Ritchie McKay and his Liberty team got off the bus at Probst Arena knowing that at any given time, they’d have the two smallest players on the floor in their Conference USA Championship Game against Jacksonville State. They also knew that the possibility that they had the two best players on the floor was a real one, though.
Promoting the idea that Liberty guards Colin Porter and Kaden Metheny will intimidate anyone with their physical statures appears to be futile, but by the end of their trip to Huntsville, they’d combined for 34 points in a game that clinched the Flames an NCAA Tournament berth for the first time since 2020-21.
NBA evaluators may scoff, power-five programs may look the other way and opposing teams may underestimate. McKay isn’t changing his ways, though. Porter is 5-foot-10, Metheny is 5-foot-11, yet the Liberty head coach has never shied away from playing them alongside each other and giving them the keys to this operation.
“I think it’s a little bit of my personality, I just don’t feel like one-to-three inches in height or length determines a person’s impact in a program,” McKay told Basket Under Review. “I just feel like you win with great teammates and individuals that are fully invested and it’s kind of the template that we’ve recruited from and it’s benefitted us.”
In an age in which the highest levels of basketball–including some within McKay’s own league—have prioritized positional size, versatility and length, the Liberty head coach has stuck to his guns.
McKay won his second-to-last conference title on the back of 5-foot-9 standout Darius McGhee and 6-foot-1 complementary guard Chris Parker. While the country has zig’d, McKay has zag’d. That appears to be fitting.
“The unique thing about Coach McKay is that he’ll never conform to the world,” Porter told Basket Under Review. “He knows who he is and how he should run his program and it’s one of the best run programs in the country. We may not win every game or be in the top 25 national rankings or make it to the Final Four–which could be in God’s will for us–but how he runs the program is more than enough to give us all confidence.”
The Liberty head coach’s rèsumè is enough to inspire some confidence within this program, as well. McKay has taken this program to the NCAA Tournament three times since being named its head coach in 2015, led a team that won 30 games and broke the school’s wins record as well as a few teams that saw their seasons end in the NIT and CBI.
McKay isn’t the first to be successful doing what he has with his roster, but he’s become a modern-day example to other midmajor coaches–even ones that coach at traditional Liberty rivals–that they can go against the grain as they build their rosters.
“We kind of looked at the way Liberty built their roster over the last couple years,” Lipscomb coach Kevin Carroll said as he reflected on a starting lineup with a 6-foot-1 point guard and a generously-listed 6-foot shooting guard. “They won their conference with two similar-sized guards.”
The Liberty team that Carroll describes was aided by current NBA player Taelon Peter, veteran forward Zach Cleveland and veteran big man Isaiah Ihnen, but was pushed forward by its two ball-dominant backcourt pieces.
McKay’s ideals on guardplay, on life have become less taboo to some, but will never be the norm. He’s okay with that, though. He admits that he’s not always right, but this has worked for the Liberty head coach over the years. He’s not deviating from his ideals anytime soon.
“I just try not to be tied down to tradition or to things that everybody says is the way you have to do it,” McKay said. “I wanna be open to God doing exceedingly and abundantly above all we can ask or think.”
Of the scholarship players on Liberty’s roster, Porter and Metheny are likely the most familiar with the phrase “no.” They’ve heard the perception that this program can’t take this thing as far as they believe they can because of their size. They’ve been told seemingly their entire careers that they’re too small to be real impact players.
“Colin and I, with being under six foot, we go out there with a chip on our shoulder,” Metheny said. “We've been counted out throughout this basketball profession our whole career and I think going out there we just wanna show everyone that we belong out there and also give younger guys that may not be the tallest, give them hope as well that they can do it.”
McKay loves the chip that his two guards carry. He looks for it when he recruits, he measures it when he can. It’s an indicator of passion and a will to win that he gained a true appreciation for while spending time on Tony Bennett’s staff at Virginia.
The Liberty head coach has built this thing with the school’s Christian values in mind, but he wants his group’s competitive edge to show up in the same way he wants his group’s faith to. The players McKay recruits aren’t often former four or five-star recruits, they’ve often been dismissed as power-five prospects and have had to scratch and claw for every opportunity they’ve been given.
“You don’t necessarily have to have a perceived size disadvantage to have that posture,” McKay said. “Guys that may come from nothing or people count out that just have this insatiable relentless pursuit of, not just proving everyone wrong, but getting to a level in which they dream about and that's been paramount to our growth and development.”
The relentless pursuit of success paired with McKay instilling belief and granting an immense amount of freedom to those who have earned it within his program–like Porter and Metheny–has allowed McKay’s abstract efforts in recruiting and program development to pay off.
This Liberty team acknowledges that the idea behind two small guards defending bigger ones can be a perceived negative, but after a season in which Porter and Matheny averaged 1.5 and 0.8 steals per game respectively, they’re not buying into the idea that they have to be different on the defensive end. A Liberty offensive possession often doesn’t fit the mold of stereotypical modern offense, either. At times, the Flames will have Porter run circles around the floor as he works to make something happen.
A style like this is all Porter has known throughout his career at Liberty, though. He’s always been part of a backcourt in which both guards were under 6-foot. He’s never lost more than he’s won–and has won over 25 games in two of his three college seasons–though. What McKay has built since Porter’s arrival in 2022 is the seemingly cliche heart over height story personified.
“Having a smaller guard out there like Kaden, we know each other’s character, we know that we’ve been doubted a lot,” Porter said. “We play with that grit and the desire to win because we've been told that we couldn't win and we couldn't do it at the highest level, whatever the case may be. Definitely just being able to have that chip on your shoulder is meaningful.”
Liberty’s core group of old guys knows what this means as they step on to the raised floor at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Washington, and look out at the March Madness logo at midcourt. It’s the reward for this program and its ability to finish the job for the first time as Conference USA members, but it’s more than that for its group of old guys.
That core group has done this for the mission of the school as much as they have to prove that they belong as Division-I members. Liberty describes itself as a “distinctively Christian academic community” in which its “persons are spiritual, rational, moral, social, and physical, created in the image of God.”
The program–like its philosophies on guard play–isn’t for everyone, but it believes as if its ability to succeed for something bigger than itself is meaningful.
“Getting an NCAA tournament and this university on that big of a stage to get more eyes on us and hopefully draw some interest from people and then look at us and be like you know what guys are different, that's the ultimate goal,” Metheny said. “Putting the name of the university on our chest and just trying to emulate Christ-like behavior is all you can ask for.”
Metheny and Porter are “best friends” and “brothers,” as Porter says. They initially viewed each other as competitors, but have since developed a trust that’s been primarily centered on their faith and has crossed over to the floor. The pair is more alike than different on and off the floor and has a goal in what appears to be their final ride together.
They want to get this program back on the stage in which it was on last March and they want a different result than they had in their 81-52 loss to Oregon last season. They don’t know how this will end–most of it will come down to a seven-day stretch in March–but they know that they’re doing this for a purpose.
Porter and Metheny also know that they’re not going down easily despite their size.
“I think the way Coach McKay just views the game and has that competitive side, we know we're not gonna back down to anybody,” Metheny said. “That starts from the top. That starts from the culture that he brings to the team. That starts from the energy that he wants us to bring. Knowing that's how he is definitely gives us more energy and competitive juice to go out there and honestly show everyone that coach McKay is right, that he should be believing in us.”
