10 minutes with Neal Ring

Neal Ring was named head men’s basketball coach at Maranatha on April 22. Ring, 39, was an assistant coach at both Northland Baptist and North Carolina Wesleyan, and also coached high school basketball for 12 years. Three of his teams won state titles—two at Heritage Christian School in Little Rock, Ark., and another at Falls Road Baptist Church School in Rocky Mount, N.C. He works as an advisor for Atlanta-based OnCourt Player Development, which specializes in skills development for players and coaches and the establishment of basketball academies.

Q: Can you tell us a little about your playing career?

A: I did play high school basketball. During my first year of college basketball, I suffered a back injury in an accident while on weekend military duty with the Reserves. I was finished playing, but it was a blessing in disguise, because it was at that point I began coaching.

Q: How will you be able to combine your full-time job with coaching at Maranatha?

A: I really will have the best of both worlds. Everything I do in my job with OnCourt Player Development is communicating with players, coaches, and parents. I will be representing Maranatha and OnCourt Player Development at every stop.

Q: Have you developed a philosophy of coaching at a Christian college?

A: It’s my ministry, just as if God had called me to be a youth pastor. I get the opportunity to disciple, mentor, and spiritually challenge young men. We want to win games, but we also want to win spiritual battles. The first question I have for a recruit is his salvation testimony. I don’t want them to be ashamed to tell me, because they’re going to get opportunities to tell other people. We want sport to be a platform for ministry.

Q: What type of offense and defense do you generally favor?

A: Typically, my teams have run man-to-man defense and a motion offense. We may play zone a bit more here. I watched the DVDs from last year, and didn’t see any teams in the conference that play zone defense. Because of that, teams may not practice much against it.

Q: You are taking over a program that hasn’t finished with a winning record since 1996-97. How do you change the culture?

A: I think “changing the culture” is exactly how I would put it. We’re going to act like a winning program. We’re going to do the things winning programs do. We will play with the type of intensity that will make it impossible for a guy to play 40 minutes for us. I am a stickler for defense, and we will work hard to eliminate easy baskets. We have a better platform, a better opportunity for testimony, if teams have to play hard to beat us.

Q: It may take a while to get there. How will you know if you’re on the right track?

A: First, did we take care of the spiritual aspect of the lives of these young men? Second, did we get after it defensively? Third, are we hard to guard when we are on offense? If we do those three things, we can compete. I truly believe that.

--Posted by Andrew Call, 5-12-09