They talk about the magic of Indiana high school hoops including the legends of coaching, college recruiting and winning a state basketball state championship

Dan Archer coached Bishop Chatard to the Indiana 3A State Championship last year at Conseco Fieldhouse. He grew up watching some of the biggest coaching legends work their craft. Watching these coaches helped shape his coaching style.

In this interview he discusses what makes Indiana basketball so special. He also discusses winning the state championship and going through the college recruiting process with his star player.

This interview give hoops fans from across the country a peek into the magic of Indiana basketball.

CigarBoy: When you started last year on your state championship run, when did you know that you had something special going on?

Archer: Well, we had an eleven game winning streak at the end of the prior year. That was the longest in the history of the school. We had some injuries and we were 3-8, turned it around and won our Sectional. Lost a heartbreaker in the Regionals, but when I saw those kids and how they had played, I was encouraged. When I saw them put together that streak and saw the heartache we had after that two-point loss in the Regionals, I kind of knew we were going to be good. But, we went over and played North Central in their holiday tournament...

CigarBoy: Now, they're a traditional power, right?

Archer: Yeah. That's where I used to coach and they were ranked at that time in the top five of the state, regardless of the class. We went over and played them in their holiday tournament after we had beaten a really good Toronto Eastern Commerce team to earn the right to play them. And when we beat them at their place I remember the players just refused to lose. They just had great attitudes. I think that's the point where we got confidence that we could play with anybody. I think that if I look back on the season, that was probably the biggest game because it was a hostile environment and it was a very good team. That's when our coaches and our guys realized we have got something.

CigarBoy: When you started making your run and you get into the playoffs, be honest, did you really think that you were going to win it all?

Archer: Well, I tell you, the way the Sectional went we played a rival, and we handled them pretty well the first game. Then we played again on Friday night against Roncalli High, another rival and won. I mean, in a game that was unbelievably contested, you just can't believe the intensity. And then the next night we played the host, on their home court, who had won eleven straight games, and won that game by three points in an absolute nail biter. So, no I did not think (chuckling) we were going to roll, but when we got to the Regional game, we played a morning game and again we played well enough to win. As we went back to the hotel between games Dan Cage, who is now a freshman at Vandy approached me and said, "Coach, we exorcised some demons" because that's the game we'd lost, the year before. We came back and won handedly in the evening, I mean 61-38, I think it was. That's when I looked at the coaches when we were coming back that night and I said, "you know, we are playing better every game" and we were really never challenged again the rest of the tournament. .

CigarBoy: When you got into the final game, what's it like? I mean when you walk out on the court, you're at Conseco, right?

Archer: Yeah.

CigarBoy: You're on a NBA court, you walk out, there are thousands of fans there, do you have butterflies? What happens?

Archer: Well, we had a very experienced team but we were still in awe. We had a police escort to go down to the game and I had these agendas set up for the whole tournament that listed times down to the minute of what we were supposed to do and when. Cage was laughing, because when we got back from semi he said, "coach, we're late - we were three minutes off." That's how well things were planned out. And it was my staff really. We met on Sunday and planned it all out. But to get back to your question, we got from Chatard to Conseco in ten minutes and so it threw my agenda off because we had about an hour and fifteen minutes before we even dressed. So I looked at the coaches and I said, "oh boy, I may have goofed." This may be the thing that costs us because we're in this big arena and nobody is there yet, really, and they could have tensed up. I look over and two or three of them are laying down, sleeping on the chairs. So much for tensing up!. They were more relaxed, obviously, than the coaching staff was. But I stayed out of the locker room as the team went in to dress . I just stayed out and a couple of the coaches came out and I was sitting in the tunnel watching Conseco fill up, and one of the coaches said, "you alright?" I said, "yeah, you know, I have dreamed of this all my life. I mean I have grown up in this state and I am going to watch this all." I saw some people come in and they waved at me, I was down in the tunnel and I enjoyed watching the place fill up. I figured I might as well soak up every minute of this because you never know if you're gonna be back. Obviously, everybody hopes they'll win it every year. You know I have lived 43 years of my life and that's been my dream - to get to the state championship game........so I was a little bit nervous.

CigarBoy: Okay, you go through the game and it wasn't a close game; you smoked Ft. Wayne Elmhurst At what point in the fourth quarter, did you finally know your team was the state champs? Or at what point did you light your victory cigar!

Archer: You know, we were playing a team that was very dangerous. They had just beaten the team that was number one in the state and we were so focused on playing our game that with a little over two minutes, three minutes to go, I looked up and we were up 30 points. And that's when I looked at my assistant coaches, I thought we were going to be state champs and I got to get these guys out of the game because our starters were still in. But with the three point shot you can get back into a game in a heartbeat. A 20-point lead can go really quick and that's what I was concerned about. But I think with about two and a half minutes to go, I went right down the line and all of us hugged - all the players on the bench and the coaches - I think we kind of realized we've done what we set out to do.

CigarBoy: So what happens the minute the game is over? Did you hug someone? Did you run out on the court? Did you jump up and down? What did you do?

Archer: I was absolutely mobbed by my assistant coaches. The players - I'm very proud of the way that they celebrated - they gathered at mid-court,. You know they got in a circle and jumped on each other a little bit, but I was really proud of the way they did it. I've seen some teams, that get there and I don't like the way their shirts come off and things happen that I don't really like. But I think you saw the emotion come out. I'll tell you, the minute that I turned around and was freed up, I realized the enormity of Indiana basketball, I mean I had media from all over surrounding me from the time that game was over until after the post game press conference. I didn't get an opportunity to say anything to the Elmhurst team we beat until after the press conference. I mean I had radio stations, I had TV stations immediately talking to me and my players on live TV here in the state of Indiana. And that is something I'll always remember too, because you want to bust out at the seams and let loose but yet you've got to be composed and you want to have class. And of course, you want to compliment your opponents.. So that's what I remember..

CigarBoy: You know, this is being read by people around the country and I think they probably have an inkling of what goes on with Indiana basketball because of the movie Hoosiers. But let's talk about the mystique of Indiana basketball - what it means to Indiana, the young men's families and communities.

Archer: Well, you know, you start with coaches. In this state it is just phenomenal the preparation that people do when you play. And I know you've interviewed some of the best college coaches in this country. But our high school coaches here - not to slight anybody else, any other state - but when you're here you'd see what I mean. There's so much more emphasis on the game and from the time you're small, you know from my growing up, going down to see Arsenal Technical High School play Shortridge High School. Or watching Washington play Howe. Growing up, you'd see a school called Argos which is up by Plymouth, Indiana, that has about 120 kids turn around and beat South Bend Clay in a packed gym with about 4000 people cheering. But for people around the country that understand, it starts with your own little kid. Even in the city of Indianapolis, our city, there's an emphasis on it, obviously, because of our county and our city competitions. But around the state, it's still very much like Hoosiers. Now we have class basketball, which is different and that's a whole other issue, but you have communities literally turn out the lights when they leave town to come down here for the state finals. So I'm not familiar with some of the outlying states, but I know in Indiana it is a different atmosphere when you go to a high school gymnasium here to watch a game and the whole town is in the stands..

CigarBoy: Now you had a division I player on your team, Dan Cage, and he's playing right now for Vanderbilt. What's it like to have a stud player that's being recruited by a number of division I teams? How do you handle that? Does it take the emphasis away from the rest of the team?

Archer: That's a learning process. I've never had an individual player who got that much attention before. I was fortunate to be at North Central High School when Jason Gardner was being recruited. One of the things I did was call my former boss, Doug Mitchell, on numerous occasions. I picked his brain and would tell him that I marveled at the way he handled that because in Jason Gardner's case, every coach in the country was calling. In Dan's case, he had very strong emphasis from some mid-major schools all the way through to some Big Ten and some Big East schools. But now you throw into that mix, the Sectional tournament. The state tournament starts and he had signed with St. Bonaventure and that all broke apart with the scandal there. We're getting ready to go play in the sectional games against some very good competition. And Dan, to be honest with you, didn't play as well as he did later. That really affected his play. I don't know if we'll ever have a situation like that again, but I can tell you what it's done.......it's put our program on the map. I've had more contacts this fall than I ever had from college coaches that are looking at kids that are coming up. It taught me a lot about the recruiting process. I've never been through sitting down with a kid, his family and the college coaches. I learned a lot about the overall presentation that college coaches give and then to try to get you to understand what fits a player the best. And I think, to be honest with you, we really liked what he was going to go to at Bonaventure and when that went down and he ended up at Vanderbilt, he felt even better. You know he's a student first; he's going to an excellent university and he's going to play for an Indiana guy, Kevin Stallings, who used to be at Purdue with Gene Keady. So in hindsight it worked out really well. But I can tell you it is very hectic, but his family and Dan made it a great process for me. It was really a good deal.

CigarBoy: Let's walk through the recruiting process. He's a stud player. I guess he's getting interest from St. Bonaventure and a lot of other schools?

Archer: Uh huh.

CigarBoy: What other schools are after him? Talk about each of those schools now and how they recruited him.

Archer: Well, Furman had come in, North Carolina-Wilmington, Wright State, and the Naval Academy. He was accepted at the Naval Academy. Dan had a 1200 SAT and was in the top 10 in his class. So in that aspect, he had a little different look because of his academic status, too. He was a good athlete and he was a good person. He had the whole package. Some of the presentations were three hours long. Where we had made contacts, set up a meeting and we would all come here to the school. Instead of doing a home visit, we did it here at the school. It was better for everybody because we had one of my assistant coaches involved too, Scott Benkie, who had known Dan since he was in third grade. And we all sat down and we listened to the college coaches give their presentations. I am just kind of summarizing, but in all aspects it was like mom and dad had questions, I had questions, and Dan had questions. What it did was make it even more complicated of a decision for Dan, because you know, with the Naval Academy you are set for life. But in Dan's case I think he's got aspirations to play professionally overseas. So out of respect, we immediately contacted Navy to let them know that he may pursue something overseas to play basketball so going to Navy and serving in the armed forces was out. That was very difficult to turn down. Some of the other cases it was just a matter of not getting good vibes from the coaches at a school. We put it all in Dan's lap, which is another thing. I commend his parents and everyone involved because I think if you had a kid, you'd say, "oh gosh, I'd love for him to play for such and such" but you also want what the kid wants. That's what you got to put first........what Dan wanted. So, as we went through this process, I think one of the things that Billy McCaffrey brought to the table was Billy didn't really have a whole lot of flash with him. He just sat down and he talked man to man: He said, "what would you like to know about the school?" And then he brought kind of a different, relaxed approach. And in Kevin Stallings' situation when he came here, his coaches and Kevin really did their homework. They needed a shooting guard. Kevin comes in and he's familiar with this area because he recruited it with Purdue. He's familiar with Indiana high school basketball, started talking about some of the gyms and some of the games he had seen years ago. I think all of us kind of struck up a relationship with him just from that aspect. And then he's worked with Roy Williams and he's been with Gene Keady. Then the match up with the school, I think, are the things that drew Dan's attention to the school. He's got a little brother coming up, Greg - who's getting some early looks right now from mid-major schools like Indiana State and Wright State and here in Indiana, Valparaiso, Indiana University-Fort Wayne, already sending him materials and he really hasn't even played a lot of minutes. But, I think we'll be a little better prepared for that process. Maybe it will eliminate some schools a little earlier. You know, in Dan's case, it was a whirlwind. And I think in Greg's case, we're going to go see a practice, we're going to go see some teams play. So that will probably improve that process.

CigarBoy: When you're looking as you whittled it down to Dan's final three schools, how did you and the Cage family evaluate those schools.

Archer: Well, (chuckles) I am drawing a blank on the third school. It was down to Bonaventure, Wright State, and I'm blank - I'm completely blank because it's been awhile. But the final two were definitely between Bonaventure and Wright State. In Wright State's case, former Coach Schilling and I go way back. We coached together in high school and that was really a tough situation for me because, personally, Eddie and I are still friends. His father and I are real close and in fact, Ed Sr. is a consultant for our team. He came in on Saturday and did some work with our players and our post players Dan knew I would love for him to play for Eddie Schilling. But one of the things that Dan talked about at that school was he wanted more of a college life. He wanted an on-campus type atmosphere a little bit more than Wright State had to offer at this point. And then when Coach Schilling left I think it took Wright State out of the mix.. I mean he immediately leaned when he met McCaffrey. When he went to St. Bonaventure he came back immediately and really liked it. He's a Catholic kid, it was a Catholic school, and no knocks against football, but that school didn't have football. Basketball was the only game in town. And that's what enticed him about going to Bonaventure. Education obviously was number one, then the setting, and those things I talked about. Then there was McCaffrey and van Breda Kolff - and the players, I mean he had met the players and was really kind of startled at the way things ended there because he thought he had a pretty good feel for what was going to go on there. But you don't know what's going to happen in a situation like that. We had Utah come in - they ended up signing somebody else. So, in Dan's case, it was just bad timing. Um, I'm trying to think who else came in. Somebody from out east, on the east coast, but I'm blank on that, it's been awhile. But when Stallings from Vandy came in I think the relationship hit up immediately plus the fact that Dan was drawn to that school academically. So those are the kinds of ways we tried to narrow things down. It's difficult when you're dealing with such quality people. It's very difficult to do.

CigarBoy: So you get Dan signed, you're squared away there. What's it like this year? You're coming back as state champs. You've lost your stud, so obviously you're a little bit different team. How did you approach this year as the state champ but with a different team?

Archer: We've got some kids that played some minutes, but obviously not like last year. That was a very experienced team with five seniors. We plugged in some kids and, we think, some talent. Ryan Baker's coming back up; I talked to UConn about him being a 6'6", 230 lb. center playing, really he's a whole other story too. He's been offered by every Big Ten school and Notre Dame in football and is a phenomenal player. He's gonna play football in college, but he didn't miss a shot in the championship game. He's great - you need to see him play - he's a great player. A while back we tried to figure out what we could do best to win. Yeah, if I worked at a school where we had 3000 kids, I wouldn't have half my team playing football. There'd probably be natural separation of athletes. But here, we have players who play all the sports. It's not a complaint. What we try to do is keep things simple and I think that's what's worked for us. We have a very simple set of offenses, defenses, and out of bounds plays. And we just try to execute better than everybody. And use what we have: we're very strong physically; you look at the players that we have in our program that we plugged in this year. In the last three years they have not lost very many games in any sport. The football team lost one; they've won 35 straight against Indiana opponents. They lost one - and it was to Elder in Cincinnati by one point - in two years. They've won back to back state championships in football. We won the football and basketball last year. What we're going to rely on is attitude; we think these kids want to win every game they play whether it be tidily winks or basketball. They want to win every game. The other thing is we're going to approach this as a championship defending team. At least as a coaching our staff.. We're gonna talk about every game being our championship game. We try to be aggressive and play like we're supposed to play. Because I think a lot of times, I've even felt myself naturally feeling pressure, because everybody expects you to do it again. What we're going to try to do is be the best that we can be. That's what I've talked about the last two seasons especially. And if we're the best that we can be, we are awfully hard to handle. But there's a lot of variables in this situation. In both football and basketball there are huge expectations but we always talk about these locker room walls. And that's all that matters in there. And when we take the court, it's not about them, it's about us.

CigarBoy: You know that kind of leads me to the last question. You know you're here in the Mecca of high school basketball. When you talked about keeping it simple in the plays you run and the way you do it, is your coaching style typical of Indiana high school basketball or abnormal?

Archer: Well, that's a good question. I think one of the first influences I've ever had in basketball is I remember watching Johnny Wooden's teams play. And then when I was a kid his teams would win every year. I read a lot about him, I heard him speak, read his books and his message is always pretty simple. And then somewhere along the line I have been influenced by the people I worked for and coached with.. That plan, I think, is just something that works here. I think what you see typically in Indiana are very thorough coaches. I think you see fundamentally sound ball clubs. Their situations are different than ours because like I said I'm meshing together guys...I get five days of practice and then we go play a game. Some of these people have had several weeks of practice since their players don't play football deep into the season. So I think people are simple, but I also think their plan is a little bit more expansive than ours because of the situation. Um, typically in Indiana what you see are great man to man defensive teams and pretty good shooters. But I think that's a coaching style that has intensity at its core and I think everybody here in this state has that.

CigarBoy: Okay, Dan, when you think of Indiana basketball you think of John Wooden, Tony Hinkle, George Theofanis, and now Dan Archer (the coach laughs). Tell me a little about your background as you become a coaching legend. Kind of walk me, give me a real brief walk through of how you got to be a basketball coach here.

Archer: Well you said the term "legend" and I don't know about that (both chuckle) - infamous might be better. I talked about seeing John Wooden as a kid. He grew up in Martinsville, Indiana, which is just south of Indianapolis and even Branch McCracken we didn't talk about him. We talked about Theofanis from Butler and Tony Hinkle, I mean you know, that's THE Hinkle Fieldhouse. That's where I saw the high school games I was talking about, when I saw Shortridge and Tech; I saw them play there with thousands and thousands in the seats. You know, you go into these arenas that are named after people and you feel it. I mean we could walk over to Hinkle Fieldhouse right now and you would feel the vibes of Indiana high school basketball. So, as a player I loved John Havlicek I mean that is who I always wanted to be.

CigarBoy: He's from Ohio?

Archer: Yeah, I know. I know he's not an Indiana guy, but if you really want to talk about probably the most influential time of my life it is when Bob Knight took over in Indiana. And Indiana, we used to be called the "hurried Hoosiers" and then Bob Knight came with his style of play, you know his defensive-minded basketball? And his motion offense, there was no shot clock; and they completely changed the face of basketball in the state. It went from no emphasis really at all on defense to us going as players and watching Indiana play. Then as coaches going to his clinics and everybody trying to do what he did. I think that's an era that I can't equate it to anything else other than just that the '60's and '70's and how time evolved but seeing Bob Knight take over was a drastic change in Indiana basketball. To watch those teams, to watch them go undefeated in '75 and then they lost to Kentucky in the regionals. Then turned around and win it all in the next year is something that I think that I've always wanted to do. That is go undefeated like the 1976 Hoosiers did. You know we went 22-2, but, you know, Pike High School here in town went undefeated. I think that's everybody's dream is to have a perfect season - but you see how hard it is to do in any sport. But that was probably the most influential time were those times in '71 when Knight took over and then through my college years in the '80's watching his teams play. And Gene Keady is another basketball legend. You cannot mention basketball without mentioning the job he's done at Purdue. Homer Drew at Valparaiso has been an outstanding coach and you can go on and on. I mean our college teams...Ball State's had Majerus there and made some runs in the tournament and is traditionally a good program.. You drop these names and to be a high school coach in this state and you know, by no means, you say a legend, I just think I've been very fortunate to have good coaches and good players like anybody else and have some luck. So, that's what kind of formed my coaching philosophy - to take a little piece of all these people and try to put it into our program. I didn't mean to, but as we were talking about programs here in the state, there is obviously one right under our nose just a few blocks from here. That would be Butler. In the run they beat Louisville last year in the NCAA tournaments and was the talk of the town and that's what I mean about Indiana basketball. So to see that happen just a few blocks from here, again, it adds to the equation there when I was talking about formation. Indiana basketball still is a pretty good product.

CigarBoy: Well you sold me! Thanks for taking the time to talk with me!

Archer: It was my pleasure.

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