It helped change him, not just as a college basketball coach, but also a man.
And it’s still paying dividends now, especially this past week as he and his Wright State team recovered from a bad loss last Sunday to Detroit Mercy, a team they had routed by 31 points just 16 days earlier.
As he dealt with that dispiriting loss, Nagy drew on that day back in 2010 when he was the coach at South Dakota State University and his veteran guard, Garret Callahan, stopped by his office for a difficult end-of-the-season admission.
It was a tough time in Nagy’s coaching career. After nine seasons of great success leading the Jackrabbits’ Division II program – a stretch that included 210 wins and eight trips to the NCAA Tournament – he was at the helm when the school moved up to D-I status.
The transition was rugged. Six losing seasons followed.
Callahan was there for four of them, including one with just six wins and another with eight.
Nagy was not good at coping with the losses. He’s the son of a no-nonsense, old school coach – the late Dick Nagy – and he himself had always had great success, both as a Hall of Fame point guard at Delta State University and then in those early SDSU years, when he averaged over 23 wins a season.
When his teams kept losing, Scott Nagy lashed out.
“I heard a coach say once, ‘We want to be demanding, not demeaning,’” Nagy recalled. “Well, when I was young, I was demeaning
“I was very sarcastic. That’s how I got my point cross. I called guys names. I was brutal. Just brutal.
“Not in terms of cursing, not in terms of calling guys, ‘you dumb m-fers!’ There’s a difference in curse words and words that curse. When you call somebody something, you’re putting a curse on them.
“But I was just very hurtful to people.”
To underscore his point, he mentioned Clint Sargent, the Raiders associate head coach who played for him during three of those down seasons at SDSU, scored over 1,500 points and has been one of his assistant coaches for the past nine years.
“Coach Sargent played for me in my sarcastic mode,” Nagy said with a bit of a laugh. “You can ask him about it.”
I did. I found Sargent with his family out on the edge of the Nutter Center court Thursday, 30 minutes after the Raiders had pushed aside Youngstown State, 84-71, for their 17th victory of the season.
“He was tough,” Sargent admitted. “When he got going on you, it wasn’t the harsh language. It was what he said – it was so true. It cut so deep. And it hurt.”
Callahan was a year ahead of Sargent at SDSU, so he had four seasons of the “brutal” comments and finally he felt he had to speak up.
Nagy has had an open-door policy in his 27 years – 21 at SDSU and now six at Wright State – as a head coach.
“In all those years, not one time have I ever yelled at a kid in my office. Not one time,” he said.
“I always say, ‘Come in if something is bothering you. Unload it. Let me have it. I might agree with you and I might not. But come on in. I can take it.’
“So he (Callahan) took me up on it. And I’ll never forget it.
“He said, ‘I can’t even stand to listen to your voice anymore!’
“He told me, ‘I feel bad for the kids who are staying here after I’m gone because of the way you talk to them and treat them.’
“He cared about the kids and he cared about me, too.
“Criticism is hard to take, but when someone cares about you, you should be able to accept it. You need to hear it
“And I did hear him. He helped me. And I ended the sarcasm.
“I got better, but I’m not perfect though. (On the court) I know I’m out of my mind half the time and I still say stupid stuff.
“But when I do, I try to apologize. I ask the team to forgive me.
“I try to treat them better. I try to treat them more like men, than boys.”
Film study
Although this is the final week of the regular season for Wright State and it’s been jam-packed – along with Sunday’s game at Detroit Mercy, Thursday night’s win in the Nutter Center and tonight’s Senior Night matchup with visiting Robert Morris – Nagy made time for a film session like no other before the Youngstown State game.
Following the self-destruction in Detroit – the Raiders’ 13th loss of the season – the team was demoralized and not pulling together.
That’s when Nagy asked his players to watch the game film from a totally different perspective.
“We had a chance to show guys body language and how they were treating their teammates,” he said. “Things you wouldn’t notice in a game, but that really showed up when you watched the film for it.
“We looked at people’s reactions, like when you came off the court and everybody tried to high-five you and you didn’t give any back. How you disrespected people. It affects everybody. It affects our emotions.
“And it wasn’t just the players. It was me, too. I’m not better. I had bad body language, too. And I pointed it out: ‘Look at me! It’s me, too, not just you guys!’
“We were critical and we asked them to be critical of each other, too. We did it from a point of caring, not being hurtful. And guys got some stuff off their chests. I did, too. A lot of it was my fault. But I think we ended up in a better place emotionally. We had a good week of preparation.”
It showed against Youngstown State, which had beaten a short-handed Raiders team – thanks to COVID – by three points, 90-87, in a Jan. 15 game at Youngstown.
In that one, former Dayton Flyer Dwayne Cohill, who transferred to YSU this season, had a career-high 25 points.
Thursday night, WSU was led by center Grant Basille, who had 29 points on 12 for 16 shooting, and guard Tanner Holden, who had 27 points and 10 rebounds.
Cohill had 12 for the Penguins.
No macho-man coaching
After the game – as he stood just off the Nutter Center court and watched his wife Jill, a former women’s basketball standout a SDSU, and their young children play under the hoop – Sargent talked about the changes he’s seen Nagy go through over the years:
“He still has his moments when he can go back to the old Coach Nagy, but he does a great job of recognizing it now and checking it.
“He’s constantly asking for forgiveness from our guys. He apologizes and shows them his vulnerability.
“In the coaching world, I think it’s very abnormal to stand in front of your guys and admit, ‘Hey, I’m struggling, too.’ Head coaches are supposed to have all the answers. A lot of them have those big ol’ egos. Macho man coaching is what I call it.”
He said people who sit up in the stands and watch Nagy with all his animated and sometimes pained reactions on the sideline, might think he’s cut from that same macho mold.
“In the locker room, it can be quite the opposite,” Sargent said. “He’s humble. He’s vulnerable.
“I think he’s one of the best in the country at getting at a player’s heart. That’s his approach and as a player you can’t run and hide from that. He creates accountability. When you see your head coach up there in front of you, kind of broken, you can’t help but check yourself, too.
“And I’ll tell you, I think the biggest gift from all that is that it prepares you for stuff like this.”
He nodded over at his wife and kids: “When you have a family and kids, that’s the approach you need.
“There are times you need to say, ‘You know what, Sweetie? I messed up tonight, today, this week, whatever. Can you forgive me?’
“Rather than just blowing through it with an ‘It’s my way or the highway’ type mentality. That doesn’t work.”
Not in marriage and not – as Garrett Callahan put it so pointedly a dozen years ago – in hoops, either.
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