Purdue Fort Wayne hoops to 'ride a wave' of positivity into Cape Girardeau

Purdue Fort Wayne men's basketball coach Jon Coffman "rides a wave" of positivity with his Mastodon players following the team's 92-72 win over Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. during the 2017-18 season.

Photo courtesy Purdue Fort Wayne Athletics

On the night of Dec. 27, 2018, the Purdue Fort Wayne men’s basketball team sat in the O’Hare Airport in Chicago passing time. The Mastodons’ flight to North Dakota had been canceled due to a blizzard sweeping across the northern plains. As it turned out, it would be one of seven canceled flights the group would endure during its 2018-19 season.

Purdue Fort Wayne eventually got put on a different flight, but this one landed in Minneapolis at 1 a.m. on Dec. 28, the same day that the team was to face Summit League foe, North Dakota.

After sleeping a few hours, the Mastodons awoke, got on a bus, rode through the blizzard toward Grand Forks, N.D. to face the Fighting Hawks.

“Seven or eight hours, through a blizzard, on the day of the game,” sixth-year coach Jon Coffman explained, “We couldn’t guarantee that we were going to get there, so the league finally postponed the game to (Dec. 29).”

Long story short; the Mastodons had to play two games (against North Dakota and North Dakota State) within 22 hours of each other and they not only did so, but they also won both games.

“We have a ‘No complaining rule,’” Coffman said of his program.

Purdue Fort Wayne (1-1) will visit Southeast Missouri State (0-1) Sunday at 4 p.m. and regardless of the score, the Mastodons will be an intriguing watch for the fans at the Show Me Center – on and off the court.

Full access

In an act of full disclosure, through August of 2018, I served as the sports editor for the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel and the Mastodons were one of my many “beats” for a decade. When you are the guy (singular) covering a lower-level NCAA Division I athletic program daily, if you handle the relationship properly, you will be afforded unfettered access and insight into the inner-workings of that program.

I sat in recruiting meetings, watched film with the coaches, contributed (unsolicited) opinions in staff meetings, and took countless phone calls from the Mastodon coaching staff as they made their way home on recruiting trips through the middle of the night.

There was nothing I didn’t know about the Purdue Fort Wayne program, which is why I can now say the Mastodons have to be the most positive-thinking program anywhere.

“We want to coach each other up, not down,” Coffman said. “We start every day with appreciation for what you have.”

THAT is the foundation of everything the Mastodons do.

Purdue Fort Wayne men's basketball coach Jon Coffman offers encouraging post-practice words to his team during the 2018-19 season at the Gates Sports Center in Fort Wayne, Ind.
Tom Davis ~ Tdavis@semoball.com

Proper mindset

Purdue Fort Wayne has nice basketball facilities, but they aren’t the best in the Summit League (the program will move to the Horizon League next season).

The Mastodons have one of the lowest budgets in the conference; yet have the third-most league wins (just two shy of second-place) since Coffman took over five years ago.

And kids in Indiana regularly spurn the Mastodons for more renowned programs both in- and out-of-state.

National writer Jeff Goodman wrote this summer that taking everything into consideration, the Mastodons ranked eighth in the nine-team league as a program.

None of it negatively affects the Purdue Fort Wayne program.

“What does complaining ever get you,” Coffman asked. “It doesn’t get you anything. The mind can not be appreciative and stressed at the same time. It doesn’t work that way.

“So if you start your day with appreciation, and being grateful, it puts you in a great mindset, you’re not stressed.”

That “great mindset” was needed following those two wins in North Dakota, because when the Mastodons’ flight out of Fargo was also canceled, they bussed back to Minneapolis that night, only to arrive at the airport minutes before takeoff.

The Purdue Fort Wayne travel party ran through the airport and got to the gate as their plane was pulling away from the walkway.

“The entire team was standing on the chairs waving at the plane,” Coffman laughed.

Luckily for the Mastodons, the flight crew was based out of Fort Wayne and they weren’t going to leave their hometown team stranded at the Minneapolis airport.

Thinking differently

Not only do the Mastodon coaches and student-athletes make lemonade out of life, but Coffman thinks differently about every aspect of his program.

Purdue Fort Wayne has no budget for the types of overseas trips that better-resourced athletic programs take regularly. So Coffman spent the better part of four years raising funds and concocting a plan to allow his players to experience a trip to Italy.

“I have a duty to these young men to educate them and help them become leaders of men,” Coffman said, “to expose them to new things and broaden their horizons.”

That education process was on full display throughout the 2018 summer trip to Italy taken by the Mastodons.

While most programs do some sightseeing on these trips and play some games, the Purdue Fort Wayne student-athletes did those things and so much more.

Coffman turned the trip into an academic venture in which his players took an independent study course leading up to the trip learning about the culture of Italy and having to do presentations on the various aspects of the country.

“They learned etiquette, culture, history, architecture, and language,” Coffman said of the lessons taught. “Our guys had to do research projects on different sites.”

That included the work BEFORE departing, and while in Italy, the Mastodon players had to give presentations at the sites again, which were taped and posted for Purdue Fort Wayne athletic boosters and fans to view.

“I just thought ‘How do I make this trip special,’” Coffman explained. “How do I get the most out of it? If we’re going to spend this much money, how do I make this work?”

The players earned academic credit in their major (the work was tailored to each student-athlete) and the basketball was entirely a secondary component to the trip.

Purdue Fort Wayne men's basketball coach Jon Coffman speaks with his team during a game at the Gates Sports Center in Fort Wayne, Ind. during the 2018-19 season.
Tom Davis ~ Tdavis@semoball.com

‘Ride the wave’

The positive nature of the Purdue Fort Wayne men’s basketball program has been encapsulated in the slogan “Ride the wave.”

Coffman and his assistants and coaches speak of “riding a wave of energy,” which from the group can carry an individual.

“It organically started,” Coffman said of his first team creating the slogan out of a single postgame talk, “and it has been a part of everything we do.”

The Purdue Fort Wayne jerseys have a Mastodon riding a surfboard at the bottom of each (they are tucked in, so you can’t visibly see the surfing ‘Don). That ensures the mantra is always with each player.

The philosophy can be scoffed at, but the on-the-court results show it is real.

Coffman is the winningest coach in Purdue Fort Wayne history at the NCAA Division I level, with the program’s most memorable victories having come over Big Ten traditional power Indiana University, which the Mastodons beat in 2016 (71-68 in overtime in Fort Wayne) and 2017 (92-72 in Bloomington, Ind.).

Coffman’s teams have never had a losing season and have advanced to the postseason in four of his five seasons at the helm.

“We’re with each other 12 months out of the year,” Coffman said of those within his program, “why can’t we enjoy each other?”

Won’t leave

Max Landis was sitting in the office of Mastodon assistant coach Ryan Sims during the summer of 2015 when his phone buzzed.

It was the coach of a ‘Power 6’ program checking in (illegally) to see if the eventual 2016 Summit League Player of the Year was interested in transferring out of Purdue Fort Wayne.

Given Landis was a graduate student, having already earned his bachelor’s degree, he would have immediate eligibility at any institution.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” the quick combo guard with a deadly stroke thought to himself.

Landis saw the positives that could be achieved in Fort Wayne (win a bunch of games, get a Master’s, play in the postseason, play a significant role on his team, and ultimately set himself up for an overseas professional career).

A similar path unfolded a year ago when the best player in Purdue Fort Wayne history (guard John Konchar) had the same option to leave – for any program in the country - but didn’t.

Konchar parlayed his positive Mastodon experience into a guaranteed contract with the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies this summer.

And Coffman too, knows what he has in Fort Wayne is special.

This past summer, a better-known, better-funded program (the job would have doubled his Fort Wayne salary) reached out to him to try and get him to leave the Mastodons and he thought about it thisquickly before saying “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“I’d be ecstatic,” Coffman said when asked if he was offered the opportunity to stay at Fort Wayne for the remainder of his career. “I’d sign up right now.

“What I did here is that I just don’t believe in making any excuses or complaining. I’ve been in a lot of worse situations.”