Twenty-five years at the school, 45 years in the racket, 67 years on the earth and still Gene Keady can’t figure out what’s going on with his Purdue basketball team.
One moment it is defeating Duke, winning the Great Alaska Shootout, running off six straight victories and rising in the rankings. Then, a heartbeat later, it is losing at home to Southern Methodist, failing to win its own Boilermaker Invitational and bumping along at a .500 pace.
Now, Thursday morning, it is just hours removed from bumbling away its Big Ten opener at Iowa, and Keady is behind his desk, figuratively scratching his head.
“We’ve lost our pizzazz,” he says between sips of coffee. “Isn’t it amazing how that comes and goes with teams? I don’t know what creates that. Who knows? It’s a team thing. The mystery of a team.
“Complacency. Selfishness. Youth. Whatever creates it, somehow as a coaching staff we have to undo it and get going again. We were playing pretty hard there for about a month . . . and I still like this team. I’m just trying to figure out what I need to do to get us going again.”
To his right, on a blackboard, are the afternoon’s practice schedule and a thought for the day.
“One of the best things we can do in our lives is this: Begin again,” is that thought, and that is what Keady has decided to do in the wake of his team’s lackluster effort against Iowa.
Purdue did not get home from that loss until 1 a.m., but eight hours later he gathered the team together to watch a tape of the performance. For an hour he critiqued his Boilermakers and then, untaped, they took to the court and spent another hour practicing an offense Keady used in the ’80s.
It involved hard cuts, harder screens and constant motion. The Boilermakers were pushed to act like so many of their predecessors.
“We got after it,” assistant coach Cuonzo Martin said. “It was basically like street ball. Let’s go!”
Just like the old days.
Keady, said fifth-year senior guard Kenneth Lowe, “has gotten nicer over the years. A lot of people can’t tell, but he doesn’t holler at guys as much as he used to.
“But this morning he was tired of the way we’ve been playing lately, so he let it all out. It was tough, man. But we were so angry about the loss, waking up didn’t bother us. It was tougher than I thought it’d be. But we got some good out of it.”
Just according to plan.
“I went back this morning to my old-school ways,” Keady said, then laughed. “Shut up and do it or I’m going to kick your butt type talk. I’m not going to do that, of course. But that’s the way I acted. Now we’ll see. Will they respond to that? I thought we’d been pretty gentle with them, really, and what do we have to lose? No one expects us to win at Illinois anyway.”
Purdue plays there Saturday, which means Keady will face off for the first time with former assistant Bruce Weber, a prospect that doesn’t thrill him.
“It’s kind of like playing family,” he said. “He’s almost like my son. No fun.”
But of greater interest is how the Boilermakers respond to their coach’s new-old approach.
Keady is one of those treasured throwbacks, a coaching lifer who began his career in 1958 at Beloit High School in Kansas. He can be gruff and rough, blunt and outspoken, but over the years he also has preached eternal virtues and has proved himself the purveyor of that thing called tough love.
“We all know coach Keady cares for us,” Lowe said.
“He’s still in it for the love of the game,” said Martin, who played for the Boilermakers from 1992 to 1995. “He has had the opportunity to go to the NBA, but he never wanted to. He likes to teach. He likes to develop young men. He really enjoys teaching young men.”
But teaching methods have changed over the years, and that is true of the Boilermakers Keady guides.
When Martin played, “The bottom line was what the coach said. There was nothing else to say,” he said.
“[But now] I think he’s probably more patient with guys. When we played, we had street guys, so to speak. They could take a lot of criticism and it would just bounce off them and they’d keep playing. He’s patient now from the standpoint he knows these guys aren’t that tough that you can say anything to them and they’ll respond. You have to learn to work with them. He does a good job of that.”
Just a matter of adjustment.
“The parents are different now,” Keady said. “The parents raise their children to be soft. Not all of them. But they want their children to have it easier than they did, and what they don’t understand is because they had it hard, it was good for them. . . . I’m not griping about it. If I was unhappy about it, I’d get out. It’s just different. That’s the best way to put it.”
Still, at the start of this season, these Boilermakers resembled the best of his old productions. They had a veteran leader in Lowe and the experience of five other seniors. (One of them, forward Chris Booker, is now academically ineligible.) They pressured the ball, denied the wing, made defense their calling card and, most significant, played with passion, purpose and unselfishness.
“But then our players went away from the little things that got them the success we had,” Martin said.
Keady woke them up.
“Just to get them to react,” he said, “have some intensity, play harder, have some fun.”
Keady smiled after he offered up that last word. It was a knowing smile, one that reflects lessons learned over the years.
“I was telling the players the other day, if Mr. [Henry] Iba and Mr. [Adolph] Rupp would hear a coach say have fun, they’d turn over in the grave,” he said. “It was all business then and we’re going to kick your butt if you don’t do it our way.
“But I use fun all the time now just, I guess, to appease the new generation. Though I’m having fun coaching, and I’m going to enjoy this because I’m going to try and get these guys to do things right. The only way I know how to do that is to work hard, get after them and try to sell them on the proper points and teach them to do the things that got us here.
“We fought so hard to get this back where we wanted it and now all of a sudden we’re letting it slip out the window because we’re not playing hard. I hope it’s temporary. We’ll see. I’m curious. I’m curious to see what our hearts are like. How big are our hearts?”
