Reinhard: A chat with Colgate's Dan Hunt

No current Patriot League football coach – assistants included -- has spent more time in the league than Colgate’s Dan Hunt. It may be only his sixth year as the head coach, but Hunt spent another 19 years as a Dick Biddle assistant.

Hunt won league Coach of the Year honors in three of his first five seasons. He’s not getting it this year – in fact, he will finish with fewer wins this season than any other since he succeeded Biddle in 2014.

At 3-8, he’s having a tough time, but he could still have a say in who represents the league in the FCS postseason tournament. Lafayette would to well to put the blinders on this week and focus on nothing but the Raiders, who have a whopping 45-13-4 advantage in the head-to-head series.

I caught up with Hunt the other day to get some comments for my Morning Call preview of the game. But before we hung up, we talked about lots of other things as well. So, I thought I’d simply post the interview in full.

ME: HOW’S THE WEATHER UP THERE TODAY (WEDNESDAY)?

DAN HUNT – Well, it was 8 degrees at practice yesterday; we had about three inches of snow Monday night and it’s been cold enough for it to stick around. And today’s not that much better. But then it moderates.

ME: DO YOU WANT THIS SEASON TO END?

DH – I never really want a season to end; it’s just that this one has been a unique one for us. I’m impressed with this team because, even at its worst, the kids showed up every day for practice ready to work and didn’t lose their energy. To be honest, this has been a lesson for me a little bit on managing expectations and how you approach things, but I never want to see it end. It’s just too much fun being out there working with them.

ME:  THIS IS DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE FOR YOU, BUT THE WHOLE LEAGUE IS SO SCREWY.

DH – Heh, heh, yeah.

ME: HOW DO YOU FIGURE WHAT’S GOING ON IN THIS LEAGUE?

DH – You really can’t, and last week certainly proved it. I look at this year, more than any, that the entire league top to bottom has very comparable talent and experience. I don’t think there’s any team that had a ton of experience coming back and everyone has their selection of good players and there are some really good young players playing really well for people. I said at the start of the year that this could be the year where 4-2 could win the conference. I don’t think that’s ever happened. At least, I don’t remember that. So, it’s crazy. Every week you look at the scores and I wouldn’t want to be a gambler trying to predict this league.

ME: SEEMS LIKE EVERY GAME IS COMING TO THE LAST PLAY

DH – You look at Georgetown; they have three league losses and two were on the last play of the game. Their game with Lafayette was a one-score game and their game with us was tight to the end. Tight victories which makes for entertaining games. Going into any game, especially in your own conference, you just never want to feel like you’re overmatched. You want to feel like this is going to be a game that comes down to who executes better. I think right now you could say that in every conference game, which is exciting at least.

ME: LEHIGH HAS A BUNCH OF GAMES IN A ROW WHERE IT WAS THE LAST PLAY OR OVERTIME, AND LAFAYETTE BLOWS A 21-POINT LEAD BUT WINS AGAINST FORDHAM AND NEARLY BLOWS ANOTHER ONE AGAINST HOLY CROSS. THEY’RE WELL AHEAD AND ALMOST DON’T WIN IT. I DON’T KNOW WHERE THAT COMES FROM. I WONDER, IS LAFAYETTE GETTING BETTER OR IS THE REST OF THE LEAGUE COMING BACK?

DH – Coaching today is so much psychology and taking the temperature of your team and finding a way to keep them playing with confidence. Lafayette is doing that right now.

ME: IT’S YOUR FINAL GAME … I DON’T KNOW IF YOU EVER PLAYED LAFAYETTE IN YOUR FINAL GAME.

DH – I don’t remember it. We usually finish with Lehigh ever year, so it would have to be a situation like this where we get done a week early.

ME: TWELVE DATES THREW THINGS OUT OF WHACK.

DH – We’ve been practicing since July 27. We finish with 10 games in a row. It’s a challenging schedule.

ME: THE INJURY SITUATION: GRANT BRENEMAN WAS OUT A WHILE AND NOW HE’S BACK AND IT SEEMS THAT IN THE LAST COUPLE OF GAMES THINGS ARE BEGINNING TO COME TOGETHER.

DH – Grant is back; he’s all the way back. Our two best games have been our last two. At least, as a coach, you have goals for your team, but one of your goals no matter what your record is, no matter what your preseason ranking is, your goal is to get better every day and every week. The last couple weeks, we’ve been getting better as a football team; so, hopefully, we have one more week of continuing that trend of improving.

ME: YOU COULD MESS THINGS UP IN THE LEAGUE; THIS COULD END UP IN A FOUR-WAY TIE.

DH – It’s crazy, isn’t it?

ME: FRESHMEN FOR LAFAYETTE THIS YEAR HAVE BEEN MAKING SOME BIG CONTRIBUTIONS, NOT JUST KEEGAN SHOEMAKER, BUT OTHERS, TOO. WHEN I LOOK AT YOUR TWO-DEEP, YOU HAVE ONLY ONE WHO STARTS BUT YOU HAVE ANOTHER HALF DOZEN BACKUPS. IS THIS MORE THAN USUAL FOR YOU?

DH – It’s certainly, yes, and it’s good and bad. It’s good in that I think that, as teams keep working with the scholarship model, you’re getting some better talent and they’re able to do more early. But also, scholarship or non-scholarship, it doesn’t matter, experience is important, so you have to live with the freshman mistakes. I think there are certain positions that lend themselves more to having freshmen play early. I think it’s impressive to have a freshman quarterback; I think it’s impressive to have a freshman linebacker; a running back, or defensive lineman or some of that is not as challenging mentally so you can let your physical talent take over. You’re seeing more and more of it and I guess you can take that as a positive for the talent level.

ME: HAS YOUR RECRUITING CHANGED?

DH – I’m a little bit different. I think recruiting is important, for sure, but I think the Patriot League, probably more than any league, is about retention and development. I think you have to keep your kids for four years and you have to improve them all. That’s why I like coaching in this league; it’s really about coaching. Recruiting is important; it never isn’t. But at the end of the day, we’re not getting five-star kids. We’re getting kids who are in the Patriot League for a reason and FCS for a reason and you have to manage that and find kids who you can see three years down the road and make that come to fruition through hard work on their part and coaching. For all the challenges this league presents, that’s one of the great advantages.

ME: LAFAYETTE HAS A BUNCH OF PLAYERS FROM TEXAS. THEY HAD NEVER HEARD OF LAFAYETTE; THEY HAD TO GO TO GOOGLE OR SOMETHING. THAT’S PART OF HOW SCHOLARSHIPS HAVE WIDENED THE RECRUITING AREA. ARE YOU FINDING THAT?

DH – Oh, 100 percent. I think scholarships have done that; I think each team in the league is trying to find almost unique areas to themselves. I think one of the things the scholarship has done is that the percentage of head-to-head recruiting within the conference I think has gone down. There are certain areas in the country each school is going into and signing kids where we don’t go there. We’ve really done well in the Midwest and Chicago and places we didn’t go before and places that not a ton of people are going. I think everyone, with the limited numbers, people are realizing that if everyone spreads out, you’re not doing as much head-to-head. A kid now through social media and the internet can learn about your team and learn about your school. Twenty years ago, they would have never considered it because it was a foreign land; but now, technology and the media have made the world a lot smaller. You’re getting kids who will jump on Google and find out about your team or the league and say, oh, this might be for me.”

ME: THEY ALSO FIND OUT FRESHMEN AND SOPHOMORES ARE STARTING AT DIVISION I LEVEL. AND MAYBE THE LAST THING THEY REALIZE IS THAT, IF YOU COME TO A PATRIOT LEAGUE SCHOOL, YOU’RE ALSO GOING TO GET A QUALITY EDUCATION. IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT FOOTBALL.

DH – Correct. I think the more that message gets out, and if we can continue to have teams succeed at a national level, I think that’s important, then you keep selling the brand for everybody.

ME: IT LOOKS LIKE IT’S GOING TO BE HARD, LIKE WHOEVER WINS THE LEAGUE IS GOING TO BE IN TROUBLE THIS YEAR.

DH – Yeah, I agree with that.

ME: AND YET, WHO KNOWS WHAT HAPPENS TWO OR THREE YEARS DOWN THE ROAD?

DH – Things have to line up for you. The years we were able to be fortunate enough to win in the playoffs and advance, you obviously have to be healthy, you have to have the right combination of talent, But it really is about experience at that point. Guys that have been around the block, have seen it, have played a couple of those teams. When that all lines up, you have a chance and you have to manage it right and get a little bit of luck, but you have to manage it right and do a good job when you have that.

ME: YOU LOST 25 GUYS …

DH -- Heh, heh, 28.

ME: HOW MANY OF THEM WERE STARTERS?

DH: – That’s what I meant about managing expectations. Our kids got that taste last year. Hey, we beat James Madison, we played North Dakota State. We want to build on that and do better than that. And we set our goals kind of [high], but look at what we lost. Offensively, we lost two all-Americans on the offensive line, and all-American tailback, an NFL wide receiver and the Patriot League’s leading receptions-per-game – and that’s a different kid than the NFL guy. And defensively, we lost everybody except for our two all-Americans, which were a D-lineman and a corner. An all-American corner can be taken out of the game; it’s hard for Abu [Daramy-Swaray] to influence a game on defense because the next thing you know, they don’t throw your way and that’s it. It’s almost the same with a defensive lineman [Nick Wheeler] if you just double team him. It’s hard. We lost so much production off last year’s team. I probably should have set our goals a little differently, especially with the first five games we had to play this year. That would have been challenging for any team and I think it affected us mentally. That’s on me. I should have done a better job there.

ME: HOW LONG DID IT TAKE THEM TO COME AROUND AFTER THE BRUTAL START. WAS THERE A TIME WHEN THEY WERE DRIFTING, OR DID THEY STAY WITH IT?

DH – They stayed with it, but again, it was a confidence thing. By the time we played Lehigh, it’s five in a row and not many games were too competitive. We had that attitude that we were waiting for something bad to happen rather than for something good to happen. We just didn’t have that intangible spark. We finally got it against Cornell, but we didn’t play well and had some bad things happen to us that game that we overcame. We went to Holy Cross and just didn’t play well at all. Something happened the last two weeks, but it’s too late. I think we’re playing our best football, which is what you want at the end of the year. It’s such a lesson in trying to be resilient and if we had just set our goals a little differently and been a little bit more realistic, we would have been able to handle it better. That’s something I learned from the year. The good thing is, at least, while it would have been easy to completely mail it in, they haven’t done that.

ME: AND THEN THE LEAGUE PUTS THE FAVORITE TAG ON YOU.

DH – Exactly right. Hey, it’s great to have that and to be ranked in the top 15 [nati0onally], but when we took a realistic assessment of everything we lost from last year, I almost thought, who do we think we are? We have a lot of kids playing who hadn’t played yet. You couple that with five really good teams to open up with, that’s what happens. It just kind of spirals. In 2015, we were 2-4, but we found a way to put it together in the league and get through the league and then make the playoff run. The difference was, with that team, nobody had any expectations going in. I think we were predicted to be third in the league. So, they didn’t feel like they were letting people down every week. This year’s team, it was like oh we’re the favorite, we’re ranked in the top 15, we’re just letting everybody down with each loss. That was hard to manage.

ME: BRENEMAN IS AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME, AND WHEN HE’S THERE WHO KNOWS? BUT YOU DON’T SEEM TO HAVE HOLLAND-TYPE RUNNING BACK TO OVERPOWER PEOPLE.

DH – James was special. We struggle with it up front, too, which hurts the running back, but we’re getting there. The good thing is, a lot of the kids playing now will be back next year.

ME: WHAT’S THE BOTTOM LINE THIS YEAR?

DH – If you’re going to have a bad year, let’s have a bad year so it wakes everybody up. If you go .500 or around there, it doesn’t hit you in the face. When you struggle and have it like this, you know you have to shake some things up. So, there will be some positives from this. I learned a lot this year about mistakes I made and I’m looking forward to fixing them and keeping that little chapter in the book so if we’re ever in the situation we know how to handle it.

ME: SEE YOU SATURDAY.

DH: I’m hearing 40 degrees. We might not have to bring our long-sleeved jerseys.