The Allan Hancock College men’s basketball team just had its most successful season in a very long time. A frustrating 1-10 start blossomed into a dream season, culminating in the Bulldogs’ first outright conference championship since 1974.
After finishing last the previous year, fourth year head coach Ralph Gorton not only turned the program around, but he did it the right way.
A basketball team’s identity is often derived from its head coach. This is especially true with the Bulldogs. In an era when winning is placed above all else, Gorton runs a “mentor oriented” program, centering on character and fueled by hard work.
Gorton calls his philosophy the “Three G’s,” which requires his student athletes to be good basketball players, good citizens, and good students. If they don’t match up, they won’t last long at the new Allan Hancock.
According to the coach, successful basketball teams trust one another, from the players to the coaches; trust off the court leads to trust on the court.
“We do this job 24/7,” Gorton said. “The coaching staff is always interacting with the players on multiple levels, basketball just being one of them. We’re involved with them socially, we’re advisors, we’re mentors.
“It’s a way to build a program, and that’s why we call this the New Allan Hancock, because this is the way we’re going to do it and it’s working,” he added. “I tell our kids when we recruit them, ‘I expect a lot out of you, and you should expect a lot out of me.’”
Allan Hancock College Athletic Director Kim Ensing supports Gorton’s philosophy, and has seen firsthand the impact he has on his players.
“A kid that has bad character is probably a kid that doesn’t go to class,” Ensing said. “Maybe he misses practice, and maybe he misses his free throws.”
Some people fail to see the correlation between team character and team success, she said, but as a former head coach herself, Ensing isn’t one of them.
“I appreciate [Gorton’s] ability to recruit good character to the program,” she said. “This year, the men’s basketball players were of high character, and everybody in our department enjoyed working with them.”
The Bulldogs began the season with a slow and frustrating start, and their character would be put to the test early on. On Dec. 17, 2010, the 1-8 Bulldogs trailed Fresno City by 28 points at halftime, but made adjustments and managed to outscore their opponent by double digits in the second half—no easy feat against the No. 1 ranked team in the state. But the Bulldogs were fed up with moral victories and close losses; things needed to change. After the game, the players were angry. They vowed to turn their season around, and responded by winning 13 of their next 17 games. Call it cliché, but it’s true: Crisis reveals character. A lesser team would have folded, as any true sports fan would attest.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Following the Fresno City game, the Bulldog coaching staff was determined to end the madness. The biggest change they made was shortening the team’s rotation to a smaller, seven- or eight-man rotation, which gave the team several advantages: It kept the best players on the court, kept them in rhythm, and intensified practice. A lesser team would have seen its players bicker over playing time, but the Bulldogs challenged one another to raise their games.
“Our players handled it very well. I spent a lot of time recruiting these kids—it’s character, character, character,” Gorton told the Sun. “Practice makes you perfect. If you perform well in practice, you’ll perform well in the games. We kept it very competitive.”
Along with the conference title, the Bulldogs netted several postseason honors. Gorton was named the Western State Conference’s Coach of the Year, and sophomore center Ali Langford was named the Western State Conference’s Most Valuable Player. Gorton said he hopes to use this season as a springboard for long-term success.
As legendary basketball coach John Wooden once said, “Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.” The Bulldogs won’t have the sensational Ali Langford and other key players next season, but it’s common for few players to return at the junior college level. The team will see several players coming back, however, along with four promising redshirts.
Successful junior college programs need at least four or five returning sophomores to maintain continuity, Gorton said. More importantly, his staff will return, and their philosophy will remain the same.
“It’s a formula that has success, and it’s not going to change,” he said. “It has worked for me as a person, it’s going to work for [the players]. It already has worked for them, and it will continue to work for them as long as Hancock will have me as their coach.”
Intern Jacob Lopez quotes John Wooden in his sleep. He can be reached at intern@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 3-10, 2011.