RIC’s Walsh Deserves His D-1 Shot
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
He may very well be the best basketball coach no one’s ever heard of. Okay, maybe in these parts some people know who Bob Walsh is but you could argue not enough!
Bob Walsh is about to complete his 6th season as the head men’s basketball coach at Rhode Island College and it’s not a stretch to say that he has done a fabulous job in his years at RIC.
Walsh’s Anchormen just wrapped up their 4th Little East regular season title in his 6 years at the school. They also won their 4th Little East Tournament championship as well with their 62-49 win over Eastern Connecticut over the weekend. They will take on Penn State-Behrend in Oswego, NY in the opening round of the Division 3 NCAA Tournament on Friday.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTIn all 6 of Walsh’s seasons at RIC, his teams have made it to the postseason. This will be their fifth consecutive Division 3 NCAA Tournament appearance. He has taken two of those tournament teams to the Sweet 16 and one to the Elite 8.
His teams have compiled an overall record of 133-42 in six seasons for an ungodly winning percentage of .760 over that span.
This year’s team led the Little East in both field goal percentage and field goal percentage defense.
So the question is: what else does Walsh have to do to get a serious look from a Division 1 school?
Walsh actually has interviewed for a few Division 1 jobs over the years. Last year both Dartmouth College and St. Francis, NY talked to the RIC coach but ultimately decided to hire someone else. He was also involved with a pair of MAAC schools in Iona and Marist in recent years, but they too opted for other coaches.
I have seen Bob Walsh coach. I have watched many of his teams play over the years and I know that some Division 1 programs are missing out on an excellent head coach.
Before Walsh arrived at RIC, he was an assistant at Providence College for 7 years under former coach Tim Welsh. For the first few years, Walsh was restricted from going out on the road to recruit so he spent all of his time working in the office, scouting each opponent and working with the players on everything from on the court fundamentals to individual workouts and making sure that their academics were in order.
Walsh’s final 4 years at PC allowed him to get out on the road recruiting. Even so, he remained Tim Welsh’s go-to guy when it came to breaking down an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. Welsh trusted Walsh as much as anyone on his staff.
Prior to his years at PC, Bob Walsh was an assistant for 1 season at the University of San Diego. That followed his 3 years as a graduate assistant at Iona.
With a resume like that, you would think that a Division 1 program from a low-major conference like the Northeast Conference, the Patriot League, the MAAC, the Ivy League or the America East Conference might take a shot on him to lead their program. That hasn’t been the case up to this point.
Why haven’t some of these programs targeted Walsh? Probably because hiring a successful Division 3 coach won’t “wow” their fan base or “win” the press conference, if you will. It’s not a “sexy” hire.
That’s the problem. If more athletic directors did their homework and watched coaches like Walsh operate, they might not care about “winning” the press conference because they would know that their programs would win games if they hired a guy like him.
Former Brown and current Colgate Athletic Director Dave Roach is an AD who did his homework before hiring Glen Miller. Miller was a coach who led Connecticut College to the Division 3 Final Four. Roach saw Miller’s teams play and quickly came to the conclusion that he could do the same for a struggling Brown men’s basketball program at the Division 1 level.
Miller came in and changed the culture of Brown basketball turning them from cellar-dwellers to Ivy League contenders in no time. Walsh deserves that same type of opportunity.
But no one ever said life is fair. Or that enough AD’s do the homework needed to make a good hire. But such is the life of a coach. Not that Walsh is sweating it. “I love my job here at Rhode Island College,” he said. “What makes it even better is that 9 of our 14 kids on the roster are from Rhode Island. This has been a great group. Give them something to buy into and they’ll run through a wall for you.”
For six years that’s exactly what has been going on. Their head coach has given them something to buy into and they have been running through walls for him. Other school’s loss is RIC’s gain.
