By BRAD KEITH
TheFlashToday.com
STEPHENVILLE (February 22, 2018) — Like any undertaking, there exists for point guards in basketball a right way and a wrong way.
Corinthian Ramsey says he is doing his dead level best to learn the Lonn way.
Cornell Jones, a Final Four point guard for the Texans back in 2005, believes him. Jones also knows what must come next as Ramsey progresses, and make no mistake, Jones says, the progression happening.
Ramsey learned it isn’t easy being a point guard for 30-year Tarleton head coach Lonn Reisman, who a less than two weeks ago became the fifth active NCAA Division II coach to reach 650 career wins. He now has 652 at Tarleton, and technically 673 as a head coach if you add the 21 junior college victories from his lone season at Connors State.
People compare points guards in basketball, setters in volleyball and sometimes catchers in baseball to the quarterbacks in football. Few places is the comparison as accurate as at Tarleton. Like a good quarterback, Reisman expects his point guards to lead on the court and off and know the assignment of every position, not just on offense but defense, too.
Cornell Jones went through a little of it all during his time at Tarleton. Learning the ropes as a freshman, having a little too much fun celebrating a big win and having to miss a regional championship final as a sophomore, maturing into a steady guard as a junior and becoming the emotional leader and one of the primary weapons for a national semifinalist his senior season.
That was in 2004-05, when Tarleton traveled to Texas A&M-Commerce and upset the heavily-favored Lions for their first South Central Region championship then began the Elite Eight with a comeback victory over Cal Poly Pomona at legendary Ralph Engelstad Arena in Grand Forks , North Dakota. The Texans were eliminated in the semifinal by Bryant, from Rhode Island, with Jones having been a part of 108 wins in his Tarleton career.
Much of the work now done by associate head coach Chris Reisman, son of Lonn, was then done by Jason Hooten, the assistant coach who is now head coach at Division I mid-major Sam Houston State in Huntsville.
“Coach (Lonn) Reisman would jump on me at times and I would turn to Coach Hooten to help me because Chris was still coming up at that time,” Jones recalls. “One game when I was a freshman and I came in to give MJ (Marcus Jacobs) a break I was playing pretty well and had just hit a 3 that got the crowd going crazy, then we gave up an easy bucket because Bidge (center Vincent Bridgewater) didn’t get to the right spot defensively. Coach calls timeout and we can tell he’s mad. But he didn’t go after Bridge, I look up and Coach is coming after me.”
At the time, Jones didn’t get it. So Hooten made sure he did.
“I asked Coach Hooten later, ‘Man, why Coach coming at me like that? That’s on Bridge. And he told me, ‘Cornell, he expects you to be on a different level. You’re the point guard, you have to know where everybody goes and you have to get them there. If they aren’t int the right spot, it falls on you.’”
In that moment, Cornell Jones became more than a point guard. He became a Lonn Reisman point guard.
“I knew then that it was about leadership. It was about being an extension of the coaching staff out on the court, and even off the court.”
And what a leader he became.
“When I realized my responsibility and accepted that role for the team, it brought the emotional leadership out of me,” he said. “I picked up on something (Jacobs) used to say before we took the floor for any big game, and I started saying it.
“We’d line up at the door and right before we ran out there, I’d tell all the guys, ‘If I don’t play hard, you ain’t gotta play hard, how about that? If I don’t play hard, you don’t have to play hard. Now follow me.”
Then he would go out and kill himself for 40 minutes, raining Reisman’s own style of hellfire down on unfortunate opponents, most of them standing very little chance against Texan teams that went 29-4 and rose all the way to No. 1 in the national coaches poll in 2003-04 and 25-9 while reaching the final four in 2005.
What Jones didn’t learn staying tight with Hooten, he picked up watching arguably the most pure facilitating floor general ever to don Tarleton’s trademarked shade of purple.
“I got to watch Marcus Jacobs; there wasn’t a better way to learn the position than by watching MJ play it,” Jones said. “This guy had a good coach before Coach Reisman who was demanding of his point guards, so he came in pretty much ready to go. He started every game of his two years at Tarleton.”
Jacobs doesn’t make it back to Stephenville often like Jones, but he didn’t shy away when given the opportunity to share his perspective on what it takes to be a Lonn Reisman point guard. It’s something he picked up faster than most and may very well have mastered better than any.
“Being a starting point guard for Lonn Reisman is a challenging task,” Jacobs began. “You have to have extreme mental toughness.”
He then listed all the hats one must wear to play point guard for Reisman and Tarleton.
A list that seems almost unfair for any one player to tackle. Which is exactly why the Tarleton teams with that special player – Jacobs, Jones, LaShon Sheffield, Michael Hardge, to name some of them – were some of the most successful in school history.
“The roles include being a coach on the floor and a psychiatrist off the floor. You have to have the ability to see the game from all angles, knowing all five positions. You have to embrace the role of leader because this is one position where you can’t have an off day, and Coach Reisman puts that challenge on his point guard, the guy who has the ball 75 percent of the time,” Jacobs said.
“Another thing he emphasized was knowing when to pick up a teammate when to get in a teammate’s face. That part is uncomfortable at first, but your guys respect you for it,” continued Jacobs, who was part of a 54-12 record in 2001-02 and 2002-03, the former marking the first season Tarleton advanced to the NCAA playoffs, the latter the first year they hosted the South Central Region Championship and their first Sweet 16 (regional final) appearance. “I was an energy guy, so when the team looked lethargic, it was my role to get us upbeat.
“Another role was being whatever the team needs in that exact moment. If we need a big stop, I better be in on the play. If (Danny) Jones or Bridgewater get doubled, I have to knock down that shot. You have to be a game manager, knowing EVERY SITUATION (Jacobs used caps lock for emphasis when replying through the Twitter direct messaging service) during the game as far as how many timeouts are left, reminding your teammates of foul situations, defenses and offensive sets. The point guard sets the tone on defense, harassing the opposing guards and taking pride in not getting scored on. I think we led the nation in defensive field goal percentage (indeed, they did).”
Regarding intangibles that never made the box score; those often fall on the shoulders of the point guard, too.
“Off the floor, as well,” Jacobs concluded, “making sure everyone is on time and mentally sharp, just leading by example. Personally, I took pride in fulfilling those roles, which made us a better team.”
Like Jones in leading Tarleton to its first final four two years after Jacobs exhausted his eligibility. Like Hardge a decade later, guiding the Texans to the final four in 2015 and back to the Elite Eight in 2016.
Jones believes the next great Lonn Reisman point guard is the current one. Not just because Ramsey almost had a triple-double against a not-so-good Northern New Mexico last week, but because of the rate of progress and desire to learn shown by the junior from Mansfield by way of Angelina College (juco) in Lufkin.
“I looked at a box score and saw where he just went off one game like crazy, so I knew right then I had to come see this cat play,” says Jones.
This was early in the year, after Ramsey topped 30 points in each of his first two Tarleton performances.
I came on a night he threw up a lot of shots, not many good ones, and not many of them went in,” Jones said. “I could see the talent, you could tell it’s in there, but it was still so raw and undeveloped. He had a long ways to go.”
Knowing first-hand how Reisman and staff develop players, Jones made it a point to come back and watch again. He has now taken in four games, including the 98-50 win over NNMU last Saturday, when Ramsey racked up 16 points, 16 assists, 8 rebounds an 4 steals in just 26 minutes. He very well could have posted a triple-double had his usual 36-plus minutes been necessary.
“You put up numbers like that, especially all those assists, you ballin’. I don’t care if it is against a weak opponent, you still ballin’, said Jones. “Now he’s being a facilitator, he’s getting teammates involved and naturally, the ball is finding it’s way back to him enough for him to score, too.”
That’s being a good point guard. But first Ramsey had to break the habits that made him a bad one.
“The big knock on me since high school was I didn’t know how to play the point,” said Ramsey. “ I’ve always had the best handles on the team, but I’ve always been the best scoring guard, too, and I love to score.”
He loved scoring straight to the bench early in the season. Reisman switched to a starting five that featured savvy senior Deshawn Riddick at the point and talented up-and-coming freshman Preston Enloe at the 2, or shooting guard.
“I had to learn how to play the game the way Coach Reisman expects it to be played,” said Ramsey. “I had always just had a green light; whatever I wanted to do, that’s what I did, but it wasn’t working out so well for us playing that way.”
Ramsey learned the hard way. Just like Jones.
But Jones is passing on advice, just like he did as the Texans transitioned to Sheffield late in 2005 and completely in 2006.
“LaShon asked me, ‘What is the deal with Coach?’” so I said, ‘Sit down, I’m going to tell you what he’s looking for,” Jones said. “And I explained to him how he had to know every position, how he had to become the emotional leader of the team, all that, and LaShon got it and became a great one.”
Reisman has had Jones address a number of Tarleton teams since his graduation more than 12 years ago, including this one.
“I addressed the team and let them know what it takes to become the team I know they want to be,” Jones said. “And I talked to ‘C’ (Ramsey), and he’s like a sponge. I can see he is alert and attentive and he really wants to learn.”
The results speak for themselves.
“No, I didn’t ever think about having close to that many assists in a game until I came to Tarleton,” Ramsey said of dealing 16 helpers last Saturday. “But, hey, if that’s what the team needs to win, I’m ready to do it.”
He’s still ready to take the big shot, too.
“I’m always going to be a scoring guard and I’ll always want to take the big shot, but I know now that if I get everyone involved, I’ll get plenty of chances, too.”
He’s learned from Reisman, from Jones, even from Riddick, how to improve as a floor leader, an attacker and a passer.
“Riddick is good about looking to the corner when he drives, so watching him, I’ve gotten better about that. Where I used to try to squeeze it inside in traffic, now I’m looking outside nad helping guys get open shots from the corners, I learned that from Riddick. Even when he doesn’t know he’s teaching me stuff, he is.”
It’s all part of the process.
“The next step I think for (Ramsey) is bringing more fire to the defensive end and keeping up the emotion of himself and everyone,” said Jones. “Now that others on the team see him becoming that leader, he should start to feel more comfortable doing that.
“He’s going to be a great one. He’s already dang good and has so much talent,” Jones concluded. “I bet he finishes this year strong, and I wouldn’t want to go against him next year.”
Ramsey knew how to run around, take shots and score, even if it meant playing point guard the wrong way.
Now, he’s learning to distribute first and take advantage of the scoring opportunities as the ball comes back to him, playing point guard the right way.
And he’s inching ever closer to being the leader Lonn Reisman has had playing point guard for the very best teams in Tarleton history.
Those are the guys who played point guard the Lonn way.
“He demands a lot more out of his point guard than any coach I’ve ever had in high school, AAU or in juco,” said Ramsey. “It’s a lot to take on, but I’ve learned to be hungry for it. I’m learning everything I can from Coach Reisman and from guys like Riddick and trying to become the best point guard I can be. As long as I do that, I know we have the talent here to go all the way.”
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