Make fun of the so-called ‘worst college basketball team of all time’ all you want. They have a bigger priority than winning

Only a few minutes into his team’s first practice of the 2023-24 season, Logan Strand already had an inkling that the months ahead might be grim.

It was glaringly obvious to the Free Lutheran Bible College men’s basketball coach that most of his roster of 18-to-21-year-olds had hardly played before.

Strand began assessing his team with a shooting drill. One player heaved six straight corner 3-pointers off the side of the backboard.

Strand moved onto ball handling. So many crossover dribbles bounced off feet that Strand lost count of how many balls he chased after.

When Strand introduced a rebounding drill, he winced at confused expressions on the faces of several players. He might as well have been speaking in a foreign tongue when he asked them to close out on a shooter, turn and box out.

“It was like, oh boy, I guess we’re going to be doing a lot of third-grade basketball stuff, the things you usually teach young kids,” Strand told Yahoo Sports. “How do we shoot the ball? How do we pass the ball? How do we set a screen?”

For Strand’s hopelessly inexperienced team, the start of the season was like Ralph Wiggum’s “I’m in Danger” meme come to life. FLBC went 0-24 against an assortment of fellow bible colleges from Minnesota and neighboring states. Nineteen of those losses were by 40-plus points. One team outscored FLBC by more than 100. The closest FLBC came to victory was a 10-point loss to its own alumni team.

With its leading scorers from last year’s winless team departing and no experienced newcomers arriving to fill that void, this season’s FLBC team is even more overmatched. Opponents have outscored the Conquerors 378-39 in their first four games this season. FLBC trailed 61-0 in last month’s season opener before guard Westin Jenson rattled in a 3-pointer for his team’s first points. The following night, the Conquerors faced Division III Crown College’s JV team and still lost 87-11.

Wade Mobley watched FLBC men’s basketball not come close to winning a game last season. The FLBC president said without hesitation, “I think last year’s team would beat this year’s team by 20.”

FLBC’s historic run of futility attracted some unwanted attention last month. Barstool Sports poked fun at the Conquerors with a story entitled “We Have Found Unquestionably the Worst College Basketball Team of All-Time.”

What stories like that one miss, according to those at FLBC, is the school’s non-traditional purpose for competing in sports. FLBC is the rare school that proclaims that winning games is merely a secondary consideration.

The mission

Why would a modern-day college athletic department prioritize anything above winning games, shining a spotlight on the school and generating prestige and profit? The answer lies in FLBC’s commitment to its mission.

FLBC seeks to teach young Christians to faithfully serve Jesus Christ and to prepare students for leadership roles in their congregations and communities. The Minneapolis-area bible college’s athletics program only exists as a tool to help its 100-plus students achieve those goals.

In a section of its website entitled “Our why behind athletics,” FLBC insists that it takes competing for championships seriously but that playing sports for the school “is about more than wins.”

“Our students see themselves as representatives of the school and of Christ,” the school states on its website. “They find exciting parallels between working together on a sports team and working together to build up the church. Along the way, they discover a close brotherhood/sisterhood with their teammates that extends beyond the court.”

In many ways, FLBC’s atypical approach to athletics is a byproduct of its school president’s unconventional life story. Wade Mobley grew up in a tiny speck of a town in the hills of South Dakota, the son of a single mother and an uninvolved father. Basketball became a refuge for Mobley as a teenager seeking to stay on a constructive path and avoid drugs and alcohol.

“I shot baskets, obsessively, compulsively, clinically,” Mobley said. “That’s why I’m 52 years old and I have a knee replacement surgery scheduled for next month.”

At the same time that Mobley developed a passion for basketball, he also began to take more interest in his faith. Friends invited him and his mom to attend a Free Lutheran church in the basement of a neighboring town’s grocery store. The love and acceptance shown to him at that church changed his life and inspired him to become a Christian at 18.

While Mobley studied engineering physics at South Dakota State, he soon realized that he was good at it but he didn’t love it. He became his university’s only engineering physics student who dreamed of coaching college basketball.

At first, Mobley envisioned himself coaching at the highest possible level. He found two ideal mentors, accomplished coaches who were also devout Christians. Lynn Frederick, the coach of nearby Brookings High School, hired Mobley as a volunteer assistant for two seasons. Brad Soderberg, then South Dakota State’s coach, used his connections to help Mobley land jobs working at prestigious camps across the Midwest.

By the end of his senior year, Mobley learned that what he “enjoyed most about coaching wasn’t so much the basketball.” Mobley discovered that he possessed “this pastoral impulse wanting to invest in the lives of young people as I had been invested in.”

What sealed Mobley’s decision to study to become a pastor was the blessing of Soderberg, by then an assistant coach under Dick Bennett at Wisconsin. In 1995, during a conversation in his office in Madison, Soderberg told Mobley, “You can always coach. You will always have a connection and I can always get you a job. But right now you have an opportunity to grow in your faith.”

Mobley’s new path led him to what is now known as FLBC. He has spent large stretches of his adult life at FLBC’s tree-lined campus on the shores of Medicine Lake, first as a student, then as a basketball coach and athletic director and more recently as school president.

‘I never had a thought of quitting’

The basketball program that Mobley inherited at FLBC is worlds apart from the ones he once aspired to lead. FLBC is a member of the Association of Christian College Athletics, “about as low as you can get on the college basketball hierarchy,” according to Mobley. Its league consists of bible colleges and tribal colleges in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Since FLBC did not have an on-campus basketball gymnasium of its own until 2021, the school paid for its men’s and women’s teams to use facilities at Minneapolis-area high schools and colleges. Wade remembers holding practices on carpeted church basketball floors and on courts so cramped that the 3-point lines nearly touched.

As recently as five years ago, FLBC’s basketball teams held 10 p.m. practices at a K-through-12 Christian school about a 15-minute drive away. Players would sweep up the bleachers after high school games ended, tape the college 3-point line onto the court and then practice until they were too heavy-legged and bleary-eyed to go any later.

The top levels of college basketball are populated with players who dream of playing at a higher level, whether that’s the NBA, an overseas professional league or even just a more prestigious four-year school. It’s not like that at FLBC, where, Mobley says, “there’s nobody coming here to further their basketball career.”

At FLBC, Strand and his fellow coaches don’t recruit by scouting high school games or AAU tournaments in search of overlooked prospects. Most of those players aren’t options, Strand said, because “they don’t fit FLBC’s mission, vision and values.” Strand’s preferred alternative is to stay in contact with community church leaders about potential players and to reach out to applicants to FLBC to gauge their interest in playing basketball.

That approach has produced enough sporadic success to fill a small trophy case with cut nets, golden balls and engraved plaques commemorating league and tournament titles. More often than not, however, FLBC has struggled to accumulate enough talent to win more than a handful of games each season.

In 2021, the FLBC men’s and women’s basketball programs went a combined 1-29, the women picking up the lone victory in their final game of the season. On the FLBC website, Mobley penned a blog post arguing the basketball seasons would have been a “success” even if both the men and women went winless.

“At FLBC we don’t play basketball to win games,” Mobley wrote. “Check that: We play to win but winning isn’t why we play. We play for the leadership development and discipleship that comes with a team effort. Everyone needs to be a part of something bigger than himself or herself.”

The past two men’s basketball seasons have shaken Mobley’s faith in his vision if only because FLBC has been so overmatched. It’s one thing to lose every game. It’s another to trail 61-0 and have even the opposing players applaud your first basket.

What has reassured those at FLBC has been the players’ positivity and resilience. Every first-year player on last year’s team came out for the team again this season. One student who didn’t play basketball his first year at FLBC actually decided to join the team this fall.

“At first it was pretty hard losing game after game,” second-year guard Kent Anderson said. “But I was able to shift my mindset from how can we win to how can we improve. It also helped remembering that I am ultimately playing to bring God glory and not for myself. I never had a thought of quitting because I just love playing the sport so much.”

The enthusiasm and effort level among this year’s players, Strand says, exceeds that of any other team he has played for or coached. He admits he was feeling “a little down” after FLBC’s 85-5 season-opening loss until one of his new players approached with a fresh perspective.

“Coach, thank you for starting me tonight,” the player told Strand. “Hearing my name announced over the loudspeakers was one of the best moments of my life.”

‘We know we’re bad. Who cares?’

The ultimate test of FLBC’s conviction came about a month ago. Strand hadn’t yet finished his morning coffee when he received an urgent text from the dean of the school.

“Have you seen this?” Adam Osier wrote, alongside links to the Barstool Sports story ridiculing the FLBC men’s basketball team’s recent futility.

At first, FLBC administrators were horrified. Two different Barstool Sports podcasts also made fun of the FLBC players. So did commenters on a Reddit thread and on social media.

What eased the FLBC administration’s concern was the amused response from players when Strand mentioned the negative headlines during a team meeting at his apartment that night. One player was pleasantly surprised to receive any media coverage. Another told Strand that he found it hilarious when the Barstool podcasters cracked jokes about one of his off-target shots.

“Wait, you laughed?” Strand responded, admittedly caught off guard.

The coach remembers players reassuring him,”Yeah, we know we’re bad. Who cares? We’re having a good time.”

Anderson told Yahoo Sports that he found out about the Barstool story when someone shared a link in the team’s text thread. The second-year guard said the players “weren’t mad because it was them giving their opinions purely on what they see.”

“They don’t know why we play and who we play for (God),” Anderson added. “There is no use in us taking it personally or letting it affect us.”

That’s not to say that anyone at FLBC wants to see another basketball season like this where its team is so overwhelmingly outgunned every night. Coaches and administrators at FLBC are trying to be more proactive about identifying potential basketball recruits who fit the school’s mission and about informing prospective students that they have the opportunity to play.

“If we can put together a somewhat competitive team next year, I might try to do that just to buy us a little bit of a reprieve,” Mobley said. “In my role I’m trying to keep a stiff upper lip and I think I’m doing a pretty good job of it, but inside this is driving me nuts.”

Oddly enough, Strand said, last month’s stories poking fun at FLBC have actually helped the program’s recruiting efforts. Prospective players who otherwise never would have known the tiny bible college existed have emailed Strand about enrolling at FLBC and joining his team.

To Strand, the inquiries are tempting but risky. On one hand FLBC desperately needs an influx of basketball talent. On the other hand, just a few guys who aren’t attending chapel or taking classes seriously can damage the culture of a college with just 100-plus students.

“It’s difficult,” Strand said. “There’s a lot of people, especially now after the Barstool story, who have reached out and said, ‘I want to play basketball. I can come this semester. I can do this right now.’ It’s like, yes, but do you understand who we are as an institution? Do you understand that we’re trying to grow you in leadership in church settings? We don’t want to become good at basketball at the expense of the mission of the school.”