Canzano: Ritchie McKay says he got 'over' himself
Liberty basketball coach prepares for a date with Oregon Ducks.
Ritchie McKay was the head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State for exactly two seasons. One of the most impressive things he did was to parlay a 22-37 record and two ninth-place finishes in the Pac-10 into the head coaching job at the University of New Mexico.
I contacted a handful of people who worked closely with McKay in Corvallis. The nicest thing anyone I spoke with said was: “I haven’t thought about him in ages. I’ll leave it at that.”
To be fair to McKay, some of my former co-workers might say the same about me.
McKay is now the head coach at Liberty University. The Flames are the No. 12 seed in the NCAA Tournament and are preparing for their opening-round game on Friday night in Seattle against No. 5 Oregon.
“In it for himself.”
“Always looking for his next job.”
Those are things others told me about McKay’s younger coaching years at Portland State, Oregon State, and New Mexico. When I tracked down the 59-year-old coach on Tuesday, what surprised me was what he said about himself.
“I was a little young, and had too much ego,” McKay told me. “I was so much me-centric instead of others-centric early in my coaching stint.
“That’s a recipe for disaster.”
McKay left Oregon State in the spring of 2002 for New Mexico, his father’s alma mater. He posted an 82-69 record in five seasons there before being fired.
“It didn’t end the way I thought it would,” he said.
Now, here comes McKay, seemingly older and wiser, at Liberty University. He’s been the head coach for two different stints at the private conservative evangelical university. McKay’s first tenure at the school ended when he took a job as an assistant on Tony Bennett’s staff at Virginia. He left after six seasons to return to Liberty, where he’s been for the last decade.
McKay says time and that return helped him shed what he described as a “scarcity mentality.” He said he doesn’t worry about missing out on coaching jobs or making strategic career moves and isn’t focused on whether fans are growing impatient.
“Whatever the excuse or narrative, I’ve just stopped listening to it,” McKay told me. “Gregg Popovich always talks about how he wants players who are ‘over’ themselves. I think, as men, it’s hard to do. It’s hard to get over yourself. I think that’s why Liberty has been so good for me.”
His two-year stretch in the Pac-10 at Oregon State?
“Back then, the Pac-10 was really hard,” he said. “Coach (Ernie) Kent had it going at UO. Lute Olson, Mike Montgomery, Steve Lavin? Henry Bibby was in the league. The Stanford-Cal trip was just brutal.
“We were looking up at the rest of them.”
McKay and I talked about Friday’s NCAA Tournament basketball game. He praised the coaching of Dana Altman and went down Oregon’s roster, noting the skills of Jackson Shelstad and TJ Bamba, and the size of Nathan Bittle.
“We are who we are, we’re not going to get any taller in four days and we’re not going to put in a defense that will solve how to handle Bittle,” McKay told me. “We’re going to be who we are, and they’re going to be who they are.”
Liberty’s starting guards, McKay told me, are both under six feet tall.
“We’re often chastised (for that),” he said.
McKay left OSU for New Mexico in the spring of 2002. I arrived in the region six months later to write a sports column. I didn’t know him. We never spoke before Tuesday. Over the years I gathered that folks at Oregon State didn’t care for his act. It sounds to me like McKay didn’t care for it himself.
“Failure is learning,” he told me.
I’m a fan of Henry David Thoreau. His work stuck with me. Thoreau sought out solitude and learned about society by isolating himself from it. It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? The idea of moving far away from something in order to examine it more closely and with more clarity? In a way, getting away from our younger years only to see them better is sort of what we all do.
I suppose I could roast McKay today for using OSU as a two-year stepping stone all those years ago. For recruiting a bunch of players, selling them on the idea of building something special, only to jump at the first personal opportunity he got. For being a self-serving phony. But he let the air out of it on Tuesday by calling it out himself.
Liberty (28-6) won the Conference USA Tournament last Saturday night. It was a nice moment for McKay, who is back in the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time.
McKay said: “It’s really hard from the mid-major level to get to the tournament. You’re threading the eye of a needle. So we win on Saturday night, we get home at 3 a.m. from Huntsville, Ala. and everyone’s really excited about the selection show, then our opponent pops up.”
A date with the Oregon Ducks in Seattle.
Said McKay: “I can give you a list of 25 things that concern me.”
We are all “under construction” till we breathe our last breath. Sounds like Coach McKay has used that time to mature and grow in wisdom. Good reminder for all of us.
Sounds like Coach McKay has evolved, which I suppose we all aspire to do. I too once was chasing a better job; better pay, more prestige. It was a fool's errand and while I gained valuable experience it did not make me a better husband, father or friend. But life is like that: You learn from the trials and avoid repeating mistakes. I sleep better now. Go Ducks.