Navy basketball coach Ed DeChellis is not a man adept at hiding how he feels.
When I visited a Navy practice in February, he called his players together into a loose huddle a few minutes before the official start of practice. Navy students being Navy students, many of them had been there for a half hour. A few of them had trotted out to the humble practice court 50 minutes early. DeChellis had to ask one of his staff members to chase away a few teenage kids who'd been playing pickup.
On this particular day, DeChellis seemed torn. His Midshipmen had just lost their 17th game in a row, in double overtime to archrival Army. And yet here they were, his mishmash of basketball...