‘Play Angry’ style spurs Greg Heiar, Northwest Florida to NJCAA basketball title
The convenience of practicing at Koch Arena made sense, but there was another reason why Greg Heiar wanted his Northwest Florida State team to come back to his old stomping grounds at Wichita State.
As they were preparing for a week in Hutchinson chasing a junior college national championship, Heiar wanted his players to see the banners that his previous teams had won hanging in the rafters.
One for the Final Four, another for a Sweet 16, five for conference championships, two more for conference tournament titles, one for the NIT championship and six for NCAA Tournament berths — all won during Heiar’s time as an assistant coach at WSU from 2011-17.
The motivation worked: now Heiar and Northwest Florida State have a banner of their own to hang after completing an inspired run to the NJCAA Division I men’s basketball championship with an 83-67 win over No. 1 seed Salt Lake Community College on Saturday at Hutchinson Sports Arena.
Heiar promised his team would bring the “Play Angry” mentality to the juco level and his method was backed up by assistant coach Carl Hall, who embodied it for his two years with the Shockers. Northwest Florida State showed that the style can win at any level.
“Gregg Marshall, Chris Jans and Steve Forbes, those are my three biggest mentors and their fingerprints are all over how we play because of my time with them,” Heiar told The Eagle last week. “And honestly, because that’s all I really know. And I’m proud to say they have their fingerprints on this program.”
Heiar gave credit to his former boss, Marshall, as well as Jans and Forbes, former peers on the WSU coaching staff, for his success as a first-year head coach at Northwest Florida State, a once-proud program that was coming off a 6-win season.
Both of those former assistants have attained a great deal of success as head coaches at the Division I level, as Jans led New Mexico State to a first-round upset in this year’s NCAA Tournament and Forbes was named the ACC Coach of the Year for his work turning around the Wake Forest program. And now Heiar, who worked with both coaches during the 2013-14 season, has a juco national title to call his own.
The Raiders, which last won a national title in 2015, just competed a 31-5 season that featured a Panhandle conference championship and a 5-0 week in Hutchinson with dominant wins over the No. 1- and No. 2-ranked teams in the country.
Northwest Florida State pulled away in the title game on Saturday with a 17-0 run in the first half, stretching a 17-11 lead into a 34-11 lead and eventually a 41-15 advantage at halftime. The Raiders forced 14 turnovers and scored 21 points off those turnovers in the game.
Oregon commit Brennan Rigsby led Northwest Florida State with a team-high 24 points on 9-of-14 shooting to go along with seven rebounds, while Kam Woods notched 17 points and Deshawndre Washington added 10 points, eight rebounds and three assists. Washington was named the tournament’s MVP.
This story was originally published March 19, 2022 at 7:43 PM.
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