Michael Bacon living dream as a head coach for Abilene Cooper boys basketball team
Michael Bacon knew at a young age he wanted to be a head coach.
Bacon, 34, was a wide-eyed 6-year-old ball boy for the Abilene Christian University men’s basketball team in 1995 — the same year future head coach Joe Golding was a point guard for the Wildcats.
Bacon, whose dad, David, was the sports director for a local TV station and radio announcer for ACU sports, didn’t dream about playing basketball. He dreamed about coaching it, while watching Golding and the Wildcats play.
“I would sit under the basket,” Bacon said. “Every kid when they’re young wants to play pro basketball or pro baseball. I realized pretty quickly that wasn’t going to happen for me, and that my best chance to stay in this long term was to coach.”
While Bacon did play basketball at Abilene Christian High, he stuck with his dream of coaching.
“I never wanted to do anything else,” Bacon said. “I love to compete. I love basketball, and I love kids. A lot of coaches did a lot for me.”
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Early success
Bacon, a 2008 ACHS grad, didn’t wait long for his first head coaching job — or state title.
Bacon, 21 at the time, wasn’t much older than some of his players when he led ACHS to a Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools’ Class 2A state title in 2012.
It was Bacon’s first year as a head coach, and it spoiled him.
“At the time, when you’re young, you think you know everything,” Bacon said. “And after that, I really thought I knew everything.”
Bacon led the Panthers back to the TAPPS’ Class 2A state tournament the following year, falling in the state semifinals in overtime.
Wildcat year
Bacon, who was a senior and taking a full class load at Abilene Christian University, as well as working a part-time job on the side his first year as a head coach at ACHS, walked away from the Panthers’ job following the 2012-13 season to be a grad assistant at ACU.
Bacon was quickly humbled working for Golding and assistant Brette Tanner.
“I realized very quickly how little I knew about basketball working for those guys,” Bacon said.
That was the 2013-14 season — ACU’s first season as it transitioned from Division II to Division I. The Wildcats went 11-20 overall and 2-12 in Southland Conference that year.
Love and Bearcats
Bacon worked one season with the ACU men’s basketball team, then took a year off to concentrate on his master’s at ACU. He met his future wife, Sarah Haley, while working on his master’s. They even sat next to each other in class.
After graduation in 2015, they tried the long-distance relationship thing. Sarah took an accounting job in Dallas, while Bacon got a head coaching job at Ballinger.
The Bearcats went 16-15 in his one year at Ballinger and made the playoffs as the fourth seed from District 6-3A — losing to Colorado City 52-46 in the first round.
Following his heart
He married Sarah after that first year at Ballinger, and he decided to follow her to the Dallas area. He landed an assistant boys basketball job at Irving High School, where he worked for Tigers’ head coach Steven Perry.
“Tanner, Golding and Perry changed my life,” said Bacon, now the first-year coach at Abilene Cooper. “Not everything we do here is a reflection of them, but 95% of it is one way or another.”
He spent two seasons working for Perry at Irving, which played in what Bacon called the best Class 6A district in the state. It’s hard to argue that. DeSoto, Duncanville, Cedar Hill, South Grand Prairie and Irving MacArthur all played in the Tigers’ district at the time.
“It was murderer’s row, and we were competitive more nights than we weren’t but that was a brutal district,” Bacon said.
Irving was 23-37 in Bacon’s two seasons with the Tigers, including 7-21 in district.
Back home
After two years living in the Dallas area, Bacon and his wife, an Anson grad, decided they wanted to move back closer to home.
Bacon found a job at Cooper as an assistant coach for the girls’ varsity basketball team. It wasn’t exactly his dream job.
“It was not my first plan to come back here and be the girls’ assistant,” Bacon said.
He thought he would move on after one year at Cooper, but he got lucky and landed a job as an assistant for Bryan Conover and the Cooper boys basketball team.
He loved working for Conover.
“Somebody else I’m forever indebted to,” Bacon said. “He let me do a lot and trusted me to do more than most head coaches would. I love him for that.”
The laid-back Conover also helped Bacon learn to relax a little more.
“That’s not in my nature,” Bacon said. “He was so good for me for so many reasons.”
While Bacon is still a bundle of nerves, he learned what he should — and should not — worry about while working for Conover.
“What I learned from him more than anything else was, what’s a big deal and what’s not, because 21- 22- and 23-year-old me thought every single thing that happened every day could be the end of the world,” Bacon said.
Winning once again
Bacon also became reacquainted with winning. The Coogs won consecutive district titles before finishing second in Conover’s final year with the team last season.
It was the first time Bacon had been part of a winning program since his Ballinger team posted a winning record in 2015. It also was his first district title since his ACHS days.
“We were really good, man,” Bacon said of his ACHS teams, which were 53-9 in his two years as the Panthers' coach. “We had good players. That’s the reason we were good. I took that for granted. I thought it was going to be like every year."
Yet every stop after his time at ACHS, other than the one year at Ballinger, were lean years.
“You can say I wandered through the wilderness of coaching for a little while, and I wondered if I would ever get a chance to win again wherever I was at,” Conover said. "I always said through that journey not to take it for granted if we were ever good again. We had a quality staff and quality players (at ACHS), and we have it now at Cooper.”
Coogs’ main man
Bacon, who took over the Cooper program after Conover stepped down after last season, has a had bumpy ride as the Coogs' head coach thus far. Cooper is 9-15 overall and 2-3 in District 4-5A.
“We had some choppy waters in non-district," Bacon said. "We lost five games by five points or less, and we lost on a couple of last-second shots.”
Yet Bacon remains confident, thanks in part to the fact he retained the rest of Conover's staff — Josh Alcorn, a former head coach, and Karl Wilcox, who Bacon said is ready for his own head coaching job. Bacon said both played key roles in the Coogs' previous success and help him in the decision-making process.
“Instead of asking Bryan if we can do something, it’s been asking Karl and Alcorn if this is a good idea,” Bacon said, referring to the biggest changes since taking over the program.
The Coogs took a two-game losing skid into Friday’s home game against league-leading Abilene High (19-7, 5-0). Cooper is in fifth place, a half-game back of Abilene Wylie, which it plays Tuesday at Wylie.
The Coogs, who beat Wylie 56-52 the first district meeting, still have a shot at making the playoffs for the sixth consecutive year.
“I wanted to compete at the top of the district and win more than we lose,” Bacon said “Those are still doable, and I want to keep our run of consecutive playoff runs intact. Our district is tough. Every night you better be ready to play, or you’ll get beat. That’s one through seven. That makes it fun as a competitor. It also makes it extraordinarily stressful … I’ll say Alcorn and Wilcox balance me well. Getting me to relax at any time is hard.”
This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: Michael Bacon embraces life as Abilene, Big Country basketball coach
