It’s a brand new ballgame for Snip Esterly, Rebels
Snip Esterly’s first home game as a professional basketball coach was a little different, to say the least.
It was easily the longest game he had ever coached — 48 minutes of regulation, plus two five-minute overtimes, nearly the equivalent of two full high school games.
And then there was the final score.
“So much for my philosophy on defense, huh?” Esterly deadpanned Sunday night after the Reading Rebels’ 148-147 victory over the Connecticut Cobras at the Geigle.
Esterly has built a legendary coaching career at Berks Catholic, and before that at Central Catholic, around the basic principals of defense and sharing the basketball.
Those concepts are pretty much out the window in this pro-style league where there’s a 24-second clock and no chance to lull your opponent to sleep with a series of patient screens, cuts and passes.
“It’s something we need to adjust to,” said Esterly of himself and his lead assistant, Joe Linderman, his All-State center from Central Catholic. “I’m a big stickler on ball movement. With 24 seconds you can only move the ball so much.”
Esterly’s been around basketball since the days of short shorts, but this is all new to him. It will take time for him to absorb the various nuances of this style of play. Right now, after little more than a week on the job, the 63-year-old basketball lifer is trying to soak it all in.
He was brought in to coach the Rebels, a semi-pro team in its first season, just 10 days ago, a few weeks after they made their debut in The Basketball League. Donovon Jack, the Rebels’ 6-10 center and an All-State player for Esterly at both Central at BC, reached out to him earlier this month to gauge his interest in coaching.
With his season wrapped up at Berks Catholic, Esterly was intrigued. He met with team ownership, watched the team play a game, liked what he saw and signed on.
His No. 1 basketball commitment remains at Berks Catholic — he’s not about to leave that program, or the high school game. He’s been a head coach at that level for 33 years, has won 769 games and 13 district championships.
Still, he’s intrigued by the talent level in this league, and by being able to reconnect with former players such as Jack, Marcus Dawkins and Marquis Marshall, each of whom he coached at Central and each of whom are on the Rebels’ roster.
He also has a chance to coach Trenity Burdine — whose Reading High team knocked out Central Catholic in the Berks Conference playoffs a few times — and an array of impressive college talent put together by Alex Bernhard, the director of player development, and the Rebels’ staff.
The roster includes Rich McCalop, who played at Southwestern Oklahoma State; Dontel Highsmith, who played at Cleveland State and Northern Illinois; Julian DeBose, who played at Florida Gulf Coast and Rice; and Anthony Lee, who set scoring records at Kutztown University.
“I have all the confidence in the world in these guys,” said Esterly, “because all of them can flat-out play, and they know what they’re doing.”
They know how to score, that’s for sure. McCalop had 35 points Sunday against Connecticut. Debose scored 27. Burdine had 22, the last two on free throws with 5.8 seconds left in the second overtime after he came up with a steal, his team down a point.
Just like old times, Burdine drained a pair of clutch free throws and the Rebels held on to win, improving to 4-1 — 2-0 under Esterly, who was on the bench for the first time Saturday night in a 128-121 win at Lehigh Valley.
“Wasn’t no jitters going through my bones,” said Burdine, who won many games at the Geigle with clutch shots, of his free throws.
Dawkins, his former Red Knights teammate, grabbed and hugged him during a postgame interview.
“That’s my boy right there,” said Dawkins, who made some key plays off the bench for the Rebels.
Burdine has made a couple of pro stops since his college days ended. He understands the drill at his level, where midseason coaching changes are par for the course and rosters change by the day.
“We loved Sergio (Afre) as a our (original) coach (of the Rebels), but when Snip came in we were confident,” Burdine said, “because we know he knows how to coach basketball. It’s not like we had any worries.”
Esterly has no worries, either. He’s excited to be part of the new venture and is just going with the flow at this point. He understands the methods that have made him one of the most successful coaches in Pennsylvania high school basketball history need to be tweaked, or abandoned, to work at this level.
He won’t have the same full-time, year-round commitment he gets from his high school players. The guys on his roster have jobs, families and some don’t live close by. Jack, for example, lives and works in New Jersey.
Practice time will be limited, too: Twice a week, with no assurances of who will be available to attend.
“It’s so different . . . but it’s fun,” Esterly said. “I’m learning on the go. Thank goodness we’ve got help on the bench.”
Up next for the Rebels? Check out the schedule:
It was important, he said, that he was able to bring in Linderman, who had an outstanding career at Drexel has coached at Alvernia University, and elsewhere. Esterly also is relying on Kelsey Stasyszyn, part of the original coaching staff, for her knowledge of the game and the current players. Stasyszyn has a rich basketball background and is currently head coach of the girls basketball team at Carlisle.
“I’m starting to learn the players a little better,” Esterly said. “We’ll get the rotation down, and all the sets we run. We’ll put a few more things in.
“Kelsey did a great job (during the transition) and Alex has helped out tremendously, too, just knowing the guys, knowing the sets. Joe and I are still learning. That’s the hardest part: Becoming more familiar with the guys, who does this well, who can cover who. It’s a whole learning (experience).”
