Siddle Reflects on First Season, Personnel Changes

The UNCW coach has an interesting perspective on his head-coaching debut

There are plenty of ways to describe UNCW’s 2020-21 men’s basketball season, and not many of them are pleasant.

You name it — it hit the Seahawks.

COVID-19 cost the program a crucial summer with first-year Coach Takayo Siddle, and after a promising start, the virus again cost the team more than 50 days of practices and games during two extended stoppages.

Already short on bodies and talent, injuries and departures hit the roster so hard that manager Jack Mehrtens suited up for the final two games of the season as the Seahawks limped to a 7-10 finish, winning just one game over the final three months of the season.

So, how’s that for a debut season?

“You know what? I always tell people this last year was great,” Siddle said.

Wait, what?

To be clear, Siddle isn’t talking about the results — those weren’t fun. Everything else? A lightning-fast crash course in what the program needed to return to glory.

“I was able to evaluate the whole program and change the personnel to fit what we’re trying to do and fit our culture,” he said. “So last year was great in a lot of different ways. I made a lot of changes to my to my roster … I made a change to my staff as well. So I thought last year was great for me as a first-year head coach going into year-two, from an evaluation standpoint.”

Siddle has a unique perspective on what it takes to turn a last-place team into a winner. In fact, he’s one of four people on the planet who have been part of a coaching staff that inherited a last-place UNCW team and turned it into a winner.

The first time around, it happened a little more quickly, as the Seahawks went from 9-23 in 2013-14 under Buzz Peterson, before a shocking 18-14 turnaround that saw UNCW finish in a first-place tie in 2014-15.

So, as those losses piled up in an empty Trask Coliseum last winter, Siddle didn’t spend a whole lot of time wallowing in the disappointment of being unable to replicate the worst-to-first turnaround.

“I knew (that) I know what I want, and I know how to get there,” he said. “The first thing that we had to do was change the personnel and get everybody on the same page.”

That trek began almost immediately after the season-ending loss to William & Mary in the CAA Tournament.

Jake Boggs (South Florida), Imajae Dodd (Charleston Southern), Joe Pridgen (Northeastern) and Brian Tolefree (Flagler) quickly hit the transfer portal. Jay Estime (Chowan) ultimately departed this summer, and Ja’Juan Carr, who never played for UNCW, moved on to Cape Fear Community College. Including Ian Steere, who left the program in December, seven players moved on to finish their careers elsewhere.

Later in the spring, assistant coach Monty Sanders quietly moved on to Winthrop, and has since been replaced by former Seahawk Craig Ponder.

“I wish those guys had moved on nothing but the best — I don’t have anything negative to say about it,” he said. “I have a vision of what I want this program to be the type of people that I want around me, and they just didn’t fit … I had to get the right guys in here to fit exactly what our culture is right now.”

In a spring that Siddle needed to completely flip his roster, it just so happened that the NCAA passed new legislation that grants first-time transfers immediate eligibility with their new programs.

That means the departing Seahawks found better opportunities for this season, and for UNCW, Siddle accomplished a roster makeover in months, rather than years.

“It was it was great,” he said. “We were able to identify who we wanted and we got lucky. Everybody who we wanted as a top priority, we were we were able to get them and they fit exactly what I’m trying to do.”

From the portal, Siddle and his staff landed six transfers with Division I experience, in addition to four freshmen.

And it’s not a coincidence that the transfers expected to play the biggest roles this season all come from teams that won their conference’s regular-season or tournament titles last season, in James Baker Jr. (Morehead State), Jaylen Fornes (Nicholls State) and Alec Oglesby (Cleveland State). Those teams went a combined 60-23, while Baker and Oglesby both logged minutes in the NCAA Tournament.

Another, Amari Kelly, played for a Duquesne program that has consistently improved over the past several seasons and went 21-9 in 2020-21.

“The one thing that we talked about is getting high-character, talented student-athletes — all in that order — and we were able to do that.”