Shane Rinner: Understanding the man behind the whistle

Former TAMIU head men’s basketball coach Shane Rinner (in white) was one of more mercurial and successful coaches I’ve covered in my seven years as a sports journalist. Here he is talking with me (in black) along with star guard Ryan McLucas after winning the program’s first conference tournament championship in 2011.

(Since 2009, I covered Shane Rinner’s stint as head coach of the Texas A&M International men’s basketball team. I was the beat writer for the program – and was from June 2007 through January 2012 – and recently learned of him leaving the program last week for a job in California. As one of the more mercurial and successful figures I’ve had the joy of reporting on in my career, here is my recollection of Rinner’s tenure in Laredo, Texas).

One of South Texas’ most brilliant and calculating basketball minds resigned last week to head to California for a better gig. But what Laredo’s Texas A&M International men’s basketball program lost in head coach Shane Rinner was not only a man who revived what had been a scandalous doormat of an athletic institution, but an individual presided upon ethics who embraced right from wrong and expected his staff and players to follow suit.

As complex as Rinner, who will be the first assistant head women’s basketball coach at Fresno State, may seem, he’s actually not. The fiery, no-holds-barred tornado that whirled the sidelines in the “Gateway City’s” north side is actually, in essence, an affable, thoughtful, considerate human being without a selfish bone in his body. All the evidence necessary is the reason why he took the Fresno State gig, and that was to get his wife Amanda, a Cali native and Fresno State alum, back home to be with her family, knowing that’s what she’s wanted all along. That was priority No. 1: do what’s right by his family.

See, there’s Shane Rinner, the coach, and there’s Shane Rinner, the person. It’s important to learn how to differentiate between the two.

In a brief but substantially rewarding three years at the helm of the Dustdevils, Rinner – who accepted what appeared to be a career death sentence in 2009 when he accepted the position following a cheating scandal the prior spring in which the program had six players who cheated on a spanish exam, resulting in the NCAA stripping the program of all wins in 2008-09 and putting it on probation for following seasons – led TAMIU to its first NCAA conference tournament postseason appearance in his first year and earning two consecutive conference championships in his next two seasons. He won a school-record 21 games in each the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons, and in 2010-11 he guided the program on an epic run toward the NCAA Division II tournament, where the Dustdevils fell to No. 1 seed and site host Central Oklahoma by nine points in overtime in the first round. In his three years at TAMIU, Rinner’s Dustdevils won 54 games. In his final campaign last year, he earned the conference’s Coach of the Year honor and helped Evan Matteson (his first recruit to TAMIU) nab MVP.

It was easy to assume that basketball is all Rinner eats, sleeps and drinks. It’s true that his work ethic is legendary. It’s also true that he is incredibly meticulous on all matters in his program, nothing was void of his fingerprints, and is the definition of “hands-on,” from the style of marketing posters made for the team to the way a player closes out on a potential shooter. But there is certainly a method to his perceived madness, and if you can say one thing about Rinner it’s that it’s blatantly clear that he cares way too much. That goes for any waters he dips his toes into. If he pleads his allegiance, it will be done, and it will be done right.

But basketball is not the end-all, be-all with Rinner. In a sit-down chat right after a heated practice before the start of the 2011-12 season last winter, I found out a few cool things about a leader who is as multi-faceted as he is demanding. Rinner actually does not necessarily aspire to be a head coach at a prominent Division I university. He’d be perfectly fine as an assistant coach at a mid-major DI. He boasts other interests, vastly different from his current vocation. He loves politics. He’s been known to sit in on campaigns and craves that kind of stuff, even going as far as tinkering with the idea of running for office back home in Alaska.

He also likes fundraising. Loves it, in fact. In previous conversations, he has mentioned how he doesn’t necessarily have to coach and he would still be happy in college athletics. He’s talked about his passion for building a program. He also joked that he would like the lifestyle involved in fundraising, which is “little more than playing golf and going out to dinners.” He has a passion for helping others, for building, for structure. It’s a cliche, but Shane Rinner is all about the journey, all about being immersed in the process.

While I was taken aback a bit at the sudden nature of Rinner’s departure for Fresno State last week, I was far from totally surprised. His move not only achieved the goal of getting his wife closer to her family and back home, but also opened the door for former player, longtime associate head coach and dear friend Bryan Weakley to run his own program and keep TAMIU afloat all at the same time. It was a no-brainer for Rinner. It was a calculated move. It was an unselfish move. No one loses. Everyone wins.

It’s the end result to a past three years that have been hellaciously tiring and emotional. It’s why Rinner busted his tail in otherwise deplorable circumstances.

Consider:

– The Dustdevils are one of three Heartland Conference teams not fully funded. TAMIU, in the 2011-12 conference championship season, played with 5.2 scholarships. The rest of the 5.9 went to redshirts. TAMIU played with 5.8 schollys this year, 6.8 total.

– In the Heartland Conference, Laredo is considered the second-least desirable attraction other than Oklahoma’s Panhandle State. The program is also second-worst in scholarship allotment, also behind OPSU, and TAMIU has the fewest number of students on campus (approximately 600). The next fewest is 1,600 in Odessa at Texas-Permian Basin.

– Any increase in Rinner’s budget has come from his own fundraising, which is approximately $2,000 in his three years. That money helped for upgrades in the men’s locker room as well as the women’, due to Title IX. He was the program’s chief fundraiser and drove the initiatives, finding little support from department administrators.

The only plus of being in the situation in Laredo, Rinner told me, is how bad it was before he got there. It was a program mired in scandal and mediocrity; a program of apathy and a revolving door of head coaches, philosophies and principles. For a first-time head coach, it was also a beneficial one. Anything and everything Rinner and his staff would be able to accomplish in Laredo would be seen as the next great thing, simply because the program had never escaped the depths of college basketball purgatory. Had Rinner failed, it would have been thought of as nothing. But if he succeeded – he would be seen by university leaders as nothing less than a savior. It was win-win. Low risk, high reward. Much like his move to leave TAMIU, interestingly enough.

Give Shane Rinner this: No move goes unplanned. He’s always thinking 2-3 steps ahead, on and off the court. He is a throwback to the old age of coaches who demanded excellence on the court, off it and in the classroom. The plus is that TAMIU won’t skip a beat with Weakley. Weakley shares Rinner’s thrill for helping student-athletes succeed, in the classroom first before on the court. And while I have no doubt the Dustdevils – who graduated eight seniors and are in an ideal rebuilding situation with a motivated, hungry teacher like Weakley running the show – will maintain the program’s integrity and growth initiated three years ago, it’s important to take a moment and understand what Rinner truly accomplished, coming to Laredo like a dark knight from his home of Alaska, willing to put his career on the line and sacrificing for the greater good of the university.

And now that sacrifice has been rewarded, for the greater good of his family.

Dustdevils stay in the moment as season approaches

After 26 days of practice, including a plethora of two-a-day sessions, the Texas A&M International men's basketball team finally gets to see what it's made of Friday night at home. (PHOTO BY CUATE SANTOS | LAREDO MORNING TIMES)

Fall practices for the 2011-12 men’s college basketball season began 26 days ago, but Friday night’s season opener at home for the TAMIU Dustdevils began as a work in progress on March 13.

As soon as the Dustdevils left Central Oklahoma following a historic campaign that featured a conference championship and NCAA tournament appearance – both firsts for the program – they immediately began work toward Friday night’s contest against regional foe Incarnate Word.

So what do we know of these ’11-12 Dustdevils? Well, we know they’re more athletic and versatile, thanks to junior college transfers Joe Reid (sophomore forward), Jayvin Reynolds (junior center) and Tyree Murray (junior guard). We know, in spite of the graduation of their top two scorers in Will Faiivae and Luis Gomez, they return a great chunk of last year’s core in senior center Evan Matteson, senior forward Armando Brito and senior guards Ryan McLucas and Scottie Payne. We know that they have issues communicating on the floor consistently, talking and directing, and they had turnover troubles during recent practices.

Most importantly, however, we know they’re all on the same page. Even for the newcomers, it didn’t take long for them to buy into head coach Shane Rinner’s mindset.

“Excellence is the standard,” Murray said. “That’s our motto and that’s what’s on our posters everywhere. He doesn’t expect anything less, and that’s good. Even if you’re not excellent, you’ll fall somewhere around there.”

Coaches are generally pessimistic by nature. but even TAMIU’s leaders are having a difficult time pinpointing much to be concerned with.

“Our practices are more consistent and the unity and the closeness of the group is a lot higher than at the beginning of the year last year,” associate head coach Bryan Weakley said. “We have eight seniors preaching our system daily and that’s a huge benefit. Now we’ve got to see who steps up in a leadership role.”

Even Rinner, normally high strung and as stressed as can be about his team, is relatively assured. Perhaps that comes with having 12 returners, including eight seniors. Perhaps that comes with not having to preach about effort or intensity, two things the Dustdevils do well. Or perhaps he finally sees a complete team with size, shooting, athleticism, scoring and versatility.

“I like where we’re at,” Rinner said. “The guys are getting better and they’re really working. You just have to try and get them to be as edgy as you can, so you overemphasize everything to make sure they can get there. But I like where they are.”

If you’d like to know where these Dustdevils compare to last year’s record-setting unit or of any in Rinner’s tenure here, don’t bother. Rinner loathes comparing teams and is all about the process, the journey, opposed to the destination.

He literally lives day by day, practice by practice. In practices he encourages players by saying he sees them getting better, which is perhaps the highest compliment you can receive from Rinner, who scrutinizes everything to the max and prioritizes detail after detail after detail.

“I don’t get caught up in wins or losses or anything like that,” he said. “I always try to stay involved in the process instead of setting my eyes on the destination. When you set in on the destination, it’s easy to skip steps and there are no steps you can skip. If you climb a ladder, you go one rung at a time. If you miss one, you fall down.”

The most glaring flaw of these Dustdevils, from what I’ve seen through six preseason practices and a scrimmage, is they don’t communicate consistently. There are bursts where everyone is talking, directing, in sync like an orchestra. And there are others where there’s, well, nothing. No talking, no anything.

For a team predicated upon defense and spacing and movement on offense, communication is absolutely a necessity. It’s not to say the Dustdevils are bad at it, not by any means. It’s my opinion, however, that they’re not communicating up to the standards of last year’s bunch or even other Rinner teams in the past.

Rinner, for his part, does not see it as a significant issue.

“If the average person came into our practice, they’d say we communicate at an above-average rate,” he said. “As a coach, it’s not what you coach, it’s what you emphasize. We emphasize communication, so I’ll hit them over the head with it every day.

“We’re pretty good at communicating. But we want to be the best.”

That’s fair. And it’s, to be honest, nit-picking. This Dustdevils team is tantalizing because it, for the first time in Rinner’s tenure, has the ability to make up for mistakes due to its speed, athleticism and quickness. While it’s not something you’d like for them to fall back upon, at least it’s there.

TAMIU tips off its season Friday against Incarnate Word at home. The Cardinals were ranked No. 15 in the country last season before injuries precipitated a drop from the rankings. They opened some eyes in the exhibition season with a 69-65 win over NCAA DI A&M-Corpus Christi, though they were picked to place seventh in their 10-team conference’s preseason poll.

The Dustdevils then play A&M-Kingsville on Saturday before going up there to play them again on Tuesday. Then they head next week to Odessa for a tournament to play West Texas A&M and Abilene Christian.

These next two weeks are absolutely crucial. All four teams are Lone Star Conference foes, which, if TAMIU is to do well and thrive, could help in its bid for an at-large spot for the NCAA tourney.

All four are picked within the bottom half of their 10-team conference, though the conference is said to be 5-6 deep in title contenders.

“If we want to accomplish what we hope to accomplish in the preseason and get some regional points so we can get an at-large bid for the NCAA, that’s what we’re urgent about,” Weakley said. “Ever since (Rinner) called the team out a couple of weeks ago on the lack of urgency, that’s risen. But it’s still not where we want it to be.

“We measure this team to the team in Alaska when we went to the (NCAA Division II) Final Four (in 2008, with the University of Alaska-Anchorage), where we had great practices and the leadership was intact.”

It remains to be seen whether these Dustdevils are deserving of being mentioned in the same sentence as that UAA squad. But the mentality is right, the tools are in place and the system is proven.

“I just take it game by game,” Payne said. “Every game plays out a different way and it’s a long season, man. The focus is winning every game you can so that when the big games come you’ve been through the battles and you can compete.

“It’s about the process. You can’t look down the line.”