Hank Is Here! Plona back on IHCC campus as new head men’s basketball coach

OTTUMWA — As he walked into the Hellyer Student Life Center on Friday, one of the first people Hank Plona saw practicing was Warrior sophomore James Harris Jr. It was like deja-vu for the brand new head coach of the IHCC basketball team, considering his last trip to the Hellyer Center ended with Harris Jr. making one of the most unbelievable game-winning plays the Warriors have had in recent memory.

“I told James the last time I saw him, he was standing right there on that same side of the floor throwing an inbounds pass off a player before scoring a game-winning basket against me,” Plona joked.

Plona, who was in his fourth year as an assistant coach at South Plains last November when the Warriors won 99-98 over the Texans on Harris Jr’s inbounds play with 0.6 seconds left, got a fun replay from the outgoing sophomore.

“He told me he was going to remind me of it when he first saw me,” Plona joked. “I told him there was no need for that. I think I’ll always remember that play.”

Plona arrived in town Thursday night, just enough time to catch some sleep before heading out to get a full glimpse of the Indian Hills-Ottumwa campus for the first time in four years. Things like the improvements made to the Tom Arnold Net Center really stood out to Plona, who was hired to take over the three-time national championship program on Monday.

“They’ve made some amazing improvements to facilities around here,” Plona said. “I didn’t really get the chance to see much when I was here with South Plains in November. It’s been great catching up with some familiar faces and seeing some familiar sites.”

Plona will get the chance to meet the entire “Warrior Nation” fanbase officially on Wednesday during a meet-and-greet at Warrior Junction with the new head men’s basketball coach. Even in his brief time here as an assistant, and brief encounters as an opposing coach, Plona knows what fans expect from him as he prepares for his first head coaching role.

“Getting that national championship game at Hutchinson is something that’s very special. I’ve been fortunate enough to experience that twice as an assistant coach at South Plains,” said Plona, who was part of a national championship staff with the Texans. “The goal is to build a program and build a pulse that we’re heading in that right direction as a program. From now until the next national championship game at Hutch, we want to feel like we’re building this program in the right direction.”

To do that, Plona admits there are several things he’ll have to learn on the fly after spending his first coaching years as an assistant at both IHCC and South Plains. The new challenges that await Plona in this role include finding the type of talent that can both represent Indian Hills at a high level with high class as well as putting together a coaching staff that can help Plona get the best out of his team.

Indeed the challenges that await Plona in taking on the challenge of Indian Hills head men’s basketball coach range from the complexity of putting together a team that brings home the program’s fourth national title to simply putting together a schedule that will properly prepare the Warriors in 2015-16.

“We’re really at square one right now,” Plona said. “With no coach in place for the past several weeks, there’s certainly a lot of catching up that needs to be done by me. Many other schools are really putting those things together right now. We’re still figuring out who we’re going to play at home, how many home-and-homes we can work out of the region and putting our in-season tournaments together.”

“We want to test ourselves in some tough environments, but we also want to have an exciting home schedule. That has been a change for me. There’s a lot more that goes into something like that. If we don’t have a schedule, there goes the season. That’s one of the first challenges we have to face.”