I sat down to talk to Saint Xavier Men’s Basketball Coach Tom O’Malley. O’Malley is in his 23rd and final season as head coach. He has three Chicago Collegiate Athletic Conference Coach of the year awards. He is also Saint Xavier’s all-time winningest head men’s basketball coach with over 500 victories to his name.
I opened up the interview asking him how he is able to keep his team motivated over the course of the season.
He told me that coaching is all about teaching and he tries to keep his players’ minds on their next task.
He continued to talk to me about his coaching style, explaining that in order to be effective, he needs to be critical of bad plays and tendencies without being critical of the person.
I then started to question him about the current season, asking him why his team has struggled so much on the road as opposed to at home games. He responded to me by telling me that they need to shoot better as a team on the road. He then elaborated that they were not a great shooting team, but they did have some very good shooters.
I then asked him to talk about the game against Trinity Christian. He told me that it was very important that they ended up winning this game and that they have been good against the Trolls in the past.
Next I asked him about Calvin Payawal, who has been playing since he became eligible at the end of January. He told me that Calvin is really athletic and a good scorer, but those games at the end of blowouts
We then began talking about the play of the entire bench, where he said overall, they have to be better.
He began to talk about Jeffery Mayberry’s game against Trinity Christian. He explained how Jeff was a spark off the bench, scoring 10 points and getting three rebounds.
Then I asked him about Joshua Evans, the team’s leading scorer. Coach O’Malley told me that Evans was a great two way player who could score while being a great defender. He went on to say that Josh was good at everything, except that his passing skills could use a little work, as it was not as good as his other skills yet, but he is only a Sophomore and could still develop it in the future.
After this, he began explaining that this team is really young and with the good coaching provided by his assistant will be great in upcoming seasons.
With my final question, I asked Coach O’Malley what we need to see for Saint Xavier Men’s Basketball to have a successful end to their season.
He reiterated to me that they needed to start shooting better to be better and then talked about the importance of getting a double-double.
He said that getting double-doubles is a sign of confidence for his players and that will be important in all facets of their games.