PGC Grad, Ronald Nored (Butler) Sees the Game from the Other Side of Coaching

Two-time Point Guard College graduate, and Butler point guard, Ronald Nored, normally leads his team on the court, but now the college player is coaching an AAU summer travel team

If Ronald Nored ever becomes a college basketball coach, he won’t be a facsimile of Butler’s Brad Stevens.

Butler’s Ronald Nored can’t play basketball while he recovers from shin surgery, so the junior is coaching an AAU team, The Truth, this summer. He encourages his players (top), months after savoring an upset of NCAA Tournament No. 1 seed Syracuse.

The enduring image of Stevens from this year’s NCAA Tournament is that of the 33-year-old coach calmly pacing the sideline with arms folded. Nored, the 20-year-old Bulldogs point guard, has not been so restrained when coaching a summer AAU team.

There was the game he picked up two technicals and was ejected. Or the moment he called timeout just to applaud his players because he was so surprised they executed a play correctly.

Nored is recovering from shin surgery, so if he can’t play basketball, coaching is the next best thing.

Nored’s ambition is to become one of Stevens’ coaching colleagues. If not on Butler’s staff, then elsewhere. Nored said he enjoys everything about the sport, from travel to preparation to recruiting.

“I don’t think there’s anything better than college basketball when you think about sports,” Nored said. “Being a recruit, I’ve seen how the coaches recruit. As a player, I’ve seen it.”

Nored said his relationship with the players is like that of an older brother, especially on those occasions he is angry.

“He knows how to discipline us at times,” said Zach Taylor, a junior at Hamilton Southeastern. “If we get out of control, he tells us we need to get focused and stay in line.”

Gardner and Taylor said they enjoyed having a college player in charge. They repeatedly said Nored “knows what he’s talking about.”

The Butler junior is enduring a second successive summer of limited activity. Stress fractures in both legs kept him sidelined a year ago, and he didn’t resume full workouts until the Bulldogs began formal practice in mid-October.

He still became the Horizon League’s co-Defensive Player of the Year and often made key offensive plays late in NCAA Tournament games. Nored said his shins didn’t feel sore during the run to the championship game, but he had a recurrence of pain thereafter.

One shin had a noticeable bump on it. So he opted for what he called minor surgery June 16.

“It got to the point where I don’t want to sit four weeks every summer,” Nored said. “I thought it would be great if I got through a quick rehab and not worry about my shins anymore.”

He said his recovery is ahead of where it was last summer and that he expects to resume playing well before the start of practice for the 2010-11 season.

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