There’s also upheaval across the Horizon League with Valparaiso departing for the Missouri Valley Conference, which has created chaos and uncertainty within the scheduling process.
Nagy sat down earlier this week to discus those issues and others:
Q: What is your comfort level this year as opposed to this time last year?
A: We’re a lot more comfortable. For me, this time last year my family wasn’t even here. I was just looking at my wall in there and I still don’t have pictures of them. We’ve been going hard now for 14 months. But we have been able to take some deep breaths where last summer we couldn’t because we just hit the ground running.
›› RELATED: WSU facing big changes for second year in a row
Normally with a basketball season, usually when it’s over and you get to April and May you can kind of take a deep breath. But last year we couldn’t because we were hiring people and trying to recruit and getting things organized. So it’s been a full year of full steam ahead. It’s been better this year in terms of our May and June, so we’re a lot more comfortable. There’s still a lot of work to do in terms of completely developing our culture, but we’re a lot closer.
Q: One of the issues with the team last year was no true point guard or post. Do you feel better about those spots?
A: I’m less worried about those two positions and probably more concerned about our 4 spot. Having lost Ryan (Custer), it leaves a hole there. It leaves us without the flexibility we’d like to have, in terms of if we’re going against somebody big, being able to be a little bit bigger. But we can work around that. Last year we played Grant (Benzinger) at the 4, so we know how to play guards there.
Q: How has that whole experience with Ryan’s tragic injury changed you as a coach and as a father?
A: I think I’ve coached long enough and not that I’ve had players go through a ton of tragedy, but I’ve coached enough players that have gone through it with their families, to see it. I just understand that life is tough. It’s not fair. So what we’re doing is trying to get our guys ready for that, trying to explain it to them. Because when you’re young like that, you think things like that aren’t going to happen. You think you’re going to live forever and everything’s going to be perfect.
›› MORE: WSU basketball team travels to Chicago to visit injured teammate
Basketball players get treated so well, but this is not normality in terms of what life is going to be like when you leave here. Reality, when basketball is over, really hits you. Now you’ve got the rest of your life to life. All we’re trying to do is get guys ready for that. I don’t think it’s changed my urgency or anything like that because hopefully I already had that. The key is for us to continue to support Ryan, and it’s hard because he’s been in Chicago and now he’s in Denver, so it’s hard to go see him. But we want him to know we’re not going to forget about him. He’s got a lot of good friends here.
Follow Jay Morrison on Twitter
Q: Another player you lost unexpectedly was leading-scorer Mark Alstork to Illinois. Is the graduate transfer rule something you’d like to see changed?
A: It doesn’t matter if I want it to change. It’s not going to change. I think with the transfer rules they’re just going to become more loose about it. I think they’re so concerned about lawsuits and everything else. My concern is we’re going to get to the point where kids can transfer mid-season and play right away. So it doesn’t matter what I think about that rule. It’s not going to change. I don’t think it’s good for basketball and just individuals in general.
Q: Another familiar entity gone is Valparaiso. Do you see that as a positive given that the Crusaders have dominated the league, or a negative in terms of losing a marquee name and quality opponent?
A: It doesn’t help the league. I like to have good teams in the league. When I was at South Dakota State when we first came into the league (in 2007), there were three dominant teams in the league almost every year, and that was IUPUI and Oakland and Oral Roberts. And I appreciated those guys because we had to get better if we were going to compete.
›› RELATED: Valparaiso leaves Horizon League for MVC
They made us get better. I appreciated the fact they had such good teams and such solid programs because it forced us to get to that level. Valpo has been forcing us to get better here. And I think having a league at nine teams is hard. It makes it tough on travel when you don’t have the travel partners. The schedule really changes and you end up playing some more mid-week games. And some weeks you travel and just play one game instead of being out there and playing two. I’m hopeful we can get back to 10 teams.
Q: Speaking of the schedule, where are you in terms of wrapping up the non-league part of it?
Well, losing Valpo so late really hurt that. Because now all of a sudden we’ve got to add two non-league games to fill out our schedule. And we were hoping if we were going to lose Valpo that we could at least push the schedule back into January for conference games. That would give us the end of December to play some non-conference games. But they haven’t done that.
›› MORE: HL extends invite to school to become 10th member
We still have the same days in terms of a league schedule, but we have less teams so we’re playing less games in those days. And now we’ve got to squeeze two more games into an already packed November and December. Unless you play non-conference games during the conference season, which is hard to do. It’s hard for your players to do that because the focus is so much different. So it’s not easy. That one probably really hurt everybody in terms of how they’re going to add those two games we lost with Valpo leaving.
About the Author