Former WPIAL star lands the Pine Richland boys varsity basketball head coaching job, as Steve McNees is set to restore the program to prominence.
McNees graduated from Shenango High School in 2006, where he was a four-year starter for his father and head coach, Bill McNees. He finished his high school career as Shenango’s all-time leader in points (2,192), assists (824), and steals (233).
Bill McNees was a teacher for nearly 40 years at Shenango and spent 25 years as the head basketball coach there. Being raised in that environment was one that Steve called, “a very winning recipe for my family growing up”. He went on to say, “I’ve kind of always wanted to be my father and emulate the impact that he had on young people.”
McNees has already been doing that for years whether he knows it or not. After a very successful collegiate career at Akron, where he played for legendary head coach, Keith Dambrot, and started 78 games, leading the Zips to two NCAA Tournament appearances, McNees followed his former coach to Duquesne.
McNees spent 11 years coaching at the college level under Dambrot, so it’s not like coaching basketball is new to him. That being said, this will be his first time as a head coach on the high school level. So what is it about Pine Richland specifically that made him take on this new challenge? Everything.
“I live in Pine Richland, my kids will go to Pine, and hopefully my boy plays basketball. It's kind of near and dear to my heart,” McNees said. “Obviously, I have a passion for coaching. Basketball is all I've done as a professional, so for me, it's a perfect fit”.
He went on to explain how his experience at the college level has prepared him for the transition to high school basketball saying, “I think the cool thing about college coaching is it's all that you do. You don't have another side job. You don't have things that occupy you from nine to five. All you're doing is hoops and all you're doing really is dealing with young people and basketball.”
“And with that, you learn to handle a lot of problems,” McNess said. “I was able to do it for 11 years and really got tremendous mileage on just dealing with everything between the lines and outside the lines, and so I think for me, it was just a really condensed tenure of basketball, making decisions, and handling the ups and downs. So I think heading into a high school tenure, I feel very prepared in terms of just handling the day- to-day, the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
The Pine Richland Rams are coming off an underwhelming season, where they finished outside the playoffs, with an overall record of 7-15. McNees plans to return Pine Richland to its usual winning ways as quickly as possible. “I came here to build a program over a long duration, and I think it’s very important that you win early,” McNees stated. “My focus will certainly be flipping the program as quickly as I can. I had a lot of experience when I was with Coach Dambrot’s staff taking over Duquesne, as that was a bit of a rebuild.” He went on to say that, “The first year is going to be all about culture building, and then we want to win as much and as quickly as possible.”
The Rams do return a lot of players from last year’s squad, including their captain and leading scorer in 6’3” senior guard, Grant Spacciapolli, who averaged 16.1 points last season. “I've been fortunate to get to know Grant a little bit over the years, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him,” McNees said. “Him and I have connected because we're both basketball junkies, and he's a very, very mature young man. I think for me, it’s very exciting to be able to lean on that type of maturity. He's a very impressive human being, and on top of that, he's a tremendous scorer.”
The new Pine Richland coach went on to express his excitement to lead this group of returning players saying, “That whole returning senior class are very basketball-focused people. Some of them I've gotten to know over the years as well, and so that class in particular is a fun group for me to start with.”
When asked about the style of basketball he plans to play with this incoming group, McNees said, “Naturally I’m a very offensive-minded person in everything that I do. I’m pretty aggressive. I like the three-ball. I like to fling it.”
Defensively, McNees spoke to his experience at the college level saying, “I think defensively, I was able to coach under what I consider a top 5 to 10 defensive coach in the last 20 to 30 years in Keith Dambrot. His level of discipline on the defensive end was really good for me, just being an offensive-minded person.”
When it comes to his plan for the Rams, McNees said, “I plan to be very, very disciplined and hold them extremely accountable on the defensive end. And hopefully offensively, we have a ton of confidence and we’re letting the ball fly. I don't want people thinking twice on the offensive end.”
One challenge for a lot of first-year coaches is being able to immediately connect with the players. A lot of times players aren’t particularly familiar with the experience that their coaches bring. They either haven’t heard of them or there isn’t a huge story to tell. That’s different with McNees. He was a phenomenal player in this very conference. He was a Fab 5 player in high school, a successful division 1 college player, and even played professionally overseas. That provides some built-in credibility for McNees in year one.
“'I’ve been in their shoes,” McNees said. “As a former player, you learn to deal with quite a bit, and so you're able to kind of talk the talk and walk the walk with them and be very raw and real. There's a level of just being authentic that I think young people can sniff out, and if you actually have gone out there, laced them up, and done a few things, they tend to kind of listen a little better.”
McNees reiterated just how much admiration and respect he has for Pine Richland as a school, a program, and a community as a whole saying, “One of the things that attracted me to Pine Richland, in addition to living there, was the high achieving families and people that exist there and their taste for excellence. And so for me, again, coming from the college side where everything matters and you're playing to really do something special. I think that that's what I hope to bring to the community.”
He went on to cite the Pine Richland football program as an example saying, “You look at the Pine Richland football program and the amount of pride and just sheer respect that not only that community has, but the surrounding communities have for that program. If I can take some steps in that direction in terms of just doing it the right way and then winning not only on a WPIAL level, but hopefully on a state level.”
McNees plans to keep the connection to the Pine Richland community in mind when building out his coaching staff as well. “I want to include Pine Richland people as much as I can,” McNees said. “Obviously I live in Pine Richland, but I didn't go to Pine Richland. So trying to find some people that have that upbringing and those core beliefs of Pine Richland tradition and success is important to me.”
In addition to coaching, McNees is also the Co-Founder of Run the Show, a basketball training program focused on holistic player development. He plans to lean on his contacts from that world as well saying, “My basketball business locally has led me to round up quite a bit of local basketball coaches and professionals, and certainly we'll draw from that list. I like to have a well-rounded staff. Some young, some old, and some with niches, whether it's player development people, or X's and O people,” McNees said. “I think it's very important that you have a few different walks of life on your staff, so I intend to execute that.”
To use his own words, McNees is “fired up” about the future of Pine Richland basketball. He understands how special this opportunity is for him as he thanked the school, the administration, and the Athletic Director, Joe Gironda, for believing in him.
Family, community, and basketball are essential pillars of life for McNees. “I'm a very community-based person,” he said. “Again, from how I was raised. So the thought of my family growing up in a similar style that I did, and again, it was such a winning formula for me growing up and my sister and my mother and everybody. It was just tremendous. So the opportunity to replicate that is the strongest desire.”
“For me, all I know is basketball,” McNees said. “It's all I do. I stay away from things I'm not good at, and I've tried to build a career around hoops and around young people. So for me, the Pine Richland opportunity was perfect.”
The high school basketball season won’t begin for several months, but the work for Pine Richland and new head coach, Steve McNess, starts now.