By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          Georgia College has been a poster child for stability in its men’s basketball program.

          Since that first season in 1970-71, the Bobcats have had only seven head coaches, excluding the six-game stint of F.V. Anderson to start the 1974-75 season.         

          Ryan Aquino played for the program’s mainstay, Terry Sellers, who led the Bobcats from 1993-94 to 2013-14, and then coached with Sellers’ successor, top assistant Mark Gainous.

          The transition to a new coach for the Bobcats will be mighty minimal with Aquino, who has spent the last eight seasons as an assistant under Gainous before being announced Tuesday as Georgia College’s new coach.

          "This has been the only place I would call home since 2008,” the new Bobcat boss said in Thursday morning’s introduction to fans and media. “The chance to stay here and continue off of the success that we've had on and off the court is special to me.

          “I am truly blessed and excited about this opportunity. I think we can do a lot of special things because this is a special place."

          The crowd included two former Milledgeville mayors and a few former Bobcat basketball players, former head coach and athletics director Stan Aldridge, among others.

          “Ryan elevated himself,” athletics director Wendell Staton said.

          The program, head coach or not, was to host a camp with around 1,000 campers. Staton needed to know if Aquino would run the camp even if the school picked another head coach.

          “There’s no doubt,” Staton said. “Ryan says, ‘I’m not going to do that to you all. I’m not going to do that to people that don’t know how to run this thing. I got it. No problem.’

          “That’s just the kind of character.”

          Staton’s normal energy and enthusiasm – high-level on a slow day – was boosted once the process was over and Aquino was the pick.

          “The best thing I can tell you is the reaction of the campus when I told everybody,” said Staton, who noted he and Gainous had coffee together every day for nine years. “I’d kinda been privately telling people the last two weeks as we went through some things. ‘Hey, Ryan’s gonna be our coach, we’ll announce in a couple weeks.’

          “The reaction that you all had told me all I needed to know. You all made that decision.”

          President Cathy Cox noted the arduous process to make the right decision.

          “In addition to the search committee, our candidates who came to campus spent enormous hours with all parts of our campus,” Cox said, “… to make sure we were finding the right fit for our campus because we’re not looking just for credentials.

          “We’re making sure we find the right fit for our campus.”

          Cox said the school had more than 40 applicants from around the country within about 24 hours of posting the position after Gainous resigned to take over as Perry High’s head boys coach.

          “In the end, we found the right fit right here,” Cox said. “Ryan stepped up and showed us things in that interview process that made us absolutely confident we had the right person for the job.”

          Georgia College went 21-8 last season, its best record in nine years.

          After Gainous announced his resignation Staton told Aquino – who has two degrees from Georgia College - to apply for the job.

“ ‘You’re going to get a fair shake just like anybody else,’” Aquino said. “That’s not how it works every where. Sometimes they’ll say, ‘you’ve got no head coaching experience’ (or) ‘we want a bigger name, we want somebody else out there, pack your bags and you’re going somewhere else.’

          “I told him and President Cox … I was just appreciative of the opportunity to go for this opportunity. If you had told me when I got here in 2008 that I would still be here, I would probably think you were crazy.”

          Since then, Aquino has spent every year but one as a Bobcat.

          “The chance to stay here and continue the success we’ve had on and off the court … I told a few people this orning it hadn’t hit me yet,” he said. “I think it’s starting to hit me right now.”