NYC Legendary Head Coach Johnny Mathis 🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀 For most basketball coaches, seeing their team mired in a 27-point deficit would be cause for some angry barking, a clipboard fling, and a swig or two of Mylanta. For John F. Kennedy head coach Johnny Mathis, it’s his medicine. Mathis, a fixture at JFK since 1987, has had more to deal with than the average coach. Health issues have thrown him a curve the past several seasons, which has enabled the legendary coach to put subpar play by his team in its proper perspective. So when his Knights were down 49-22 with just over six minutes left in the third quarter in last week’s game against Truman, there were no sideline histrionics. Just a calm timeout, and a chance to get his players’ heads back in the game. “They’re young,” Mathis said. “Most of them are inexperienced so I just tried to settle them down.” Kennedy responded by shaving their 27-point hole to a single point with 16 seconds to play. But Kennedy’s miracle comeback came up just short when Emmanuel Sarbah’s putback off Isaiah Malave’s missed free throw with 0.3 seconds to play came a fraction too late as Truman held on for a 69-67 victory. “We dug a hole that was too deep to come back from,” Mathis said. “We got down 8-0 to start the game, and we just let them shoot and we weren’t playing any defense. But we did exactly what we were supposed to do in the second half, which allowed us to come back from 27 down. If we had done that from the beginning, we would have been all right.” --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app