Should Fran O'Hanlon Be Fired?

If the average sports fan looked at Lafayette College Men’s Basketball Coach Fran O’Hanlon’s record the last couple of seasons, they would surely call for his job.

Over the last two seasons (this season being one of those), the Leopards have accumulated an embarrassing record of 13-42.

Lafayette is 7-18 so far this year, and with only four games remaining in the season, they have mustered up just three wins in the Patriot League.

Lafayette has a history of firing older coaches with bad recent performance.

The school just recently fired long-time head football coach Frank Tavani. Tavani, like O’Hanlon, had recently won the Patriot League. The rationale for firing Tavani, like it could be for O’Hanlon, is that the recent struggles for the team outweigh the team’s success a few years ago.

Let’s examine the case with O’Hanlon a little bit further. Although O’Hanlon has the most wins in patriot league history with 301, he does have 350 losses. This means that he is averaging a losing season per year.

In his 22 years, his team has won the Patriot league tournament three times and has been the regular season champion only once.

Although these are all reasons for why the leopards should get rid of the coach, they should actually keep him, at least for this season.

In my opinion, O’Hanlon’s strength as a coach is his ability to have his players trust and buy into his system. This “trust of the process” allows O’Hanlon to turn a bad season one year into a good season the next.

O’Hanlon’s teams often go through cycles of a couple of losing seasons and a couple of winning ones. This pattern makes sense because when O’Hanlon first acquires new players, it takes time for them to learn his system. However, after a couple of years, O’Hanlon is often able to get the players to mesh.

Take the 2014-2015 Lafayette Leopards for instance. That season, Lafayette finished 20-13 overall and won the Patriot League tournament. However, a year before, they were just 11-20 and won just six league games.

What happened? Well, Nick Lindner showed tremendous growth from his freshmen season to his sophomore year. Lindner learned where to find his driving lanes on a team with plenty of shooters, and he blossomed into a reliable scorer toward the end of games.

In addition, the rest of the starting lineup were all upperclassmen. Talented players like Dan Trist, Seth Hinrichs, and Joey Ptasinski were all seniors and were at the peak of their college careers, and Bryce Scott, who became a junior, was also a capable scorer.

The reason why the 2014-15 Lafayette team won so many games was that they played as a unit.

The chemistry with the team was fantastic. The ball was constantly moving on offense, and they all played together. It was an O’Hanlon type offense at its finest, and it was clear that these players had been in O’Hanlon’s system for many years.

In his tenure, O’Hanlon has never had more than three straight seasons with a losing record. This speaks to his ability to get the most out of his players after a couple of years.

If you have watched the games this season, you can see the slow development with the new freshmen players.

You are starting to see offensive production by freshmen Kyle Stout, Lukas Jarrett, and Hunter Janacek, and the defense showed a tremendous effort against Holy Cross a couple of games ago. Although it may not take into effect this year, this could be a very different Leopards team in one or two years.

With Frank Tavani, the knock on him was that he was not an “X’s and O’s guy.” He was known to be more of a figurehead who raised money and did not know the little details about the game. However, that cannot be said about O’Hanlon, and the game against Holy Cross demonstrated this point.

Against Holy Cross, a team that plays a very complex matchup zone defense, Lafayette picked it apart, showing great team scouting and preparation. The zone offense was flawless, giving the ball to the short corner and working with the big men in the middle.

On defense, Lafayette was creative and mixed up their defenses all game. They started out in a 1-3-1 zone defense while mixing in a 2-3 zone, man to man, and a ¾ court press to slow down the offense throughout the game.

Lafayette held Holy Cross to just 59 points on Wednesday night’s win, and O’Hanlon’s impact on the game was clear.

If Lafayette struggles the next two seasons, it will be time to get rid of O’Hanlon (If he doesn’t already retire). However, as of now, it would be premature to fire someone who is trying to improve a young core group of players.

Sometimes it takes patience. But with O’Hanlon, it is often worth the wait.