New Coach on Campus
Don Brown suits up and sets a positive tone
By Paul Perillo
The walls in Don Brown's office are bare, a sign of
the hectic schedule Northeastern's new head football coach is following.
With the exception of a pair of Huskies helmets next to the desk, few clues
indicate this office belongs to the man now leading N.U.'s football program.
But amid all the commotion that goes with assuming such a job, Brown
is the picture of enthusiasm on this beautiful summer day, a little more
than a month after he was appointed to take over the reins from nine-year
coach Barry Gallup. Though staff members call twice, waiting for him to
begin a meeting, nothing can stop Brown from conveying his excitement about
his new job.
"There are two factors that entered into my decision to come here,"
Brown says. "The first is the city of Boston, and all it has to offer.
In terms of recruiting, it's a great city for a college student. I got
a whole new perspective of the campus itself when I interviewed with [N.U.
athletic director] Ian [McCaw]. It's much more appealing than I thought
it would be.
"The second reason is football. There's a lot of talent here. It
wasn't long ago [1997] that this team went eightthree. We went twonine
last year, but there were five very tight games that could have made the
record sevenfour. Sometimes change is good. When things aren't going
that well, sometimes you stir the soup a little to get things going in
a different direction."
"Change" is the operative word for the 2000 version of the
Northeastern football team. Gallup stepped down as head coach after accepting
an administrative position with the football program at his alma mater,
Boston College. With spring practice and recruiting already completed,
Brown stepped in on June 2 with an eye toward turning around last year's
disappointing season.
That left little time to prepare for the September 2 opener with American
International College. In mid-summer, Brown, wife Deborah, and their four
children were still searching for a house in the Boston area and trying
to adjust to their new surroundings. Brown, who scrambled for a month to
put together his coaching staff, was still assessing his roster. He indicated,
for example, that there would be more newcomers on the roster before the
season's start.
But the forty-five-year-old coach has been in this position before,
albeit not as the head man. After ten years as an assistant at Dartmouth
and Yale, Brown was named head coach at Plymouth (New Hampshire) State
in 1993 and, after compiling a 256 record in his three years there,
quickly became a hot coaching commodity. He was named the Freedom Football
Conference's Coach of the Year each year.
Brown's career was then bolstered by his appointment as defensive coordinator
for Brown University. There he hooked up with the highly successful Mark
Whipple. The two were together for four seasons before Brown came to Huntington
Avenue.
After two seasons at Brown University, Whipple and Brown went to UMass,
where the 29 Minutemen became the 123 Division I-AA National
Champions in just one season. They followed that up with a 94 mark
last year and a trip to the quarterfinals of the national playoffs.
Brown believes the similarities between UMass and Northeastern are evident.
"It's almost an identical situation," he says. "We walked
into the room to meet the team [at UMass], and it was like walking into
a morgue. The difficult part is getting the players to move forward and
to set a tone. You have to get the players on the same page in terms of
how you do things.
"Last year, Northeastern was kind of in a rut. But the key to getting
out of it is establishing credibility and stability."
Brown hopes an aggressive, attacking style of play, particularly on
defense, will do just that. His UMass units were known for wreaking havoc
and creating turnovers: In the 1998 national title game win over Georgia
Southern, the Minutemen forced seven turnovers. Offensively, Brown will
try to find a better balance between running and passing.
"You've got to be able to do everything," he says. "We
have to make people respect our running game. Most people think that we
threw the ball all over the place at UMass. But that's not the case. Whip
knew how important running the ball was, and if you look at the numbers,
we did that. I like to throw the ball, too, but after sticking it in the
tailback's chest a few times and catching the safeties cheating. Then you
try to get the ball down the field."
He has no place to live and his office is nearly empty, but Don Brown
couldn't be more enthused about coaching the Northeastern football team.
Field Hockey Team Shooting for the Top
Northeastern's field hockey team is used to winning.
With six America East titles, ten NCAA appearances, and three trips to
the Final Four during her twelve seasons as coach, Cheryl Murtagh expects
to win.
That's why last year's 812 finish, the first sub-.500 season of
Murtagh's career, raised so many eyebrows among field hockey watchers.
And it didn't sit too well with the coach or her team. During the off-season,
Murtagh says, "we took a look at absolutely every aspect of our program.
We changed in a lot of ways-fundamentally, recruiting, everything. Nobody
was happy with the way last year played out, and I think that is a good
thing. We're anxious to put that behind us and get back on track."
But that won't be easy. Though the Huskies have won 68 percent of their
games since Murtagh arrived in 1988, she has assembled a difficult schedule.
In addition to the conference slate, the Huskies have home games with perennial
powers Michigan, Michigan State, and Old Dominion, as well as road games
with UCBerkeley and Stanford.
Murtagh believes it's better to face the country's best before preparing
for the New England teams than beat up on weak opponents who provide little
competition. It's a philosophy she's had success with in the past, and
last year's struggles did little to dampen it. The problems in 1999, according
to the coach, had less to do with opponents than the youth of her team.
Ten players from the 1998 squad, a team that finished 148 and went
to the NCAA tournament, were missing, and the youngsters who took their
place predictably struggled, especially in the early going.
"We certainly improved as the season went on," Murtagh says.
"I think a big key to this year's team will be how we deal with the
early part of the season. We have to keep our confidence up and play through
any adversity. But that's typically the type of player and the type of
student we have at Northeastern-hard workers who never quit."
Another factor last season was the knee injury goalkeeper Kathleen Madaus
suffered during the first practice, keeping her out of the lineup for five
games. The junior is healthy now, a fact that by itself, Murtagh believes,
should provide a huge lift.
Offensively, the Huskies' search for goals last season began and ended
with Jackie Carl (now a student assistant coach). She finished with fifteen
goals; no one else had more than four. Murtagh is confident that sufficient
firepower can be found in the trio of Krisanne Duchemin, Sarah Broderick,
and Kelly Williams. "We'll need some production from these players
if we're going to get back where we belong."
For the Northeastern field hockey team, that's on top of the America
East standings and in the NCAA tournament as one of the top ten or fifteen
programs in the country. Despite the atypical performance in 1999, the
Huskies still finished third in the conference and knocked off defending
America East champ New Hampshire in the semifinals before falling to Boston
University, 20, in the championship.
"There's no doubt that we can compete for the conference title,"
Murtagh says. "We have a lot of work to do, and teams like UNH, BU,
and Delaware are very tough. But nobody on this team wanted to be associated
with the first Northeastern team to finish under .500, and nobody is forgetting
what happened to us last year. We're determined not to let it happen again."
With their track record, it's a good bet it won't.
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