The Bahamas Basketball Federation (BBF) has named its vice president, Mario Bowleg, as the new head coach of the men's national basketball team.
Bowleg has coached the game at several different levels, and will replace Colorado State University's head coach, Larry Eustachy, who served as the team's head coach for the past year.
This summer, Bowleg served as Eustachy's assistant when the men's team competed in both the Caribbean Basketball Confederation Championships (CBC) in July in Tortola, British Virgin Islands and the Centrobasket tournament in Mexico in August.
"The agreement with Eustachy was a one-year deal. The executives at the federation always felt that I was quite capable of taking over the head coach job and doing a good job at it. It was an agreement with Eustachy, the executives and the players who felt that at this time it would be good for myself or a Bahamian to coach the team," said Bowleg.
"Eustachy did a good job, and we were pleased with his performance. It's very time consuming to come in and not all of the time we will be able to have our training camps out of the country. So he had his time and we thank him for the time spent with us."
Bowleg's first job as head coach will be getting the team ready for the Central American and Caribbean Games in Veracruz, Mexico, November 14-30. However, the team that will be traveling to Mexico will look a lot different from the teams that played in the summer.
Due to the start of both the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) season and several basketball leagues around the world, the men's team will have to play without a lot of its key contributors.
"Keno Burrows has indicated that he had put it in his contract for him to be released to play, so we hope that we will have him along with Marvin Gray, C.J. Hinds and Mitchell Johnson. With the right finances in place, we can have them along with Kadeem Coleby as well. We also have guys at home who have played at this level; Eugene Bain was a part of those summer teams and we also have players like Gamaliel 'Chameleon' Rose and Cordero Seymour," said Bowleg.
"The makeup may not be exactly the way it was in the summer, but there is a decent core that will probably be there along with some of the local guys. At this time, other than Puerto Rico and Mexico that have pro teams, we usually have better local players than the other teams that will be there."
The team's first official practice will be held on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the D.W. Davis Gymnasium, and although Bowleg will be taking over, he still plans to incorporate some of Eustachy's techniques in the team's training sessions.
"There are many things that I learned in our time together, too much to mention. Some things will continue to be a part of our program, while some things will not be exactly my style and may be eliminated, but then again that's for each coach to decide. There are things that you would or would not do as head coach, but that doesn't mean that it's right or wrong; it's just the preference of the coach at that time," said Bowleg.
The men's team finished first at the CBC championships and fourth in their pool at Centrobasket.

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