Travis Ford is a busy man. From recruiting trips, to family vacations, to trips to the Final Four, the born-and-bred Kentuckian has been a man in perpetual motion.
Last week, I finally caught up with him, a day before he departed on a two-week hiatus from Pioneer Valley.
He took shelter in his office, on the third floor of the quiet Mullins Center. Pictures of the little Fords pepper the room, along with a rousing photo of a baby-faced Kentucky point guard cutting off a piece of the basketball net on his way to the Final Four.
Ford is fiery, ebullient and ultra-intense, but when he isn't fuming over a turnover or a bad shot, the UMass head man is affable, calm and ready to talk basketball.
Like all basketball lifers, the offseason eats at him. He longs for November, when his Minutemen can take the UMass stage once again and compete for a now tangible Atlantic 10 championship. Ford sat down with the Massachusetts Daily Collegian for an hour-long question-and-answer session, where he reflected upon topics ranging from the turbulence of last season to his newfound preference for country music.
Rob Greenfield (RG): You went to the Final Four this year; were you happy about Florida winning the NCAA Championship?
Travis Ford (TF): Elated. I was coached by Billy [Donovan]. Billy was the assistant coach at Kentucky the whole time I was there, and he and I built a relationship. He mentored me, being a point guard in coach Pitino's system. In some ways I had a closer relationship with him [than with Pitino]. He's somebody that I've always admired who's climbed up the coaching ladder.
My associate head coach Tim Maloney coached with [Donovan] for six years and helped him get started there, so there are all kinds of connections to Florida.
RG: Last season was a roller-coaster year for your team. Have you caught up on some sleep since the season ended?
TF: I'm just glad I didn't get fired. (laughs) I woke up that morning [after the Xavier game] and thought I was fired. So that's a positive I guess.
Things are about on track, to be honest with you. This was my third head-coaching job and the first years are always tough. Transition years are never, ever easy. We got in here and we had roster changes before the season started. We had roster changes while the season was going on.
And then there's the schedule we inherited. The year before I got here they had 18 home games. That's unheard of for anybody. We had to return all of those games.
If you look at our road record, it's not good and we're disappointed. But the next phase is winning road games. If you think about it, in almost every one of those games we were the underdog. That's tough for a team that's trying to understand a new system.
RG: You played for Rick Pitino, who liked to get his team up and down the court. Was that tough for your team to do this year?
TF: It was tough in that, from October to November we practiced pressing every single day. We practiced running our offense the way we wanted, getting up and down every day. Then in the second game of the season we lose a player. I said this from the start: we are a team with a very small margin for error - if we lost one player, any of the nine guys we had, it's going to change the way we're going to play.
Then we lost a player [Artie Bowers] the second game of the year who was starting. I had to scale it back a little bit. Then we lose Maurice, and I had to scale it back even more. We had spent a month and a half on [pressing] and then we didn't even get to do any of that. It was a setback.
RG: And Chris Lowe was playing 40 minutes a game.
TF: That added a lot of pressure. We were not a strong offensive basketball team, plain and simple. We were not. And even though defense and rebounding wins, offense makes those things that much better. We didn't have the bodies to press. We didn't have the personnel to press, so hopefully we can get back to that as much as we can.
RG: It seemed like you had to deal with a lot of situations off of the basketball court - Bowers, Maxwell, Stephane Lasme had some issues later in the year. Did that affect you at all as a coach?
TF: What affected me the most was Artie and Maurice leaving - two guys that I respect tremendously. Those things hurt because it's just roster changes and you're losing something.
I'm dealing with 18-, 19-, 20- and 21-year-olds every single day. Things like that are going to happen. What's bad about it is: people don't understand the whole story. People hear one side of it where I see all of the facts of it, exactly what happened, good and bad.
That doesn't set me back as far as my coaching ability. I can be disappointed in players for doing certain things. But I understand the full truth of what's happened. The public doesn't have the full understanding of what went on.
RG: You played point guard at Kentucky and Chris Lowe is playing that position for you now. Is there anything that you would like him to do differently as he develops?
TF: I would like for him to continue to work on his leadership abilities. It's an ongoing process for him, learning to be more outgoing and holding his teammates more accountable. As a point guard you have to make sure your teammates are in the right place at the right time. He's becoming more outgoing, but in order for him to do that he has to gain the respect of his players.
We're going to work on his jumpshot more. He's got a good jumpshot. I think he's hesitant sometimes to take it, not because he doesn't think he's going to make it. I think he thinks, 'I have to pass all of the time.' But he needs to keep the defense honest by making some shots.
The third thing would be getting to the hole. A lot of times, since he's at the front of our defense, he gets some steals. And he needs to be able to go one-on-one with somebody and get inside, create some fouls and get to the foul line a little bit. For a freshman, playing 40 minutes a game and doing what we asked him to do and the pressure we put on him, I'm proud of Chris. He has a long, long way to go to reach the potential that I expect of him, but it was a good start for him.
RG: If you had to do something different as a coach from this past season, what would it be?
TF: I probably would have stuck with our system. It probably would have cost us a few games. But I probably would've said, 'Let's keep running the ball, let's keep pressing and doing what we want to do.' At the end of games we would have been very tired probably and by the time February got here we'd all be dead.
But I probably would have done that a little bit more because it's just agonizing to score in the 50s and 60s. Defense was our greatest strength. We were one of the top teams in the league in defense and rebounding. We just couldn't score.
RG: What kind of players are you recruiting right now?
TF: We really don't have a guy who can shoot. So if I could have one thing I probably would get a player that can shoot the basketball. But I like our team. I like the players that are in place right now. If you look at the guys that we're adding - Gary Forbes, Luke Bonner, Etienne Brower, Tiki Mayben - they all bring in a significant need. I think next year we will be an improved basketball team.
RG: A lot of people were skeptical about James Life's shot selection. Was that ever frustrating for you during the season?
TF: I'm a big believer that people have to play to their strengths, whatever they are. James Life doesn't need to be here if I'm not going to let him shoot it.
And you can ask any coach in America, the history of junior college players is they won't hit their stride until their second year. They can contribute their first year and there are some things that they can help you with. But if they can really play the game, they don't hit their stride until their second year or so.
I expect that this will be a different year for him. He shot it quicker than I wanted to at times but he has the potential to get hot, so I let him jack 'em up a little bit.
RG: Who would win in a three-point contest, you or James Life?
TF: I would definitely win in a three-point contest - as long as it was stand-still. That's been proven. That's a fact.
RG: How does your first year at UMass compare to your first year at Eastern Kentucky?
TF: As far as introducing a new style, it's the same thing - guys not understanding the system. I wouldn't say I have the most difficult system in America, but it's definitely not the easiest. It was a typical transition year where you don't know what to expect from your team. Right now we're in postseason workouts and I'm so excited because I know what we need to work on. When I first got the job you don't really understand what to work on and what your team's strengths and weaknesses are.
RG: What's the most important thing you learned from Rick Pitino?
TF: How hard you have to work at it. Don't leave any stone unturned - that's in recruiting, preparation for your games, in practice. Never sit back at night and say, "I wish I had worked at this harder." Put all of the time and effort into it that you can to give your team an advantage to be successful on and off the court. That's what I saw in him every day and learned from him.
RG: You moved from Kentucky to Massachusetts last year. How did you and your family deal with that adjustment?
TF: I tell people that it's not all that different. It really hasn't been. Amherst is a rural area and Kentucky is pretty much a rural area. Richmond and Amherst are very similar. And we had a Kentucky winter here. People kept warning me about the winter, but I was like, "This is not bad. This is like Kentucky. I can handle this."
I've had either family or friends at every single game, so it's not what people would probably think. My family and kids love it here. They really do.
RG: Do you have any favorite places to take your kids around here?
TF: We go to Kids Sports [on Route 9] all of the time. We ride the bike trail in the summer. They go over and take ice-skating lessons from Laurie Leaman. My son started taking hockey lessons but it lasted about a week. (laughs) He didn't last in the hockey part.
RG: What is your favorite movie, besides "6th Man"?
TF: (laughs) I heard that I was going back into acting. That's always such a hard question. I love movies. That's something I don't do as much as I used to. That's one thing I love doing. I love going to the movies. I love going to the movies because it seems like I can forget about everything else. I have so much on my mind, so I tell my wife, 'Let's go to the movies,' because I can forget about everything.
Some of my favorite movies are pretty cheesy, to be honest with you. One of my favorite movies, and I'd forgotten about it until the other day, was "The Game," with Michael Douglas. I was up at 2 a.m. the other night and "The Game" came on and I stayed up 'til 4 a.m. watching that thing. That is a great movie. I like Michael Douglas. "American President" may be my favorite movie. I love the basketball movies too.
RG: Did you see "Glory Road?"
TF: I've seen "Glory Road" and I enjoyed "Glory Road." I'd heard all of these things about how it was killing Kentucky, but I didn't see that at all. I thought "Glory Road" was very, very good. I enjoyed watching that. I took the team to see it the night before the Temple game here, so I guess it must've worked.
RG: What about music? I saw a picture of you with Tim McGraw when he came to the Mullins Center.
TF: I've turned into a country music fan over the last four or five years, and it started when I was invited to a Kenny Chesney concert. Now I am a country music fan, believe it or not. I wouldn't say I'm die-hard. I'm not a die-hard music fan. I didn't listen to music much before they came out with these iPod things.
RG: Is there a role model, on or off the court, who you've taken after?
TF: I look at different people. I've learned so much from my mom and dad about what type of person I should be. I think they did a really good job of trying to teach me right from wrong and how to treat people. My mom sacrificed a lot for the kids. My dad always worked extremely hard every day to try and give us a little bit more.
My dad taught me the game of basketball. But as far is coaching is concerned, Rick Pitino has been my main influence. I love everything about him as a coach as far as how hard he works at it and the system he plays and what he represents as a coach. I really look up to him. I watch every game that his team plays, same thing with Billy Donovan and those guys, people who I can connect with.
RG: Did you always know that you were going to be a coach? Or was there a moment when it clicked for you?
TF: I did want my job to have something to do with basketball. Basketball has been my whole life. I grew up around it. My father was a high school coach. He has always been involved with basketball. I've always been around it. It's pretty much taken up most of my life. As time went along I knew that I enjoyed playing for coach Pitino and it quickly became apparent that I wanted to be a coach. Basketball's pretty much been my life.
RG: Did you have any reservations about taking the UMass job?
TF: There are always reservations. There is always good and bad. When my wife and I came and looked at the job, we wanted to do it. I'm a guy that's big on lists - good, bad, to-do lists. There are always positives and negatives and I thought that the positives outweighed the negatives.
The greatest thing was that I do enjoy a challenge. I love a challenge. That's what my career was based on: people saying that I couldn't do it, that I was too small, too slow, couldn't play. That was my greatest motivating factor to work hard every day.
RG: What was the greatest college basketball game, coaching or playing, that you were ever a part of?
TF: It may not be my most exciting or my best game, but maybe the most memorable game: the game against Florida State in the Elite Eight to get us to the Final Four.
Making it to the Final Four is really what you want. Once you get there, if you win it that's kind of a bonus. That game, we won it, and just knowing that we were going to the Final Four in New Orleans in the Superdome in the one of the best Final Fours ever - us, North Carolina, Kansas and Michigan, big time basketball schools - was absolutely ridiculous.
RG: If Louisville and Kentucky met in the NCAA finals, where would your allegiance be?
TF: It would be with Kentucky, no question. And I think that [Pitino] would be the first one to say "pull for Kentucky," and he would understand. I would definitely pull for Kentucky but hopefully it'd be a great game and Kentucky would pull it out at the end. I have a lot of respect for coach Pitino, obviously. But I graduated from the University of Kentucky and it gave me four tremendous years.
RG: I have to ask, what kind of car do you drive?
TF: Ford Expedition. Absolutely. I'm an SUV guy.
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