fits our school, I think it fits our team, more importantly, and it’s been a great, great thing for those young men.
Oklahoma transfer Je’Lon Hornbeak has been great for you this season. What’s different about integrating transferring players who are upperclassmen versus freshman recruits?
Well, Je’Lon is like the big brother on our team. Ever since he stepped on campus, he earned our players’ respect and they look to him because they feel like he has great knowledge of the game, he has success on the floor in practice, and he’s a little bit older than them. So Je’Lon has been a great addition to our program for toughness, for explaining to them, ‘Guys, we still haven’t accomplished anything yet, there’s still a long way to go,’ and he’s truly a very, very good basketball player. I can’t wait until Je’Lon gets his legs underneath him and starts playing closer to what we expect of him, because Je’Lon is a very, very good player on the floor: He’s an extension of me on the floor as a coach, he knows what to do, he knows how to get guys in the right spots. I think in the next three weeks to a month, you’ll see Je’Lon Hornbeak do a lot of things on this basketball court that are really going to help our team get better.
What’s been your favorite moment this season?
Monmouth is Better than UCLA, Which is Better than Kentucky… (USA Today Images)
You know, we’ve had a lot of fun moments. When you win at UCLA, that was pretty cool. I grew up watching Notre Dame, from my mom I’m half-Irish. I got a message on my phone from my mother saying, ‘That was a great game, Honey. That was the first time I ever pulled against Notre Dame.’ So that’s pretty cool. And just that the athletic director believed in the vision that we had as coaches and that she has stood behind me and supported me the whole time. I’d say those three things have been the coolest things.
You have Canisius on Friday to start conference play. When you’ve had so much success to start your nonconference schedule, do you want to be playing your conference games this soon?
Well, we are ready for conference. Early, before the season started, everybody said, “King, man, you’re messing your team up ’cause your nonconference is too hard.” Now I get, “Hey, are you ready to play conference?” Our whole thing is to win the MAAC championship, the regular-season championship, so these are the games that are most important to us, and we talk about that all the time. Because if you win your league, we think the regular season is the hardest thing to do. So it’s early – last year we had some success in those first two games, and it really catapulted us throughout the year. We know Canisius well, they’re very, very good, they’re very well-coached, Coach (Jim) Baron has over 500 career wins. I have about 439 or 437, something like that. So he’s the veteran. We’ve had great games every time we’ve played them that could have gone either way, so I’m expecting this to be as hard of a game as any game that we’ve played so far. Those kids up at Canisius will be fired up to play us, because then if they beat us, that gives them some shine.
Do you think your early success will put a target on your back that you guys wouldn’t otherwise have?
King Rice is Riding the Wave His Program Has Dropped Into (USA Today Images)
Well, we’ve gotten picked second in our league this year. Iona’s still the league favorite. Siena’s having a lot of good wins. Manhattan has dropped one or two, but Manhattan has won the championship the last two times. Canisius is a team that’s right there. Rider took Maryland to the brink one night this year. I think, top to bottom, the league is really, really good. Because we were picked second, I think people were going to be shooting for us a little bit. This is our third year in the MAAC, and we’ve been saying we’re getting closer to the top of the league, and I think the top of the league would like to knock us back. But when you have success early, it definitely makes the games harder, because other teams are going to want to take our shine away, and we’re going to want it to keep happening.
I was looking a couple nights ago at how many times, because I went to Oregon …
I worked at Oregon before. I loved it out there, brother.
Anyway, I was going through the stats and trying to count how many times Oregon beat both UCLA and USC away from Eugene in the same year, and it was only once in the four years I was in college. I don’t know if people realize how hard it is to beat both those schools away from home.
Well, I’ll tell you, I did coach at Oregon for a year, so I do understand that that trip is a hard swing. We were able to get UCLA on that first night, and then USC did beat us, so we were fortunate we got to play them again on a neutral court. That game could have gone either way, too. It was the third game in four days, both teams were tired, and I think they ran of gas just a little bit before we did. But we do understand that it is a pretty big deal that we have beaten both of them, and we’re thankful for the opportunities that those teams gave us.
When were you at Oregon?
Jerry Green’s first year. Mark Turgeon was an assistant, Bobby Braswell was an assistant, Coach Green was the head coach and I was the restricted earnings coach. Coach Turgeon bought me breakfast, lunch and dinner every day because I was only making $12,000 and I didn’t have enough to pay the rent, so Turge kind of fed me that whole year.
When was that?
I want to say, I finished school in ’91, so 1993-94. (Note: It was 1992-93. But I was two. It was awhile ago.) Yeah, I’m an old guy. I try to not look like it, but I’m an old guy.
Watching games in Mac Court was one of my favorite things about college. I miss that place.
How cool was that place? I’m telling you, someday, everybody knows I’m getting land or a house in Oregon and I’m retiring outside of Portland somewhere. I’m sure, 100 percent.
