"Do you know what you're getting yourself into?"

A friend posed the question in September 2007, when Kevin Cook accepted the head-coaching job at Gallaudet (D.C.) University. A man of diverse basketball experience, Cook thought he was ready for the challenge of coaching a struggling Division III women's basketball team at the world's only all-deaf college.

But when only seven players showed up at the first practice with a coach who didn't yet know sign language, Cook realized he still had a long road to travel.

"I didn't realize when I got here that they hadn't won a conference game in years," said Cook, who had recently returned from an overseas coaching venture before his initial interview at Gallaudet. "I thought I was gonna be able to turn things around quick, fast and in a hurry."

The 48-year-old Cook, a native of Fremont, Ohio, has done his fair share of traveling. He spent 10 years as an assistant coach at Kansas, 11 more as an assistant for the four-time WNBA champion Houston Comets and a summer as head coach of the Nigerian women's national team that finished second in the All-Africa Games. He's also the owner of a successful basketball academy.

But getting Gallaudet back to basketball respectability would require a long-term commitment. Twenty-eight months later, Gallaudet is riding its longest winning streak in 11 seasons. On Wednesday, the Bison won their fifth consecutive game, beating Salisbury (a team from the Eastern Shore of Maryland that had racked up 22 straight wins over Gallaudet, dating back to 2000) to improve to 7-3 overall. The seven victories are the program's most in a season since 2000-01, and after four winless league seasons the Bison have posted three consecutive victories for a 3-1 mark in the Capital Athletic Conference.

To read the complete story, courtesy ESPN.go.com, click here.