Mount St. Mary’s authors a year to remember despite adversity, transition

Donny Lind and Mount St. Mary’s end first year together with MAAC championship and foundation for a bright future. (Photo by Travis Tellitocci/MAAC)

RALEIGH, N.C. — When Donny Lind was hired at Mount St. Mary’s nearly a year ago, he highlighted his main objective in succeeding Dan Engelstad in Emmitsburg.

Lind, a branch of the highly fruitful Shaka Smart coaching tree, made it a point to focus on building relationships with the players he inherited, ensuring he got to know them as people first and foremost before any workouts or practices had begun.

The 38-year-old rookie head coach also addressed the ever-changing mid-major landscape and his neophyte status within it in a rather unique manner upon taking over at The Mount last April.

“I’m a big believer in FITFO,” Lind said before explaining the self-created acronym and what it stands for. “Figure it the fuck out.”

Lind and the Mountaineers did exactly that this season. Whether it was a non-conference season capped by an upset win at Miami, battling through stretches where injuries and other attrition threatened to derail a train gathering momentum, or taking out three of the MAAC’s top four teams in succession to get to the NCAA Tournament, it felt as though The Mount had an answer for every obstacle placed in its way.

And with a veteran core that Lind—with the help of Xavier Lipscomb, who played at Radford when the coach was on Mike Jones’ staff—was able to keep together, the transition was made easier even as naysayers abounded with claims that building a culture could not be done through continuity.

“It’s a testament to the fact you can still do it,” Lind said of his team reaching the NCAA Tournament, even as the Mountaineers were ousted by Duke. “There’s so many doubters, so many people that say you can’t care about the kids, you can’t build a culture, you can’t invest in them because they’re just gonna leave anyway. That’s what everybody says.”

“Veteran leadership and veteran players are so important in this day and age. I was really fortunate that X’s and my relationship kept a lot of those guys here. They’re willing to stay because he can vouch for me. Because of that, they blossomed and they grew, and they were able to have the sort of impact that we all knew they were capable of having. It was a great merit for sure.”

Nearly everyone on The Mount’s roster is eligible to return next season, including Lipscomb, who noted Friday that he had an additional year remaining should he choose to exercise it. Regardless of how much of this championship outfit reprises the quest to repeat, this much is clear: A foundation has once again been erected in a place known for consistency.

“The timetable is shorter, but we can still make an impact,” Lind asserted. “You go in that locker room and those guys have been impacted by our staff—by each other—because we were intentional about it. I’m proud of the fact that it gives me some validation in what I believe in, that that truly does work, but the work has just begun. We want to build a program here that ascends to heights greater than these.”

Dola Adebayo, the Mountaineers’ all-MAAC power forward, concurred.

“Looking forward,” he posited, “this is just the beginning for us.”

Mount St. Mary’s was lightly regarded, if at all, in the preseason. Picked third-to-last in the 13-team MAAC, presumably because of the uncertainty after Engelstad departed for a high-major assistant gig at Syracuse, The Mount essentially had a chip on its shoulder from the start. But Lind and his players centered on making year one a year of multiple memories, long before Selection Sunday was even a fleeting possibility.

“I’m just super thankful for my teammates,” Lipscomb reflected. “The perseverance we showed as a group—we were picked 11th in the MAAC preseason poll and we didn’t care about that—every day, we just worked as hard as we could and took it day by day. We proved all the doubters wrong.”

“We talked a lot all year along about A memory as opposed to THE memory of the season,” Lind reiterated. “We didn’t want the win over Miami to be THE highlight of our season, we just wanted it to be A highlight. And as we look back, I’ll get some time to reflect and there’ll be a lot of highlights in that highlight reel, on and off the court, with these guys.”