ADA — Ohio Northern University has gone south to hire Neal Young as the new men’s basketball coach Wednesday.
Young accepted the position after spending the five seasons as the head coach of Covenant College located in Lookout Mountain in Georgia where he posted an overall record of 79-47 and recorded three conference regular season titles.
Even though he spent the last five years in Georgia, Young is from Muncie, Indiana and went to school at Anderson and returning to this area was a major factor in taking the job as was ONU’s rich basketball tradition. Prior to coaching at Covenant, he coached at Goshen, an NAIA Division II member, for four seasons.
“We love it down here being at Covenant,” Young said. “We love living in Chat (Chattanooga) and we are proud of what we have built here.. But when you start talking about ONU and the history and the support and just walking into the office every day knowing that everybody from the administration to the other coaches that the goal is to win a national championship and that is just a different feeling.
“It doesn’t hurt at all that I have three little kids, they are six, four and two, and both sets of grandparents will be two hours away instead of eight. So I am getting out of the dog house with my mother and mother-in-law for sure for taking their grandchildren eight hours away. So it doesn’t hurt to be close to family either.”
Young calls northwest Ohio and Indiana basketball country and added that it will be nice to get back to his roots.
“Getting back home is a big part of it to so my wife and are excited about it,” Young said. “I grew up in Muncie and I played at Anderson University so I have always been familiar with small college basketball in the Midwest. I have always been a Midwest small college guy and when you are a midwest small college guy you know ONU.
Young added that he had an assistant coach, Mike Hunter, when he was at Goshen who was an ONU graduate and learned more about the program through him and decided that when the job opened up he was going to make a run at it.
Young replaces Rich Bensman who stepped down after six seasons at the helm of the Polar Bears. Bensman guided the Polar Bears to a 66-75 record, a winning percentage of .468. He helped ONU to a 19-9 record in 2017-18 and his teams reached the championship game of the OAC Tournament in 2017-18 and 2020-21.
However, the Polar Bears have four straight losing seasons including a 10-15 showing last year and three winning seasons since the 2009-10 season. ONU’s last Ohio Athletic Conference regular season title was in 2001 when they also won the OAC tournament title and made it to the Division III final four.
“Ultimately we want to get this back to where it was, a powerhouse,” Young said. “That’s the goal. My family and I are coming because we see this as a potential national championship type of place. That’s the goal. That is where we want to take it and really in the OAC it is a realistic goal. If you can win the OAC you are good enough to win a national championship.
“In the short term it is just to re-establish the culture of working and fighting. The standard has got to be higher in what is expected from a work standpoint and the standard has to be higher in terms of what is expected in fighting to compete in games. It is not where it needs to be so that is what we want to accomplish right away and just establish a new standard for everything.
Young said two things that his teams have always embodied and they are a tough, hard-nosed man-to-man defenses and a motion offense.
“We just want to be really hard to score on and just really frustrate teams with our defense,? Young said. “Whatever a team does best we want to make them work really, really hard to that and take it away from them completely and then offensively I am a motion guy. I don’t think you are allowed to grow up in Indiana in like the late 80s or early 90s and not love motion basketball. It is not allowed. I am a motion guy.
“I think that is the philosophy I am comfortable with and that is what I think I can teach and coach the best. I think it is a really enjoyable style to play because everybody gets to be involved in some way or another and guys really end up buying into that.
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