AFA basketball: Reynolds learns from ghosts of season past

Air Force opens its 2009-10 men’s basketball season tonight at Clune Arena against Division II Western State, hoping to put last season’s ugly 10-21 campaign — which included a winless run through Mountain West Conference regular-season play — behind it.

But while focusing on the future of his program, third-year coach Jeff Reynolds has not turned his back on last season’s losses, struggles and mistakes.

During the offseason he evaluated his program, his coaching staff and — perhaps most importantly — himself.

He consulted current and former players and coaches in and out of college basketball whom he respects. And he gained some perspective from a personal health scare.

All that has him approaching the season with a reinvented approach and attitude.

“I don’t know if I’ve got all the answers,” said a surprisingly introspective Reynolds in a preseason interview. “But we’re going to be a little bit better.”

‘I didn’t handle the losing very well’
As last season spiraled into one of the worst in academy history, Reynolds — a fierce competitor with little tolerance for losing — had only one solution.

Work harder.

So practices became tougher, shouting became louder, film sessions dragged longer.

And things got worse.

It was like Reynolds, with a car stuck in the mud, decided to stand on the gas pedal. The wheels kept spinning.

The car kept sinking.

On Super Bowl Sunday, the day after a 21-point home loss to UNLV, the Falcons had a marathon day watching film. Then there was the 74-59 loss at Utah on Feb. 14.

“Afterward we had a 3½-hour film session at the hotel,” senior forward Mike McLain said. “We dissected every play and went over every single piece of the film, and it was long and it sucked. … There were definitely a lot of long practices, and I know a lot of the guys got really tired.”

Cadet athletes often consider the time they spend in practice a respite from the rigors of the academy. That wasn’t always the case last season.

“A lot of last year, basketball was so much more tough,” sophomore center Sammy Schafer said. “Being up on the hill was easy.”

“I didn’t handle the losing very well,” Reynolds admitted. “I had never experienced that.”

Near the end of the year, however, Reynolds “kind of took the reins off of us,” junior guard Evan Washington said.

And the Falcons played their best basketball. Their final four losses of the regular season came by five, three, three and five points, respectively, including near upsets on the road of conference heavyweights UNLV and BYU.

The Falcons then beat Colorado State in the MWC Tournament play-in game to snap a 17-game skid.

“I think one of the things I found last year was I thought a lot of our problems might have been that I overworked them,” Reynolds said. “And toward the end of the year when we started being really competitive and getting closer and closer, our practices were shorter. Now, we went just as hard, but no matter what, we were off the floor in an hour and 50 minutes.”

‘I will approach things differently’
After last season Reynolds met with last year’s seniors and this year’s seniors to discuss what had to change. He also sought advice from coaches, including former Army coach Jim Crews, former Air Force coach Jeff Bzdelik and Air Force football coach Troy Calhoun.

He decided to keep the shorter practice schedule and give players every fourth day off during the preseason — something he’d never done in nearly 30 years of coaching.

He’s also letting his team play for longer stretches in controlled scrimmages.

“He knows the game like no one I’ve ever been around, but at times (last season) he would over-coach, I would think, and he would even admit it,” Schafer said. “He just needed to let us play, and that’s what he ended up doing.”

Reynolds’ new attitude and approach were reinforced this spring when he noticed a lump on his right thigh.

Reynolds visited an orthopedic oncologist in Denver who recommended it be removed, because there were five possibilities of what it could be, and one was liposarcoma — a malignant tumor. Reynolds contacted a good friend from New Orleans, who also is an oncologist, and he had the same diagnosis. Shaken, Reynolds made the mistake of doing a Google search. He found with liposarcoma there’s a five-year survival rate of less than 50 percent in males over the age of 50.

He had the lump removed in August and it turned out to be a myolipoma, a benign tumor. But the experience “opened my eyes,” Reynolds said.

“It caused me to realize, I’m fortunate,” Reynolds said. “I’m blessed.”

And he vowed he “will approach things differently from now on.”

“I don’t know if the right word is fun,” Reynolds said. “But we’re going to be very competitive, play really, really hard and they’re not going to be as tight.”