maly, too: 'I'm Looking Forward To Making Drake Basketball the Best It can Be,' New Coach Ray Giacoletti Says. Athletic Director Sandy Hatfield Clubb Says She's 'Ecstatic' That the Man Who Has Been An Assistant At Gonzaga Is the New Guy In Charge Of the Bulldogs' Ship

Thursday, March 28, 2013

'I'm Looking Forward To Making Drake Basketball the Best It can Be,' New Coach Ray Giacoletti Says. Athletic Director Sandy Hatfield Clubb Says She's 'Ecstatic' That the Man Who Has Been An Assistant At Gonzaga Is the New Guy In Charge Of the Bulldogs' Ship

There are lots of great things about being in my place in life.

One of them is that when I want to go to Hy-Vee to do the rest of my grocery shopping for the Easter weekend, I never have to be concerned about what else is going on in the world.

Like Drake naming a new basketball coach.

I was in the process of rolling up a bill for more than $140 this afternoon when Ty Patton, Drake's assistant athletic director in charge of athletic department public relations, sent an e-mail to me that said the university was planning a 2:30 p.m. press conference to announce Ray Giacoletti as the new men's basketball coach.

I didn't see :Patton's e-mail until after I had carried all of the groceries from the trunk of my 1989 Toyota Camry [the official car of this and every other one of my websites] into my home.

Then I turned on the computer and saw Patton's e-mail.

I, of course, didn't make it to the press conference. I wasn't home to see the streaming of the press conference either. But here's Patton's release, which he e-mailed to me:

Drake University will introduce Ray Giacoletti as the Bulldogs’ men’s basketball head coach during a press conference Thursday, March 28 at 2:30 p.m. The introductory press conference will take place in Levitt Hall located in Old Main on the Drake Campus. The press conference will also be streamed live on www.GoDrakeBulldogs.com.

“I’m ecstatic to announce Ray Giacoletti as our men’s basketball coach,” Drake director of athletics Sandy Hatfield Clubb said. “He has an extraordinary combination of experience as a head coach and has spent the last six seasons as an integral part of one of the winningest basketball programs in the nation. Ray shares our commitment to the holistic development of our student-athletes. He has a firm grasp on the potential of our program and the level of sustainable competitive excellence we aspire to achieve. Our goal is for the men's basketball program to serve as a catalyst for the Bulldogs to become a source of pride and joy for the campus and our community.”

“We are delighted that Ray Giacoletti has agreed to be the men's basketball coach at Drake University,” Drake president David Maxwell said. “His coaching experience, his values and his aspirations for Drake basketball are in perfect alignment with ours—to have a highly competitive men's basketball program with young men of high character who excel in the classroom as well as on the court. We demonstrated in the 2007-08 season that it's a realistic and attainable model, and we know that Coach Giacoletti is the right person to guide the program in achieving and sustaining that level of competitive success.”

Giacoletti [pronunciation: JACK-o-let-ee] has served as an assistant coach at Gonzaga University for the past six seasons, where he helped lead the perennial basketball power to six straight NCAA appearances, five West Coast Conference titles and a 163-41 (.799) record during his time on campus in Spokane, Wash.

“I’m excited to be a part of the Drake family and Des Moines community,” Giacoletti said. “I’ve followed Missouri Valley Conference basketball my whole life and I’m looking forward to making Drake basketball the best it can be. There are a lot of similarities to where I’ve been and this is a similar situation where there is the potential to grow a program. My wife and I are both Midwest natives, so the opportunity to return to the area is an added bonus.”

This past season, Gonzaga marched to a 32-3 record and spent the final three weeks of the season ranked No. 1 in both the Associated Press and USA Coaches Polls to earn a No. 1 seed in the West Region of the NCAA Tournament.

Giacoletti came to Gonzaga after with 10 total years of head coaching experience and a three-year tenure as the head coach at the University of Utah where he led the Utes to a 29-6 record in his first season to tie for the third-most win in program history and advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. That squad won 18-straight games to win the Mountain West Conference regular-season title and recorded the best league record to date (13-1) in the six-year history of the league.

As a result, Giacoletti was named the NABC District 13, USBWA District 8, and Mountain West Conference Coach of the Year. Sophomore center Andrew Bogut became Utah's first consensus national Player of the Year, winning the John R. Wooden Award, Naismith, National Association of Basketball Coaches and Associated Press Player of the Year honors. In three seasons on the Utah bench, he amassed a 54-40 record.

Prior to taking the reins at Utah, he served as the head coach at Eastern Washington University where he went 69-50 in four seasons, the best mark of any coach in the school's NCAA Division I history. He guided the Eagles to their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 2004, as well as the Big Sky Conference regular-season and tournament titles. In each of Giacoletti's first three years, the Eagles placed second in the Big Sky during the regular season and advanced to the tournament championship game. In 2002-03, Giacoletti led EWU to the NIT for the program's first postseason bid since 1947 when it was a NAIA program.

The 2004 Big Sky Conference Coach of the Year, Giacoletti directed EWU to a 17-13 overall record and an 11-3 mark in conference play that season as the Eagles won 14 of their last 18 games en route to winning the Big Sky Tournament. In the first round of the NCAA Tournament, EWU fell to eventual Final Four participant Oklahoma State.

In four seasons under Giacoletti, EWU posted a 41-17 record in Big Sky Conference games for a .707 winning percentage, eighth in the league's 41-year history of the league that has produced notable coaches such as Don Monson, Mike Montgomery, Larry Eustachy, Jug Heathcote, Tim Floyd and Ben Howland.

Giacoletti's first head coaching job was a three-year stint (1998-2000) at North Dakota State University, a Division II program at the time, where he went 48-33. In his 10 seasons as a head coach, he has amassed a 171-123 (.582) record.

Before assuming his first head coaching assignment, Giacoletti was an assistant for four years at both at Missouri Valley Conference member Illinois State University (1990-93) and the University of Washington (1994-97) under mentor Bob Bender.

Giacoletti, a native of Peoria, Ill., graduated from Minot State University with a degree in physical education in 1985. There he was a 4-year letterman on the court, started three seasons and served as team captain twice. His coaching career began as a student assistant coach at Minot State in 1984-85 while he finished his degree. He was also a graduate assistant at Western Illinois University in 1985-86 and an assistant at Oral Roberts University in 1986-87. His resume also includes one season of professional basketball experience as an assistant coach and director of player personnel for the Fresno Flames of the World Basketball League from 1988-89.

Giacoletti is married to Kim Lankford.

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.