There will be a lot of familiar faces in the men’s basketball locker room this season, with one notable exception. Head coach Chris Oliver stepped down earlier this month to take the head coaching position at the University of Windsor and will be replaced for the season by former assistant head coach Rob Smart.
This is the only major change the team will be undergoing considering they lost only one player to graduation—albeit their captain, Jon Cudney—and Smart will be ed by returning assistant coach Suche James and former Golden Gaels captain Duncan Cowan.
Oliver’s decision to leave comes as a surprise to some, considering the team improved each year under his leadership—they were 4-18 in his first season—and this spring hosted their first playoff game in 35 years. They led late in that game, but came up just short, losing by seven points to the University of Toronto. The fourth-place finish was the team’s best season since 2000.
His replacement knows OUA basketball well. Smart is a Queen’s graduate and former player who began his coaching career in nearby Napanee. His brother Dave is the head coach of the Carleton University Ravens, where Smart’s two sons have been playing.
His coaching background suits the leader of a Queen’s program which has a harder time recruiting top prospects than many other schools.
“A lot of times at the club tryouts in Napanee, we’d get eight players out and they would be the eight players that played,” Smart explained. “We always told them right from the start that we planned to compete at the highest level.” Smart brings the same attitude to the Gaels.
He acknowledged that Queen’s is in a tough spot regarding recruiting, due to its high academic standards.
“There are impediments to Queen’s having a really great basketball team—[the school is] tough to get into, that’s the reality,” he said. “But in the end, basically, if you get kids who are prepared to do what they have to do, I would never say they can’t get there.”
The Gaels finished last year with 11 wins and 11 losses in a very tough conference, which includes the CIS Champion Ravens—who were undefeated in the regular season—and the talented York Lions. Their strength was on the defensive side of the ball: they finished the season as the second-ranked defensive team in Canada, behind only the Ravens.
“Our biggest dilemma is that we’re in the toughest conference,” Smart said, “but we were one game out of third place last year. Hopefully, we’re going to be a little bit better, especially as we have pretty much the same team. I believe we can do it.”
Oliver could not be reached for comment. In a statement on the Windsor Lancers’ website announcing his hiring, he said, “I believe there is tremendous opportunity at Windsor to build a championship calibre program.”
Meanwhile, Queen’s women’s basketball head coach Dave Wilson has been named an assistant coach for the Canadian junior women’s (under-19) team. He will Rich Chambers and head coach Christine Stapleton for the 2005 FIBA Under-19 World Championship, which takes place July 15-24 in Nabeul and Tunis, Tunisia.
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