Augustana College’s men’s basketball team has been very successful for the past 16 years. As players come and go, one thing has remained the same and that is the coaching.
Grey Giovanine has been the head basketball coach for 16 years at Augustana keeping a 284-116 coming into the 2014 year and seems to be on track to continue this success.
“Thus far this season we beat a Division 1 team on their own court and are ranked number one, so it’s been pretty good,” said head coach Grey Giovanine who has been affiliated with Augustana for 16 years.
Giovanine describes the team as hungry and cohesive. For as long as Giovanine has been coaching, the team’s objectives have remained the same.
“Our goals really do not differ from year to year,” said Giovanine, “Our goal is to have our team to be as good as they possibly can be. Every team has different possibilities, but as a coach you just want them to achieve which is something that stays consistent every year.”
The expectations for the team are to get better every day by practicing and growing closer.
“If we do those things,” said Giovanine. “We do that by being well prepared, communicating expectations to our players and holding them accountable and hoping that they hold themselves accountable.”
Giovanine enjoys this growth that the team experiences and values how the team has matured over the year so far. This growth goes past the basketball court, and Giovanine pushes them to be productive citizens, professionals, and good husbands and fathers.
Even with the positive mindset the team and the coach have, they also experience obstacles. This season the team lost their most experienced front line player, senior Kevin Schlitter.
“It’s an incredible setback,” said Giovanine. “Those are the things you can’t control, but you have to deal with anyways. The course of the first three weeks of our season we are having a remake of our team. As far as injuries go, they are also a significant part of the season.”
There are other obstacles such as dealing with adversity that the team faces along with reaching success as he says, “To be ranked as the number one Division III team in the country has its own set of challenges. There’s all kind of issues that come in the course of the season which started in October and ends in March. It is the longest season of any college athletics.”