Checking out Sacramento State men's basketball games over the past decade always has left me feeling ambivalent.
On the positive side, the players always have played iron-hard. It didn't make a difference if the coach was Don Newman, who somehow fell off the Sac State head-coaching position into an assistant coaching/world championship ring collector's position with the San Antonio Spurs; Tom Abatemarco, now an assistant coach with the Sacramento Monarchs; or current Hornets coach Jerome Jenkins.
Outside of being shown love from those at and around Sac State, that's the unfortunate extent of the positive ledger. From a men's basketball standpoint, it's a test of futility.
I'm going to borrow a line from former football coach Bill Parcells. Said Parcells in a reference to kicking to Chicago Bears returner Devin Hester: "You don't have to hit me in the face with that skunk anymore, I smell it."
You don't keep doing something that doesn't work, and what Sac State has been doing isn't working.
The university has moved to Division I status in name only. One quick look at the Hornets Nest and you know this really isn't a D-I program. It has been almost 30 years since I've been inside my high school gym in Cambria Heights, N.Y., and as I remember it, that gymnasium, in which Hall of Fame guard Bob Cousy played during the early 1950s, is about the same as the one these Hornets play in.
Surely, the lights are brighter and the seats with backs on them are an improvement, but c'mon now. This is ridiculous. We know this is an educational facility first and foremost, but if I'm Jenkins bringing in a recruit to check out the program, I'd tell the prospect the gym is being remodeled.
How is Jenkins supposed to recruit against other D-I schools when he shows recruits a gymnasium that looks more like a practice facility?
You watch Jenkins' teams play and often they'll get off to quick starts. However, since beginning his eight-year stint here as the head coach, Jenkins never has brought in a capable big man. He has had numerous perimeter players who can impact a game, but at some point there's got to be some power and/or strength and/or talent and skill around the hoop or most every game depends upon on little guys making big shots.
Once again, that void might be because of second-rate facilities and inherent difficulties in recruiting. Right now, though, the Hornets are like their professional counterparts with a couple of big men who play small and more small men who play big. That almost never brings prolonged success.
Jenkins, that I've seen, also has displayed an inability to consistently make appropriate adjustments with the games on the line – or at least not as many effective adjustments as his counterparts. Granted, those foes usually have had more with which to work than Jenkins. However, any coach's job is to best make use of what he does have.
Every coach has their own respective style, but whizzing players in and out of games, as Jenkins has been prone to do, would burn me up if I were hooping for him. Shoot, it burns me up just watching other guys keep popping up at the scorer's table. The concept of giving everybody some burn is cool, but sometimes you have to deal with a player's weaknesses because you need his strengths.
This I do know, though: It's imperative to recruit your own area. Jenkins can find players from Dallas, Detroit and Windsor, Conn., but not one from Sacramento?
Yes, it's likely the local hoopers already will have seen the Nest, but we all have crosses to bear.
