FAU Coach John Jakus met with the media earlier this week, discussing a variety of topics as the season winds down. The Owls head into their final matchup of the season with East Carolina needing a victory to lock up the 5th seed in the AAC, while a loss could send them spiraling as far as the 8th seed.
The Pirates present an interesting challenge to close out the season, as although the Owls defeated them earlier this season, ECU has improved since that match up and they look to finish off their best season since 1975 on a high note. Not only do the Pirates head to town for a pivotal matchup with seeding on the line, it is also senior day and the Owls will be looking to honor KyKy Tandy, Jack Johnson and Ken Evans Jr with a victory.
According to FAU coach John Jakus, ECU deserves a boatload of credit for the success they have had this season, however no matter who the Owls had on deck this weekend, the most important thing is getting a win for the seniors.
“I want to compliment that staff, there’s something they just accomplished that was significant. It’s been over two decades since they pulled that off, I think they’ve done a really good job. So one, they deserve to be complimented as a staff. The second is, I want our fans to come out because it’s senior day and they’re rooting for us and not rooting against somebody else. So clearly, ECU is on the up and up, and we’ll need the fans to help to win it at home. So that’s a reason to come. But I hope the biggest reason is that on senior night, it’s a great place to celebrate Paradise, and that FAU is a wonderful home, and we want the community to be together, and we want sports to play a role in that. So I hope that last home game is a special day, and we’re thankful that it happens here,” Jakus said.
Although the Owls head into this matchup on a one game skid, the theme this season for FAU has been resiliency, as they’ve bounced back from multiple game losing streaks before and heading into this one they will be playing with a clean slate. UAB was a tough loss for FAU, as they played well enough to win at times, however they were hurt by mistakes on both ends of the court and needing a win against ECU, they can’t let those mistakes phase them.
Earlier in the week, FAU coach John Jakus was nominated for the Joe B Hall award, which is given to the best first year head coach in college basketball and the success his team has had this season that led to that nomination is in large part due to the resiliency that they will need against ECU. But where did that resiliency come from one might ask, well, according to Jakus, it started with a resilient staff early on and it spread from there.
“I think about April 20th, we had a couple of guys that played for the last regime that thought about staying, and then when they didn’t stay, we were kind of blindsided, and we got late to the portal. And so even in that moment, I think we had to show some resilience as a staff. And I think it’s nice that they honor coaches in their first year. I think the fact that we have a winning record, it just shows you how hard it is to have a winning record year one in this portal era when you have to sign 11 new guys. But Coach Drew taught me a lesson, and I agree with it 100%, those kinds of things are team awards. Without the staff leaving their wives and kids for that three month stretch, we wouldn’t even have a team. And without those kids saying yes to FAU, we wouldn’t be in a position to have a winning record at this moment. So I think the resiliency started from the very beginning. We thought this thing was going to go one way, and then it went another, and then we had to fight. And I’ve said this all along. You couldn’t ask for a nicer group of kids to go through year one with. When we lose, they let us, coach us, coach them. We’ve changed starting lineups. We confronted them. They don’t roll their eyes. They take coaching, and there is this foundation of culture, I think that we’ll be able to reset and build upon with retention. But it’s a nice thing that people notice that to start from something we’ve done something positive, but our expectations are a little higher for the future, and I think that’s probably what we’ll focus on,” Jakus said.
Jakus mentioned the team being okay with confrontation and something like that is no guarantee in today’s player centric league where the portal can open at any given moment, but this FAU team has never quit on their coaches and that mentality will give them a chance to compete down the stretch. Most recently the confrontation came in the form of lineup changes, which saw KyKy Tandy and Tre Carroll move to the bench in favor of Matas Vokietaitis and Kaleb Glenn and all 4 have stepped into their new roles quite well, specifically against USF.
A part of being on a team is being humble and accepting a role when it is assigned to you, while also finding a way to excel in that role to make the team better and this FAU team has shown they have humility to put the team first and that is something Jakus is proud of.
“I think our guys have shown humility. I think we’ve made it clear that our best days are when both point guards play good, and our best days are when both five men play good, and so Trey and Matas had to take turns in accepting accountability and coming off the bench. And I think I’m proud of them for that, we preach selflessness, but some of that’s how they’re raised. They’ve got great parents or other people in their life that allow for that, and I think we have struggled with toughness and IQ at times, but what we have not struggled with is being a family or love, and our losing streaks being cut off have been because the kids have allowed us to coach them in those moments. So I’m glad you noticed that, and our hope is that in year two and three and four, that becomes a foundation, and we get even better because of it,” Jakus said.
Looking back on this season, the Owls tested themselves against quality opponents numerous times and although there are many things that went into FAU’s resiliency, being battle tested was definitely a big part of it. Although the non-conference slate could have gone better for FAU, they gave themselves a chance to compete for an at-large in a year should they have won more games out of conference and that is something not every team in the AAC can say.
Heading into next season, Jakus and company will look to once again put together a schedule that will give them a chance to play postseason basketball without having to win the AAC tournament, a goal that should align with the conference as a whole.
“If you were going to rank who went out of their way to try to get quad-1 wins, apart from Memphis, I think you got to put us second. And I was left a 15 day trip in Charleston, and we could have just blamed that and gone soft in every other area, and we chose to go on the road against a big 12 team and on the road against the first place Big 10 team, and we went to Auburn in really unwise decision just to prepare us for the fact that the only way we get a quad one swing was to go on a road game. So I would say that we punished ourselves in order to even try to get a quad one win. And as a first year head coach, we definitely had every reason in the book, with 11 new guys, to not do that, and I’m not going to speak for the other staffs and why they avoided taking those swings. I’m just going to say that I’m proud of the fact that we were courageous enough to try. I think it put us in some awkward situations. 10 of our first 15 were on the road. I think it’s a shame that our league has to succumb to that, to the point where you don’t get a game in return in a home and home, and that you’ve got to go only on the road and deal with that in order to get a quad one try. And we’re going to have to think through how we skew the numbers our own way in our favor. That still allows for wins moving forward, while putting us in a position of being at large bid. But in our rush, not only did we have to sign new 11 guys, but we had to go schedule a way that probably wasn’t the wisest, but we did it anyway to even try to get a quad one win, or try to be an at large team. We want a multi bid league. If four of our teams get in, then you can afford a loss in a way that right now you can’t afford a loss. You have to almost be perfect in our league to be a Quad one, good tournament team, moving target, we did our best as a year one staff to hit the moving target. I don’t know if what we did was perfect or not, but I know how important it is, because you want to give yourself more than one chance to get in the tournament. So we’ll continue to fight to get the analytics right, and we’ll continue to try to be tough enough to go schedule a game, if it’ll help us get in,” Jakus said.
