Just before dawn, Russ Pennell pulled out of his driveway lacking motivation.
He usually was able to think of something inspirational by the time he reached Tyler Street. A quote. A theme. Something to share with his players to stir their spirit for the 6:30 a.m. practices.
But the University of Central Arkansas men's basketball team was 0-15 in Pennell's first season, and the Bears had just suffered a 109-58 loss to Stephen F. Austin on their home court.
It was 2015.
"I'm driving to work, and I got nothing," recalled Pennell, the fourth-year coach at UCA who spoke at the Downtown Tip Off Club at the Wyndham Riverfront in North Little Rock on Monday. "The tank is empty. We're 0-15. This thing is going the wrong way. What am I going to tell these guys?"
He reached the end of the street and saw a house being built. It was dark the night before, and he hadn't seen the house. The construction team had just bulldozed the dirt.
"It was like the good Lord said to me, 'There's going to be a house there, but it isn't built yet,' " he said. "And my thought was this as I drove to work: How ridiculous it would be for me to run out there, stop the bulldozer guy and go, 'Hey! Where's this house? What are you doing? How come the house isn't done?' Because he had to clear the dirt."
Pennell was in the middle of bulldozing his own dirt. When the former UCA player was hired before the 2014-2015 season, the basketball program had a 1.7 grade-point average and had been placed on a two-year postseason ban for not meeting the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate requirements.
Pennell was hoping for just a single victory just to keep the program from getting slapped on a national TV graphic for winless teams.
After the 51-point loss to Stephen F. Austin, Pennell told his players about the house he had seen. The Bears won two games by the end of the season, finishing 2-27.
Pennell continued to watch the house on his morning drives. It had become therapeutic.
"Every day, I'd go by: 'Oh, they poured the foundation,' " he said. "I was cheering for that house, man. That house was going up."
Now, the Bears are 10-11 (4-4 Southland Conference), and their nine victories over Division I opponents are the most since the program made the jump from Division II before the 2006-2007 season.
UCA was picked to finish 11th in the Southland's preseason poll, but Pennell said before the season that he hoped this was the year the program "moved to the upper echelon of the league. Maybe even win it."
Since then, the Bears have beaten California, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and lost 106-101 in overtime to then-No. 18 UCLA on Nov. 15.
Senior guard Jordan Howard is fourth nationally in points per game (24.5), and he broke the UCA career scoring record by scoring 28 points in a 80-63 loss to Abilene Christian on Saturday. Howard's 2,158 points surpassed the 2,157 points Clifton Bush scored from 1988-1992.
Pennell thought his program was "about to put the roof on" its proverbial house when the Bears beat New Orleans 81-57 on the road Wednesday, the Privateers first loss at home this season.
Then, the loss to ACU "looked like that storm blew the roof off."
"So, I'm not sure," he said. "But I think we're getting there."
The house at the edge of Tyler Street has been done for a few years now.
"There's timeliness to things," Pennell said. "There's timeliness to building a house. There's timeliness to building a program. And I think in basketball, in coaches, and I think this is where athletic directors make mistakes: As long as it keeps getting better, you need to stay with it. You need to stay with your coach. You need to hang with it."
Sports on 01/23/2018