MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[sac]

There are many ways to coach a sport, Ernst's way is one way.  As coaching goes, he checks a lot of boxes.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

There are many ways to coach a sport, Ernst's way is one way.  As coaching goes, he checks a lot of boxes.

Bob Knight had similar tendencies and successes ... but it eventually wore thin as well (no assumptions of how the players were treated; strictly speaking public persona and in-game actions). Iowa's current coach is on a razor thin edge as well.

[wiz]

I think Albion can take down Loras tomorrow.  Go Brits!

[HopeConvert]

There is no excuse for, or justification for, a grown man screaming at and humiliating 18 year old kids in public. I know someone is going to say "that's the culture." It's a bad culture, and schools such as ours ought not tolerate it from the coaches. If professors acted that way, they'd be fired. Why do coaches get a waiver?

Nor is there any justification for a grown man throwing temper tantrums in public. Irascibility is a vice.

[Jameswys]

Steve Ernst leaves Olivet as the first and only head coach that the Comets have ever had who won more MIAA games than he lost. Considering that Olivet has been in the MIAA for 88 years now, during which Ernst had 19 predecessors (not counting that redoubtable coaching talent Unknown), that's a pretty impressive achievement.

I'll probably get some -k for this, but it's an honest question (based on my opinion of course).

Yes, he achieved the wins, but at what cost to the reputation of the institution, the team, and the players?

As an alumni I'll always appreciate what Coach Ernst did for Comets Basketball. I had never followed Comet basketball with anything more than a casual reading of the box score and a write up from OC's excellent SID Geoff.

This year I traveled to Adrian, Hope, Trine (twice) and Kalamazoo. I went to 11 games this year, and watched all but 30 minutes of the @Alma game on live for the 3 games I missed. I even stayed to watch the Calvin/Trine semis after a heartbreaking Olivet loss.

For me, Coach Ernst did a lot and I'll always look on him in a positive light, no matter how many technicals, wasted timeouts, or yelling at officials he did.

[Jameswys]

Steve Ernst leaves Olivet as the first and only head coach that the Comets have ever had who won more MIAA games than he lost. Considering that Olivet has been in the MIAA for 88 years now, during which Ernst had 19 predecessors (not counting that redoubtable coaching talent Unknown), that's a pretty impressive achievement.

I'll probably get some -k for this, but it's an honest question (based on my opinion of course).

Yes, he achieved the wins, but at what cost to the reputation of the institution, the team, and the players?

Those are fair questions. I don't think that the answers are necessarily binary. As sac points out, Olivet is a tough sell; the fact that Steve Ernst is the first Comets coach to post a winning career MIAA record in the history of a program that has been a part of this league since the First World War tells you everything that you need to know about just how tough a sell it really is. To put it another way, Olivet's reputation has been terrible in terms of its competence in this sport.

On the one hand, he's not the most genteel human being, and it can be fairly asked whether his combustible and confrontational style is necessary to achieving success at Olivet or is only an individual quirk that need not be characteristic of another coach who can tap into the same sort of pipelines that sac described. And Ernst's players are certainly rough around the edges in terms of their deportment, too. (Perhaps his combative personality on the court is conducive to recruiting that sort of player, in the sense that they may feel akin to him in terms of being the snubbed blue-collar underdogs that have to scratch and claw for whatever respect they get in a league full of well-heeled types.) On the other hand, the Comets achieved success on the hardwood under Ernst by taking on what sac described as "transfers from jucos and guys in need of a basketball home", and this raises the question as to whether or not this fits with Olivet's mission as an institution. If part of what Olivet College is all about is providing a resource for higher education for student-athletes who fit that description, then you can't argue with his recruiting if you're being objective and honest with yourself. If players like that stick out like a sore thumb on the Olivet campus, however -- I simply don't know enough about Olivet to say anything one way or the other, and I'm not going to make any pronouncements out of ignorance -- then they're not going to hang around for more than a season, anyway, and retention will always be a problem for the program. It'll be a different type of retention problem than the retention problem of the past, which was that few people are ever willing to stick around and play for a perennial loser, but it'll be a retention problem just the same. It's hard to thrive on a campus where you feel like a fish out of water whose one and only reason for being there is to play basketball.

It's easy to cast judgment upon somebody else's program and/or school, especially if that program and/or school is very different than the one that you follow. But I think that it's always a good exercise to try to put yourself in the other guy's shoes and to try to understand where his school is coming from -- the advantages it enjoys, the disadvantages it has to overcome, the mission of his school, the sort of fit it's looking for in its student body and its coaches, etc.

Since you mentioned Olivet's institutional belief (which I bolded to highlight) I thought I'd mention my experience here. Olivet is the land of opportunity. If you need a second chance in life and truly want to work for it you can find it here. Olivet has a program called the Comet Opoertunity Program. Students, athletes or not, who didn't do the best in high school can come to Olivet in the summer for classes to
learn life skills and do college level classes to prove that they can do the work and need a spot in college for a second chance. I hadn't thought about Coach Ernst's second chance recruiting in this light but it really is very Olivet of him. I mean when we were founded we had the audacity to allow men AND women, black AND white all in the same college together, so Michigan waited to grant a charter for 12 years. Giving a kid who screwed up his grades a second chance is very much in outback institutional history.

[wiz]

In other news today...

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

In other news today...

There is other news?

[wiz]

...it's breaking.

[Gregory Sager]

There is no excuse for, or justification for, a grown man screaming at and humiliating 18 year old kids in public. I know someone is going to say "that's the culture." It's a bad culture, and schools such as ours ought not tolerate it from the coaches. If professors acted that way, they'd be fired. Why do coaches get a waiver?

Nor is there any justification for a grown man throwing temper tantrums in public. Irascibility is a vice.

I'm not excusing, justifying, or giving a waiver to Steve Ernst for churlish behavior. I've been pretty outspoken over the years about how much of a boor Grey Giovanine of Augustana can be on the sidelines. I agree with you that ranting and raving like a lunatic is never a good look for a grown man, especially one in authority who is doing it to menchildren under his charge. What I'm saying is that this behavior doesn't necessarily have a black-and-white effect with regard to the sum total of his efforts. It's not a given that, because he yells and screams at people during games, he's therefore a bad coach and a blot on his school. Anyone who seeks to stand in judgment of him ought to look at the whole picture -- which may mean educating yourself as to what is entailed, institution-wise, within that whole picture. To wit:

Steve Ernst leaves Olivet as the first and only head coach that the Comets have ever had who won more MIAA games than he lost. Considering that Olivet has been in the MIAA for 88 years now, during which Ernst had 19 predecessors (not counting that redoubtable coaching talent Unknown), that's a pretty impressive achievement.

I'll probably get some -k for this, but it's an honest question (based on my opinion of course).

Yes, he achieved the wins, but at what cost to the reputation of the institution, the team, and the players?

Those are fair questions. I don't think that the answers are necessarily binary. As sac points out, Olivet is a tough sell; the fact that Steve Ernst is the first Comets coach to post a winning career MIAA record in the history of a program that has been a part of this league since the First World War tells you everything that you need to know about just how tough a sell it really is. To put it another way, Olivet's reputation has been terrible in terms of its competence in this sport.

On the one hand, he's not the most genteel human being, and it can be fairly asked whether his combustible and confrontational style is necessary to achieving success at Olivet or is only an individual quirk that need not be characteristic of another coach who can tap into the same sort of pipelines that sac described. And Ernst's players are certainly rough around the edges in terms of their deportment, too. (Perhaps his combative personality on the court is conducive to recruiting that sort of player, in the sense that they may feel akin to him in terms of being the snubbed blue-collar underdogs that have to scratch and claw for whatever respect they get in a league full of well-heeled types.) On the other hand, the Comets achieved success on the hardwood under Ernst by taking on what sac described as "transfers from jucos and guys in need of a basketball home", and this raises the question as to whether or not this fits with Olivet's mission as an institution. If part of what Olivet College is all about is providing a resource for higher education for student-athletes who fit that description, then you can't argue with his recruiting if you're being objective and honest with yourself. If players like that stick out like a sore thumb on the Olivet campus, however -- I simply don't know enough about Olivet to say anything one way or the other, and I'm not going to make any pronouncements out of ignorance -- then they're not going to hang around for more than a season, anyway, and retention will always be a problem for the program. It'll be a different type of retention problem than the retention problem of the past, which was that few people are ever willing to stick around and play for a perennial loser, but it'll be a retention problem just the same. It's hard to thrive on a campus where you feel like a fish out of water whose one and only reason for being there is to play basketball.

It's easy to cast judgment upon somebody else's program and/or school, especially if that program and/or school is very different than the one that you follow. But I think that it's always a good exercise to try to put yourself in the other guy's shoes and to try to understand where his school is coming from -- the advantages it enjoys, the disadvantages it has to overcome, the mission of his school, the sort of fit it's looking for in its student body and its coaches, etc.

Since you mentioned Olivet's institutional belief (which I bolded to highlight) I thought I'd mention my experience here. Olivet is the land of opportunity. If you need a second chance in life and truly want to work for it you can find it here. Olivet has a program called the Comet Opoertunity Program. Students, athletes or not, who didn't do the best in high school can come to Olivet in the summer for classes to
learn life skills and do college level classes to prove that they can do the work and need a spot in college for a second chance. I hadn't thought about Coach Ernst's second chance recruiting in this light but it really is very Olivet of him. I mean when we were founded we had the audacity to allow men AND women, black AND white all in the same college together, so Michigan waited to grant a charter for 12 years. Giving a kid who screwed up his grades a second chance is very much in outback institutional history.

Well, there you go. He was a good institutional fit for Olivet. His behavior certainly didn't help his case in terms of public image, but nevertheless I'm not going to second-guess the decision to hire him.

[Knight Hawk]

Kevin Vande Streek Retires as Calvin Men's Basketball Coach

http://calvinknights.com/sports/mbkb/2018-19/releases/20190228vfjft0

[Flying Dutch Fan]

WOW!!

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Congratulations to Kevin on a tremendous career. Finished it off by going 3-0 against Hope this season. That ain't bad.

Staying on a professor isn't shocking. I wonder how hard it will be to stay away from the game, though.

[sflzman]

Ernst to Calvin 

[sac]

Ernst to Calvin 

He was the coach at Summit Christian Academy and  Lansing Christian