Late last February, after another painful loss in a season filled with them, Allen Community College head coach Patrick Nee retreated to his office and started laughing.
His assistant coach wondered why.
After starting 6-2, Allen proceeded to lose 19 of its last 23 games, and as the injuries mounted, it was apparent the Red Devils were headed for a quick ouster in the Region VI tournament.
Nee was looking further ahead.
“We’re gonna go from last to first,” Nee predicted. “What’s a better story than that?”
Nee, entering his second year at the Red Devil helm, expects vast improvement for his veteran squad, most of whom were a part of the teams but did not play because of medical reasons or redshirt decisions.
“Last year was difficult,” Nee explained. “But it was Year 1, and so we took it like that.”
Nee had come to Allen just weeks before the start of the season after former Red Devil head coach Andy Shaw was hired to coach at Western Iowa.
The timing was less than ideal.
“We had to recruit 14 brand new players in less than six weeks,” Nee recalled. “It was a challenge.”
Nee noted that many were going to sit out the first year, in order to get them acclimated to the college game.
And then when the injury bug hit — six players missed the end of the season for one ailment or another — Nee and Co. knew they’d have to chalk up it up as a foundation-building year.
“I don’t like to use the word tanked, but a lot of last season was building toward this year,” Nee explained. “We’re gonna be really good.”
THE RED DEVIL roster is both a veteran bunch, and one with little playing experience. Only one of this year’s starters, Dirk Johnson, played in 2023-24.
That matters little to Nee, who said the team’s offseason development “is miles ahead” of where it was last season.
