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https://www.thecabin.net/sports/20180926/pennell-sees-better-horizon-for-uca

Nice article on Coach Pennell..........

Andy Robertson

Sep 26, 2018 at 4:20 PM
Sep 26, 2018 at 4:20 PM

Nearly a month shy from starting his first game of the 2018-19 season, University of Central Arkansas men’s basketball coach Russ Pennell spoke Wednesday at Kiwanis about his history of rebuilding programs and his love for coaching.

“I love what I do,” he said. “It amazes me that I get paid to coach a game. I never take that for granted. I wake up every morning thinking this is the coolest thing on earth. We are always under scrutiny. Poor coach Morris up at Arkansas. He would even say to you it is still worth it. Because when you pour yourself into your team, its just you.”

After finishing his playing career at UCA in 1984, Pennell would soon join the coaching ranks with a coach he had some history with.

“I started out my coaching career at Oklahoma State under Eddie Sutton,” he said. “I played under coach Sutton for one year at Arkansas before coming to UCA. I got a chance to set up as a player and then a coach under coach Sutton and it was incredible.”

After coming off a scandal that the NCAAA nearly gave Kentucky the “death penalty,” Sutton began coaching at Oklahoma State University, where Pennell said the team racked up 52 wins, two Sweet 16s, a Big 8 Championship and a preseason NIT Tournament win.

“I thought coaching was easy,” he said. “I don’t think coach [Rob] Evans and I even won 52 games when we went to Ole Miss. My career has been dotted with reviling programs. Even when we joined coach Sutton, this was 1990, they had not had an NCAA Tournament appearance since 1965. Then, I went to Ole Miss in 1992. Ole Miss hadn’t had a 20-win season since 1938.”

From Ole Miss, Pennell and Evans then went to Arizona State and began a stint there.

“I went to Arizona State and they were coming off a point shaving scandal,” he said. “Anytime I would go home to recruit, we would always be asked about that scandal and we had to explain that about the previous regime. In four years, we made the NCAA Tournament.”

Pennell then joined the University of Arizona under Hall of Fame coach Lute Olson.

Under difficult circumstances, Pennell eventually became interim head coach.

“Unfortunately, he was only there for about five or six months and had to retire,” he said. “I became the interim head coach in a very tumultuous year as far as keeping everything together. We were blessed with a lot of good kids and they really worked hard, so we got a chance to get to the Sweet 16 that year. I got to dip my toes into being a head coach.”

Pennell wasn’t stripped of the interim title and he began a stint at Grand Canyon University.

“I went to a school called Grand Canyon University,” he said. “They went from Division II to Division I and they hadn’t won very much. My last year there, we were ranked 22nd in DII and went to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments.”

Pennell said he wasn’t saying that to pat himself on the back, but because he has been in places where the schools he has been at has been rebuilt to get to where he has gone.

“I don’t tell you that to pat myself on the back, but there is a formula to get there and I’ve had great mentors,” he said. “That’s the way I feel with where we’re at at UCA.”

Pennell said when he got to UCA, the team’s GPA was 1.7.

He got rid of the entire team except one player in Ethan Lee because Lee was an eligible player, who is now working on his second master’s degree at UCA.

The team won two games in Pennell’s first season as head coach.

UCA won seven games his second year, eight his third and 18 last year, including wins against the University of California, a near-win over then ranked No. 18 UCLA, a win over Stephen F. Austin and an opening round Southland Conference win against Lamar.

Pennell thinks the best is yet to come for the Bears.

This will be the first in a two-part series, concluding Friday.

Rest of article from LCD.......

https://www.thecabin.net/sports/20180927/bears-basketball-coach-talks-about-his-purpose-in-coaching

Andy Robertson

Sep 27, 2018 at 3:57 PM
Sep 27, 2018 at 3:57 PM

Not only did University of Central Arkansas men’s basketball coach Russ Pennell talk about how he ended up with the coaching job at UCA, he spoke on how he got into coaching and why he still does it.

“I believe as a coach, our obligation is to teach life lessons,” he said. “Do we like to win? Absolutely. That first year, we won two games and that wasn’t fun or easy. What I learned that year as a coach, and I’m starting my 29th year, is that you can get through something difficult, something that will rock you to the core. Three years before I cut all those guys, I was coaching in Lucas Oil Stadium across from Rick Pitino in the Sweet 16.

“I came here and I win two games? When you get caught up in that stuff, that will jack with your mind. That’s why you have FBI probes, that’s why you have cheating and all that stuff because men can’t be satisfied in the fact that they’re doing an honest day’s work and they don’t need outside influences.”

Pennell talked about how he isn’t at UCA to please President Houston Davis or athletic director Brad Teague, but he wants to build an honest program for his players.

“If that’s not good enough then I’ll get the tap on the shoulder,” he said. “If it’s not good enough, it won’t be because outside influences. Our program is our program and it’s guarded and I put a hedge around it. I’m very picky of who gets to be a part of that because I made promises to parents.”

The promise Pennell made was to send a kid back to their parents better than he received them.

“When we recruit, I tell parents that it’s my obligation, my responsibility and my desire that I send a kid back to them better than I receive them,” he said. “If you are entrusting your child with someone, you’re expecting them to value your child as much as you do. I can’t love those guys as much as their parents do, but I can look at them like I do my daughters.

“My daughters mean everything to me. If I ever thought that someone wasn’t treating my daughters right, it would infuriate me so much that I don’t know what I would do. That’s the way I feel about our team.”

Pennell continued to speak about his team he has this year, saying it has a chance to be pretty good.

Pennell then got into a story about why he got into coaching.

“It wasn’t because my dad was a coach,” he said. “When I was about 8 or 9 years old, my dad’s players were my heroes. I would go to practice with him. One day, he came home from practice and he’s got one of his players with him and his name was Rick. I asked my dad why Rick was there. He got my brother and sister and told us that Rick was going to stay with us for a couple weeks.”

Pennell said he thought it was awesome at the time but asked his dad about 10 years later why Rick stayed with them.

“My dad told me Rick’s dad needed to go away and get things straightened out,” he said. “His dad was beating on him and was an alcoholic. The two weeks Rick was with us was so his grandparents could move down for a few months while the dad was in rehab. The crazy thing about that story is the moment my dad told me that story, my hero worship went from Rick to my dad.

“I thought what an honorable profession. What a way to impact people’s lives. When you’re getting beat and you’ve lost a recruit, I have to go back to that story and ask myself ‘what are we trying to do here?’ If we’re trying to produce better people to go into society to make a change, that’s what we do. We need to win, but I am thankful that my leaders know what we are trying to do in our mission.”

The Bears first game is Nov. 6 in Columbia, Missouri, against the University of Missouri.

Link year?

Where is This? Is this a High School or is this like Post Grad?