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With about 14 minutes left to play in Sunday’s game against George Mason, sophomore forward Patricio Garino picked up his fourth foul.
For most players, especially those struggling like Garino, this would mean remaining on the bench until the final minutes. For a GW team with paper-thin depth, that decision seemed even more likely.
But, as he has done many times this season, head coach Mike Lonergan made a risky coaching decision and put his high-energy forward back in the game less than four minutes later.
“The assistants told me to take [Garino] out,” Lonergan said. “For his career – I know he’s only a sophomore – but there’s going to be big games, hopefully even bigger than today, and you want to build confidence to play him. I told him after the game he did a great job of playing defense with foul trouble.”
Lonergan’s bold decisions haven’t always paid off – and when they don’t, the third-year head coach seems less courageous and more foolish. But this season, Lonergan has shown his confidence in making daring sideline decisions.
They paid off Sunday – as his team went on to defeat the Patriots 66-58 – and overall have helped the Colonials on their way to a 21-7 record and a potential NCAA Tournament appearance – GW’s first since 2007.
Up until his fourth foul, Garino was having an off game. He had recorded just five points, while turning the ball over three times, so few would have questioned keeping him off the floor.
But the Patriots were on an 11-2 run that cut the lead to two. The game was close, and losing Garino to any sort of minor foul could be fatal down the stretch.
“I just think our bench is struggling to be real productive and Mo [Creek] hit some shots, I didn’t want to just rest him [Garino] and sit him there the entire half,” Lonergan said.
Garino responded with his best defensive stretch of the game, locking in on the Patriots’ leading scorer, Sherrod Wright. On offense, Garino went on a run of his own, knocking down a three from the top of the key, finishing a layup in transition and completing an acrobatic reverse layup tip-in.
Garino’s re-entrance sparked a 13-3 Colonial run and gave them a 12-point lead.
It was more than Lonergan could have expected from a player with four fouls. The run would last for more than six minutes, until finally Garino was called for his fifth and final foul – an offensive elbow – with 4:53 to play.
But by then, the win was more than within the Colonials’ reach.
Lonergan’s bold coaching decisions, though, have been hit-or-miss this season.
The 20-year coaching veteran has been known to save his timeouts, calling them infrequently and often not buying into the common practice of calling a timeout to set up a final play.
In the early season win over Miami, the no-timeout led to sophomore Joe McDonald’s overtime-forcing layup. But in recent conference matchups against Massachusetts and Saint Louis, Lonergan held his timeouts in his pocket and watched as his team made questionable shot selections. The result: two tough single-digit losses.
When he did call a timeout, before the final play against Maryland, it led to graduate student Maurice Creek’s season-defining shot and a buzzer-beating victory.
More wins and more buzzer beaters will only help Lonergan build his coaching pedigree – unless the sideline strategist sees his luck run out.