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5 days after the information dropped that he’d be taking up as simply the tenth head coach in Alabama A&M males’s basketball historical past, Otis Hughley is within the fitness center surrounded by the blows of whistles and screeches of vivid coloured kicks hanging the court docket, collaborating in a course of he discovered way back to grasp: preparation.
It’s a Sunday afternoon and Hughley is scouting a 6-9 French prospect who only in the near past dedicated to the Bulldogs and Hughley’s imaginative and prescient of the HBCU program. He can shoot, the coach provides.
“I’m in all probability a stranger to sleep and simply informal relaxation. That’s out of date now,” Hughley later says over Zoom with a chuckle. “Whenever you get into this, you already really feel such as you’re behind, particularly when you realize what it takes. And by God’s grace, my expertise has taught me the onerous method, learn how to know largely what it takes.”
Hughley shares the identical tutelage and keenness of this system’s previous historic coaches—together with the nice L. Vann Pettaway—by bringing over 30 years of expertise throughout everything of the teaching panorama. His resume is greater than in depth, it’s outrageously detailed and traveled.
As a 19-year-old faculty soccer participant, Hughley discovered early on “that correct preparation prevents poor efficiency.” After transferring and graduating from the College of West Alabama, he started his teaching profession as the pinnacle males’s and ladies’s coach for Wallace Group Faculty – Selma, earlier than spending a season at each Wright State and Liberty College as an assistant. A yr after the flip of the century, he studied below legendary coach Ben Jobe, who has amassed 500 profession wins, as an affiliate head coach at Southern College.
Rising up between Jersey Metropolis and Harlem, the sport has not solely broadened his perspective, but it surely’s positioned him in the midst of cultures and townships 1000’s of miles away from the East coast, together with a decade with the NBA China program. Hughley most not too long ago led the resurgence of the Nigerian Nationwide Girls’s Crew as head coach, profitable three Afro-Basket championships and claiming the No. 1 rating in Africa.
“To look at these younger girls be lastly acknowledged for who they’re—it’s a must to see [us]. There’s no extra mitigating [our] existence. There’s no extra marginalizing my achievements. I’m who Maya Angelou wrote about,” Hughley tells SLAM of the ladies’s success.
A number of years in the past, Pettaway started encouraging Hughley to come back take over this system he’d spent 25 years guiding. Having operated as a scout and assistant for NBA groups all through the early 2010’s, Hughley discovered consolation within the dedication to profitable on the skilled stage. That very same dedication has been brewing on The Hill for the previous few years and now Hughley has an opportunity to mix his savant-like data of the sport with what’s thought-about to be the HBCU Harvard of the South’s assets.
There’s a direct, historic connection that attracts Otis Hughley to Alabama A&M. Not many coaches within the recreation can hint their basketball lineage again to the sport’s forefather in James Naismith.
In the event you’re brushed up in your basketball factuals, the identify John McLendon may sound acquainted: he’s the person who revolutionized the sport at Tennessee St. with a never-before-seen fastbreak type of hoops whereas establishing the full-court press. McLendon was the primary African-American to graduate with a bodily schooling diploma from the College of Kansas, the place Naismith taught and mentored him.
Legendary head coach at Southern, Ben Jobe—who employed Hughley as his affiliate head coach for the 2001-2002 season—was mentored by McLendon earlier than occurring to make 4 NCAA event appearances. When Jobe was lured away from The Hill to Southern in ‘86, he promoted his then-assistant Van Pettaway as the pinnacle honcho. Through the hiring course of, Pettaway served on the search committee that introduced Hughley’s rent final week.
“There’s a direct lineage to the place I’m and why I’m there,” Hughley tells SLAM.
Hughley is inheriting a 12-18 program who made a late push final season to go on a six-game profitable streak and snag a SWAC event win over FAMU. With the intention to construct upon the achievement and excellence of his new squad, Hughley must be totally and unapologetically himself.
“I may be fairly respectable at impersonating different individuals, or making an attempt to undertake this craft or that craft, or making an attempt to assimilate a technique or any sort of character,” he admits. “However, man, I’m nice at being who I’m. And who I’ve been made to be is a sacrifice and an envoy for reality. Giving youngsters what they want within the context of what they need. They should know their goal.”
“Extra is caught than taught,” Hughley continues. “Individuals pay attention extra of what they are saying after they view what you do. So if I may be the individual that God supposed me to be, man that’s going to be one thing to witness.”
At Alabama A&M, Hughley is planning for an uptempo, in your grill, type of play that pushes you to break down below their strain.
“It’s organized chaos,” Hughley describes as he embraces one among his gamers on campus with a dap and hug. “We need to shoot it and we need to preserve capturing it. We don’t imagine in Mo-tion, we imagine in Extra-Shoot.”
His squad is amped to make a comeback within the SWAC and return to the identical stage of status as Pettaway and Jobe’s former squads. With three of the workforce’s high scorers anticipated to return, Hughley is already feeling motivated after only one exercise with the workforce.
“The power within the constructing, in case you might’ve plugged an extension wire into it, it’d’ve lit up an evening in any darkish metropolis. It was electrical,” Hughley says. “And that was only the start.”
Pictures by way of Getty Pictures.
