First-year Southern University men’s basketball head coach Michael Grant is having the time of his life.
Although his Jaguars are currently 11-15 overall and fighting to stay in seventh place in the conference standings, he said that he could not be happier.
“I’m on cloud nine,” said Grant. “This team has already made a turnaround since last season.”
The Jags were 9-20 last year under former coach Ben Jobe. Jobe retired after 12 years of coaching at Southern and left a Jaguars’ program that many considered lacked fundamentals, pride and were undisciplined.
“I am bringing all of this back to this program,” Grant said. “I did it at Central State and I can do it here.”
Grant had completed his seventh season at Central State, going 23-11 before coming to Southern and 126-94 overall. During the 2000-2001 season, he became the fourth CSU coach to win 100 games.
“I want to bring a fresh start to the Southern University basketball program,” Grant said in May when he was selected as coach. “I also want to bring it to a respectable level.”
Getting that respect has not been very difficult to obtain from his opponents, but getting respect from the team’s fickle fan base has been an uphill battle. Of the 11 games that Southern has lost, only seven has been lost in double digits and eight of the 11 have been lost by a margin of five points or less.
“I always hear from critics and skeptics that the team ‘could have done this and they could have done that,’” Grant said. “But it doesn’t matter, because as long as I get a team that is disciplined and organized, that will all fall into place. The fact is that I am here and I am not going to stop coaching.”
According to senior guard Traveyean Scott, the Jags are more disciplined and organized.
“We used to go crazy and everyone wanted the ball last season,” said Scott. “But this year, he has taught us a hell of a lot. We had to learn how to be a team before we could play as one.”
Now that the team has been “disciplined,” he said that he wants his team to be able to put more pride into their playing, especially at home and that they needed to take losing more personal.
“When they lose, I want it to be like someone slapping their mother,” Grant said. “You can’t get more personal than that. We are at a point where we have to take our game to another level and that won’t happen until the team refuses to lose. I want guys that are used to winning.”
There are only eight spots reserved for play in the SWAC tournament and the Jags have one more game to play before tournament play starts March 11. If the tournament started today, they would be the seventh seed, but they have to face Texas Southern before then. The Jags faced Texas Southern on January 3 and they lost 65-47.
Southern barely got past Prairie View A&M two days later when they defeated the Panthers in a buzzer beater 76-74. Southern defeated PVAM 87-66 last night.
But Grant is not looking at the past games. He said he would guarantee that the Jags will be in the tournament and that they will surprise a lot of people.
“We are going to show everyone in Birmingham. Due to the close losses we’ve had, there is not one team that can definitely say they can beat us “Just watch.”
