Amidst waves of grief and joy, Darnell Haney persists in creating a Georgetown program to be proud of
After suffering the tragic passing of Hoya head coach Tasha Butts, Darnell Haney stepped in and guided Georgetown to stability. Now he carries with him a legacy as he builds a DC program in his image.
A year ago, Darnell Haney wasn’t expecting to even be an assistant coach at Georgetown. He had just left the University of Jacksonville and was considering staying in his home state of Florida. Maybe to Miami or to the University of Florida to be an assistant and continue his coaching career. But instead, he got a call from Hoyas head coach Tasha Butts. They had been in contact about potentially setting up one of his former assistants to be on her new staff in D.C. But, as it turned out, she was looking for someone else.
“I’m like ‘oh, you want to talk to my assistant again, right?’”, he remembers, “and she’s like ‘no. Would you be interested in the position?’”
Haney was unsure. His daughter was in her senior year of high school and his whole family was down in Florida. But after some conversations and a visit to Georgetown he decided he would help out. He was aware of Coach Butts breast cancer diagnosis but wanted to help out however he could. It was just a few months into the job that he got a piece of news that would change his life, and the lives of those around the program, forever.
After a little under two year battle with breast cancer and just two weeks before the season began, Tasha Butts passed away.
“I wasn’t trying to be the head coach,” Haney says. “I was just trying to help.”
Now, one year later, he leads Georgetown into a new era and balances the grief, the joy and the required stability to make the Hoyas a Big East contender.
It’s a delicate balance and one that requires some measure of continuity. After Coach Butts’ passing, the Hoyas banded together and entered Big East play with a 10-2 record. What kept them afloat was a stringent adherence to routine. Haney comes from the world of high school football in South Florida and drew on his background to help add a degree of consistency in the midst of a season that was anything but normal.
“I think when you have a system you stay on a routine,” he explains. “If you allow it to become a distraction, it’s going to blow your whole world up. And that’s why I’m a spiritual guy. I think things happen for a reason. I think people are put in places for a reason. I think all of those things are intertwined.”
But the waves would come, as emotion often does in times of loss. Days would go by where Coach Butts’ loss was felt acutely while others felt normal by comparison. Grief and joy would mix regularly. To keep the emotions in check, Haney’s strategy was about routine and structure. One way to create that balance in his players was by ascribing roles and nicknames to them. Everyone plays defense but offensively one player might be known for something in particular.
‘The engine’.
‘The sniper’.
‘The general’.
‘The anchor’.
‘The glue'.
Every staff member has a role as well. Haney sees it like making a car. The engine and the wheels serve different functions. You can’t put an engine block where the wheels go and vice versa. But, when put in the right sports, the car flies down the road.
“I think what people want is something they can have, that they can say is theirs,” he explains further. “I think it helps you build a camaraderie amongst the team because everybody’s not trying to do the same thing.”
It’s about the responsibility of taking on a role and making it your own which, in some ways, mirrors Haney’s journey as interim head coach last season. When he arrived at Georgetown, he quite literally was ‘the assistant’. Very quickly, he had to take on a new role: the rock. As the season progressed, the Hoyas made a Cinderella run in the Big East Tournament. They started as a 6 seed, upsetting No. 3 St. John’s and No. 2 Creighton before falling to eventual Final Four team UConn in the conference tournament championship. With the spirit of Coach Butts pushing them forward, donors and alumni responded in kind. Now, there’s momentum within a program that has historically been associated with success on the men’s side but hasn’t been as dominant in women’s basketball. Haney thinks that there is a possibility to change that.
“I think we honor but we also stick to our stuff,” he says. “I ain’t John Thompson. I ain’t Patrick Ewing. I’m not any other coach that’s been here. I’m Darnell Haney. And Darnell Haney is an outside dog.”
It’s a program predicated on pesky defense and hustle plays. They’ll weigh you down and wear you out. Something Haney half-jokingly refers to as ‘Nightmare on M Street’. The goal is to create something with resonance. Whether it be the demographics of the DMV — a strong Black population that brought up the likes of Angel Reese — the style of play or the atmosphere the Hoyas want to create in their arena. It’s about creating an identity that people can carry with them. Interestingly enough the feeling of loss, and the growth in its aftermath, is as much an identity as the aforementioned components. But to say the Hoyas are relatable because of Coach Butts’ passing alone ignores the nuance of grief and the way we build in the wake of tragedy.
Emptiness is inextricably intertwined with fulfillment. Happiness and sadness have to exist together in perpetuity. Adversity can build routine and lead to normalcy while stability requires chaos. If those different concepts don’t have the other, then the emotions themselves carry less weight. What is joy without grief or gratitude without tragedy? At Georgetown, all those emotions weave together into a story that many understand on some level. While Tasha Butts may not be around to see it, the hiring of Darnell Haney keeps her legacy alive while he builds his own in Washington D.C. Step by step, role by role and shot by shot.
“As long you keep pounding the stone, you don’t know when it’s going to crumble,” Haney finishes. “So you just gotta keep pounding everyday and at the proper time it’s gonna open up.”