By BRAD KEITH
TheFlashToday.com
(February 27, 2016) — Lonn Reisman knew it was time to “push some buttons,” and no coach in the South Central Region and the Lone Star Conference has done more late-season button pushing than the Tarleton State veteran with 608 career wins, 101 more than the rest of the LSC coaches combined.
What bothered Reisman wasn’t an errant shooting night or just one upset loss. What bothered the veteran head coach was that his team was not even playing good defense, soothing he has always deemed unacceptable.
But all that changed before a trip to San Angelo to take on Angelo State, and those changes have led to a lot being on the line Saturday when the Texans visit Texas A&M-Commerce. Tipoff is about 6 p.m. following a 4 p.m. women’s contest at The Field House.
“Sometimes the button pushing that needs to happen is very clear to me, but this season it was not,” Reisman says. “There were some sleepless nights a couple weeks ago because I could tell it was time to push some buttons, but I hadn’t figured out which ones to push.”
Tarleton had just been defeated 73-57 at Cameron. In their prior road game, they were hammered, 78-61, by West Texas A&M.
“When things are going that way, you have to be very careful what buttons and who’s buttons you push, because you can do it just right and bring your team together and get ready to peak at the right time, or you can do it wrong and you can lose your team in a hurry, or just not get any better and be grind it out until the end.”
Reisman may be known for his grinding, defense-first style, but grinding isn’t how any coach wants to describe the end of their season.
“We tweaked some things defensively, raised our intensity again on that end of the floor, and we also tweaked some things offensively,” he said. “We had to go back and make sure we were executing the intricacies of our offense in order to get the right players the right shots form the right spots and all at the right time.”
It’s hard to argue with the results over the last four games, and in particular, the last three. Since losing in double overtime at Angelo State, Tarleton has defeated A&M-Kingsville, Eastern New Mexico and West Texas A&M, the latter being the only one that ended with a narrow margin and even that game was out of place and needed a funky ending full of fouls to be close on paper.
The Texans are shooting 54 percent during the three-game win streak, and Tarleton has even shot 41 percent from the arc over that stretch. They struggled and were hovering around the 29 percent mark from downtown for much of the season.
But in typical Reisman fashion, the head coach is most impressed with the team’s defense. Opponents are shooting just 34 percent during the streak and even though West Texas A&M finished with 82 points, the Buffs needed 35 points in the final six minutes to get there. They scored only 47 points and trailed Tarleton by 25 after the first 34 minutes in a game that featured 68-second half free throw attempts.
“The end of that game didn’t go the way any of us wanted, but I was very pleased with our effort, especially defensively, for most of that game,” Reisman said. “We showed signs of being where we needed to be at this time of year.”
The South Central Region has taken notice, too, with Tarleton jumping three spots to No. 7 in the second regional rankings, released Wednesday. The region has also taken notice of the immense strength of schedule held by LSC teams. Midwestern State and ASU are the top two teams in the poll, which comes out again next Wednesday before the Division II Championship Selection Show the night of Sunday, March 6.
The best record in the South Central belongs to Fort Lewis, which has only three losses, two less than MSU and ASU. But Fort Lewis, due to strength of schedule – or perceived lack there of – is currently third in the regional rankings, just ahead of Tarleton.
“I don’t know about Fort Lewis, I just know about us and the other teams in our league and I can only imagine that our strength of schedule is just tremendous,” Reisman said. “It’s among the best in the country, I’m sure.”
Of course, after 28 years at Tarleton with 22 of those coming in Division II, the LSC and the South Central, Reisman knows a team can fall from a lofty regional ranking even more quickly than it climbed there.
“One loss and we can be right back in that seven or eight spot, and you don’t want to be in the six through eight spots going into conference tournaments because you run the risk of being bumped out by an automatic qualifier,” he said.
So what’s the best way for Tarleton to avoid its season becoming such a casualty?
“Just win one game at a time. That’s all you can do anyway and should be how you always look at it, but it’s something you really have to remind your team and coaching staff of at this time of year,” he said. “The conference tournament, regional tournament all that, that’s coming, but you can’t look at that now.”
Not with a trip to Commerce on the line. Reisman remembers all too well a narrow loss at A&M-Commerce keeping Tarleton from hosting the regional tournament two seasons ago. Instead the Texans went to Metro State College – Denver and lost in the regional semifinals to Midwestern.
And, of course, Reisman and everyone in camp Tarleton remember losing at home to the Lions, 67-65, in their first meeting this season.
“We know this is a very good basketball team that is capable of beating anyone in our league,” Reisman said. “We have to be at our very best to have a chance to beat them on their home court, and that’s exactly what I expect of our team because it’s that time of year. I’ve been blessed to have teams peak at the right time, and I’ve had teams where it never happens, but I always expect it. You have to expect it. You have to expect to be the best at the right time or you will never get there.”
It’s an expectation he takes back to east Texas with him on Saturday.
“It’s a big game because it’s the next game. It’s the game we can control and one we definitely need to win,” he concluded. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. We’ve played well lately and we have to play well again on the road Saturday to have a chance to win.”
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