It was an ordinary day for Southern Miss men’s basketball coach Doc Sadler in fall 2014. Sadler and his players were gearing up for a normal day of practice when the ball was dropped in Sadler’s lap. No, not a literal ball. A 2,000-pound figurative one.
Sadler received a call from a USM athletics staffer who insisted he’d come by and pick him up in a golf cart for a quick chat. Sadler wasn’t sure what the conversation would be about, but it ended up being something that would flip the basketball program upside down.
The coach
The headman of the Southern Miss basketball program has seen a thing or two in his 30-plus years of coaching. He had assistant stints at Arkansas, Lamar, Houston, Chicago State, Texas Tech and Arizona State before being named the head coach at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith, which was previously known as Westark College until 2002. He served as an assistant at UAFS twice – from 1988-91 and 1997-98 – before getting his first head coach gig at the school.
The Greenwood, Arkansas native coached five seasons in Fort Smith, compiling a 120-39 overall record with four conference titles and two NJCAA National Coach of the Year honors. In April of this year, he was inducted into the Arkansas-Fort Smith Hall of Fame.
There’s no doubt the experience he gained in those five years set him up for his future because it was then that he learned how to be a head coach.
“Everybody thinks they’re ready to be a head coach. All of us,” Sadler said while sitting in his office inside Reed Green Coliseum. “But, until you’re actually put in that position, I think a lot of people are prepared to do the coaching part of it, but it’s all of the other things outside of the coaching part you have to manage.
“Now you’re in charge of your roster, now you’re in charge of the fans and dealing with the administration. So all of the extra things outside of coaching are the things that you’re never prepared for because you’ve never done it.”
His success there led to a spot on the UTEP bench as an assistant coach, and he quickly moved up the ranks to the head coaching position. He spent two seasons leading the Miners, putting together a 48-18 record with an NCAA appearance before earning the Nebraska gig.
He coached the Cornhuskers to three NIT berths and a 101-89 record. He was let go in March 2012 and he became the Director of Basketball Operations under Bill Self at Kansas for the 2012-13 season. Then he returned to the bench at Iowa State under Fred Hoiberg, who is the current Chicago Bulls head coach, as an assistant coach for the next season.
While Sadler bounced around the Midwest, Southern Miss’ program was seeing success under former coach Donnie Tyndall. The Golden Eagles advanced to the NIT Quarterfinals in 2013 and 2014, and Hattiesburg wasn’t even on Sadler’s radar when Tyndall bolted for the University of Tennessee after the 2013-14 season.
Besides a few trips to play Southern Miss as a visiting coach, Sadler’s only time spent in Hattiesburg was when he was passing through on his way to Florida for vacation.
“I didn’t really know much about (Southern Miss) except when we played them when I was at UTEP,” Sadler said. “I think we went 3-0 against them, actually. That was the only time I had ever been here, so I didn’t really have an impression. I never followed it and didn’t have much of an idea what the situation was like until I actually got here.
“It’s no different than any other job. You take the job, you’re excited to get it and get started. There are only 351 jobs in college basketball and I had one of them, so I was really excited.”
The headache
It’s been four seasons since Sadler has taken over the USM program and it’s been far from a smooth ride. The struggles have been well documented, but it all started when Sadler took that golf cart ride with that athletics staffer, Daniel Feig.
The NCAA was coming to Hattiesburg to investigate the program, and it was the first time Sadler had heard the news.
“Yeah, I was blind-sided, 100 percent,” Sadler admitted. “I met with the team that day and I explained it to them. I didn’t know anything and I had no idea when it was going to come down, but as time went on, it kept going and going and going.”
The Southern Miss administration made the decision to self-impose a two-year postseason ban, which the NCAA upheld when the final ruling came down in March 2016. The school also self-imposed a number of different recruiting penalties, such as limiting the number of unofficial visits for recruits during the 2015-16 season, communication with recruits over a period of time and a reduction of off-campus recruiting days.
It was a difficult time for Sadler and the Southern Miss men’s basketball program, and Sadler almost bolted for an assistant gig after his first season. He ultimately backed out of an agreement to stay in Hattiesburg.
“When it first happened, obviously I was frustrated and had the emotions that you could believe,” he said. “I thought, ‘Man, I just don’t want to go through this.’ I had opportunities that spring to go to some other places. I came within one day of taking another job as an assistant. In fact, I met with the athletic director and told him I was going to do it.
“Between that time and that afternoon, I changed my mind. I thought, ‘This is something I need to stick with and see it through.’”
Who could blame him for wanting to leave? Sadler had no way of knowing what kind of mess Tyndall and his staff left behind, and now he found himself in charge of leading the Golden Eagles out of the muck.
Sadler said it seemed like there was something new every day he had to deal with. A few members of the team were ruled ineligible during the 2014-15 season, and Sadler even found himself in an odd situation against Florida International during a February contest that season.
“I can’t tell you how many times you went to a game, you practiced that afternoon to get ready, then you get ready to play and you’re told you wouldn’t have a couple of players,” he said.
Against FIU, Southern Miss began the game with seven players dressed out. After a close contest that eventually went to overtime, three Southern Miss players fouled out, leaving Sadler with four eligible players with less than a minute to go in the extra period. The Golden Eagles would eventually lose, but they hung tough with the severe disadvantage.
That was just one example of the bizarre situations the Southern Miss players and Sadler faced during the NCAA investigation.
“There were so many things that I had never been through because I had never been in a program that was under that kind of investigation,” Sadler said. “But, you deal with it, you try to make life lessons for the players you’re coaching, you’re trying to live the life lessons, you’re trying to teach and trying to control what we can control.”
The new boss
Southern Miss Director of Athletics Jon Gilbert wasn’t here during the NCAA investigation into the school’s basketball program. In fact, he wasn’t even here when the NCAA handed down its penalties to Southern Miss. He inherited the situation.
He was introduced in January 2017 while the basketball penalties were brought to light in March 2016.
“I knew we were still under those sanctions,” Gilbert said. “Certainly, you have expectations of winning anytime you field a time at this level. You want to win. Coaches want to win, players want to win, administrators want to win and the (Southern Miss) President (Dr. Rodney Bennett) wants you to win. I also knew there had to be some growth and rebirth of our program, and I think Doc has done a great job with that.”
Gilbert, from his position, wanted to be supportive of Sadler and the program. He wanted to be visible to the coaches, players and the students. That meant going to practice, going on road trips and make investments into the program.
After this season it was announced that Sadler had his contract extended by one season through March 2021, making it a three-year deal. In the State of Mississippi, the maximum for a public university coach to be under contract is four years, and a contract is automatically rolled over to a year unless the school’s athletic director declines the option.
The decision on whether to allow his contract to roll overcame quickly for Gilbert once he took the position in 2017.
“I felt from the time I came into Southern Miss, I think in my first week, I was there a day or two and I went right to Birmingham for the tournament, and I really didn’t like the language in the contract where you had to make a decision within five days. I felt like I needed more time to evaluate the program,” Gilbert said.
“But, I also told him that I was 100 percent supportive of him. ‘You’re a really good coach, I want you to be our coach for a long time, but I just don’t think in this short period that I could make a decision on that.’ I knew this year, the same language was in the contract. After evaluating the program and having gone on trips with them and practice, I did see improvement. I told him prior to the Conference USA Tournament that I was going to extend him.”
When Gilbert first got to Southern Miss, he decided not to roll over Sadler’s contract, letting the contract become a three-year deal. Sadler wasn’t discouraged by Gilbert’s decision because Sadler knew he had high expectations for the program.
“When he came in, we met a couple of times,” Sadler said. “When the season was over, he made the decision to not roll over my contract, which I totally understood. He wanted to evaluate, and that’s what he did.”
After the 2017-18 season, even before Southern Miss beat MTSU in the C-USA Tournament, Gilbert was pleased with the direction Sadler had the program going. Gilbert had five days after the season to decline yet another rollover, which would leave two years left on the contract, but he decided to allow it to be extended to a three-year deal.
The shadow
Way before Gilbert, Southern Miss had self-imposed numerous recruiting penalties, but the NCAA cloud of uncertainty was by far the most detrimental to the program. There weren’t a lot of positive things to say about the program, especially since Sadler couldn’t answer the question of what will happen to the program once the final ruling was handed down.
On top of not knowing, other basketball programs used the investigation as a chance to convince high school recruits that Southern Miss wasn’t the right place for them.
“We’re still dealing with it,” Sadler said in May. “Unfortunately in our business, negative stuff seems to stick more than positive. It’s amazing how a lot of the coaches who we were recruiting against knew more about – or thought they knew more about – what was going on than I did. Obviously, it wasn’t good, but it wasn’t as bad as they were saying.”
From the outside looking in for Southern Miss fans, they knew about the uphill climb the program was going through, but not too many understood in detail what the situation was like in those first few years. Sadler didn’t want to make any excuses, though. He dealt with the recruiting restrictions, he dealt with the postseason ban and, unfortunately, he had to deal with the loss of fan support.
“The one thing I’ve always tried to do, whether it’s the media, the fans or the recruits, is be brutally honest about it,” Sadler said. “There’s no need to hide behind a door. Tell them what you know, then they have to make a decision on if they want to come be a part of it.”
Even now, there is still a negative stigma surrounding Southern Miss for recruits, but slowly, it’s starting to fade. While it’s been a process that’s seemed to creep by, the Golden Eagles have improved their win totals every season since Sadler has been on the bench.
From nine wins in Sadler’s first season, Southern Miss recorded 16 wins during the 2017-18 campaign, so the program is at least on some type of upward trajectory. It even played on the third day of the Conference USA Tournament this season, defeating Middle Tennessee State in the second round, which prevented the Blue Raiders from making the NCAA Tournament.
Southern Miss is still on probation, however, and that will end Jan. 29, 2020.
“We still get (NCAA) questions all of the time, and rightfully so,” Sadler said of recruiting now. “The other two or three schools that are recruiting them say, ‘They’re still on probation,’ and we are and we will be for a few more years. But, it really doesn’t affect any of our players and it doesn’t affect anything we’re trying to do at this point.
“We’ve had players tell us, ‘We want to play in the NCAA Tournament and y’all are a long way from being there.’ We had a little success in the (C-USA Tournament) and now people are believing in what we’re trying to do.”
To help with recruiting and the overall experience at Southern Miss basketball games, Reed Green Coliseum has seen some improvements since the calendar flipped to 2018. New video boards have been installed and the coliseum got a facelift with new paint and new banners hanging in the rafters.
“When recruits go in there, they do see this place has been freshened up and Southern Miss cares about basketball,” Gilbert said. “I think those are the types of things I can do from my seat to help move our program forward.”
Gilbert said he’s also working on new basketball goals, and the construction of a new volleyball facility near Reed Green will help both the men’s and women’s basketball teams. Currently, all three teams share the coliseum, causing a headache when scheduling practice times and it prevents players from going inside to just shoot around.
The new volleyball facility should alleviate those problems.
When the 2018-19 season tips off, Southern Miss will have two more years of probation, then add in the facelift of Reed Green and Gilbert’s vote of confidence, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
“I think the way we ended the season was a positive,” Sadler said. “It gives us some momentum going into next year. We have a lot of guys finally returning, so we have an opportunity to build on that.”
Southern Miss had one senior on last season’s team and two transferred, but it’s set to return nine players to the roster who saw the floor last season. Some might say Sadler finally has the program he signed up for when he accepted the job in 2014.
“We have one more year with the scholarship reduction, so it’s still what I would term a competitive disadvantage, but we can see a light at the end of the tunnel,” Gilbert said. “I do think with the staff he has, the recruiting we’ve done, what upgrades we’ve been able to provide, I do think our basketball program is trending in the right direction.”
