Marquette Post Game

How can you not like coach Buzz?  Absolutely one of my favorites in the business.

Dedication

Found this piece by one of the most postive, real, and energetic motivators out there today, Alan Stein.  He speaks the TRUTH.  Check him out on Twitter @AlanStein

My goal has always been to create an extraordinary environment for elite level basketball players to improve their basketball specific athleticism. An environment for dedicated players to work hard, yet have fun as well. I work hard to stay on the cutting edge of basketball specific training methodology, techniques, and equipment to make sure I fulfill my goal.

Dedication and commitment are essential for success in any endeavor, but especially in basketball. The game is so unbelievable competitive right now, if you aren’t dedicated, you won’t make it. That goes for everyone; from high school players to the NBA. Most novices take for granted how incredibly dedicated NBA players are. Many of these guys are up early in the morning for individual skill work, come in mid-day for their strength & conditioning work, then off to another individual skill session and then play pick-up at night. They do that 5-6 days a week. That is dedication!

On the topic of dedication, a powerful quote comes to mind (which was shared to me by the legendary Coach Don Meyer):

“There are two kinds of pains in life. The pain of discipline and the pain of regret. Take your pick.”

Everything in life, whether shopping for a new a TV or chasing your dream of playing in the NBA comes down to three simple questions:

1) What exactly do you want? (play college/pro basketball)
2) What does it cost? (time, effort, consistency)
3) Are you willing to pay the price? (make sacrifices, be focused and dedicated)

While listening to one of Coach Meyer’s stories he mentioned he heard that in his prime, Tiger Woods used to make 100 9-ft putts in a row to end every practice. That is 100 consecutive putts. If he missed his 92nd putt, he started over! That is dedication. I figure an appropriate equivalent for basketball players are free throws. Are you dedicated enough to end every workout with 5 or 10 or 20 consecutive free throws? Tiger went on to say, “If people knew how hard I worked they wouldn’t think this came so easy to me.” I guess it is true; champions are made when no one is watching!

Another example of dedication is what’s known as the NBA “early bus.” There are two buses that head to the arena before every NBA road game. One heads over 3 hours early and one heads over an hour and half early. The guys that head over on the early bus are usually rookies, guys fighting for playing time, guys on 10 day contracts, etc. Guys that need to put in the extra work as often as possible. They head over early to get up shots, work on their ball handling, and sometimes even lift weights. These guys are dedicated to getting better every day. Legend has it NBA superstar Tim Duncan continued to take the early bus every game, even after his legacy and superstardom where solidified. In fact, the Spurs organization took notice and said “if our best player can take the early bus, then everyone can take the early bus.” Needless to say the Spurs only have one bus to games now!

The truly dedicated players understand dedication isn’t a sometimes thing, it is an all the time thing. There is no such thing as being “kind of dedicated.” You are either dedicated or you’re not; there is no in between.

Now the question is… are you dedicated?

NCAA Tournament

Many things have been said and written about the NCAA tournament, but the following sums it up rather nicely.  It was written by Harlen Coben, an American novelist, for Parade Magazine.

"The Super Bowl may be our biggest party night, and the World Series may be the pinnacle of our national pastime. But our hearts and souls somehow belong to March Madness, Old and young, rich and poor, Republican and Democrat, in workplaces, in Rotary Clubs, in bars, in houses of worship —there is something about this amateur spectacle that brings us together."

Some random facts about the teams and tournament.

• More regular season championship teams (9 of 12) have reached the Final Four than conference tournament winners (8 of 12).
• Since 1989, a #5 has beaten a #12 in every year (except for two).
• Only three teams in the past 26 years have finished the regular season ranked #1 and have gone on to win the championship.
• Since 1979, the championship game has matched two #1 seeds only six times.
• Missouri is the first 30-win team from a power conference NOT to receive a #1 seed.
• Washington is the first team from a "power conference" to win its regular season title and not get an NCAA bid.
• With its win on Sunday, Vanderbilt won its first SEC men's basketball championship since 1951.
• No team has won the NCAA championship after losing its first game in the conference tournament. • Illinois, who started the season at 10-0, completed its collapse by not even getting a bid to the NIT.
• Nashville and Cincinnati are the only two cities with a pair of NCAA tournament teams (Nashville has Belmont and Vanderbilt; Cincy has Xavier and the University of Cincinnati).
• 2011 marked the first time in five years a #1 seed didn't win the national championship. Overall, nine of the past 13 national champions have been #1 seeds.
• In the last 12 years, NCAA titles have been distributed as follows: ACC-5, Big East-3, SEC-2, Big Ten-1, Big 12-1
• Drexel, who failed to get an NCAA bid, had won 19-straight games heading into their conference championship game.
• No school beginning with the letters (B, E, J, P, Q, R, X, Y, or Z) has ever won an NCAA D-I basketball title. • Northwestern, which hosted the first NCAA final in 1939, is the only school from one of the "power conferences" never to play in the NCAA tournament.
• Harvard, who plays Vanderbilt in a battle of academic powerhouses, is playing in its first NCAA tournament. • Of the 33 national champions since seeding began, 29 of them were #1, #2 or #3 seeds.

Creating Value

The following is a guest blog entry from Oklahoma City Thunder forward Nick Collison that was published in GQ Magazine. (Yes Nick Collison and GQ were in the same sentence ).

The Nick Collison Guest Blog, Vol. 4: How To Survive in the NBA When You're Not a Superstar

The NBA is a league of roughly 450 players of different sizes, backgrounds, ages, skill sets and abilities. There are guys in the league who will make $200 million over their careers and become hall of famers. There are guys who will get one 10-day contract and $38,000. Everyone has their own journey and their own challenges. And at some point, the question every player has to answer is: "What is my role in this league?"

The players who can consistently help their teams win games are the ones who stick around, so every player has to figure out what it is he does well enough to help a team win. Otherwise, the new crop of young players who enter the league every year will replace them.

The NBA is currently enjoying a group of some of the most talented basketball players the planet has ever seen. The game is evolving, and the athleticism is at an all-time high. Certain rules—like no hand-checking on the perimeter, and defensive three seconds, which moves help defenders further away—make it almost impossible to shut down the most talented offensive players. They are going to get their shots and their numbers. They have earned this position because they have proven that when they get the ball and try to score, good things usually happen for their team. These guys are rare and are valuable and are paid accordingly.

So what about the rest of us? Players like, well, me?

Before most of us entered the League, we were one of the main scoring options on our college teams. Offenses were designed to get us the ball. We got features in the media and received all the accolades. When you make an NBA roster, that all changes. All of a sudden, you find yourself on a different level of the totem pole, and you have to adjust. Each team may have three to five guys who consistently find themselves creating their own shots. The other ten guys on a roster have to learn to play off of those guys and find ways to create value for themselves. You create value for yourself by doing enough positive things to make your coach keep you on the floor. The guys who have success in the league and stick around are the ones who understand how to make themselves valuable to an organization.

You do this by embracing your role and focusing on things other than scoring. Sure, you've spent your whole basketball life developing and displaying your offensive game, but suddenly you aren't getting those scoring opportunities in games. You take thousands of shots in the offseason, you work on your shot before and after practice, yet you may go weeks without taking a jumper in a game. But you can't dwell on it, because there is so much else you can do out there to help the team win. If you can become really good at things like screening, passing, defending pick and rolls, communicating, boxing out and rotating defensively, you can have a huge affect on your team winning a game. If those parts of your game become a habit and you develop consistency, you are going to be valuable to your team and have a long career.

The hard part is being able to have the focus to do it over and over again, knowing you aren't going to get a lot of credit. Doing a great job of talking on defense won't get you any high-paying endorsement deals. Nobody is making a YouTube mix of all your badass screens with a Rick Ross track playing over it. (I'm not saying I would complain if someone did this for me.)

A lot of guys can't or won't do these things because they don't see the value in it. Some people look at it as sacrificing your own game for the greater good. This is true to an extent, but you don't just play this way because you are a nice guy and you are willing to let other guys shine. You do it because you want to win, to be a part of a championship team, and you do it because you want to create value for yourself. If you are a bench guy and you start to take more shots, to take your scoring average from six points a game up to eight points a game, not many people are going to notice. You are doing the same things, just in a more inefficient way.

On the other hand, if you average only five points a game but defensively you can blow up every pick and roll and take that option away from the opponent, you are going to be able to play for a long time and make a lot of money over your career. At the same time, your play will have more of an effect on winning than it would otherwise. The goal is to try to make it very difficult for your team to replace you, so that they have to do what it takes to keep you around. That's how a player creates value for himself.

Sometimes it's difficult to take a back seat when you know you are capable of showing more than what your role allows. It can be frustrating to play without getting the shots you want, and to see your numbers dip. Most fans won't appreciate the things you do well. This is where a little perspective and being secure in yourself can go a long way. If you have perspective, you will realize that your job totally rules. You get paid a huge salary to play basketball. You will be part of the 1 percent. You will get your summers off. You will be encouraged to take naps most days.

Think of the millions of guys who started playing basketball because they loved it just like you, but for whatever reason didn't get a chance to play at this level. Be secure enough to not listen to your friends and family, who say you should be getting more time than the guy playing ahead of you. Learn to chuckle when writers or people on twitter make snarky comments about what a stiff you are. None of that should really matter if you take pride in your work and you can take care of your family.

When you look at your job for what it is, and what kind of life you live, you will realize you really aren't sacrificing anything. You are just figuring out a different way to play.

Collison, 31, a power forward for the Oklahoma City Thunder, will be guest-blogging for GQ throughout the 2011-2012 NBA season. Click here to follow Nick on Twitter, @nickcollison4.

Another great Buzz Williams article

From insidemilwaukee.com

by: HOWIE MAGNER | Monday 2/20/2012

Buzz Williams was struggling. The Marquette University head men’s basketball coach had gained some 30 pounds, and he was swollen and bloated, heavier than he’d ever been, adding more stress to an already stressed life.

Finally, he sought help at the Mayo Clinic: With wife Corey by his side, he met with doctor after doctor until one specialist finally shed light on the problem. “He’s got on a shirt and tie, sport coat, nice guy, older guy,” Williams recounts in his perpetually hoarse voice. “So the guy says, ‘I know who you are, and you’re gonna die a very early death.’ ”

Williams was stunned – and angry.

“I stood up and got in his face, and I said, ‘Don’t talk like that in front of my wife!’ ”

Ever the calming influence, Corey patted Buzz’s leg, and he sat back down. The doctor tried more soothing words.

“ ‘Listen, I don’t completely understand what you do,’ ” Williams recalls the doctor saying. “ ‘but I know that it’s stressful, and I promise what I’m saying is true.’ ”

His life was in peril, the doctor said, for a simple reason: “You are not sleeping at all.”

Williams protested. He slept. Well, maybe not as much as most. After all, coaching Big East basketball doesn’t lend itself to regular shuteye, especially the way he coaches.

A CBSSports.com survey of college coaches named Williams the second-most relentless recruiter in basketball. “He just won’t quit,” says Lewis Orr, the man who gave Buzz his first crack at collegiate coaching. “He’ll just work another hour, another hour, another hour, if that’s what it takes.” His days are scheduled down to the minute because he has so much to squeeze in.

“Stop and think about all the things he’s worrying about on a daily basis,” says longtime friend and colleague Brad Autry. “His players, former players, the next players. He’s got all these people coming at him.” MU basketball is so important, Autry adds, “that in a lot of ways, he’s the face of the whole university. You can see where he struggles sometimes to shut his brain off.”

But he needed to start doing that, at least at night. “When you think you’re sleeping, you’re not sleeping,” the doctor explained. Williams had a sleep disorder, and he would have to make changes in his lifestyle.

Some two years after that Mayo visit, the condition is under control. No, his players and colleagues haven’t seen any let up in Williams’ fierce intensity. But his sleeping has improved, his weight is back down to normal, and he’s eating healthier. There may be no more telling sign, says Corey, than eliminating his longtime habit of guzzling sweet tea. The wake-up call worked.

*** The first thing you notice inside Williams’ Marquette basketball office is the pictures. Hundreds of them cover every available wall and ledge and whatever area of his desk isn’t being used for work. Shots of current and former players, of Corey and their children, and lots and lots of other children, legions of special needs kids in Buzz’s Bunch, the support group he’s created.

“He asks me about once a week,” Corey says, “ ‘Can you take more pictures of the kids?’ ”

The pictures mingle with pieces of memorabilia. One plaque quotes Mother Teresa: “People are often unreasonable, irrational and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.” Perhaps she started out as a basketball coach. But the office is orderly enough to pass Marine inspection. Even his closets are meticulously categorized, with each hanger spaced at specific intervals, Williams reveals.

“Does it have to be perfect? Not to a lot of people. But to me, within how I function, yeah, it’s gotta be perfect.”

He’s obsessed with organization, explaining his meticulous practice plans, reams of daily reading material and notes-to-self notebooks stretching back 18 years. He can show you month-by-month charts of phone calls he plans to make, with scores of names ranging from current basketball recruits to the first player he ever wooed, from Marquette administrators to everyday people, from church pastors to Charles Barkley.

It all seems to have paid off. Barely known when he was hired, Williams was an immediate success. Each year, he’s guided the Golden Eagles to at least 22 wins and an NCAA tournament bid. This season, they’ve been regulars in the top 25 rankings. And last season, in what was supposed to be a rebuilding campaign, Marquette ended up in the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16. Other colleges lined up to hire him away, but Williams reiterated his commitment to Marquette and signed a new contract, reportedly with a big raise in salary. And he was already earning $2.8 million in salary and bonus money, according to Marquette’s most recent (2009-10) federal tax filing.

But there’s little sign of the 39-year-old Williams easing back to enjoy the fruits of success. He’s a devout Christian, but his profanity-laced practices are anything but biblical in tone. Williams came from nowhere, and you get the sense he is still doing everything he can – driving himself and his players – to make sure he never returns there.

Maybe that’s why he surrounds himself with all those signs of love. Besides all the pictures, he keeps what he calls a “love letter box,” packed with cards and notes from people offering praise and thanks and consolation. At one point in our interview, Williams brought out the near-overflowing box and read aloud a letter from an elderly man whose identity he declined to reveal but who clearly meant a great deal to Buzz. As he read the letter, the MU coach began to choke up.

*** Brent “Buzz” Williams grew up in the obscure northeastern Texas town of Van Alstyne, whose entire population would fit in the Bradley Center’s lower bowl. He is the child of divorced parents and declines to talk about that childhood, but does volunteer one high school sports story.

In small-town Texas, playing football is practically mandatory for boys, but Williams wasn’t interested. Instead, he volunteered to be a kind of assistant coach for the football team, which was full of his friends. But on the sidelines, he wasn’t their buddy, he was their coach. Which meant plenty of shouting matches when those friends messed up, because Williams was too intense to let anything slide.

But basketball was his true passion. He was good enough to be a high school guard, but smart enough to figure out he wouldn’t play in college. So he set out to be a coach in the sport he loved, not easily done without the benefit of a collegiate playing career.

It was Lewis Orr – head men’s hoops coach at Navarro Junior College in Corsicana, Texas –who gave Williams his first collegiate coaching role, making him a student assistant in 1990. Orr also coined the “Buzz” nickname because of how he buzzed through every aspect of the job, be it sweeping floors or absorbing every spare bit of coaching expertise. “We wanted you to work like you were being paid a million dollars,” Orr says. “And he did.”

Still, it was just a student gig, which was followed by a similar job at Oklahoma City University. And there, as an OCU senior in 1994, he devised a plan to get a real, paying job in the business.

Williams once did an impromptu 10-minute soliloquy explaining the plan, leaving a room full of cynical NCAA tournament media slack-jawed at his tenacity. Just 21, he finagled a $1,200 emergency student loan, using the cash for two things: a suit and an airplane ticket to Charlotte, N.C., for the NCAA’s Final Four weekend.

Camped out in the lobby of the NCAA’s main hotel, Williams passed out résumés to everyone. He had no money left for food and bummed whatever snacks he could from bartenders. One coach mentioned an opening at the University of Texas-Arlington, so Williams left hourly phone messages for the school’s coach, Eddie McCarter. Eventually, Williams got his face-to-face with the coach, but it was a brief, perfunctory encounter. So, after flying back home to Oklahoma City on Monday, he promptly drove overnight to Texas to camp out in front of McCarter’s house, just to re-emphasize his interest in person.

Problem was, Williams didn’t know where McCarter’s house was. So when he got to Arlington, he stopped at a gas station, looked up McCarter in the phone book, fortunately found that he was listed, and asked the attendant for directions. A few more stops for directions at other stores finally got him to the right home. He waited in his car for hours until McCarter drove up that Tuesday night. Williams exited his vehicle, said hello, and told McCarter again how much he wanted the job. McCarter said he was crazy, but invited him inside his house nonetheless.

And Williams got the job. It’s a story, he often says, “Only God could author.”

He stayed at UTA until 1998, then started quickly rising up the coaching ladder. Rungs included assistant jobs at Texas A&M-Kingsville (1998-99), Northwestern State in Louisiana (1999-2000), Colorado State (00-04) and Texas A&M (04-06).

Along the way he would cross paths with Brad Autry, another young assistant coach, on the basketball recruiting trails of the Southwestern plains.

“He used to call me all the time. All. The. Time,” Autry says. “He would call me and ask about this player, ask about that player. ‘What do you know about this guy? How good is this kid?’ And one night, I pulled into my apartment complex, and who’s calling at 10 o’clock at night? Buzz Williams.”

In 2006, Williams got what looked like his big break: The University of New Orleans named him its head coach. But he resigned after only one season, believing the school wasn’t properly supporting the program. As it turned out, the real break was just another assistant coaching job: In 2007, Tom Crean hired him at Marquette, and within a year, Crean abruptly left for Indiana University. The names of several big-name coaches were mentioned as possible replacements, but instead, Marquette hired Crean’s little-known assistant: Williams became the university’s 16th head coach on April 8, 2008.

*** Lewis Orr was Navarro's coach for 32 years before retiring in 2008. He never expected to coach again.

Then he got an unexpected call. Buzz Williams by now had a network of contacts that stretched nationwide, many of whom would’ve jumped at a Big East job. But he had not forgotten the man who gave him his start, a man with a wealth of knowledge about basketball and life, a man who’d watched him grow from floor-sweeper to head coach.

“I think I was retired for one day,” Orr says, his accent betraying a lifetime spent in eastern Texas, his soft tone conveying the grandfatherly wisdom of his 74 years. “And Buzz calls the next day and says, ‘Would you be interested?’ And I said, ‘I might want to talk to my wife, but I’m interested.’ ”

Mrs. Orr indeed signed off, and Orr has been working as a consultant for Williams ever since. He recounts how he’s come to love the Marquette campus and the people around him, how the situation is perfect, how Williams brought the relationship between student and teacher full circle.

“It brings tears to my eyes,” Orr says, wiping those tears from his well-earned wrinkles, “because God’s plan’s a lot better than mine.”

“When you’re in Buzz’s inner circle, you’re there for life,” says Scott Cross, head men’s basketball coach at Texas-Arlington.

Cross should know. He was the first kid Buzz ever recruited after Eddie McCarter hired Williams at UTA. Cross vividly remembers a game in which Buzz stood on a chair, “yelling and screaming for us to play harder.”

Cross still gets regular phone calls from Williams, and Buzz has flown down to UTA to speak to the team. “He keeps in contact with all his guys,” Cross says. “Even guys who played lesser roles than I did who aren’t in the business, he still keeps in contact.

“He’s one of the most loyal guys around.”

Brad Autry, the assistant coach Williams used to call all the time for tips on players, can testify to that loyalty. After Buzz had landed as an assistant at Marquette, Autry was out of a job. His foot was in a protective boot because of surgery, and he couldn’t walk. “I was really down,” Autry says.

“There was one dude who called me every day,” he marvels. “Every day. Buzz. Nobody else. I’m like, ‘Buzz, quit calling me, man. I’m fine.’ ” But in addition to lending a supportive ear, Autry says, Buzz was keeping him up to date on the business. “Had nothing to gain by calling me.

“But that’s who Buzz is.”

When Buzz ended up as Marquette’s head coach, Autry was coaching a high school team in Texas. Buzz made another phone call. Autry was offered and accepted the job of Marquette’s coordinator of student-athlete development.

Orr is impressed with Williams as a recruiter and as a tactician. But he cites another area where Williams really excels: “He might be the best at developing trust in his players of anybody I’ve ever seen. Parents believe they can trust what he’s saying.”

But Orr adds, with a twinkle in his eye, that Williams’ best recruiting involved landing a date with a young female athlete. “She’s the best recruit he’s ever had or ever will have,” Orr laughs. “He fooled her.”

*** Corey Norman grew up in Amarillo, Texas, where she ran track and cross country at Randall High School. But her best sport was basketball. A sharp-shooting guard and playmaker, she led Randall to the 1992 Texas 4-A state championship. The 5-foot-3 spark plug was named MVP of the finals and went on to play at three schools – Barton County Community College in Kansas, then Missouri-Kansas City before finishing up at Texas A&M-Kingsville, where she met a young assistant coach named Buzz Williams.

Buzz asked Corey for a date, suggesting the local TCBY, a frozen yogurt shop. “And I said, ‘Well, I’ll meet you there,’ ” Corey recalls. “Because I thought he was kind of a nut job.”

They took their yogurt to a park and chattered away the warm Texas night. Or at least one of them did.

“I thought he was never gonna be quiet,” Corey says. “He ended up talking my ear off till nearly 4 in the morning. He’s a talker.”

But he’d done enough to win a second date. The plan was to drive Buzz’s 1989 white Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight to Corpus Christi for a nicer dinner than could be found in Kingsville. Along the way, Corey saw a sign for Sea World in San Antonio and remarked how she’d never been there, so the plan changed. “And he is not spontaneous,” she says. Nonetheless, they were off to San Antonio.

Right up until the gas ran out.

“I was broke,” Buzz says.

“I thought it was comical,” Corey says.

“I was somewhat embarrassed,” he concedes. “But at the same time, I was like, ‘Look, I’m sorry, but this is kind of how I am. I’ve got a lot of things going on.’ Hell, I’ve run out of gas twice here [in Milwaukee]. Just got so many things on my mind.”

It’s an easy enough fix in Milwaukee. Williams just calls a Marquette staffer and asks to be picked up on I-43. Down in Texas, not so much. “It’s a looonnngggg, lonely stretch from Kingsville, America, to San Antonio,” Buzz says.

So they accepted rescue from a guy driving a white van – “Things you’re not supposed to get into,” Corey says – with only two seats in front and a pail in back. Buzz sat up front, Corey grabbed the bucket, and they drove to get gas. An hour and a half after being stranded, they were back on track for San Antonio.

And so Buzz managed to land date No. 3, this time a trip to the beach.

“When he wants to recruit,” Corey says, “he definitely goes full force.”

It took a year before he asked for the letter of intent, proposing in September 1999. They were married a year later.

Being a basketball coach’s wife hasn’t dimmed Corey’s love of the sport. “I get up and watch ESPN,” she says. “I go to bed watching ESPN.

“He’s always said that if I ever felt second to basketball at any point, then we have issues,” Corey says. “And there hasn’t been one day I’ve ever felt that.

“I knew he loved me, but I didn’t know he’d love me to the extent that he loves me. It’s so much better than what I thought.”

She says he’s very protective of her and his family. “He doesn’t like my feelings to be hurt,” Corey says. “You can imagine how many fights we have in a year. Not very many. He does not like anything in my world to not be OK.”

She tells him if he ever writes a book, it shouldn’t be about basketball, but balancing life’s demands. “Because you’re the best husband in America, bar none,” she will say. “And the best dad any kid could ever have.” She sees him pulled in hundreds of directions, but he still makes time for her and the kids –10-year-old Zera, 9-year-old Calvin, 6-year-old Mason and 2-year-old Addyson. “Just yesterday, we had tea with our 2-year-old up in the playroom,” she says.

“Just sitting in a little tea chair.”

*** Jae Crowder, Marquette’s standout senior forward, was recruited out of Texas, too. But Buzz took a slightly different approach than he did with Corey. Yogurt was not involved.

Crowder was playing for Howard Community College when Buzz pitched the offer. “Buzz is like, ‘If you really want to grow as a player and a great person off the court,’ ” Crowder recalls, “ ‘and get your balls crushed every day, you’ll come play for me.’ ”

“Yep,” Williams says. “I tell most of them that.”

That’s the other side of Williams, the coach who pushes players through brutal preseason boot camps and frenetic practices.

“I think that there’s too much sugar in the world and not enough salt,” Williams says. “Kids want to be challenged. Humans want to aspire to something. You don’t win in life and you don’t win in athletics with softness or selfishness.”

At a December practice preparing for a tough road game at UW-Madison, Buzz begins, as always, with two distinct rituals. He calls everyone to together, and despite all the clapping, manages to squirt everyone’s hands with sanitizer. It’s cold and flu season, you know. Details, details. Then he says a prayer aloud. When he says “Amen,” it’s a cauldron of warrior screams. Time to work.

And if that work isn’t done right, everything stops as he goes drill sergeant on a player. “You stood your ass RIGHT HERE! How can you stand there in the 27th PRACTICE?!”

But when something is done right, he’s quick with compliments. “Yes. Yes. Yes,” he yells, his claps echoing through the gym. “Stop. Stop. Perfect.”

Williams and his assistants are putting in a special defense to counter the deliberate “swing offense” that nationally celebrated Badgers coach Bo Ryan has elevated to an art form. Often when explaining things, Williams says them two or three times, until he’s certain the message has been received. It’s the same way when he’s calling out plays. “Addyson weak handoff. Addyson weak handoff.”

Yes, he names some plays after his children. One more way to keep them on his mind. “[At games], you’ll hear him go, ‘Mason! Mason!’ ” Corey says. “I spend so much time away from them,” Buzz explains, “that when I call their names, whether they’re present or not, it’s good thoughts.”

At practice, Williams can actually be quite calm, often almost serene, standing back and observing while assistants run drills. But in a flash, he can be bellowing at the top of his lungs, standing straight up, arms outstretched to the heavens, firing off obscenities. “Guard the motherf--ker!”

When emphasizing the importance of the special defense against the Badgers: “We gotta f--king get this sh-t!”

When driving home what it will take to beat the Badgers: “Be more athletic than they are. F--k with them.”

They guard. They get it. They are more athletic. They beat Wisconsin, 61-54.

*** Joe Fulce was a top basketball prospect out of Texas who, for academic reasons, ended up at Tyler Junior College. On three separate occasions, he committed his basketball future to Buzz Williams. First, he agreed to play for Texas A&M when Buzz was an assistant there. Then, when Buzz went to New Orleans, Fulce said he’d go there, too. Finally, when Williams ended up at Marquette, Fulce decided to follow him again after finishing his “juco” year at Tyler. So when Fulce finally arrived in Milwaukee, Williams was the new head coach.

“To this day, I say it was by the grace of God, putting us together like that,” Fulce says. “It’s helped mold me into a person I would’ve never dreamed of being.”

But why show such loyalty to a coach who switched schools on him several times?

“He’s my guy. He was upfront about everything and told me nothing that I wanted to hear,” Fulce explains. “That says a lot. I’ve been around enough people to tell when I’m getting bullsh--ted. You can tell he’ll never bulls--t you.”

Fulce was a steady role player at MU, but never a star. Becoming a Marquette graduate in December, however, was plenty reward.

“You’re talking to a student that had to go through juco and, damn, I’m graduating from the Harvard of the Midwest,” Fulce marvels.

The lessons from Williams stay with him.

“You have to really mentally be strong and have the mindset of, whatever’s about to happen, be ready for it,” Fulce says. “Before you even touch the court, before you even touch the ball, Buzz makes sure, letting you know that it’s more mental than it is physical.”

In March 2011, Marquette played its final home game of that season, the team’s traditional Senior Night, complete with postgame ceremonies. Fulce both loved and loathed what it represented.

“We’re celebrating a night of saying goodbye. What coach wants to do that to a player?” Fulce muses. And he pauses. His eyes mist up. He apologizes for getting emotional.

“To this day,” Fulce says, “I don’t know what I’ll do to try and repay the man.”

*** It’s some two hours before Marquette’s Dec. 22 game against UW-Milwaukee, and the Bradley Center is practically empty. The only activity comes from a few dozen players on the Al McGuire court, but none are on scholarship.

A young girl, perhaps 10 years old, wears pink and gray and white sneakers. They complement the rainbow tights stretched down her right leg – and the rainbow colors of her prosthetic left leg.

One boy is in a wheelchair. Another, perhaps 6, doesn’t want to leave his father’s side, no matter how much dad encourages him to go join the others.

They’re all part of Buzz’s Bunch, a program Williams started when he took Marquette’s head post. Its simple goal is to give children with special needs a break from their everyday medical concerns by way of summer camps and pregame shootarounds like this one.

“That will be the only thing, as long as I’m employed here, that ever has my name on it,” Williams says. “And whenever it is that I’m done here, that’s the legacy I’m gonna leave.”

Soon, some scholarship players do arrive. MU team members start mingling with the kids, and the court becomes nothing short of a neighborhood playground. The tall young men bend over and encourage the kids to take shots with blue and gold basketballs. They shag balls after makes and misses. Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas” plays over the PA system.

Marquette freshman Todd Mayo notices the shy boy who clings to his father. He brings him a ball, and dad tries persuading the boy to go take shots with the other kids, but to no avail. Instead, the young boy smiles wide for pictures.

Buzz Williams is on the court, too. He wears a black and gray shirt, black pinstriped pants and black Nike sneakers. He’s at center court signing an autograph for a young boy amid friendly conversation. He poses for pictures and shakes hands with the parents, then starts a circuit of the playground, replaying the scene with different kids and different parents, each time producing the same smiles and laughter.

Eventually, Buzz comes face to face with 16-year-old Andy Stasik. Andy’s been in Buzz’s Bunch since its inception. He has Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, often referred to as the “bubble boy” disease.

These days, Andy doesn’t need a bubble to survive. But Linda Stasik, Andy’s mother, tells how he needed a bone marrow transplant at age 1, how he was basically kept in isolation for five years, how they made hundreds upon hundreds of hospital visits. The words are weighed down with weariness.

But as she watches Andy and Buzz converse, she is smiling. They are getting on like old friends, because that’s what they are.

“He always knows who I am,” Andy says later. “He’s there for me. He always laughs about how I’m getting so much older as the years go on.”

This time was no different. They chat, joke, laugh, pose. And before Buzz moves on to his next conversation, Andy hands him an envelope. On the front, in large letters, are the words “Thanks Coach Buzz.”

One more letter for the love box.

Phil Martelli Prank

Great prank pulled by Coach Phil Martelli on his Saint Joseph's squad.  How Coach Martelli managed to keep a straight face the entire team is beyond me.  Worth watching and should give you a pretty good laugh, especially if you ever had to wear those as the varsity passed down the jerseys in high school.

Check it out here

The Hurley's

Here is a video piece I came across featuring Danny Hurley (Seton Hall) and brother Bobby (Duke) and how they've taken over the program at Wagner in Staten Island, NY.  The video talks about how they are going about changing the culture, what it's like working with each other, and how they became who they are today as coaches.
 



They reference their father, Bob Hurley, who is the coach at St. Anthony's in Jersey City.  Coach Hurley has 26 State Championships and over 1000 career victories.  One of only a few high school coaches inducted in to the Basketball Hall of Fame.  A few years ago I took a trip to Jersey City to meet Coach Hurley and to watch his team practice twice and play.  That particular team had 6 guys signed to D1 scholarships, and a 7th once junior Dominic Cheek signed with Villanova.  They included Mike Rosario (Florida), Tyshawn Taylor (Kansas), Travon Woodall (Pitt), and Jio Fontan (USC).

During that season a documentary was filmed and was there step by step along the way to an undefeated season and a national championship.  The documentary is titled The Street Stops Here.  Below is the trailer.

If you want a little more info on Coach Hurley or St. Anthony's, here is a piece from 60 minutes done the year after the above movie came out.  Coach Hurley is a fantastic man, a great coach, his wife keeps the book because she is the only one he trusts, and if you are ever in the NY/NJ area, go check out a game and if you are a coach go watch a practice.  They were very open to letting us come watch when we asked a few years back.