Whenever a coach of high prestige is hired to take over a struggling athletic program or team, most diehard sports fans usually think success and winning is automatic and just around the corner.
But when the team fails to live up to these certain expectations, most fans are ready to spit fire and give up on the coach and the team.
This is a common problem at both the collegiate and professional levels in the world of sports. Fans fail to realize that it takes patience and order to build a successful and winning program.
The same case could be made for the Colonels basketball team and its new head coach Ricky Blanton.
In Blanton’s first season, the Colonels are 3-13 overall with a 1-7 Southland Conference record.
Despite having more wins than last years 2-25 record, some fans and students are already calling the Blanton era a huge disappointment before it really began to take its course.
These people like judging a book its cover. They do not want to look inside and find out what is really going on. They are only judging the team and the season so far as a disappointment by the 3-13 record the Colonels have notched up so far.
In the Colonels’ first 16 games this season, they have played three games on the road against NCAA powerhouses like LSU, Texas Tech and Mississippi. They have also played tough Southland Conference games against Northwestern, Stephen F. Austin and Louisiana-Monroe.
A demanding schedule like that is definitely not a ray of sunshine by going against several teams that are probably locks for NCAA tournament berths in March.
Despite having six returning players from a year ago and two transfer players with collegiate playing experience, Blanton is inheriting a team that is still in the infancy stage of playing basketball together.
Most of the Colonels are still getting used to Blanton’s new system. It will take a season or two before players start to fully understand the basics of what Blanton wants to accomplish both offensively and defensively.
As time goes on, the team will start to become more accustomed to one another and the system that Blanton expects them to learn.
But, in order for this to happen, the team, players, coaches and fans need patience in order to successfully become a winning program.
A good example of having patience is this year’s Colonels football and volleyball teams. After struggling for the first few years of their careers, football coach Daryl Daye and volleyball coach M. J. Engstrom each found patience in the systems they were committed too and each successfully turned their programs around.
Three seasons ago, the football team compiled a 1-10 overall record. Three seasons later, the football team finished 7-4 and was just a couple of minutes away from knocking off the number one ranked football team in the nation and possibly clinching a playoff berth.
In volleyball, Engstrom guided the volleyball team to its first conference tournament since 1997.
Both Daye and Engtrom used patience in strategy, recruiting and coaching to turn their programs around, and now Blanton will need to have the same patience in order to lead the Colonels to their first conference championship since 1997-98 season.
As Colonels’ basketball fans, it is understandable that everyone is probably tired of losing. But it is also important that everyone has patience with the new basketball regime here at Nicholls.
Winning never comes easy because it takes hard work and patience in order to achieve it. And in time, everyone will be singing the praises of Blanton and the Colonels’ basketball team.