COLUMN: Rekha Patterson separated herself from crowd of Southeast Missouri State women's coaching candidates

Rekha Patterson was the right person for the job.

After the vetting dozens of applicants for the Southeast Missouri State women's basketball coaching position and interviews with nine finalists that lasted more than 11 hours, that much was obvious to athletic director Mark Alnutt and senior associate athletic director Cindy Gannon.

"The thing about going through that process, when you arrange these candidates and when you're going to meet with them, Rekha was No. 1," Alnutt said during his formal remarks before introducing Patterson on Wednesday. "If we had known what the result of that interview was going to be, we would've stopped right then and there because 11 hours later of interviewing candidates it was a long day -- and Cindy and I both agreed we kept going back to Rekha."

Her resume is impressive and includes a national championship at Baylor and experience in the Ohio Valley Conference at Eastern Illinois. Many have insisted that Southeast should pursue successful, young assistants who've been a part of winning programs, and the hiring of Patterson couldn't fit that description better.

She separated herself so far from the other candidates during her interview that she was the only one Alnutt invited to campus. He said Patterson was "polished" in the interview and "said all the right things."

"I had a true sense that she's been there before, and she knows what it is to have that first-class student-athlete experience that we always talk about with that balance of academics, develop them socially and then also knowing how to compete at a high level," Alnutt said.

Patterson thanked God and her family before laying out her vision for the Redhawks in her prepared opening remarks Wednesday.

The polish Alnutt spoke of was obvious. She had a plan, coaching mottoes that I'm sure we'll hear many times and the type of excitement in her voice that is expected but I'll never tire of hearing.

That coordinated display on stage and behind a podium, however impressive, was easily overshadowed during Patterson's question-and-answer session with a small group of media members after the formalities were over.

She and Alnutt have a shared passion for the "student-athlete experience," which should never be trivialized or forgotten. Both, as with most in the college coaching profession, have a strong desire to see young people succeed beyond the court and into the community and classroom, but frankly success in the latter two categories without winning games isn't too much fun for anyone. Those who have watched the women's team in recent years understand that all too well.

Patterson never said that Wednesday, but she talked about winning enough to make me believe she'd agree.

"My style is going to be whatever it takes to win, and I told the players that today," she said when asked how her teams would play. "I'm not going to come in here and say, 'We're going to run motion,' or 'We're going to run this type of defense.' We're going to get out there and evaluate their strengths and weakness, and however we can get to a win, that's what we're going to do. If we need to press, we're going to press. If the team can press and we can be successful with it, we'll do it. If we need to sit back in a 2-3 zone, we'll do that. Whatever it takes to win, that's what we're going to do."

She also said the film she'd chosen to watch of her team was when it played a top team in the conference because "that's who we've got to beat."

Southeast hasn't been among the top conference teams for nearly a decade now, and it will be too much to expect her to lead the Redhawks there next season. She's inheriting a team that went 3-13 in the OVC last year, although it's not unreasonable to think the team can be far more competitive with improvement to its abysmal offensive production.

Patterson was born into the game of basketball and has dedicated her life to it. There are few experiences her players will go through that she hasn't already experienced as a former player, and she spoke more than once about the importance of building confidence in players -- even if they don't always love the process.

Ty Margenthaler had much of the same basketball pedigree and never found success at Southeast, so maybe I'm a fool to place faith in Patterson so soon. Winning a press conference has never helped a team win a game, after all.

But I left the Show Me Center on Wednesday with the same feeling Alnutt and Gannon left their marathon interview session with -- Patterson is the right person for the job.