- March 28th, 2007, 9:15 am
#73079
Hope you guys don't mind me posting these.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007http://www.abqjournal.com/sports/550110 ... -28-07.htm
NCAA Basketball: McKay Can Be Himself as Liberty's Coach
By Rick Wright
Of the Journal
Take a good, long sip of that sweet Lynchburg Lemonade, Ritchie McKay.
After the tough year you've had, you deserve it.
McKay, fired Feb. 22 as men's basketball coach at New Mexico and hired 32 days later for the same position at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., would never touch an actual glass of Lynchburg Lemonade. That's an alcoholic drink, and he's a teetotaler.
But if McKay's a little tipsy with joy at landing on his feet— and what a soft, two-point landing it is— one hardly could blame him.
Ritchie and Liberty, a.k.a. Jerry Falwell U., seem a better fit than Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.
Or, for modern-day dance fans, Cheryl Burke and whoever her partner might be on "Dancing With the Stars."
For McKay, what wasn't in the stars was success at UNM. Unlike Fred and Ginger, McKay and Albuquerque were constantly out of step.
Among the many disconnects: McKay's Christian beliefs, or at least his advocacy of them.
In the fall of 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union accused McKay of pledging to prize recruit J.R. Giddens' mother that he'd make sure the kid attended church if he came to UNM.
McKay denied the charge, but it wasn't his first such dust-up at a state-run school.
There's a gospel song entitled "Couldn't Keep It To Myself." At UNM, and at Portland State earlier in his head-coaching career, McKay had a hard time doing that.
(Memo to new UNM coach Steve Alford, a friend of McKay's and a practicing Christian who last week talked of developing his Lobo players spiritually as well as athletically and academically: careful, Steve; you're courting a phone call from the ACLU.)
Did McKay's religion have anything to do with his firing last month, or with the events leading up to it? No.
Here's a previous line of mine that I'm really proud of, deservedly or not: if McKay's Lobos had gone 26-7 every year, as they did in 2004-05, UNM would have been happy to put hymnals on the backs of the seats in the Pit.
Winning solves everything, almost. McKay didn't win, so he's gone.
He needs to win in Lynchburg, too, of course, if he intends to stay there. He's replacing Randy Dunton, who was fired at Liberty six days after McKay was canned at UNM.
Still, it's abundantly clear that McKay is among friends at Liberty. He's coaching at a private Christian school, and nobody at the ACLU is going to pounce on him for quotes like those below, printed Tuesday in the Lynchburg News & Advance:
"It's a chance to combine passions," he said of the Liberty job. "I'm passionate about God's word and growing as a believer, trying to fulfill the purpose and plan he has for my life.
"That's why I think God prepared me for this, to be able to appreciate it, and not just for the basketball part of my passion, but where my heart really lies."
At UNM, McKay never denied or apologized for using his religion to recruit players from Christian backgrounds. Sometimes, it worked.
"It's divinely put together," Victor Danridge said of McKay's UNM program in March 2004. Danridge is a pastor, and his son, Tony, signed with the Lobos later that year.
It'll be interesting to see how McKay fares now, recruiting at a Christian school.
On one hand, with Falwell as chancellor, you'd think Hugh Hefner could recruit Christian kids to Liberty.
On the other, under such circumstances, do McKay's own beliefs become less of a selling point?
For today, at least, it doesn't matter.
McKay, finally, is at Liberty— to be himself.
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Catch Rick Wright's column at www.abqjournal.com. E-mail him at rwright@abqjournal.com
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