March 12, 2025
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Former ONU teammates Adrian Provost, Gary Tidwell meet again as coaches

Tidwell’s Bismarck-Henning topped Provost’s Bishop McNamara in last week’s sectional championship

By Mason Schweizer
Bishop McNamara head coach Adrian Provost watches a free throw as Bismarck-Henning head coach Gary Tidwell does the same in the background during the Fightin' Irish's 52-49 loss in the IHSA Class 2A Peotone Sectional championship on Friday, March 7, 2025. The two head coaches were once teammates together at Olivet Nazarene University.

Bishop McNamara head coach Adrian Provost watches a free throw as Bismarck-Henning head coach Gary Tidwell does the same in the background during the Fightin' Irish's 52-49 loss in the IHSA Class 2A Peotone Sectional championship on Friday, March 7, 2025. The two head coaches were once teammates together at Olivet Nazarene University. (Tiffany Blanchette)

If fans who caught the Bishop McNamara vs. Bismarck-Henning matchup at last Friday’s Class 2A Peotone Sectional championship boys basketball game noticed similarities between the two teams and their styles of play, they’re not alone.

The two teams are coached by former teammates at Olivet Nazarene University. Bishop McNamara’s Adrian Provost and Bismarck-Henning’s Gary Tidwell spent a couple of years with the Tigers together, and both have taken things they learned during that time to help guide their programs.

After going their own ways following college, Tidwell said the two have struck back up an adult friendship as their coaching careers have developed.

“He and I are friends,” Tidwell said of Provost. “We just started to rekindle that relationship in the last couple of years in coaching and playing like opponents. We text each other from time-to-time with scouting reports and stuff like that.”

Tidwell, a 1994 Olivet graduate, and Provost, a 1996 Olivet graduate, both played under the late Ralph Hodge, a coach whose success found him inducted into several halls of fame, including the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, Illinois Basketball Coaches Association and the school’s own hall.

Both say that they took some of his basketball foundations, such as the ability to push the ball offensively and defend in full-court man-to-man fashion. Both coaches also noted that their out-of-bounds plays are almost carbon copies of Hodge’s Olivet playbook.

But another aspect both coaches took from Hodge won’t be drawn up on a dry erase board or called out of a timeout. In Provost’s eyes, it’s the way to guide a program off the court that has perhaps mattered most.

“I brought some basketball stuff to McNamara from ONU, but mostly we try to focus on our culture, accountability, developing young men,” Provost said. “I feel coach Hodge did that very well through basketball.”

The Blue Devils won the game in thrilling comeback fashion 52-49 for their second-ever sectional championship, both coming under Tidwell. Several familiar Tiger faces were in the crowd, such as former sports information director Gary Griffin, former assistant coach Jeff Schimelfenig and current head coach Nick Birkey. Both Provost and Tidwell said they wished Hodge could have been there as well, although they both joked Hodge would have probably been pulling for McNamara.

One of Provost’s favorite memories with Hodge came when the Tigers invited his Fightin' Irish to practice with the team ahead of McNamara’s trip to the Class 2A State Finals. It’s a memory he reflected back upon after Friday’s game.

“I had the privilege of practicing at ONU in 2017 with our team before going to Peoria for the Final Four, and coach Hodge expressed to me then how proud he was of me and what our program was doing,” Provost recalled. “Coach would have a lot to say about things our players did wrong [Friday], but he would have appreciated how hard both mine and Gary’s teams played.”