Men's college basketball: Bethel rediscovers 'the juice'

Al Lesar Commentary

5:29 a.m. EST, March 4, 2013

MISHAWAKA -- When a basketball program becomes stale, the first victim is its “juice.”

Energy is missing. Daily work is a drudgery.

This time last year, Bethel Hall of Fame coach Mike Lightfoot recognized the program he had nurtured to national success over the past quarter-century was facing a crisis.

“We were at a crossroads,” said Lightfoot. “No doubt about it.”

His plan: Remove the doubt; or doubters.

The Pilots had just finished the 2011-12 season at 15-14 on the Thursday before spring break. No conference tournament. All that was left was to spend the time away licking the wounds.

“After our last game on a Thursday night, coach said, ‘Take Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off, then be back here on Monday ready to work,” said Pilot junior guard and Mishawaka High grad Ryan Benner.

Benner and his teammates didn’t know what to think.

“Bethel basketball does not take spring break off,” said Lightfoot.

So, if the Pilots aren’t playing, they’re going to be in the weight room working.

“(The campus) was like an empty tomb, no one around,” Lightfoot said. “We had to be here if we were going to resurrect.”

Lightfoot put his players through his own sort of juicer.

“It was tough love, for sure,” he said. “Our attitude was: If you don’t like it, find someplace else to go.”

He lost one, and “a couple others had questions,” Lightfoot said.

“In the last year, (Lightfoot) kinda became a father figure,” Benner said. “Feeling like that, it was easier to run through a brick wall for him.”

That brick wall came in the form of the odds stacked against the Pilots heading into this season. Picked seventh in the Crossroads League preseason coaches poll, Lightfoot used the selection as fodder for an “us against them” approach the entire season.

All year, all the players heard were that they were seventh.

“That got to be so annoying,” Benner said. “All we heard was, ‘Every team thinks you don’t belong.’”

Lightfoot scribbled “seventh” on the board in the Pilot locker room and left it up all season.

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