Coach invites Martin Center members to Bruins game

By CAROL STUART
For Brentwood Home Page
Basketball coach Rick Byrd predicts four-time NCAA Tournament team Belmont University will double its attendance at conference games in 3-4 years after moving from the Atlantic Sun to the Brentwood-based Ohio Valley Conference.

Byrd spoke Tuesday at the Martin Center’s monthly potluck, which just happened to follow on the heels of Friday’s announcement that the Bruins will joining the OVC in 2012-13 with such schools as Tennessee State, Tennessee Tech,  Austin Peay, Tennessee-Martin and Murray State. Fans are more familiar with those teams, including with the OVC tournament being hosted in Nashville.

“People in Nashville know so much about the OVC than the Atlantic Sun,” Byrd said. “Our fans still don’t know who Florida Gulf Course and Upstate South Carolina are.”

Em Ghianni, left, pictured with Belmont coach Rick Byrd and sports columnist Joe Biddle

He said basketball-wise, it would be mostly be a lateral move for the men’s team, although some sports it might be tougher – or easier, such as basebal. That coach could look at it as downgrading league player – or having a better chance to win the championship.

Byrd said the A-Sun’s RPI basketball rating is better right now than the OVC, but that would reverse if you added in Belmont’s rating after the Bruins won 30-plus games and made the NCAA Tournament again this year.

“The other easy part, if you ran a business and if you could slightly upgrade or even make a lateral move and cut your costs in half, you’re going to do it,” he said.

Other than Belmont Boulevard rival Lipscomb 3 miles away, Belmont’s shortest road trip in the current conference is equal to the team’s longest team in the Ohio Valley Conference. He said all the university teams had to make two flights to Florida each season, plus rent buses while there along with paying for hotel rooms and meals.

Byrd also said he thinks the team – and the OVC – will get more exposure on local television and other media because they’ll be interested in more than one of the teams playing each other.

“All of us view for media coverage, especially since the Titans and Predators came to town and get their just rewards,” the Belmont coach said. “Our league got more coverage when we were in the NAIA than we do now.”

Doing it the right way  

Byrd talked about how whether you’re playing golf or coaching basketball, you choose to follow the rules or “you’re playing a different game.” And if win the wrong way, you didn’t really win that conference championship even if your name is on the trophy, he said.

He recalled how when Belmont decided to move from NAIA to NCAA Division I that one person in the university’s board meeting remarked the team would never win 10 games in DI.

“One of my players said to me, Coach you’re going to have to recruit other kinds of guys if you’re going to win. I said I’ll dig ditches before I do that. I said I’m not going to let winning and losing dictate what my job is going to be like.”

He said the program needs to enhance Belmont University and represents the school well at all times. “We need to remember it’s part of the university, not the reason it’s there,” Byrd said.

The coach drew applause from the crowd when he said that Belmont had the most Academic All-American basketball players in the past 10 years of any universities with 9 (among 4,000-some athletes a year at the 345 DI schools). And he also noted that the Bruins’ on-court success came along with a GPA of 3.0 or higher for 10 straight years.

“We’re doing it with a real college student who happens to be a good basketball player, and that’s important to me,” Byrd said.

He said the staff and school not only recruited players talented enough to play DI basketball at the mid-major school, but also pay attention to how athletes treat other people -- reacting to teammates and coaches, responding to referees, interacting with their parents .

 “I may eliminate some really good basketball players after all that, but at the end of the day I think it makes our team better -- stronger,” Byrd said.

He joked that fans say a player isn’t good enough to play for Vanderbilt, Western Kentucky or MTSU but they could play for Belmont – and then expect his team to beat programs like Wisconsin (this year’s NCAA opponent).

“I must be a really great coach,” he said, the crowd laughing.

‘When no one cares who gets the credit’

Byrd invited the senior citizens to a group outing to a Belmont game, saying his team is a group of guys they would want to root for. He said they might be Vanderbilt, Trevecca or even “unfortunately misdirected, misguided” Lipscomb fans.

He said he gets compliments all the time from Lipscomb fans – “they just don’t want any Lipscomb people to see them.”

The Bruins coach talked about how this year’s team, which returns all but two players next season, turned out a lot better than even the program itself expected. A lot of that was due to the players all buying into sharing playing time and sending in fresh players, having 11 players who averaged more than 10 minutes but less than 25 a game.

“One have a saying in our locker room about what can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit,” Byrd said. He noted that could hold true in any organization.

The 2010-11 team was the first in the country to win 30 games and also led the nation in scoring margin – even though the Bruins only played 12 home games and other big-named programs get extra home games and guarantee games against small schools that turn into blowouts.

He talked about the stability of the program, too. The coaching staff had been together 11 years – the longest in DI until former Brentwood Academy standout Casey Alexander just took the head coaching job at Stetson. And no scholarship player has left Belmont since 2003.

Byrd recalled the program’s progression from NAIA champions to the transitional years into NCAA Division I when the school wasn’t eligible for the postseason. And he also pointed out the reason that then-Belmont president Dr. William Troutt made for moving up.

“He said if we just play LSU on a particular night, more people will know about Belmont than if we win the NAIA championship,” Byrd said. “At that time CNN was even scrolling scores all night.”

Troutt compared Belmont to such schools as Samford, Mercer, Davidson and Stetson and believed the school should be as big-time in athletics as it was in academics and other areas.

When Belmont made the 2006 NCAA Tournament, the university got a front-page USA Today spread – not the sports section, Byrd noted. “That is a lot of dollars ad-equivalency,” he said.

During its third straight NCAA in 2008, Belmont nearly stunned No. 2 seed Duke, bringing even more national recognition. “We had the lead and the ball with 40 seconds left, and we should have won that game,” Byrd said.

“That night all the reaction showed that Dr. Troutt made the right decision,” Byrd said. “People around the country heard about Belmont.

“I got more emails about how well the young men reacted and represented the university than I did about the basketball game.”