The captain is supposed to go down with the ship. That was the case in Durham, N.C. during the spring of 2006. In the wake of the ‘Duke Lacrosse Scandal,’ head coach Mike Pressler was dismissed as the coach of a Duke program he built from a barely competitive team to a national powerhouse. As the lies began to melt away, and as the witch-hunt gave way to vindication, the circumstances still remained: a group of players lost their season and good name, and a coach lost his job. Luckily, in the summer of 2006, Pressler was welcomed into the ranks of Bryant University. In his first year with the program, and his first year coaching DII, Pressler lead the Bulldogs to an 11-3 record and an NE-10 conference championship. As Bryant enters their last year of DII play, they will switch to a DI schedule next spring, Pressler has his work cut out for him. We were able to steal an hour of his day and talk about what’s new in Smithfield, R.I., what it’s like coaching in DII, and what it means to move on from Duke…. LAX: How is Rhode Island in February compared to Durham? MIKE PRESSLER: That’s one comparison that’s not equitable. Certainly the weather is a little bit different up here. It’s in the 30’s, sometimes a little bit colder. The snow. The elements in New England playing lacrosse, we’ve all got to deal with. LAX: Was it a little harder to get practice rolling because of inclement weather? MP: I think it was more actually last year. Being 16 years down in the South, that was the biggest adjustment for me. One thing you gotta do when you coach in New England, you gotta keep your guys moving for the obvious reasons, but the kids have been great, and the Old Coach [Pressler] is certainly getting acclimated. How great did it feel last year to be back on a sideline and leading a group of young men again? You can’t even describe that for me personally because, you’ve got to go back to the summer of ’06, and it looked like my career was over, because of the situation down in Durham, a situation that I had nothing to do with. I applied to three different schools and couldn’t even get an interview. It looked like the thing that I had done for 20+ years was coming to an end, and I had to go look to change careers, that was the most difficult of times. Then when the Bryant thing finally happened, just to be out there again with a group of guys and a university that’s behind you, it was so rewarding, so thrilling, and I could tell you last year in my first year here, on a personal note, I had the time of my life. How did the job at Bryant come about? Joe Alberici, you know him from Army…Joe is a very, very close friend of mine. I’ve known him for years, and he used to be my assistant at Duke. He is childhood friends with the AD here at Bryant, Bill Smith. They grew up in Auburn, NY. I guess Bill had reached out to Joe for candidates for this job. I believe Joe, as I’ve been told, gave him a list of names, and then on another phone call, he said ‘Why don’t you give Mike a call?’ ‘Do you think he would be interested?’ Bill said. And [Joe] says, ‘Bill, he wants to coach again.’ I think that prompted Bill to give me a call, and that started the level of interest there. I came up for an interview, then I came up for a second time, and that was late July, early August of ‘06, fell in love with the school and the people who make up this school and the vision for the program and the future, and then here we are. Did they want you on pretty eagerly from the first meeting, or were they hesitant and really had to think about the decision because of what was going on in Durham? I think they did their due-diligence there. They looked at all the literature; they read the ‘Coleman Reports,’ the SI article. They did all the research regarding the situation, and as the president said to me, ‘This young man had nothing to do with this.’ And through a series of meetings with him, we certainly hit it off I believe, and they offered me the opportunity and my family and I jumped at it in a ‘New York minute,’ so to speak. How was the reception when you stepped onto campus? Were other coaches and faculty excited that a big time DI coach was coming into the program, or did some people kind of have reservations and approached you hesitantly? No, people here, from the fellow coaches, from the custodian, to the grounds guy, to the faculty, to the student body, to the administration, it’s been great, so welcoming, so supportive, so grateful for the reception that they gave to us from day one and how great they’ve been to our team and certainly my family. How does the atmosphere compare? Duke is about 6,000 students; Bryant is around 3,500; Duke has a tradition of big-time athletics. How is the campus atmosphere? I think that’s been a little bit different. Obviously Duke’s got so many years playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, and all of that, but Bryant’s a terrific school on the Division II level, very, very competitive in our conference and nationally in Division II in all sports, and as you probably know, the exciting thing is that in the summer, well I should say in the fall of ’08 and spring of ’09, we’re going Division I in everything here, so hopefully down the road, we can enjoy some of that notoriety that some of those other schools do. How does lacrosse at Bryant rank in the athletic department? You come from schools like OWU where it is a big deal, or Duke, where you built it into a big deal. Does it have the same place in the hierarchy at Bryant? One thing, back to Duke, when I went to Duke in ’91, we were an after thought as a team in that department. We were very minimal scholarships, very minimal support that way. We were at the bottom of the ACC, and when I got the job in 91, they were strongly considering dropping men’s lacrosse, that’s how highly the administration at that time thought of the sport. Then 16 years later, all those recruits, all those players, we built that into something very, very competitive, as we all know today, but that was a lot of hard work by a lot of the assistant coaches, and certainly the players that we recruited and all of that. The support here for Bryant lacrosse, and this is my contrast, from day one has been nothing but tremendous. The administration here, Bill Smith the [athletic director], they’re doing everything they possibly can to give us the tools to be successful here, so the Old Coach here has no complaints that way, but how it ranks, they’re doing the same for a lot of the other sports here to, which I really like…I really think it’s unhealthy to have sports necessarily put on pedestals in their own school, and then all of a sudden the jealousy that goes with the athletes that way if you know what I mean, that’s not going to be the case here. We, myself, my staff, our coaches, we support all the teams here. We go to their games, I support my fellow coaches, and they very much do the same by us, so again, no complaints that way. How has fan support been growing for the team? I imagine the sidelines weren’t full when you first showed up? When we beat Le Moyne, the entire student body ran out and jumped on the pile…I’ve never seen that…It’s been great that way. How great of a task was that to beat Le Moyne, the defending DII champs, during your first regular season of coaching at this level? I think that was, just on a personal note, the high for me was to see our players, and a team that had never really been competitive with Le Moyne, and certainly the student body. We were down three with six or seven minutes to go, and to come back and tie it and then win it in overtime. It goes to show you that Le Moyne, certainly talent-wise, was better than Bryant last year, but that’s why you play the game. It’s not necessarily the most talented team that wins; it’s the beast team that plays on that particular day. Our kids that day proved that adage to be true, but on a personal note, we [Duke] had beaten Virginia the year before, in ’05, 17-2, for the ACC tournament title/regular season title. This win was just as rewarding if not more rewarding just for the joy and the excitement that this university experienced on that particular day. What are the biggest differences between DI and DII lacrosse? I think the preparation at the Division I level is so much more thorough than, not everybody in Division II, but a lot of the teams. Unfortunately in Division II, there’s still part-time coaches out there, so it’s not fair to judge them against the best in Division I, because those schools don’t have the resources. There’s such a dichotomy between the top level Division II teams and the other ones, so I think it’s unfair to compare. At the Division I level, the level of preparation goes into your plan each week. Every week is certainly different that Division II. You might do it certain weeks, but it’s not a fair comparison because of the part-time coaches in Division II who can’t devote the time. A lot of the schools that we play have no scholarship money whatsoever. So there’s very much a contrast in the different levels. What about in terms of play? Some people like that DII and DIII tends to be a little more wide open and not as micromanaged. I can tell you this, you saw our teams at Duke recently when we started to open up and play full field. Yeah, that’s the issue, there are teams like yours that ran and played a little more wide open, and then there are others that everything is a controlled, specialized match-up and set. It’s up to the coaches and his philosophy there. But I tell you, when you do play fast, a couple things, people want to come to see you play, the players love to play that style, and the recruits want to come and play in that program. You’ve got to recruit accordingly, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful running a different kind of style. It’s all up to the coach and his personality there. Offensively, if you want to score in the double digits and hopefully get to the teens, you’ve got to open up, because you just can’t pound it into people, half-field, six-on-six, and expect to get 10 or more. The level of athlete is different. Those defensive guys to goalies are so prepared, the coaches are so prepared, the best and easiest way to get those great scoring opportunities and get them in number is to play a little bit more wide open. You have coached at all three levels. I know DIII is no athletic scholarships, DI there are 12.6 a team at max, so where does DII fall in that spectrum? The maximum in Division II is 10.8. You have some teams that have 10.8. You have some teams that have two; you have some teams that have six, and you have some teams that are just need based financial aid, so very much there’s a variance in the level of financial support. What prompted the move to DI for Bryant? I think the president, the board of trustees, it was a move for very, very important reasons. They want to become more of a national university from a recruiting point of view, as opposed to being more of a regional school. They’re trying to bolster enrollment here and get closer to the 4,000 mark, and they see athletics, and certainly the Division I model, as part of the reason to get them there. What challenge does that present you in terms of making the shift from DII competition to DI competition? Well the level of competition is, without questions, a bunch of notches higher. You go from playing quality Division II teams like Merrimack and St. Mikes [Saint Michael] in your league, to playing teams like Army, and Virginia, and teams like that down the road, some of the Ivy League schools that are pretty good. Recruiting in Division I opens up a whole different level of athlete that before you might not have access to, so for us that is going to be very exciting. How is the DI transition in terms of rules? It sounds like you will play a full DI schedule next year, but you won’t be eligible for postseason play in DI until 2012? There’s a four-year wait before. You have to demonstrate to the NCAA that you can abide by all Division I rules, all the things that go into being a Division I institution. So you can play a Division I schedule, but you’re not eligible for ‘conference play’ or ‘NCAA play’ until that period is up. What conference would you enter? We’re already in, it’s called the Northeast Conference, the NEC, and the exciting thing about that is with the addition of Bryant, we’ll be the sixth team in the league, and you need six teams for an automatic qualifier. That was one of the carrots. So Mount St. Mary’s, Wagner, Robert Morris, Sacred Heart, and Quinnipiac are the five teams in the league. We become the sixth team, and therefore here comes the AQ. Do you think the addition of another AQ will push the NCAA to think of expanding the tournament? You hope so, if that’s the case. By NCAA rule, if you have an AQ that is an automatic, and obviously the more AQ’s you have, the less at large teams you have, but that’s well down the road. That’s the NCAA, the powers to be and the lacrosse committee have to make those decisions, but as far as I have been told, the minute we are eligible for NEC play we will have a conference automatic, and I’m looking forward to that. Do you think the NCAA could stand to open up the DI tournament, from a health of the game prospective, in terms of growing the game and getting more fan interest? I think certainly DIII is going crazy. They’re adding teams it seems like every year to their tournament. Obviously we make money. We’re a huge moneymaker that way for the NCAA, unlike other quote-‘Olympic’- sports. Maybe you go from 16 to 18, I don’t know, but does that prompt other schools to add men’s lacrosse down the road, who knows, but again it’s so competitive right now to get into that NCAA tournament, and certainly if you can have a conference AQ that’s the way to go. Is the athletic dept. really funding this whole-heartedly, full scholarships and everything, or is it going to be limited or no scholarships and part-time coaches? Oh yeah…We’ve been told we are going to get all the amenities that go with being a fully-funded Division I programs. We have three full-time coaches, the travel budget, the equipment, the scholarships funding, all of those things are very important in this equations, and certainly when you get that kind of support, you’re certainly excited about it. What is the recruiting challenge? I mean if I am a high school player, if I come in as a freshman in 2009, I don’t have a shot at even being eligible to play in the postseason until my senior year? Well I think that the challenge is, say that you might be ineligible to compete for a championship, but on the other hand, you’ve got a chance to play the very, very best schedule that we can assemble. In ’09 for example, we’re playing Army, Virginia, Maryland, Loyola, Brown, Dartmouth, Hobart, we have some terrific Division I competition. I think the challenge of that…I think the challenge too, being the first, coming into Bryant on the bottom floor so to speak, as we make this move to Division I, has certainly got to be appealing and exciting. It’s certainly something we’re selling to Division I recruits. If I am a high school senior looking to play lacrosse in college, why should I come and play for Mike Pressler at Bryant? (Laughing) Oh boy…I think there’s a lot of things there. Number one, we’re, in New England now, we’re known as one of the top business schools. We do have liberal arts, but our forte is in the business world, we’re business specific. I think that’s unique and gives us a niche there. Then the other part is, what we want to become, and to be the guys in the ground floor, as we build ‘that model.’ We’re coaching our team; we’re doing everything here that we did at Duke for 16 years. The names have changed, the colors have changed, the university’s changed, but we’re going about our business without question in the Division I model, and I think that is appealing for any high school junior or senior certainly right now…. Pay attention to lax.com, as we will post “Catching Up with Mike Pressler—Part Two” in the near future.