A transition to D-1, three athletic directors and now the COVID-19 pandemic, Abilene Christian head coach Joe Golding has had to face his fair share of adversity during his ten-year tenure at the small Texas school.
“I was a high school basketball coach and then to make this transition I think God has given me a death wish for coaching,” he joked.
HC Joe Golding brings his fun personality to regular press conferences
Still though, that hasn’t stopped him from building up one of the more respectable mid-major programs in the entire country. Collegeinsider.com currently has the program ranked 22 among mid-majors. This year alone, they have already beaten Austin Peay, who is ranked 11th in the same rankings, and only fell to No. 17 Texas Tech by seven this past Wednesday.
This success isn’t new to the 2020-21 team, as Abilene Christian would’ve made four consecutive postseason appearances had last year’s postseason tournaments not been canceled due to the pandemic. This four-year stretch was highlighted by the 2018-19 season when Abilene Christian won the Southland Conference tournament and made the NCAA tournament, both for the first time in school history.
These accomplishments, while obviously making Golding a very proud man, are not what he focuses on now though. Instead he tells his players, “Trust the process.” He laughs at how cliche that phrase is, but made a point to note that it’s how to keep his team focused on the right things. Focused on the goal of improving each and every day, instead of focusing on months down the line about where they could end up on selection Sunday if they managed to win the conference. To not worry about non-conference records, even though their team sits an impressive 5-1 with the lone loss being that almost upset against Texas Tech, and to just focus on getting stronger and better. Focus on making small improvements in their individual abilities each and everyday, so that the team is ready for conference season. As winning the conference is really the only realistic way a school in the Southland has at making the NCAA tournament.
ACU is off to a tremendous start in 2020-21, and perhaps have quickly become the favorites to win the Southland Conference.
To sum up all of that, he simply sticks with the phrase, “Trust the process.” Again, it can come off as a cliche phrase but that’s only because it’s a lot easier to trust the Albiene Christian process now. It’s easy to trust a process that has a team 5-1 and one of the top mid-major programs in the country. It’s easy to trust a process that gives a program like Texas Tech a run for their money. It’s easy to trust a process that you can clearly see is working.
That wasn’t the case when the program switched to D-1 before the 2013-14 season. That year, the team’s first five games were losses to Duquesne University (94-75), St. Bonaventure University (75-47), University of Maryland (67-44), University of Iowa (103-41) and Texas Christian University (71-64). The team also had to go up against Xavier University (93-65) that non-conference season, marking six games against tough opponents.
“It was the most challenging thing I have ever done,” he said. “I think back, I probably would’ve done some things different, but I don’t know if it would’ve made a difference.”
They didn’t get their first D-1 victory as a D-1 team until they defeated conference-foe University of Central Arkansas on a last-second goaltending call. ACU player Parker Wentz had taken the ball across the court in 4.4 seconds before throwing up the lay-up. Tirrell Brown of UCA, who had just hit their go-ahead lay-up, pinned the ball against the backboard as time expired. After a huddle by the officials, goaltending was called and ACU’s D-1 success finally could get started.
It is one of Golding’s favorite memories. And it was really the first time he could say, “Trust the process” without anyone questioning the process itself. Even if, as a young coach, he was still setting measurable goals himself on how many games to strive to win each year, a habit he didn’t break till he became a more seasoned head coach.
Even if he finally got the monkey off the program’s back by winning that game, “trusting the process” was still difficult for his players. As a new D-1 member, Abilene Christian had to wait four years to participate in their conference tournament. The early goal of the program was to raise money and get some exposure. In order to do that, they had to schedule games against programs willing to pay them money to get an easy win on national television. And while no non-conference season was ever as tough as that first one was for ACU, they still had to go up against programs like Nebraska and Oklahoma in the following seasons. And while the athletic department was forced to suffer from these potentially moral-crushing defeats, they went through three different leaders at the top. All three though stayed committed to Golding and his process. That commitment from the school finally being rewarded with their first D-I conference championship in 2019.
It wasn’t just a commitment from the department though as much as it was from Golding and his staff as a whole. Golding is an alumnus from Abilene Christian, both a former player and assistant coach for the basketball program. He estimates that he has spent 17 years there, which is almost 50% of his entire life given he is just 45 years old.
Golding got commitment from his staff, many of which have stayed with him through the egregious transition process. And that’s not to mention the talented players he was able to recruit early on in his tenure.
Which is pretty amazing, as evident by the way Golding talked about those early days. He said if he was a parent of a recruit, he would have told his kid to choose another school. Sometimes it was tough to put on the Abilene Christian t-shirt when he was recruiting in the early days of his head coaching career. Mainly because there wasn’t a whole lot to promise these kids at the time. They weren’t allowed to compete for a conference championship, they were scheduled to play a lot of tough games solely to raise funds for the program and, like any transitioning program, they struggled to win during the early years. Still though, he managed to find commitment from his guys and what he sells now is a form of community among his team. He mentioned that he likes his players to play hard on the court, and love each other off of it. He values those relationships he can build with his players heavily, and given the quick rise of the program since joining D-I, it’s evident that those relationships are building.
“There’s a respect there now. We’re validating our vision,” he said. “We don’t have to sell a vision, they can see what we’re doing.”
Now that his program is built, it’s only fitting that he has another daunting challenge to deal with. Although this one is much different from the others. He doesn’t consider the challenges in staying competitive while the schedule is constantly in flux due to the pandemic as difficult as the task of transitioning to D-I was approximately eight years ago. Still, it’s different. Those challenges were predictable while these ones are not.
He considers himself lucky though. Most of his players are experienced and have already spent time in his system. Only four of his 15 players are Freshman and ten of them have been with his program for at least three years now. He considers this a major advantage for his program, as the consistently changing practice schedule wouldn’t hurt his team of veterans as much as it would hurt a team made up of mostly Freshman, JUCOs and transfers.
It also means that his players are perhaps motivated to get back to the tournament that they were denied a year ago. While his team wasn’t a lock to make the NCAA Tournament, they still had a double-bye in their conference tournament which put them in a good chance at making it for a second consecutive season. Both tournaments were canceled though, which Golding stressed was the right decision, and the players missed out on a chance to win back-to-back conference titles.
The path to the Southland Championship will likely have to go through the Teague Center.
Golding admits that is hard to get out of a player’s mind and can see it causing motivation, but he still stresses his players to “trust the process.” The process of getting a little better each and everyday. The process that has turned this D-II school into a D-I mid-major powerhouse. The process of battling adversity by simply striving to get better.
And now 2020 has brought new adversity to his program and, so far, they have responded well. The last question I asked Golding was if he thought that the difficulties he has faced over the last decade helped him prepare for the difficulties of this year. He said that he hasn’t really thought about that, but he thinks it’s taught him to fight adversity.
Of course he hasn’t thought about it, because that would mean that he’d be violating the very thing that he says to trust. The process that got him to 2020. The process that got him through two divisions and three athletic directors. The process that has prepared him to deal with the uncertainty of an ever-changing landscape in 2020. And the very same process that he will use to get through 2020.
All he has to do is, “trust the process.”
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Logan Carney
Bracketeer.Org Contributor