By Paul Perillo

This winter has been a season of change around the Northeastern basketball programs, but not one of discontent. Both the men’s and women’s squads are adjusting to new coaches, and, though the early results weren’t spectacular turnarounds—a 9-17 season for the men and a 3-21 record for the women by the middle of February—each team appears to be on the right path.

And Bill Coen and Daynia La-Force Mann say they’re enjoying life at the helm of their respective squads.

“Northeastern is a great academic institution, and that’s what I wanted to be associated with,” the forty-four-year-old Coen said in December, a day after leading the men to their third win, against UNH. “We have a great bunch of kids with solid characters who want to be challenged, and they’re really buying into what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Coen, who had been an associate head coach at Boston College, didn’t pick a ready-made contender for his first head coaching job. When Ron Everhart bolted for Duquesne last spring, CAA defensive player of the year Shawn James went with him. Instead of having a junior star to build around after Jose Juan Barea departed for the pros, Coen inherited a thin club with little firepower and less depth.

To make matters worse, the 2006 portion of the schedule was only slightly less taxing than the Boston Celtics’ calendar. The nonconference opponents Northeastern played before the new year included four Big East schools—Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Connecticut, and Louisville—and New England powers UMass and BC, Coen’s former home. The Huskies opened the season with four games in five nights before pounding cross-town rival Boston University in the home opener.

“We’ve preached to the kids that we want to play against the best,” Coen explains. “Against those teams, there is absolute accountability. If you execute properly, you’ll have positive results. But there’s no margin for error. Sometimes against lesser opponents, you can get fooled into thinking you’re playing better than you are.”

Many of the players express a genuine affection for the new coach. For his part, Coen singles out the play of seniors Bennet Davis, Adrian Martinez, and Bobby Kelly, who embraced their new leader after toiling for Everhart for three years. Coen knows that’s not always the case when coaches change.

“I’m extremely pleased with the effort of our seniors,” Coen says. “They’ve been placed in a very difficult position, and I appreciate their efforts and production daily.”

As bumpy as Coen’s road has been, La-Force Mann, thirty-three, would consider it a cakewalk by comparison. She lost her top two players to injury in the first weeks of the season, making wins predictably tough to come by.

Senior Jody Burrows went down with a knee injury and was lost for the year. Shaleyse Smallwood, a junior, missed a few games in December with a leg injury. But the Huskies continued to work hard through the adversity.

“The girls have really embraced the staff and our philosophy,” says La-Force Mann, who came to Northeastern from the University of New Haven, where she was a conference-winning head coach. “They wanted a change, and they’ve bought in quickly. Now we need to find a way to get some more wins so we can validate it.”

La-Force Mann picked up her first victory in December with a 10-point win over Harvard. After just missing several earlier close calls, she was thrilled with her team’s effort.

“We’ll get better because they believe in what we’re doing,” she says. “We have to stay focused and try to do the little things needed to win. We talk a lot about free throws, boxing out, taking good shots, and other things that will give us an opportunity to succeed, and not so much about wins and losses.”

Both clubs expected to hit some early potholes, and they have. But when you watch Coen and La-Force Mann preside over their teams, you come away with the clear sense the programs are in good hands. The squads play with discipline and intensity, two cornerstones for any successful team, regardless of the sport.

And, perhaps more important, the early signing period was productive for Coen and La-Force Mann, who are eager to compete for CAA titles down the road.

“I spent a lot of time in September and October trying to sell North­eastern,” La-Force Mann says.

The response she got was gratifying. “It was pretty easy to go into homes and sell the university and the program,” she says.

Photo by Tracy Powell

Back as Coach, Gunn Still Rouses the Rink

Imagine walking into any endeavor and finding out you’re about to be trained by the best of the best. That’s what happened to the Northeastern women’s hockey team at the beginning of the season.

Head coach Laura Shuler, BHS’94, had added an interesting assistant coach to her staff: former Husky, former All-American, and current U.S. National Team member Chanda Gunn, BHS’04.

“I was so excited she wanted to come onboard,” Shuler says. “Even if only on a part-time basis, because of her involvement with the National Team. It gives our girls an incredible opportunity to be coached by the best goalie in the world.”

Shuler isn’t exaggerating. Gunn has been the National Team’s top netminder since graduating from Northeastern, the only goalie to defeat Canada in World Championship competition.

Gunn also won a bronze medal with Team USA at the 2006 Winter Olympics, in Turin, Italy. She is currently training for the upcoming international season. Her on-the-ice credentials are only magnified by her resilience in her fight with epilepsy, which was diagnosed when she was in the fourth grade.

“She’s just so energetic and dedicated,” Shuler says. “She’s a really good person, and I’d love to have her around all the time. She’s willing to do anything with the girls. Because she’s not always at the games, she does a lot of video analysis. It’s such an advantage to have her, given her remarkable resumé.”

During one of Gunn’s coaching stints with the players, she started a workout she calls Goalie World, basically some extra ice time for her protégées. But the rest of the team quickly latched onto the program, too. Shuler says all the players respond to Gunn’s eagerness and constantly try to improve.

And, because Gunn is such a well-known name in women’s hockey, Shuler is also able to take good advantage of her assistant on the recruiting trail.

“Recruiting has been her secondary responsibility,” Shuler says. “Not only does her name open a lot of doors, she’s played with and against the highest level of competition the sport has to offer, so I really value her opinions. When someone like Chanda Gunn is evaluating players for you, that’s an invaluable asset to have.”

Shuler’s team did not get off to a great season, winning just three games by the middle of February. But, despite the record, the coach feels the program is at its strongest point since she took over three years ago. Because Shuler was hired so late, there wasn’t a lot of time to recruit for her second season, and the current crop of freshmen is her first true class. She thinks the team is deeper now than it’s ever been.

“We’ve had a rough start here,” Shuler said back in December. “But we’ve played against some pretty solid competition, and the games have been a little more even than they were in the past.”

Ironically, the coach says, goaltending is a weak spot for the team. “In the past, Chanda and Marisa [Hourihan] had to make fifty or sixty saves a game to keep us in it,” she says. “Now we don’t have that kind of talent in the net, but we’re playing much more competitive hockey.”

With Gunn around to spread her magic, Shuler’s goaltending woes likely won’t last long. Gunn’s already had a notable impact, just on a part-time schedule. Because that’s what working with the best can do.