[B][SIZE=3]Fancher’s departure shocks Brand[/SIZE]
By Steve Hanf, High Point Enterprise
March 18,2009[/B]
Kellen Brand and his Appalachian State teammates headed to the basketball office Monday night for what they thought would be a casual conversation about the team’s future.
They left the Mountaineers’ athletic complex stunned at the news of uncertain times ahead: Coach Houston Fancher called the meeting to announce his resignation.
“No one expected the news that we got,” Brand said Tuesday during a teleconference arranged by school officials. “We thought we were coming in to think about things for next year. It was definitely a shock to everybody. There were a lot of tears, a lot of emotion around the office.”
Fancher recruited the T. Wingate Andrews star and watched Brand blossom into the Mountaineers’ leading scorer this past season. But Appalachian struggled to a 13-18 overall record and 9-11 mark in the Southern Conference this winter. The nine-year head coach who also spent four seasons as an ASU assistant finished with a career record of 137-136.
The coach will be paid for the remainder of his contract, which expires next March.
“I’m thankful for the opportunity to represent Appalachian State University for the past 13 years,” Fancher said in a statement. “It has been a wonderful experience for me to build a program. The next head coach at ASU will be fortunate to coach the terrific group of kids that are in the program.”
That includes Brand, one of four true juniors on the roster. After proving himself worthy of joining the Mountaineers in the first place and then developing into the team’s unquestioned leader, Brand now finds himself in the unenviable position of proving his worth all over again.
Unfair for a rising senior? “Kind of,” Brand admitted. But it’s not something on which the 6-foot-1 guard plans to dwell.
“I don’t want to refer to myself,” Brand said. “As a team we’re all going to have to adjust. That’s going to be the hard part. It’s not going to be Coach Fancher. The new coach is going to have to get used to us, we’re going to have to get used to him. It’s going to be a long process, but it’s going to have to be taken care of. Hopefully we can get it done.”
That sounds about right. During Brand’s career at Andrews, he was known for being the consummate team player on the football field and basketball court. He mulled offers from several schools before heading to Boone, then debated whether or not to play football, too.
In the end, he stuck with basketball. After getting his feet wet as a freshman, Brand started every game but one - Senior Night - last year and started all 31 contests this winter. He led the Mountaineers in scoring at 14.8 points per game, placed third in shooting percentage at 48.9 percent, He was third in 3-point shooting at 39.3 percent and third at the foul line(79.1 percent) while taking the most free throws of anyone on the team.
Brand’s 30.5 minutes per game ranked first on the squad, and he averaged 1.5 assists and one steal per game while only turning it over twice per contest.
“I still haven’t recovered from the season,” Brand said of a campaign that ended against Davidson in the second round of the SoCon Tournament. “I wish we were still playing.”
The new wish for Brand and the rest of his teammates has to be for a quick return to normalcy in the program. Most of the Mountaineers - Brand included - will remain in Boone for summer classes, individual workouts and informal getting-to-know-you sessions with the new coaching staff.
That new leader will have a lot to live up to following Fancher. In a statement, ASU director of athletics Charlie Cobb called the departing coach “a terrific ambassador for ASU, a valued member of the community and an outstanding leader of young men.”
Brand agreed.
“I love Coach Fancher. He’s a cool guy, he was like a father away from home,” Brand explained. “His family - I loved his family. I’m going to miss them. Coach Fancher is just a guy you had to love.”
Fans, however, did not love the losing records in the years following three SoCon North division titles and a school-record 25 wins in 2006-07 that came with a berth in the NIT. When asked about this season’s results, Brand said the team knew it failed to accomplish its goals, but "that doesn’t mean you give up. We as a team already met and said we were going to change some things, work harder so this doesn’t happen next year. I definitely think Coach Fancher should have been given another shot.
“I’m speechless right now. I’m still shocked,” Brand concluded. “It’s just a process we’re going to have to tr to fight through. We can’t walk around with our heads down, because that’s not going to fix it. You just have to suck it up and try to move forward.”
