We'll have to figure it out
Panama City, FL: It has been six months to the day since Gulf Coast coach Phil Gaffney roamed the sidelines for a Commodore basketball game — a 75-73 home win over Tallahassee, after which Gaffney suffered a heart attack that kept him out for the remainder of the season.
Gaffney was set to return for the Commodores’ trip to the national tournament in Hutchinson, Kansas, but the COVID-19 outbreak caused the cancellation of the tournament.
Thanks again to the pandemic, Gaffney won’t get to coach his next regulation game for Gulf Coast until Jan. 22, 2021, at the earliest — a full year since that momentous early-season Panhandle Conference victory over the Eagles — thanks to the NJCAA’s ruling earlier this week that fall and winter sports would be moved to the spring semester.
“Man, it’s almost hilarious,” Gaffney said of fate continuing to prevent him from coaching. “I was just blessed to have coached the three practices getting ready for the national tournament. I was glad to be able to do that to show that I can still do it. I was slow and it was pretty painful and bad, but at least I was doing it.”
While Gulf Coast won’t play another game until January, Gaffney will get to lead the Commodores through a makeshift off-season, getting to choose two months between Sept. 15 and Dec. 15 for practice and scrimmage before the start of official preseason practice on Jan. 11.
Gaffney said the Commodores likely will start in October and go through December and use three of the five allowable scrimmages, with the other two designated for January.
The challenge for Gaffney and his staff, he said, goes beyond keeping his players sharp and in shape. With 10 months between the Commodores’ last game and their next game, keeping them interested in coming to practice without games against outside opponents will be a major challenge.
“We have to figure out how to make practice like a game for the guys,” Gaffney said. “After a month, guys are ready to play if you’re going hard and intense. It’s the same person you see every single day, so guys want to see somebody new. Absent that, you’ve got to make practice fresh and exciting and make them want to come to practice when they know that no games are gonna be played.”
There’s also the challenge of putting together a schedule, with a maximum of 22 regular season games allowed, 12 of which will come in conference play.
Gaffney said he’s skeptical that he will be able to fill out a 22-game schedule. There’s the possibility that the Panhandle Conference could vote to go to a 16-game league schedule, though that would prevent its own problems.
“It’s extremely difficult for us to get a schedule. Nobody wants to come to Panama City to play us, so that will be a problem,” he said. “If we only play 12 league games, that only leaves 10 games in a very short amount of time and there’s no way we’re gonna get those 10 games.
″(The league going to 16 games) is a possibility, but playing somebody four times is a killer. It’s gonna be a scheduling nightmare. We have to realize for one year that this is what we have to do and it’s too bad. But yeah, it’s a scheduling nightmare.”
Once teams get back into action, Gaffney said no one should be expecting to see the quality of player that they’re accustomed to seeing in January and February.
“They’re not gonna be sharp,” he said of the players. “We’re not playing until January and we don’t know what we’re doing yet, so right now we’re just going with the flow. Eventually we’ll have to come up with a strategic plan on how we’re going to do this and keep them sharp.
“What’s the best way to maximize those scrimmages to keep guys sharp and keep them fresh? Honestly, I have no idea. We’ll have to figure it out on the fly. But keeping people sharp, that’s gonna be a disaster. Guys will come back and not be in shape, not be in rhythm. The first few games will be butt-ugly and we’ll have to fight through those until February when hopefully we start getting a rhythm and playing better and hopefully in April you’re peaking at the right time.”