Mike McConathy has steered the Northwestern State basketball to its greatest heights in his two decades as the veteran coach begins his 23rd season on the Demons sideline.
McConathy’s 682 victories in 39 seasons (which includes 16 seasons at Bossier Parish Community College) is tops among Louisiana college coaches in state history. That group includes LSU’s Dale Brown, Louisiana Tech’s Leon Barmore, Grambling’s Fred Hobdy and ULM’s Mike Vining.
He’s led the Demons to three NCAA Tournament appearances, including one of the most memorable March Madness upsets in tournament history with a 2006 win against No. 3 seed Iowa in which NSU erased a 17-point Hawkeye lead with 8 ½ minutes remaining.
The Demons also made NCAA Tournament trips in 2001 and 2013. NSU is 2-3 in NCAA play, including a 2001 win against Winthrop (coached by Gregg Marshall) in the inaugural Opening Round game in Dayton, Ohio.
He crossed the 300-win mark on the NSU sidelines in his 21st season, leading a team with six of its top seven scorers being newcomers to a fourth-place finish in the Southland Conference and a first-round tournament win before the postseason was canceled because of the COVID-19 virus.
McConathy, a former Southland Player of the Year himself at then-SLC member Louisiana Tech, has excelled in the conference tournament. He’s advanced to seven SLC Tournament championship games, winning three (2001, 2006 and 2013).
Only the Demons (2005-08) and Louisiana-Monroe (1990-93) have made four straight championship game appearances in the five decades of Southland basketball competition. NSU is 19-9 in Southland Tournament play in 13 trips under McConathy.
His teams have scored road wins over Oklahoma State, Mississippi State, Auburn and Oregon State.
McConathy has developed 29 all-conference players at NSU with Trey Gilder reaching the NBA and more than 25 playing professional overseas or domestically.
McConathy’s core philosophies include the belief “the MVP of our team IS our team.” His use of a deep rotation, often with wave substitutions of five-for-five, is a tried-and-true method that has NSU playing its best basketball down the stretch.
Since the start of his 16 seasons as coach at Bossier Parish Community College in his hometown, McConathy has constantly promoted educational values for, and with, his players. Almost 90 percent of the seniors in his NSU program have graduated. More than half the team has been on the NSU honor roll in the past 10 years.
The Demons received “public recognition” from the NCAA in 2014 and in 2006 for ranking among the nation’s top 10 percent Academic Progress Rate scores in the NCAA’s annual report. They had a perfect score in 2011 and have consistently ranked among state, Southland Conference and even national leaders in that and the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate under McConathy’s guidance. NSU qualified a record five players for the NABC Honors Court this past July.
His program is #Southland Strong: The Demons are 215-194 (.526) against Southland foes under McConathy.
The Demons benefit from a big homecourt advantage at venerable Prather Coliseum, which has more on-the-floor seating than any other Southland venue. The Demons have won 66 percent of its home games (192-99) under McConathy.
Known for years as “Coach Mike” to his players, McConathy is among a select group of major college mentors. Eight Division I basketball coaches have been at their current school for at least 22 years. His peers in this distinction include Mike Krzyzewski (Duke), Tom Izzo (Michigan State), and Jim Boeheim (Syracuse).
Two current Division I head coaches – Texas A&M’s Buzz Williams and Mark Slessinger of New Orleans – have served on his Demon coaching staff.
“Coach Mike” is nationally respected by those who coach, and cover, the game.
For the 15th year, he will be part of the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Top 25 voting panel. He has also served a three-year term on the NCAA’s coaches’ regional advisory committee assisting with the NCAA Tournament selection process.
He received the 2012 NABC Guardians of the Game Pillar Award for Education during NCAA Final Four weekend in New Orleans. It is among the most prestigious awards presented by the NABC, representing one of the four core values of the Guardians of the Game program – education, leadership, advocacy and service.
National television and radio analysts and announcers such as Fox Sports’ Tim Brando and Doug Gottlieb, Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery of CBS Sports, Fran Fraschilla and Jerry Punch of ESPN, and Charles Barkley of TBS have expressed their admiration of McConathy, as much for his core values as for his coaching acumen.
Demon basketball has evolved in his tenure from being nearly an afterthought in the historic city of Natchitoches to providing the sports heartbeat of northwest Louisiana in February and March.
McConathy brought the philosophy of “Championship Basketball … with a Purpose!” to NSU in March of 1999. After winning 70 percent of his games in 16 seasons at Bossier Parish Community College, he took over a program that had never been to the NCAA Tournament and had just five winning seasons in 24 years of Division I history.
At the press conference announcing his hiring, he talked about bringing Demon basketball back to the level of expectation it had when his father and uncles played for Northwestern in the 1950s. Then, 20-win seasons and conference championships were standard fare.
Now, beginning his 23rd season as head coach, Coach Mike’s vision has long since become reality.
Sticking with the players already in the program worked. His first team posted the first winning season in eight years at Northwestern, becoming the first Demon team to reach the Southland Conference Tournament championship game.
A year later, the Demons were back, and they didn’t stop there. The heart of the team he inherited and inspired worked its way to the SLC Tournament title in 2001, into the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever, and to an opening round win as the Demons became “Dayton’s Darlings” and somewhat of a national media sensation at the outset of March Madness.
The swirl of national talk show appearances, the fact that the team’s opening win was the lead story on “SportsCenter” and in the next day’s USA Today sports section, was all part of the bigger picture for McConathy. It was a chance to solidify the foundation that had been established, an opportunity to springboard the NSU program into a position of being a consistent championship contender in the Southland Conference.
A year later, as seven seniors went through commencement exercises, McConathy was preparing for the consequences of a surprising recruiting decision. The coach who spent 16 seasons in the junior college ranks decided against blending JUCO players with a few prep prospects to replace the departing senior class. Instead, McConathy and assistants Simmons and Slessinger brought in a dozen high school seniors.
Those recruits were the 2005-06 seniors, except for Jermaine Spencer, who had interest from LSU and Texas, among others, but signed with McConathy and the Demons. Spencer took a medical redshirt year as a sophomore, so his senior season came in 2006-07. Behind that 2003 recruiting class, the Demons layered in a handful of talented high school players in 2004 and 2005, and added a blend of prep and junior college recruits since, averting another wholesale rebuilding.
The plan worked. The youngest team in the country battled through two losing seasons, appearing ready to turn the corner in 2003-04 before some key players were sidelined.
In 2004-05, the payoff began: 21 wins (the most for the Demons since 1960), a Southland Conference co-championship, homecourt advantage in the SLC Tournament and an ESPN-televised championship game at Prather Coliseum.
But it was a stunning last-minute loss. That was the painful motivator for the 2005-06 team - the Demons wanted to fulfill their potential, to repeat as champs, host the SLC tournament championship game again, and win there - and in the NCAA Tournament.
They did that, and much more.
The Demons had a school-record 26 wins, including victories at Oklahoma State, Mississippi State, over Oregon State and No. 15 Iowa in the NCAA Tournament. Attendance records were shattered. They earned a TV game in the ESPN BracketBusters. They won the SLC by the widest margin in nine seasons. Northwestern made its fourth SLC Tournament championship game appearance in McConathy’s first seven seasons as head coach. The Demons won the Pontiac Game Changing Performance $100,000 general scholarship prize for the most spectacular play in the NCAA Tournament. Northwestern made four national television (CBS, ESPN2, ESPNU) appearances, let alone the cascade of national coverage during their NCAA Tournament run by the Demons of Destiny.
Each March, national media revisit the win over St. Patrick’s Day win over third-seeded Iowa, capped by Jermaine Wallace’s off-side rebound and fall-away 3-pointer from the corner with 0.5 left. It’s shown over and over on TV, and has continually been featured in lists of all-time NCAA Tournament great finishes and best NCAA games of the decade. In March 2011, an NCAAsports.com vote by fans tabbed the contest the greatest game in NCAA Tournament history.
Seven seniors graduated. For most programs it would be back to the drawing board at that point. For the Demons, it was back to more success in 2006-07 -- starting with a jam-packed Prather Coliseum for a season-opening smackdown of Utah State, and finishing a 3-pointer shy of another NCAA Tournament berth.
For the third straight year, NSU won an SLC title - this time the newly created SLC East Division crown. Again, the Demons were in the SLC Finals.
It was more déjà vu in 2008.
For the sixth time in nine seasons, and for the fourth consecutive year, the Demons reached the SLC Tournament championship game. Another nailbiting 3-point loss kept them from the Big Dance. But their SLC Tournament dominance was palpable to observers and the competition, who are wary of the Demons’ depth that makes them so formidable in the late-season and postseason play. That was borne out again in 2013-14.
Northwestern State posted its third 20-win season in nine years. Prather Coliseum was the least liked destination for Southland teams. March Madness again enveloped the NSU faithful, and in commencement exercises in December and May, Demon players marched in cap and gown -- a recurring theme that was one win shy of a repeat last season.
It’s all part of Coach Mike’s plan. And it’s a home grown product. McConathy has built with Louisiana players as about three-quarters of the Demons who have played for him are from the Bayou State.
That’s fitting. The McConathy family roots, and values, are deep in the red clay hills of north Louisiana, tracing back decades to his family’s farm in hilly Bienville Parish, where his father and uncles did their chores before they used horses and bicycles to make the six-mile plus trip to basketball practice and games.
During his days at Bossier Parish Community College, McConathy had chances to join his college teammate Tim Floyd as an assistant coach at Iowa State and possibly to the NBA, but it never came to pass. He couldn’t put a price tag on raising his boys around their grandparents and uncles and aunts in north Louisiana.
Now, as he’s brought Northwestern State basketball back, and even beyond to a level it reached when his father played for the Demons.
The transformation of Demon basketball has been accomplished. The challenge hasn’t ended -- competition never does -- but Mike McConathy has built a program solid enough that he was proud to have his own son as part of the team.
He’s smiling even more broadly nowadays. Michael and Logan graduated with honors after finishing five years in purple and white. But there still is a roster full of “Coach Mike’s boys” who don’t happen to be McConathys, just Demons.
