Leavitt, or leave it?
With a tie and a win this past weekend, things could be worse for Wisconsin’s hockey team. But not much worse.
The team is poised to set a program low for conference wins. Police arrested the senior captain for allegedly fighting a police officer outside a bar Saturday night. The athletic department issued a reprimand to the rookie head coach after reports emerged last week that he had shoved sophomore Alex Leavitt during a series earlier in the season. Several players, including Leavitt, have cited frustrations with the leadership this season and may arrange to depart after the year.
Did all those factors boil over and turn into Brad Winchester’s bartime behavior? It’s hard to imagine a real connection, even when searching for one. Winchester made a mistake, and it remains uncertain how much it will affect his team or his career.
But what about Mike Eaves? The Badgers’ first-year coach and former UW star was expected to struggle this year with a depleted cupboard of talent and the inevitable challenges in stewarding a team thrown into transition after 20 years of stability.
If Eaves’ strategy is to motivate the team through turmoil, it has not been working. This situation does not resemble the unrelated string of troubles that have hit the football team recently. College athletes are college students, and things happen, but Eaves should have been on high alert for more subterfuge following the Leavitt firestorm last week.
Instead, he bolted town on other business and was inadequately capable of responding to Winchester’s disturbance. At the very least, that does not look good for his commitment to keeping the team under his guidance.
Tuesday, a similar set of unfortunate factors, compounded with competitive failure, turned into Jane Albright’s resignation. Albright’s career, like Eaves’ short experience, was marked by a lack of control and by blowups with players. She managed to extend her reins, or reign, by putting together a winning record, if also a lot of disappointment. Eaves can ride the same wire if he likes, but he’ll have to start winning to get there.
More advisable, however, would be to build a solid program from the foundation he is working with and transform that into a contender. Eaves might prefer to see the players who don’t want to be here take off and wait for his own recruits to filter in. But it would instill more confidence in administrators and fans if he demonstrates that he can win over this group in the next few weeks. He needs to become a coach, not just a ringleader.
