ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 12, 1996 TAG: 9608120144
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FERRUM
SOURCE: DANIEL UTHMAN STAFF WRITER
GRADUATION RATES ARE JUST AS IMPORTANT as winning percentage to Larry Mangino, the new men's basketball coach at Ferrum College.
Larry Mangino has seen the side of New England you can't find in the travel magazines. He's glad it can't be found at Ferrum College.
Mangino, 35, was introduced Friday as the Panthers' new men's basketball coach. He has 13 years of experience as a collegiate coach, five as a head coach. He's worked at George Washington, Yale and Clark University, a small, respected private school in Worcester, Mass. He has great memories of those years, but there were bad ones, too. Like this one:
In 1984, during his first week as an assistant coach at Yale, he sat in his office and looked out the window to the rough streets of New Haven, Conn. He saw two men across the way at a convenience store. Daydreaming, he wondered what they were talking about. As they began looking around suspiciously, he figured it out. They were dealing drugs.
Mangino continued to watch as one reached for a gas nozzle and began to fill up his car. But then the ugly side of so many of America's underdeveloped urban areas appeared. In one motion, the man turned the nozzle from his car to his partner, sprayed him with fuel, and set him on fire.
Sitting in his small office at perhaps the most esteemed university in the United States, Mangino saw the slim margin between civility and absolute brutality. He would have to make that narrow boundary seem as wide as the Connecticut River Valley when it came to recruiting basketball players. But at Yale, the school's reputation took care of much of that.
It was a much bigger problem during his five years at Clark, which sits in a similar neighborhood.
``It's a nice campus, but it's in a high-crime area and it's very hard to recruit there,'' said Dr. T. Michael Kinder, Ferrum's athletic director.
A large grassy hill is the only boundary between Mangino's home and his new office in Ferrum's Swartz Gymnasium. A native of Jersey City, N.J., he came to Franklin County looking for a new environment, a change. Ferrum was looking for change, too.
A 52-74 record as Clark's head coach wasn't what got Mangino his new job. The more important number was 100 - the percentage of his players who graduated the past five years.
Mangino's 1995 team went 3-22. Mangino said, ``Given what we had as players, we achieved probably what we should have.'' His top two returning scorers suffered season-ending injuries by the second game. It didn't stop them from graduating.
Mangino said he tried to stress that during his interviews with Kinder and the rest of the school's search committee.
``I knew it was something I had to overcome, but I wasn't going to let one bad year affect what I've worked at for 13 years,'' Mangino said. The won-loss record ``did come up, but I think with Ted and the committee, it was [a matter of] what they want. And what they want is to get the academics up.''
``If you go on looking just at the record,'' Kinder said, ``I think you rule out some other very important things. We were looking at his experience, his knowledge, his commitment to running the program the right way.''
Kinder frequently mentioned Mangino's graduation rates when speaking Friday. He did not reveal the Ferrum basketball program's graduation rate. He did say, ``There's room for improvement there. Of all our programs, that may be the one that needs the most attention.''
The current Panthers basketball squad appears to be making good academic progress. Fifteen players from last season have eligibility remaining, and only one (as yet unnamed) is not expected to return for academic reasons. Mangino is bringing in a five-man freshman class which includes former Glenvar High School star Corey Willis.
``I'm going to be disappointed in four years if this freshman class doesn't graduate,'' Mangino said. ``Then I'm not doing my job.''
Kinder was quick to say the emphasis on winning will not be reduced. ``We want to increase the emphasis on academics.''
Mangino said he believes both athletic and academic success can be achieved quickly. Asked to compare the team he is inheriting with the one he left behind, Mangino said of the Panthers, ``Two words: They're better.''
Mangino has watched videotape of last year's Ferrum squad. He estimated the Panthers dunked more in one game than his Clark teams did in five years. It didn't take an estimation for Mangino to discover how the Panthers got most of their points last season. All he did was look at the statistics.
Ferrum took 609 3-point shots last season. Its opponents shot 326. That's nearly a 2-1 ratio. ``That'll change,'' Mangino said.
Mangino never has avoided a chance to adapt. His theory of the fast break comes from his 10 years as an assistant at the University of North Carolina's basketball camp. When he traveled to the Midwest with his wife, Ann, and daughters, Chelsea and Grace, last winter, he found some things he wanted to add to his motion offense. He discovered the plays while watching Indiana practice.
Much of the remainder of his basketball background was influenced by Red Auerbach. When working as an assistant at George Washington University, Mangino gleaned coaching tips from the legendary Boston Celtics coach while serving as his racquetball partner.
All those influences molded Mangino into Ferrum's first choice when it needed a new basketball coach. The school's location helped him choose Ferrum.
``In Division I, the bottom line is winning,'' Mangino said. ``In Division III, that's not the main emphasis. It's to help guys graduate and be successful.''
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PHILIP HOLMAN STAFF Larry Mangino, 35, was 52-74 inby CNBfive years as the men's basketball coach at Clark University in
Worcester, Mass. More important, 100 percent of his players
graduated. color