The Terrapin women’s basketball team’s losses of assistant coaches Daron Park and Erica Floyd are bigger deals than people might realize.
Clearly Brenda Frese is the face of the program, but she relies more heavily than most head coaches on her assistants and both Park and Floyd played integral roles for the Terps in recent years.
Park joined the team before the 2007-08 season after Jeff Walz left to take the head job at Louisville, and he essentially ran the team for about half of that season while Frese was pregnant.
Even when Frese returned and was at full strength this year, Park was the main X’s and O’s coach in practice and on the sideline.
He’s a sharp guy and will certainly be a head coach someday.
Floyd, who had been with the Terps since Frese took over in April 2002, was less vocal during games and practices but was invaluable as a recruiter.
Crystal Langhorne told me last year that Floyd was a major part of the Terps’ recruiting effort to sign her, and Langhorne said a major reason she ultimately decided to join the Terps was she felt she could relate personally to both Frese and Floyd.
The Terps have recruited tremendously the past few years and it will be interesting to see how they do in that regard without Floyd.
The program is clearly in flux, and Frese is now the last remaining link to the National Championship team that is fading more distantly into memory.
Going forward, the way Brenda replaces these coaches will be nearly as important as how she attempts to replace all the departed players.
Completely disagree with the point of your blog. What is the basis for your opinion that Coach Frese relies on assistants more heavily than most head coaches? Have you done a survey on this? Have you extensively researched that? What head coach would hire assistants who aren’t capable and competent?
Coach Frese has already made one great hire in David Adkins (see Washington Post for that story) and will surely make another soon.
It is simply common knowledge among those of us who have closely followed the women’s basketball program the past couple of years that Brenda puts an unusally large amount of responsibility on her assistants.
When I asked several players during Brenda’s pregnancy about the adjustments they needed to make in her absense, a common response was the adjustments were minimal because the assistants were prepared to run things because they played such a major role anyway. It’s hard to imagine such a smooth transition would take place in the men’s program if Gary Williams was away from the team for an extended period of time.
Further, Jeff Walz is often credited with being the strategic mastermind behind the National Championship team, and many people brought that up when Louisville beat the Terps in the tournament this year. I thought it was wrong for people to discredit Brenda the way some did, but Walz’s recent success is telling.
Finally, I’m not doubting Brenda will bring in good replacements. I’m simply saying it’s important that she does because of the way she chooses to run her program.
Tom – For the championship team, Brenda got the players, Jeff drew up the plays and ran many practices. He drew up the Toliver 3-pointer vs. Duke. He’s the reason Marissa Coleman was able to adjust so quickly as a freshman. Simple facts. Greg is spot on with his analysis. Luckily for Brenda, she’s a helluva recruiter and will have the program in fine shape, just based on the talent she gets.