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Another series of articles on the Brandon University basketball situation
BU Back to Square 1
BY DAVID LARKINS
Three factors combined to convince Barnaby Craddock that his time in Brandon was done.

The now former head coach of the Brandon University Bobcats men’s basketball team was officially introduced as the new head man for the Fraser Valley Cascades Wednesday, one day after a Brandon Sun story first reported the move to bring Craddock to the Abbotsford, B.C., campus was imminent. In fact, the announcement came earlier than originally planned when news leaked that Craddock had been offered the position.

But Craddock said Wednesday that the financial commitment from UCFV, a heightened workload that was being placed on him by BU and a chance to work closer to his native Vancouver all conspired to make his decision.

“Of course (the job) piqued my interested and at the time I had just been given a full teaching load at BU, which was more teaching than I done the previous two years, so that wasn’t making me any happier,” he said.

“But the chance to get back to B.C. was tempting ... eventually they upped their (offer). They made me an offer that became enough to get me out there and combined with the family and the location.”

Still, that decision wasn’t easy.

“I feel pretty strongly about all the guys on this team, so it was a bit heartbreaking. But hopefully over the long run I’ll know it was the right decision,” he said.

Craddock informed many of his players on Tuesday of his decision and — this is what Bobcat fans want to know — said he has no intention of taking any of his recruits or current players away from the BU program.

“I think there’s zero per cent chance of that,” he said. “The guys are all vocal in coming back to the program.”

Winnipeg high school all-stars Kyle Vince and Kevin Oliver committed months ago and Craddock says he still expects them to honour that commitment. Also expected in camp in September is former Manitoba Bisons point guard Tarik Tokar and Toronto product Martin Lawrence, an athletic 6-foot-7 big who played senior men’s basketball in the city last year but is more than capable of making the jump to the university game.

So with presumably a solid returning core that led the team to within three points of a national championship, the BU job should be a coveted one by out-of-work or upwardly mobile coaches in Canada. But with the Bobcats again searching for their third men’s head coach in the past four years, the BU job is suddenly appearing like a stepping stone for coaches, rather than a place to settle.

“There are challenges at Brandon than are different than many other schools,” BU director of athletics Rick Nickelchok said, citing the fact that coaches are faculty members and required to teach as well as coach and then go through a tenure process that he called “difficult.”

“It means they must go through a difficult tenure process to secure the security in their jobs and that is something that most schools don’t have to worry about.”

Speculation on who will be in line to make the move to Brandon has already started, but Craddock covets assistant coach Mike Raimbault to take over where he left off. Raimbault is among a few young coaches who have been linked to the position already.

“There is still some good news. It’s not that all of a sudden we’re lost in this process,” Nickelchok said. “There is continuity ... We still have Mike in the program and he’s going to stay in the program and Mike has come highly recommended by Barnaby in the past.”

Craddock echoed Nickelchok’s sentiments.

“Selfishly I’d like to see that be Mike Raimbault, to be honest with you,” Craddock said. “He’s a local guy that this would be his dream job. He’s from Brandon and he’d like to be here long-term, so I’d like to think that somehow this will work out for Mike and you might have a coach that’s here for a long, extended period of time.”

In an ironic twist, the Cascades will make their first-ever appearance in Brandon on Jan. 4, 2008, making Craddock’s homecoming the first game of the new year for both teams.

One of Craddock’s close friends joked with him that the reunion won’t exactly come with a ticker tape parade.

“... As for the Jan. 4 game, (women’s volleyball head coach) Lee Carter told me that he was going to jump out of the crowd and throw a tomato at me, so I’m a little scared to be honest with you on that,” he said.

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AD could be next
BY DAVID LARKINS
By the end of this week, Brandon University could be out a men’s basketball coach as well as an athletic director.

Multiple sources requesting anonymity have confirmed to the Brandon Sun that BU director of athletics Rick Nickelchok has been interviewed for the vacant AD position at Acadia University.

Nickelchok’s interest in Acadia was first published in a Brandon Sun article on Wednesday that broke the story of the University College of Fraser Valley’s hiring of BU men’s basketball coach Barnaby Craddock. Nickelchok, whose contract at BU is set to expire next summer, would not confirm that he applied for the Acadia position but seemed to intimate that he is open to pursuing other opportunities.

“I’m in the last year of my contract and I have to go through a tenure process and I think at this stage of my contract I have a responsibility to my family to explore what options are available to me,” he said. “That’s where I am right now.”

A highly-placed source in Canadian Interuniversity Sport told the Sun that Nickelchok was a person Acadia was impressed with, but that AU alumnus Brian Heaney — a basketball analyst on TSN — is a front-runner for the job based on his national clout and connection to the school.

Nickelchok also denied he was trying to leverage tenure status out of BU by going after other positions.

“I think there’s a process in the collective agreement,” he said. “I don’t see any possibility of not following that process ... The university can’t not go through that process. I have to do what I need to do to look after my own personal best interests.”

Nickelchok reiterated his desire to stay in the city where he has lived since August, 2003.

“Yes, definitely,” he said.

An announcement from Acadia is expected either late this week or early next week.

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Bobcats left high and dry

Barnaby Craddock will be back coaching in the Brandon University gymnasium after all.

You’ll just have to circle Jan. 4, 2008 on your calendar in order to see it.

That’s the day the Fraser Valley Cascades will make their first-ever trip to Brandon for a men’s basketball game that will now, ironically, feature Craddock coaching on the opposite bench he’s worked for the past two seasons.

Craddock is leaving BU in favour of heading closer to his hometown. We’ve heard this tune before, roughly two months before Craddock took the job vacated in 2005 by an off-to-greener-pastures Les Berry, who bolted back to his native Nova Scotia.

We’ll resist the desire to rehash the words from the story that ran in the May 12, 2005 edition, but the similarities are clear.

Craddock said it was a difficult decision to leave the team he led to the national championship game and one that he agonized over for a number of days. That would seem to be true given the fact UCFV reportedly had to sweeten its offer to finally convince Craddock to make the leap.

And while Berry and Craddock both headed home — or at least closer to home — for cherished opportunities, BU has been the one left to wonder “what now?”

BU director of athletics Rick Nickelchok — perhaps himself not long for the Wheat City after purportedly interviewing for a job at Acadia — acknowledged in today’s edition of the Sun that the challenges are greater for BU to have a coach stick around because of the teaching workload and difficulty of obtaining tenure.

The workload was a factor in Craddock’s departure; The tenure a factor in Berry’s exodus.

And obviously those issues are pretty prevalent considering Craddock was willing to pass up the chance to coach a potential national contender again in favour of joining a school in more disarray than Brandon.

You see, UCFV is the school that — in order to jive with Canada West conference regulations — dismissed the two men handling the coaching duties because one of them, Pat Lee, was not a full-time, on-campus coach and then, according to Lee, didn’t have the class to inform him to his face that his services were not going to be retained.

The school is also lacking a full-time athletic director and — did we mention — Craddock will take over a sophomore program in the toughest division in the conference that missed the playoffs with a 6-17 record last season.

As was written in that opinion piece way back in May of 2005, you can’t hate a man for taking a rare chance to be somewhere he always wanted to be. But as was the case in 2005, so too it is in 2007 when a number of people are left angered by once again being left in the dust by a coach who used BU as a springboard to bigger and better things.

Animosity towards Craddock, however, is misguided considering the above. He is an emotional coach who took the wins in stride and the losses to heart. And he undoubtedly struggled to leave behind a group of players he truly loved and went to the wall with.

The university wanted to keep Craddock, but its idea of enticing him was apparently to heap a larger off-court workload on him. If you love him, you’ve got a funny way of showing it.

Memo to BU’s decision-makers: Rooting down in Brandon isn’t exactly what everyone in this country has in mind for themselves. Sometimes you have to actually make the situation a little more likable. Craddock is not the coach of the Brandon men’s basketball team because a better offer came along.

Followers of this team over the years have been spoiled because they had a coach who was committed to staying, had a family and set up shop in town for the long haul.

Now that three coaches have done the job since Jerry Hemmings, perhaps it’s becoming clear that coaching basketball in Brandon isn’t the crown jewel of jobs in Canadian university sports after all: An environment ripe with politicking, less job security and more labour.

Whether we’re writing this exact same story next year, or the year after, is likely dependent on whether or not the school realizes it too has extra work to do.
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Cats searching

An article that appeared in today's Brandon Sun regarding the Brandon University men's basketball coaching situation.

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Just when the Brandon University athletics department was starting to get back to a state of normalcy and consistency, rumours are swirling that there are major moves afoot in the staff.

Multiple anonymous sources have told the Brandon Sun that Bobcats men’s basketball head coach Barnaby Craddock has accepted the head coaching position at the University College of Fraser Valley, leaving a team he took to the national championship final in March once again looking to fill its top job.

Craddock, reached at his office at BU, declined comment yesterday.

However, a well-placed West Coast Canadian university source familiar with the situation confirmed that Craddock has been offered the Fraser Valley job, with an announcement expected sometime today.

Meanwhile, CIS sources have also told the Sun that BU athletic director Rick Nickelchok is in the running for the vacant AD position at Acadia University, where former Bobcat men’s and women’s basketball coach Les Berry is currently serving as the head men’s coach. Nickelchok, a source said, was shortlisted and interviewed for the position last week.

Calls to Nickelchok’s office and cell phone were not immediately returned.

If Craddock, head coach for the past two seasons, does bolt BUfor the Fraser Valley Cascades in Abbotsford, B.C., it will mean the Bobcats will be looking for a men’s basketball head coach for the fifth time in the past six years.

The Canadian Interuniversity Sport coach of the year this past season, Craddock led the Bobcats to a 20-2 Canada West conference record, a No. 1-ranking that they held for a total of five weeks and carried into the national final where they lost a 52-49 decision to the five-time defending champion Carleton Ravens.

The Cascades, meanwhile, played their first season in the CIS in 2006-07, finished in fourth place with a 6-17 record in the Pacific Division and missed the playoffs. At Fraser Valley, Craddock would inherit a Cascades team that won three national collegiate titles before making the jump to the university ranks.

The Cascades worked under a tandem coaching unit of Pat Lee and Tom Antil, but the university-college was concerned that the coaching situation didn’t adhere to CIS conditions, which state coaches are to be involved in on-campus coaching, a term which Lee — a high school counselor — was unable to fulfill completely.

According to the Abbotsford News, Lee was offered the full-time job last spring, but the two sides were unable to reach a viable agreement.

Craddock is originally from Vancouver and its believed that the location of the UCFV job — located 64 kilometres southeast of Vancouver — and recruiting potential were enticing factors.

“In the minds of a lot of coaches, the best place to coach is out west,” said one CIS source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The two biggest (assets) would be the recruiting pool would be a lot bigger, that would be one thing for sure, and maybe just the location. It’d be easier to do things whether to travel to the States or attract teams out there. It might be easier to build a program.”

Craddock took over the BU men’s position in 2005 from Berry, who coached one season after leading the women’s team. Prior to that, Reggie Carrick was a one-year interim coach in 2003-04 when he was coaching in place of longtime coach Jerry Hemmings, who was on sabbatical at the time.

There was no word Tuesday on the status of recruits for the Bobcats. Craddock had made it official in the winter that Winnipeg high school standouts Kyle Vince and Kevin Oliver had committed to BU, while it was rumoured that Vancouver product Bol Kong, a 6-foot-7 slasher, was coming to Brandon if he was unable to secure the necessary paperwork to play in the United States. The Bobcats were also reportedly in the running for the services of point guard Adrian Sapp, a product of Vanier College and a former teammate of current Bobcat Nathan Grant.

In addition Adam Philpott, a Neelin grad, was expected to transfer to BU after spending two seasons at Acadia.

Kobe beef

There has been a strong precedent set that Kobe Bryant really, really thrives on controversy.

Since his first few formative years in the NBA after breaking into the league from high school, Bryant has always seemed a short jump shot away from some of the most contentious issues that hit the sports world.

From his Colorado rape case, to his perceived role in Shaquille O'Neal being traded — and the inevitable break up of the dynastical Lakers — to the eternal debate of his role as a team player, Bryant naturally gravitates toward controversy. Certainly he can thank himself for some of this, the rest of it is just a product of being arguably the biggest superstar in the basketball world.

No one, however, is to blame but Kobe himself for the most recent spat of publicity that has everyone in the basketball world talking, a topic big enough that it trumped the NBA Finals. Kobe blindsided almost everyone who follows the NBA recently by requesting a trade from the only team for which he has ever played. Hours later, on ESPN's Dan Patrick Show, Kobe back-pedalled slightly and confessed that a conversation with head coach Phil Jackson helped him to step back from the bombshell he had uttered earlier on Steven A. Smith's show.

Here's what he told Patrick:

He's optimistic and determined that we'll both be back. Phil's somebody that I listen to. I listen to heavily. I lean on him a lot. He assured me, saying, you know, "Things are going to be okay. Things will be alright. Don't go full bore just yet. Just take a deep breath, kind of let us work these things out and everything will be alright." Which was very encouraging for me to hear, because I don't want to go any place else. I don't want to. I want to be a Laker. I want to be here for the rest of my career."

But when it's someone of Kobe's stature involved, the story has to remain in the media even if those reporting it have flubbed it up. The Associated Press released a story Sunday quoting Kobe's web site as such:

Kobe Bryant implied again that he wants to be traded, writing on his website that ‘‘the Lakers and me just have two different visions for the future."

Only thing being, that if anyone paid attention Kobe Bryant did not "imply again." In fact, the post that the AP ran with was the exact same post Kobe left on his web site back in May. The topic being Bryant, it naturally caught on like a wildfire and the Kobe trade story was once again front-page news.

Luckily, the Los Angeles Daily News, for one, cleared things up for everyone.

Kobe Bryant is a smart guy. He knows what he's doing and he's a fiery competitor, one of the most determined athletes playing in the NBA. I suggest if you put all those traits together, you'll see what's really happening here.

Bryant knows the Lakers can't and won't win a championship in the near future with the lineup they have and going in the direction the organization has taken the team since Shaq's departure. He also knows he's the most prized commodity in the NBA and the Lakers are mortified at any thought he wouldn't be in royal purple and gold.

So by bullying the team in the media, threatening to leave if things don't get done to make this team a winner right away, Kobe has done more to motivate a change in the ideology of the Lakers than general manager Mitch Kupchak has done in years.

So while everyone is clamouring to write the "Where will Kobe go?" stories and fans are tripping over themselves on their way to ESPN's Trade Machine to crunch the numbers and see if it's possible he could end up on their favourite team, Kobe is running an NBA front office more efficiently than some of the GMs trying so desperately to grab him.

Certainly the possibility exists that Kobe will play somewhere other than L.A. and if the Lakers drag their feet and don't rush to make their most significant player happy, that possibility will increase drastically. But combine Kobe's ability, the Lakers desperation to keep him and an idle threat and you're likely to see the L.A. front office amp up its efforts to find some talent to surround the league's best player.

However, if a few years from now the Lakers are back in a position to win an NBA championship, remember this summer as the year that Kobe Bryant did as much off the floor to return his team to the league's elite as he often does on it.

And remember that he meant it that way all along.

Common: A Dream

One the greatest things to ever happen to hip hop is Common. Here's one of many reasons why.

Lesson learned

The Brandon Sun website is a subscriber-only site, meaning much of what I write in the paper isn't accessible to you Internet folks.

On Tuesday, the Sun lost an important and loved member of its family when sports editor Mike Jones passed away suddenly at the age of 49. Around the city of Brandon and Westman region, Mike was known simply as Jonesy and rarely referred to as anything else.

Jonesy's presence in the community was rooted in more than 25 years of devoting himself to covering the people of the area and the stories they had. I often remarked at the difference between my job here in Brandon and past daily newspapers I've worked at because Jonesy — and by extension us staffers — was vigilant about keeping track of athletes in all sports no matter where they went when they left the confines of our corner of the province. That is something that simply doesn't get done in many other papers. In a tight-knit community such as Brandon and area, I always thought it significant that Jonesy truly cared about keeping people informed about their neighbours, like the entire region was a family who cared about what all the others were doing.

His committment to his craft — he was a stickler for clean copy and well-produced material — was outdone only by his committment to the people who surrounded him, whether it be his staff or the many, many contacts and friends he made over his career that spanned three decades.

So, because of the subscriber issue on the Sun web site I have posted my article on Jonesy simply because I wanted to share my thoughts. I hope you appreciate where that sentiment comes from.

Jonesy will be missed.

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By David Larkins
At the risk of uttering something that comes off as cliché and overused: Mike Jones taught me more about sportswriting in four years than I had ever learned in nearly 10 years working in this industry prior to joining the Brandon Sun.

It is a standardized statement, for sure, when someone close to you passes on to laud their importance and impact on your own life, but with the man I only ever referred to as Jonesy, this is not some simple platitude. Even before his sudden and stunning death Tuesday, I thought about this on many occasions and told others how infinitely better I had become at this job because I had the chance to work under him.

But nothing I’ve ever learned has taught me how to write something like this.

The thing that I always loved about working here was the freedom we are granted to allow our personality and sense of humour to shine through in our work. Jonesy would never hold you back on what you wanted to do creatively and, in an industry that so often can be so stale, that is such a welcome trait.

Perhaps the reason that freedom was granted was because Jonesy’s laissez-faire attitude shone through in so many of the things he did. He cared deeply about the things he was passionate about and that should never be mistaken, but he also understood that, at the end of the day, what remained important was making sure you appreciated and enjoyed the ride along the way.

That attitude perhaps was most apparent on the golf course where Jonesy always wanted the best results, but would not sacrifice all the other things that made his love for the game what it was.

I remember distinctly Jonesy telling me a few years back that when he drove through the gates at the Clear Lake golf course that, at that point, he was in absolute heaven. It was his place to lose himself, his place to be most content. I have thought about that brief conversation a lot over the past couple of days with the annual Grey Owl tournament slated to start Friday and Jonesy anxiously anticipating once again being in his element.

For all the hundreds of people who will tee off in the tournament, it will be tinged with sorrow by the one man who won’t.

Often pointed — and never, ever wavering — in his writing, the passion that showed up in newsprint was precisely what you’d get if he was there telling it to your face. Again, in this business, it’s a quality so often sought yet not often found, and I sincerely hope the people of this region realize the fervour and affection Mike Jones had for bringing these stories to them on a daily basis.

An old back-and-white photo of Jonesy swinging a golf club remains on a bulletin board behind his desk here at the office. It’s a reminder of the man when he was no doubt at his happiest.

My memories will be of him at moments like that. They will be images of him laughing in his familiar way along with his natural and endearing love for the simple pleasures of life.

Those memories, simple as they are, will forever be with me.

The loss is stunning. It is utterly difficult and painful to deal with.

Still, I will count myself fortunate that, from here on out, any and every time I put pen to pad I’m allowed to remember one man who impacted me on so many levels.

David Larkins has been a Sun sports reporter since 2003. He can be reached at 571-7386 or dlarkins@brandonsun.com

Faded memories

It's been a long time since I've posted and certainly there's any number of things I could have ranted about. But I never really felt the inspiration and this post can't even really be considered one given what I'm about to do.

There.

As I told someone earlier, when I read something really good I want other people to read it too. ESPN.com's Bill Simmons writes about the faded memories of great NBA players, memories that are quickly replaced by the current stars. It's something I've repeatedly ranted about in the "they don't make 'em like they used to" argument but I think Simmons' version hits the nail on the head.