How this former teacher preaching The Art of War built a university basketball dynasty

In his 11 years as head coach of the Dalhousie University men's basketball team, Rick Plato has been uncommonly successful. 

Since joining the program in 2013, his teams have won seven of the last nine Atlantic University Sport championships. The Tigers have won a silver medal and a bronze medal at the nationals over that stretch.

On Friday night, Dalhousie will chase its first national title when they play Brock University in the opening round of the U Sports Final 8 in Quebec City.

But long before he was the team's head coach, Plato was a teacher known for his exacting standards. His success as a coach owes a lot to some of his teaching methods.

For 27 years, he taught history, political science and economics to students at Charles P. Allen High School in Bedford, N.S., where he was probably feared and loved in equal measure.

He was known for the high expectations he placed on his students and his burning passion for the subjects he taught, which covered everything from the horrors of the Holocaust and Vietnam War, to the founding of our economic system and the origins of political thought and democracy. 

"I was a challenging teacher, I was a demanding teacher, and with a name like Plato, I better have a number of philosophies and sayings that I live by," he said this week from his office as he prepared for the national championship tournament.

His players, like his former students — I was one of them in 2009 — are familiar with those standards and his penchant for soliloquies, evidenced in part by his frequent invocation of an ancient text first published thousands of years ago — Sun Tzu's The Art of War. 

According to them, there's one Tzu quote in particular Plato is fond of repeating: "Know yourself. Know your