Villanova head coach Mark Ferrante discusses Tanoh Kpassagnon
By Matt Conner
How did you spend draft weekend?
I was actually at Tanoh’s house with him and his mom and some other family members and friends. Tanoh and his mom were gracious enough to invite me over to his home during the draft, so I was able to be there when he received the phone call from Coach Reid.
How did that feel from your perspective? There has to almost be a parental sort of feeling.
A little bit. To be honest with you, I may have seemed a little more nervous than he did at the time. I was pretty aware, if you will, of a lot of the teams that had either communicated with him at the Combine or the number of teams that came to work him out privately on our campus. I met all those coaches that came by and obviously there was a number of coaches at his pro day as well. So I had an idea, or thought I did, of the programs that seemed to have the most interest.
We thought maybe there was a chance he might have gone a little earlier than 59th, just because of the guys who were selecting before the Chiefs. Then when he slipped through those picks there… I don’t want to say it was nervewracking or uncomfortable or anything like that, but it was getting to be, “Okay we’re getting toward the latter part of the second round, so maybe we’ll end up slipping into the third.” Then when Coach Reid’s call came in, the place erupted and it was pretty exciting.
How was Tanoh when he got the call?
He got the call and I don’t think it was a call he had programmed. It wasn’t any number he recognized. rthtryone was sitting there quiet because at first no one knew who was on the phone. I think it was the Seattle Seahawks who picked right before, but he was on the phone with whoever it was before Seattle’s pick came in on TV. He was on the phone for a solid five minutes or longer before the selection came up over the television. It was quiet at first because we didn’t know who he was talking to, but then his agent got a text saying it was the Chiefs. Then a friend of mine texted me saying the Chiefs were gonna pick him. Then it came out over the television and then we all jumped and cheered.
Where were you thinking he might go?
During our season in the fall, we had someone from some team in practice almost every day — regional scouts, a couple national scouts, a couple GMs came to a few games. So there was a lot of interest building from the season. At that time, we were hearing he was a second or third round guy. Then there was a lot of momentum once people saw him live, meaning the Senior Bowl where he seemed to do well and raise his stock, the Combine obviously when people interviewed him and saw him, he seemed to have raised his stock there. Based on all the information we were getting and not knowing how accurate or inaccurate it could all be, we thought it could go somewhere in the second, we just weren’t sure where.