<p>As head coach at the same place for 34 years, Kerry Prather was bound to experience some uncharacteristically frustrating seasons.</p>
<p>The Franklin College men’s basketball coach expected them to be spaced further apart.</p>
<p>The Grizzlies have endured five consecutive losing seasons, averaging a very un-Franklin-like 6.6 victories during that stretch. It’s a reality that has forced the 62-year-old Prather to analyze every aspect of his program, including the man who runs it.</p>
<p>For most of three decades, the Grizzlies won championships, picked up postseason accolades and made the program one of the sturdiest pillars on the small-college basketball landscape.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]
<p>The recent lapse is attributed more to changes off the court than on it.</p>
<p>“The lifeblood of every program is recruiting. We’ve done it different ways. We did it the same way for a long time, and it was obviously successful for a long time. And then it wasn’t,” Prather said. “A part of your brain says you would instantly realize why it didn’t work and just fix it. But that’s really not the way it works.”</p>
<p>For years, the cornerstone of Grizzlies hoops was for players to come in as freshmen and incrementally improve their physical skills and knowledge of Prather’s system. Not one player, but four. Not one or two classes of recruits, but many in succession so that a winning season, while not guaranteed, was at least likely.</p>
<p>This started to change in 2009.</p>
<p>Inconsistencies regarding recruits, their basketball improvement and whether they remained a part of the Grizzlies program through their senior year began taking a toll.</p>
<p>Prather, who used to believe eight or nine freshmen were sufficient to keep his program on track in case of injury, attrition or both, plans to bring in 14 freshmen and a transfer for the 2018-19 school year. Overall, there are 27 Grizzlies of various skill sets looking to be part of the 15-player roster next season.</p>
<p>“We needed to be more in the volume business of this. I was never a volume guy, We never threw a gigantic net and had gigantic classes,” Prather said. “We tried to zero in on kids who we thought were a perfect fit.</p>
<p>“They came, and stayed, and worked at their game, and became much better college players than they had been high school players. When that broke, first I thought, ‘Well, that was an anomaly. That class was just different.’”</p>
<p>Thinking it was a one-time experience, Prather chose not to change his recruiting strategy. Unfortunately, one “different” recruiting class became two, and then three.</p>
<p>Other factors surfaced, including more Division II, III and NAIA programs throughout the state and Midwest. This gave prospective Franklin recruits more options and made Prather’s job more challenging.</p>
<p>Losses started to mount. Despite the occasional glimpse of offensive and defensive execution that make a turnaround appear inevitable, Grizzly teams are 33-93 since the start of the 2013-14 season.</p>
<p>The incoming freshman class is the third straight for which Prather and his assistants have practically doubled the size of their previous classes.</p>
<p>“It’s having a big enough core to kind of insulate yourself against some of the inevitable attrition, but then also just have a better handle on the starting point in terms of level of talent and level of preparation,” Prather said. “That has helped us to where we’ve been with these last two and a half classes.</p>
<p>“And the retention in those classes has been real good. But numerically, you still have a fair amount of falloff because that’s just Division III recruiting.”</p>
<p>Asked if it was tuition costs — Franklin College doesn’t offer athletic scholarships — a lack of playing time or off-the-court issues that most cause players to leave his program, Prather said it was none of the above.</p>
<p>More often than not, it’s a young man’s realization that he’s not cut out to juggle the academic and athletic demands the way he did in high school.</p>
<p>“It’s a big step. It’s much more competitive because, simply, there are more good players here,” Prather said. “What I’m pleased with is athletic careers end, but most of those kids remain at Franklin.</p>
<p>“They have found their academic niche. They’ve found their social niche. Not everybody’s athletic career goes on. Honestly, some kids have maxed out in high school. Usually not developmentally, but just in terms of what they want out of the game.”</p>
<p>Robbie Prather, who grew up in the Franklin College bleachers before playing for his father’s program as a point guard from 2013-17, has witnessed many of the program’s successes and failures.</p>
<p>He’s seen the affects losing has on his dad.</p>
<p>"The past couple of years have been rough on him, but it’s been rough on the family, too," said Robbie, who recently completed his freshman year at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis. "We certainly live and die with his success, but at the end of the day we’re able to separate basketball from everyday life.</p>
<p>"I can’t count the number of times we’ve left a gym after a tough loss, gone out to dinner and be laughing about something that has nothing to do with basketball."</p>
<p>With the help of his assistant coaches, coach Prather made changes he felt were necessary to get his program back. The process is bound to take time in order to produce desired results — not an easy thing to do in the immediate-gratification world in which coaches live.</p>
<p>Always an optimist, coach Prather saw flashes of a turnaround last season even though Franklin College posted a mark of 8-17.</p>
<p>Just under 80 percent of the Grizzlies total points were scored by underclassmen. The core group of returnees — Jordan Anderson, Borden Kennedy, Kale Morris and Sam Gutierrez — is expected back. Furthermore, Danny Goggans, a 6-foot-5 forward who started 10 games as a freshman before sustaining an injury that ended his season, will return.</p>
<p>"The chemistry in that locker room right now is what convinces you that they’re about to turn the corner," Robbie Prather said. "They’re talented and they have fun. As long as you are open that you have a lot to learn, my dad can do wonders for your game.</p>
<p>"I know what my dad knows and what he’s seen. I have all the confidence in the world in him, and his players do too."</p>
<p>The respect coach Prather receives in the HCAC from those who have competed against him remains as apparent as ever.</p>
<p>Coaches such as Guy Neal at Bluffton and Brian Lane at Transylvania, who have been at their respective universities for 29 and 17 seasons, understand Division III athletics from a variety of angles and that victories and defeats are gauged in myriad ways.</p>
<p>Like Prather, Neal coached his son in college. Their wives are professors at the universities where they’re employed. Neal said to focus solely on the past five seasons of Grizzlies basketball is to disregard the decades of good that came before it.</p>
<p>“As a competitor, I don’t even view them as having five straight losing seasons just because of my respect for Kerry as a person and as a coach,” Neal said. “My initial thought of that program is stability, first-class, doing it the right way and success.</p>
<p>“Before every game with them I’m scared to death. I know how hard they’ll compete and how well-coached they are.”</p>
<p>Lane, who also coaches men’s golf at Transylvania, recognizes the cycles Division III athletic programs go through, yet commends Prather for remaining determined to run his program a specific way.</p>
<p>“It has gotten so competitive as the tuition prices have gone up to get the athletes that fit our profile. And it seems the pool of recruits has gotten smaller,” Lane said. “The programs that come out of it are the ones with strong leaders who don’t bend on values.</p>
<p>“Kerry holds his guys to a high standard. Just a class program.”</p>
