AAU LeBron-troversy; Gottlieb and Oklahoma State Head Coach Mike Boynton Talk Hoops

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome into this edition of All Ball. I'm Doug Gottlieb,
and uh listen, I could give you some my take
on Lebron James, which I'll give you a kind of
in short order here. I don't think it's I don't
think it's sinister what he did. I don't think it
makes him the devil. I don't think it makes him
a bad parent. I also don't think it makes him
a good parent. Right Like, there's a different discussion for

(00:28):
if a guy is a good parent, and if a
guy is acting kind of appropriately, I just think it's weird,
and I get him a little bit of a pass
because that's what happens with superstars. Have you ever been
around a rock star, a rap star, a movie star,
basketball player, football player. They're generally weird. They just they

(00:48):
reach it like an art artistic threshold to where they're
they get so right brain that they don't think like
you and I do. And one of my best guy player, yeah,
I mean I don't. For me, the best player I've
played with at Oaklahoma State was Adrian Peterson, but the
best talent who became the best NBA player, who was
an incredible athlete, hard workers, desn Mason, and like, I

(01:10):
think if I use the word weird with him, it
would be unfair. But like, he's an abstract artist, right,
and that kind of fits what stars do is they
look at the world differently and can see things differently
than the rest of us. But dude, I just I
don't you don't get up and dunk and your kids
lay of blinds and you don't come onto the it's
not the an one mixtape. It's not it's not all baby,

(01:33):
all baby do. I think it makes him a horrible
human being, no, an attention hound tad. But I also think,
in all honesty, um, it's just it's just weird. It's
just weird. We got a great discussion for you. Mike.
Boyton is supposed to me by arch enemy, right, he
got the Oaklham State job, the one that I wanted,

(01:57):
And it turns out he's also actually a really good guy,
and it sucks that he's such a good guy, and
he's become a good friend of mine, and I thought
we'd kind of tell his story a little bit, or
let him tell his story a little bit. Obviously, two
years ago, they had an unbelievable run late in the
season they beat West Virginia to beat Kansas on the road.
They swept Kansas, and they were America's darling and didn't

(02:18):
get in the n c A Tournament this year not
so much, not so much, but his his story how
he got to hear is even more interesting than his
team he has now. And the team he has now
I think will be really really good this year, really good. So,
without further ado, here's my talk with Oklahoma State head

(02:39):
coach Mike Boyden. Al Right, so instead of getting to
the job now and and you're playing career in South Carolina,
you're you're Brooklyn born. But like what there's all different
parts of Brooklyn. What part of Brooklyn sty a small
section of Uh. I guess it would be the central

(03:02):
part of Brooklyn. And that's why I was born and
raised bed Style is um that's uh, that's what was
the What was the was the I read the book
Heaven as a Playground? Right? That was that was Betty?
Did you read that? Absolutely? Absolutely? There's a lot of
legend legend about best Scott Brooklyn, some of the best
players he's ever maybe never heard of actually or from

(03:24):
bed Style. And then there's a famous rapper Touris b
Ig was also from bed Stuff. So like, so okay,
so paint the picture of your childhood. Oh man, it
was probably unique and fildways for a kid from Brooklyn.
And the fact that unfortunately saying this, especially Metela Lebron talk.
I had both of my parents, I had four sisters,

(03:46):
and and that wasn't really the normal. I grew up
with a lot of guys. I started playing basketball organized
when I was about eight years old and probably only
play with from the time I was eight to the
time I was in high school. Would probably play with
two other guys who actually had fathers that were active
in their lives. So I grew up in an area where,

(04:06):
you know, there was a lot of hustling. Basketball was
a way out for a lot of us. Um and
you know, my parents and my you know, the older
people in my neighborhood kind of protecting me from some
of the the pitfalls, whether it be you know, getting
at drug villain or you know, things of that nature.
It was pretty um. I was a pretty good student

(04:27):
because my parents made it important on neither one of
them went to college. Uh so it was important that
once I had an opportunity, especially to do it for free.
That they wanted me to do the things I needed
to do in a classroom to make that happen. So
academics were always really important. Uh and you know from there,
you know, back forward to high school basketball. We don't wait,

(04:49):
don't don't don't fast forward. You don't fast forward just yet. Okay,
So so what would your would your dad do? So
my dad was a stop uh work Basically he was
a runner for Charle Swap on the New York Stock
Exchange Wall Street. And in the middle of all that hustle,
my mom worked in um and us worked from a

(05:11):
merchant a sporting good story called models Pretty Pretty. So
you had all the good you had all the good year,
I'm hoping, man, you know they first of all, the
game was okay, right, It wasn't like like now we
get took two different color ways of one shoe. But
every now and then my mom was got good enough
grades would surprised me when something came out on the

(05:33):
Saturday morning. She'd keep a pair of side So I
remember vividly it was like nineties seven, or maybe it
was being one of the first kids with their foam
posits that wore the gray ones, sure, terrible shoes to
play and very cool but terrible to play. And I
felt like phone posits are so heavy shot. Um okay,

(05:58):
so the play gun you grew up playing at was
what we played all over, man. We were proud of
young guys who went to every park. I played at
Brown's real recreational most of the time, but so also
with the Tillery Park you went too. On the whole
was for both him Brooklyn and you play that probably
any number of parks between your home and your school.

(06:20):
Uh where. I went to PS three or eight for
my first seven years of elementary and then I actually
was heard it for the first time as the seventh
grader to another elementary school, um in Harlem as a
matter of fact, and went to a school called Mount
Carmel for my eighth grade year, and we played on
the team with seven other guys who played Division one

(06:42):
basketball as an eighth grader. Okay, wait, wait, wait, so
why did you go to Harlem? Like like for anybody
who understands the the just logistics of it, did you
get a subway every day to go to Harlem, walked
to the train, took two trains and a bus to school,
took a bus and two trains home every day for
my eighth grade year. School. But why I mean was

(07:03):
it was it because of who basketball? It was because
of who's It was because of who's so, who looked,
who hooked you up? Like how did you who come
to see me? Kind of in the middle, like the
youth leagues when I was in fifth and sixth grade,
I actually got recruited to go there my seventh grade year.
I wasn't really sure. I wanted to leave Brooklyn and
some of the friends I had. But once I decided

(07:26):
that I knew with high school I wanted to go to,
which is Buschi Blackman, pretty predominant basketball program in Brooklyn,
I knew I wanted to start preparing myself to play
against great competition every day. So at twelve years old Man,
I started getting on the train and bust every day
to go to school. I had a great experience. A
couple of names you may remember, Tremaine Singletary, uh Pieter

(07:49):
Mulligan who actually went on to have a really good career,
Andre Barrett, Seton hall Um cop cost who played at St. John's.
We were all on on a cree team together, you know,
we we did not lose the game that year, which
I'm still very proud of, and that kind of spread
me onto my high school career. Okay, what what are you? Program?

(08:12):
Played for Riverside Church so really um, one of the
original you know true, I guess stacked AU teams. It was.
It was back in the day before there were fifteen
AU teams in every city. They were they were Riverside
Church Hawks, and there was a New York gut Shops
and you played for one or the other. So there's

(08:34):
many good players as was coming out of New York
City at the time. Both of us had had really
really good teams. Um. Okay, now we can fast forward
to high school. What what was your high school experience? Like? Oh, phenomenon.
So I went to Bishop Blackman, like I talked about, UM,
because I knew one of the assistant coaches for the
varsity program there, who was my mentor, Kenny Putlow. I

(08:57):
was exposed to that program probably from the time I
was in at the sixth grade. I would go to
their practices, I would go to their games. Uh. Sometimes
I've even practiced with the guy. So I had a
lot of familiarity with the people at the school. But
when I got there, my experience was unbelievable. I played
JV basketball as a freshman in high school UM and
had a great experience. It wasn't good enough to play

(09:18):
on the varsity team. Then that team had had just
graduated Seldon Jefferson, who had a great career at West
Virginia UM. My freshman years the doors on varsity with
Brian Brown and Will Dudley who both played at Ohio State.
Cut Strong, who's the all time and even rebound at
my high school, who actually went on to have a
really good career at Loyal in Maryland, UM. And so

(09:41):
as a freshman I played JV. I was able to
be good enough, I guess as a sophomore to move
up to varsity played for a legendary coach named Bob Lucky,
who's still a pretty strong figure in youth basketball New
York City. Now, what was what was Can you mentioned
Kenny Petlos your your your mentor? Um? Yeah? What was
he like with you? Like? Because because again you know,

(10:03):
my my experience is and my dad was was the
guy who took me around southern California. He coached my
AU teams and there were a couple other coaches along
the way, but like, you know, like I experienced much
of my high school life like in his buick, listened
to his music, or with dudes from all over the
country or all over southern California. Uh, what was your

(10:25):
in Kenny's relationship? Like man? So I actually met Kenny
Prettlow when I was about seven years old. I went
with an older cousin of mine who after school basketball
experience or whatever it was. And I was just kind
of the little cousin sitting off to the side. But
I was pretty tall. I mean I was one of
the taller you know, I don't know. I was in

(10:47):
maybe second or third grade at the time. And uh
remember Kenny Pretlow coming up to me asking me afterwards
if I like basketball, and I said, yeah, the actually
five A played and I told him I only played
when I go to the park of my dad. Uh
he said, would your mom let you play on the team?
And I remember, like I don't know, he actually drove

(11:07):
me in my comping home that day to ask my
mom if she would be okay with me coming back
to go to the after school program to be a
part of the team. So Kenny started pointing into my
life when I was really, really young, and we still
have a tremendous relationship to this day. But he if you,
if you talk about being discovered, he would be the
first coach that I really ever had that saw something

(11:30):
in me that thought I could maybe you know, at
least beginning as a shouting an eight year old to
play on a you know, elementary school team, but from them, man,
I just developed a great relationship with him. So Kenny
worked in Riverside Church. Erney Launch was the founder of
that program, and he was the guy in Brooklyn because
Riverside churches in Harlem, so he was the guy for

(11:51):
contact for all the kids in Brooklyn and would make
sure we got the practices and games and things like that.
And I remember Kenny drove probably this was in uh
I'm gonna gets this in late eighties, so maybe nineteen
ninety and Kenney Prelo drive a standard like Buick four
door car and he would pile seven their eight dings

(12:13):
and just driving around to different places in the city
to play. Uh. You know, we never thought anything else.
You know, we just love who and we loved each other.
Kenny was doing this all We didn't have to pay anything, um,
and so we had a great time doing it. So
I'm very thankful for him kind of saying something to
me that that kind of spared me on for the
rest of my life. Your favorite basketball player growing up? With?

(12:35):
Who my favorite player grown up? I had? I had
several From a from a professional standpoint, I was in
Knicks fan, uh, so I really admired John Starks and
Anthony Mason and Charles Popley, but I still was an
MJ fan. I mean, I loved the way he played,
the flair, the dominance, the competitiveness, but guys that I

(12:58):
didn't feel connected to those guys, you know, and I
really didn't see myself as an NBA player this abid
at the highest level. But I did grow up in
the era where Jamal Mashburn was a pretty big figure
in New York City, you know, in the early nineties,
late eighties, So he was somebody I really really looked
up to. In fact, uh and he was the reason
I actually became a Kentucky fan as a young guy,

(13:21):
because I watched the mask Burn from the Bronx go
to Kentucky have great successes, get drafted. Um. And then
I also became a Potento fan because the New York
guy he coached Kentucky, then he coached next So those
will be the guys that I probably looked up to
the most. But I meant I was around so many
great players. I mean from Elton brand to run or
Test to Lamar oldam Um, two guys again that you

(13:44):
may have never even heard of, in the act of
Shelton Jefferson, who went to my high school with Brian Brown,
you know. And then I played against high level competition. Uh.
In fact, in my senior year in high school in
New York City, Rice was loaded, right, Vice is loaded
Anthony and then sat Rai's had st Raises Julius Hodge right,

(14:06):
so st Ray said Julius Howes and Rice had like
four dudes. They have a jested map. I mean, there
was just talent all over New York City at the time,
the guys that were going on and having a good
career in college. And my senior year, which is two thousand,
there were three McDonald all American point guards from New
York City. So three guys in one city who played

(14:30):
the same position all became in gowns on Earth. That
was my competition growing up, and it's probably the reason
that I've always had to fight a little bit harder.
Wasn't as talented as those dudes. It still thought that
I could achieve at least close to the same levels
they could. The three guys were what Andre Barrett who
went to Rice High School and then went on to

(14:50):
have a really good career, Seting Hall, Click Brown who St. St.
John's Prep. Yeah. St. John's Prep. So John Spratt and
Omar Cook who went to Christ the King. Um arguably
one of the best. He's the best passion I've ever seen,
no disrespect. Does then watch you play a ton um

(15:11):
but still playing I mean this is he left college,
he left St. John's, got this especial year, which would
have been in two thousand one. UM's still playing professional basketball.
So those three guys that was you know, those are
my That was my competition and if I wanted to
do something with the game, I had to prove that
I could at least compete with those dudes every day.
But those are still, you know, really good friends of mine.

(15:33):
You were and you were known as Steady Mic at
the time. Who who's that just I need you to be?
Who gave you that nickname. So there's a big event
named I s A. It's a it's a local tournament
and Queen's literally at A had a middle school gym
that maybe or the good days to two hundreds, and um,

(15:55):
you know you're going there and you either can't play
or you can't. There's no high you don't come in
ranked and people care. You get on the court and
you can play or you can't and you get called
out for it either way. So I was a guy
who I didn't have a whole lot of flash, just
efficient got the ball. Yeah, dr ballwain needs to go.
Made an open shot when I needed to defend it

(16:15):
really hard, was unselfish and uh you know because of that,
that's what you know. Pete kind of gave me the
name study might exact a quick store. So the last
time I played in I say, um omar the league
and Andre all played together on a coolon against the
team that I was playing with. Now I had some

(16:37):
really good players, um, and we actually beat them in
the championship game and I was the NVP. So that's
my claiming thing. There were three McDonalds on me, but
the one time they teamed up and played against me,
I won, and I walked away with the hardwin. Oh no,
no question, because you know they were all doing their
the they're all doing their in one mixtape thing and
uh okay. So now now here comes the big question,

(16:58):
how the hell did you get to South Carolina? Because now, look,
I know the history Frank McGuire and bringing New York
City guys down, but like that was a long that
was about I mean, that was a long time ago.
Um so how did how did you? How did how
did become South Carolina? Like how did you get out
of the Big East? And I'll be honest, I'm not
sure that had any really doesn't have anything to do

(17:20):
with me, and it really wasn't even talk about in
my recruitment as much. I learned about that more than
I was after I committed and started doing more research.
And then obviously once you're there, I knew who coach
from Quai was, but I didn't really know the history
of all the great players in New York City who
gone there. I was really recruited because in the late
nineties they were playing three good guards together, Larry Davis,

(17:46):
Melvin Watson, and b J. MACKI might have been your
class or maybe the year before b J mckew is
my class. Yeah, b J mckew was my class, but
then remembers my class. And then I transferred out of
Notre Dame, so I sat out a year. So then
I beat two. Yeah, so those guys um well kind
of the three headed monster. And coach Foegler, who had

(18:07):
been an assistant coach at North Carolina and then went
to which I stayed many in South Carolina, was also
from New York City and always desired to go back
to the recruit you know, smart, tough, you know, point
guards who kind of he he thought could play the
Carolina way, you know North Carolina on the way he
knew came in recruiting me. In fact, Rick Callahan was

(18:30):
my primary primary recruiter and John Cooper did some some
legwork on the dog as well, but dating on him
and just I just had an unbelievable feel for his genuineness.
Um and as you get older, you have more of
appreciation for people who are really honest and coached. Folgo
I felt was the most honest person that I connected

(18:52):
with in my recruitment, not that anybody else is dishonest.
I just felt the connection with him that he was
being truth truthful about what my experience would be there. Um.
So you know I visited you Mask Hall Boston College
in South Carolina and they all ultimately committed to go
to South Carolina. That's that's a that's a that's there's
an amazing uh juxtaposition in schools, right because if you've

(19:16):
been like you now you Masses, you Messes a college town,
it's up at Amherst, right, and if you visit the Fall,
it's very pretty. Um, you know, Boston College is outside
of Boston right in Chestnut Hills, really nice, small though
and private and Catholic, right and then Seen Hall is
right there in an East Orange and probably felt more
like something. And then South Carolina is state capital, southern

(19:40):
college town, very very different. Um, you go. So I'd
have to imagine like your first year had to be
a trip like because for me my first year, I
was a Notre Dame. It's in the Midwest, it's Catholic.
I was a public school guy. You know, like some
of the parts. I like some of the parts I
didn't like. What was it like at South Carolina? For

(20:00):
a kid? It was tough. I convinced myself that that
I wanted to get away. I didn't really think about
the cultural differences because you only know what you know.
And although I traveled a lot. I've been at Tires twice,
and I played in basketball a lot of different places,
I never stayed anywhere like permanent, you know, And so

(20:21):
when you go to college, you're there. So I still remember,
like yesterday, when my parents first left campus on a
Saturday night, my first couple of days, I was really uncomfortable.
I didn't really know anybody. My teammates were all comfortable.
They had established frames. And I'm not necessarily a matraverted,
probably more extroverted now than I was, you know, many
years ago. Um, but I still remember just feeling like, man,

(20:44):
this just doesn't steel good to be here. And first
of all, I go outside at you know, seven thirty
after dinner, and no one's outside, nobody's playing ball, no
one shooting dies, no one talking, one joking on each other,
there's no rap bottles going on gonna you know, I mean,
just stuff that I was just accustomed to being around,
you know, not necessarily I took part in all of it,

(21:07):
but just feeling like the city was lively and there
was always things going on um. But so it took
me probably about three months, and I probably I would say,
I didn't really get comfortable again until the season started,
where I felt like things were normal again and I
was just hooping and I was with my teammates every
day and we're going to practice. But I remember, like yesterday,

(21:27):
getting in my car after a preseason workout on like
a Thursday and coaches gave us off the weekend and
getting in my car like six o'clock and driving through
the night to go back to Brooklyn. I got need
to get back to the city. And I pulled up
and too how parents, uh apartment or whatever you like,

(21:47):
you know, four in the morning and next day and
my mom looked at me like, if you ever do
this again, we're gonna have a serious conversation because she
did not want me, hey, driving home in the middle
of night, but also see him want me back in
the city. She was I should have been off the
school doing doing things that she sent me to do.
You mentioned how how honest Eddie Fogler was and how

(22:08):
um earnest he felt he was. Did you know he
was going to retire after your fresh freshman season? No,
And it's interesting because you know, I felt I felt
like so my freshman year didn't play ton up, I
wasn't good enough to play. I mean, I know that now,
probably didn't realize that as much then, but I felt
good about him, and I felt good about my development
under his watch. Where I remember at the end of

(22:30):
the season. Um, it was actually right after that CEC tournament.
Coach Fogler casts a meeting on that Sunday night, and
I don't think we thought we were making the tournament,
but I think we thought we were making the n
i C. So I just thought we were meeting about
you know who we're gonna be playing next, and on
the whole the head of the night before you know stuff,
because I was gonna match up with you can and
because sing and great. Guess maybe some people who come

(22:54):
watch me and stories Connecticut from the Brooklyn But um,
it wasn't. Coach Foglo actually had announced his retirement or
told our a d that he was walking away. Um,
and that was a shock to all of us. Um.
I don't know if it was somber because the way
coach delivered it, uh that it was felt it was
new schoo felt like it was just the right time.

(23:16):
He and his a d started made me button heads
a little bit too much. He didn't really want to start.
He saw kind of the change in the way things
were being done on a recruiting side, didn't want to
necessarily do some of those things anymore. And so, um,
but as I thought about, you know, immediately he thought,
my man, I could have went somewhere else if I
knew coaches and leave, well you mask a fire brus

(23:37):
Flint who recruited mem Yeah. Um, Jay Wright who was
at Hospita left to go to build Nova, and Tommy
Everca went to Michigan. Um. Okay, So before we get
to to to play for Dave Odom, which ultimately ended
up in uh the n A tournament appearance your senior year,

(24:01):
what was it like to lose? You mentioned eighth grade.
Didn't lose a game, you wouldn't have been all city. Like,
I don't know if you guys want to see a champe,
but you would have been all City unless you guys won.
You know. So I'm like, this was this was what
I went through a Notre Dame. I've never been on
a bad team before. I'd never been on a bad team.
Point we were just not good enough. We were young,
and we were Notre Dame, and we were too slow

(24:22):
and not and the Big East was loaded. And it
was as much as being across the country in a
different environment that I wasn't used to was hard. It
was also really really hard to lose. What was that like?
It was? It was incredibly frustrating because and this is
gonna sound like total fabrication, but my dad probably still

(24:43):
hasn't tased to prove it. From the time I started
playing basketball eight years old, I did not lose a
game until after I graduated from eighth grade. So I
went like four and a half years of playing basketball
without ever experiencing what Moses was like. In fact, wait
wait wait, wait wait wait, you never lost like like
wait wait in six and seventh eighth grade, like you

(25:05):
never like you lost a game in school or in
like you know, the tournaments that we won every We
won every tournament. So we lose the tournament. We lose
for the first time the summer of I guess it's
nineties six. I'm going into my freshman in high school
the summer event, and I come home and tell my
dad I don't want to play basketball. Anymore. That was

(25:29):
my reaction, I swear, and He's like, Okay, first of all,
if you don't want to play, you're on this team
and you're gonna finish the season. And then if you
don't want to play, I'm not gonna make you. You're
gonna go tell your coach and your teammates that you're
not gonna play with the people. And I was like, oh, yeah,
I'm probably got under that. I'm probably not gonna tell

(25:50):
him I quick. So I kept playing. That's that's okay.
So so now you're now you're in South Carolina and
look almost yes, my sister year. You know, we're just okay.
And I'm not necessarily involved. I'm not the man by
any stretch. I'm barely a backup. Uh. And frustrating just
I don't understand why I'm not playing more, you know.

(26:11):
And so yeah, it was frustrating. It was hard to understand,
you know, to to move once the next thing. You
got to prepare the same way for the next game
as you do for the last. Uh. And it's incredibly
incredible highs and lows and college basketball. We got up
to a good start, you know, my freshman year, you know,
probably there wasn't on these preseason events, so I don't
think we were in one at all. So we we

(26:33):
probably started like nine in two or something like that,
and we win on my first ever SEC game, we
played Florida home a kid named Travis Kraft hits a
shot at the buzzer after not playing the whole game
to beat Florida in two dozen one, and I'm thinking like, man,

(26:53):
this is cool. It's like the best thing I could
ever imagine. And then we go on to maybe one
like six games and you like six and ten. So
it was hard, and then it becomes more complicated when
you think that, right, this is my chance to step up.
And I got a new coach coming in who didn't
recruit me, Mabe doesn't value the same things coach Polo
did um and so it was it was a challenge

(27:14):
and transition. So what was that like, you know, like,
did you your your first meeting with dav Oden? What
was the team setting? Did you call you in? Like
how did how did it work? Team setting? And you
know this before social media, so there was literally just talk.
There wasn't any this guy was you know room attack

(27:35):
been on his campus or these are the people. In fact,
people thought that um Tubby Smith, who was the coach
at Kentucky, I'm crazy to sound he was the coach
at Kentucky at the time, what's going to leave there
to come to coach in South Carolina because he was
an assistant there, you know, like a decade before. He's
from North Carolina and they thought they could get him there. Obviously,

(27:57):
we don't want up Tubby and Coach Oldam comes in
and Yo, the very first meeting, he's like, well, you
guys didn't pick me, but this is kind of the
way things is gonna go. Come here. We want to
be athletic, we want to be fast. I've coached in
the exec you know, I know what it takes to
have success. And some of us are looking around, like
what does that mean for me? You know what I mean,

(28:20):
I hear what you're saying, coach, but you didn't say
anything about me. Coach probly recruited me and said all
the things that he was going to do to help me.
Uh So it took a little while and on his
staff Frank Hayt had come in with him from Wake
and I started, I mean I may have met with
coach Hayes and the week he was there, more than
I even met with coach hot I may have talked

(28:40):
to coach Holden once. Uh. And then a week later
Frank Keith leaves and goes to be an assistant at Texas. Yeah,
and so it was, you know, you just kind of
you don't understand it nineteen years old, like there's a
business side of this thing. Um. But obviously I appreciate
all that stuff even more now. But I was just okay.

(29:01):
Coach brought us some other guys and we had more
success my sophomore year than we did my freshman year.
We still went to the n I T, but we
actually almost wanted We lost in the championship game to
Memphis h Cow's team with Dawan Wagner and two thousand two,
and uh, I felt like, you know, all right, now
it is the time to step up at two guys

(29:21):
who were senior point guards ahead of meet thought I
could kind of transition to being a starter. Um. And
it actually wanted to be in my worst year of
my career, my junior in college. It's interesting because you
were behind Aaron Lucas, who was not he wasn't just
a South Carolina kid. He was like a Columbia South
Carolina kid, which is I mean, that's that's hard, right,

(29:44):
Like you're like, yo, I'm steady Mike from Brooklyn. I'm
all city. They're like, we never heard of you or
in South Carolina. Like this is before like you said,
social media, no one even knew And um, I didn't
experience this as much ocums Like when I got there,
there was this the last year who transferred out in
Joe Atkins. But like you know, Oklahoma did Peton fans
knew Oklahoma kids, so they didn't care really what you

(30:07):
did beforehand, you know they did. It's a different one.
So why why was your junior year so frustrating? This
Because I think my my mindset changed. Those guys are
gone now it's my time, and uh, I put it
on myself. I probably didn't work as hard as I
could have that year to prove that I deserved to
play more. Uh. And you know, truthfully, we had poor

(30:31):
internal leadership. It's one of the things I stressed so
much now is uh. You know, we had a couple
of singers who were totally bought into just becoming pros
and what the year was going to be like for them. Um,
and so it was really really frustrated. We actually want
to finish the dead last. I think we were twelve
and sixteen that year. We had four singers, and you know,

(30:52):
it was just a really really poor experience, and I
didn't do anything to help myself. I actually stopped being
as focused and maybe than I could have been in
like Sky Report film sessions. And you know, I was
never disrespectful or anything, you know, outright wrong, but I
definitely didn't have the focus that I needed to to
be able to help our program. So what change your senior?

(31:13):
Because you're senior, you had a great year the average
Like in a game, you know, they brought in Tray Kelly,
but you know you didn't. You know, you guys played
together some he backed you up. Um, I know the
RONALDA balk but I think yeah. So I and Dave
Otam actually met with me after that season and say, hey, listen,

(31:36):
I think you're a good kid. You have some talent.
You're not gonna play next year. We gotta set. We've
got this kid Tide from d C who's terrific and
he's going to be our start point guard next year.
And I just kind of not in my head kind
of like you know what, no one's ever told me
that you suck basically, you know, and you're not good

(32:02):
enough to play and soil you're not so just you know,
you could stay in scholarship and graduate and uh that
was after that was probably in marsh or April after
my junior year. So going into the off season for
my senior year, and I and be perfectly honest, I
just worked harder than I had ever worked in my life.
I met with our strength conditioning coach every single day.

(32:25):
I changed my body. I went from I think thirteen
percent body fat and went about probably one ninety six
one seven to like four and a half percent body
fat and laying like one eight nine. So it really
toned up, got the best shape of my life. And
was just determined that I was gonna Hey, proved that

(32:45):
I I was worthy of being recruited because to this
point I haven't done anything worth noting about. Right, um be,
if there's any chance you're gonna play basketball for a living,
you need to have a good year. And seeing your
coach just looked you and your eye told you that
yourself and and so I have a lot of I
have a tiple my show to going into that that
that year, and you know I was more than even

(33:06):
more determined to make sure our team has success and
that I could experience playing state tournament. Fascinating because that
experience for you, um has to be really interesting as
as a head coach because and I don't know, and
like you and I have talked coaching philosophy some, but
I think it's interesting. A lot of coaches they get

(33:27):
down on kids and they can't ever see that the
kid has changed or that the kids evolved, like they
just man coaches that especially assistant coaches. I talked to you,
They're like, man, I just I can't talk my head
coach into liking this kid. Like he's just done with him.
He just wants and wants to run him off. Get
a scholarship spot open. When kids do change, right, they

(33:48):
do go home, they do become better shooters, they do right,
And it's so so do you? Is that is that
part of have you been able to maintain that part
of who you are as a head coach that like, look,
this is who this guy was, this kid was. But
I'm willing because I know there's like I know, you
have a kid on your team who had actually had

(34:09):
a hell of a year. You and I talked about
him before. You're like, man, I don't know, but because
because he does one thing really really well, he ended
up he end up being a guy you had to
have on the floor. I just wonder how much of
that used from your own experience in your own team now, Yeah,
I mean I use it a little bit from my experience,
but I've also evolved as a person and I've coached

(34:31):
long enough to have seen it also. Um, And it
keeps coming up every year when you see a guy
whose friends who could go either way, And a lot
of it is I mean, coaches have a lot more
influence over kids mindset than they they give themselves credit for.
And kids know when you believe in them, they know

(34:51):
when you trying to help them be better, and they
know when you're committed to seeing that they have some success. Um.
And I remember working at South Carolina we had a
kid who who and it probably ended up, honestly at
the end of the day, really really durelling our opportunity
to stay there. Kid named Ramon Galloway on South Florida,

(35:14):
really really talented, came in like a fourth star. He
was being recruited by other schools at that level, and
he committed to us. You've got all this promise, but
he's button heads with our head coach all time. But
after his sophomore year, man he just can't He can't
get out of his own way, and we can't help
him and can't figure it out. I mean, I don't

(35:35):
know if you've ever heard his name before. The kid
Transford to this tournament. They state the first round, they
go to Street sixteen. Gar zd just's an extension we
get fired to later. Um, did you did you think
you'd be a coach? But I think I would be

(35:57):
a coach. Yeah, when you're when you're playing, You're like,
when I could do that? I mean, what was the
obviously everybody has. Everybody thinks they're gonna play. I always
thought I could coach, uh, And I always thought that
maybe later on in my life I would try to
maybe coach. Maybe you thought, well, I can't think about
coaching college. Um, yeah, in New York, you just exposed

(36:18):
so much professional sports. You don't really think about college
athletics that much. But as I got into coach, as
I got into college, I started to think more about man,
I really kind of see the thing, see the game
differently than my teammates. I understand everything my coach says
the very first time he says it, I can go
do it either any of the five positions on the
floor that he's told. Maybe he can't do it as

(36:40):
well as a seven footer, but I can do that too.
I can guard, you know what I mean. Uh? So,
I always felt like I thought the game likely coach,
and I really hoped that I would play, to be
perfectly honest, uh you know, for for a few years
and they then paying out. I had an opportunity maybe
to go to Belgium right out to my CEO. I

(37:00):
had some knee issues which kind of slowed me down.
But the truth is that this wasn't a pro basketball player, man.
And so you know, I've gotten a coaching on the
advice of Again, both of my college coaches called me
to kind of got over fill them back for myself
that didn't have great professional planning opportunities. He said, hey, man,
we think you could do this. I'll talk to coach
Bobo and coach Otam, and they helped me get on

(37:22):
as a as a graduate assistant with Larry Davis UH
at Firman University Virus, most recently the associate head coaches Cincinnati.
Yeah yeah, Larry, Larry's Larry's kind of crazy person, like
the more excited. He's got a lot of relationships. He
makes guys better. But I learned so much from him

(37:43):
about the grind that is college basketball coaching. Uh. The
fact who threatened to aspire me in my interview. Um,
I'm not saying today I got the job during the
interview he threatened to fire me. So he set the
tone like this is how this is gonna be, and
you're needed gonna do it or you're not, and you're
gonna learn a lot if you do it the right way,
or you're not gonna be here. So um, yeah, I

(38:06):
learned that this this harshness. I worked for six different
guys that believe they all do it differently. They've all
had sea level of success. All right, So you're working
for Larry at at Furman UM and then you did
you gonna work for buzz at coach? Soals that what
happened with Peterson? Did I did? Yeah? Yeah's a Bus
had been at Tennessee and Bus was pretty successful at

(38:28):
at State and then actually took over for Bill selves
Tulsa team. When Bill last I think Bill might have
gone to the like the Sweet sixteen or at lead
eight at Tulsa and before he went to Illinois. The
bus takes over for Bill self. He has a good
deal with them. I think they go to the n
i T Championship game. And then he gets a ten
job and and uh, you know, he gets fired and

(38:51):
two guys and five at the same time, I'm finishing
my g A year at Furman and he gives me
my first assistant coaching on the road recruit the opportunity. Okay, So, um,
you mentioned firm. So Fermon is a small I've I've heard,
I've never been there. I've heard just incredibly beautiful small
school in North Carolina. What was that? Okay? So what

(39:17):
is one of the feutiful scritpal campuses you have a
you know visit. It's a high academic school, UM and
the in the South, in the Southern Conference. Did you
get your masters there? Would you do your during your
g A year? So I started, I actually started a
master's program Masters in Teaching UM, the two year program.

(39:38):
But after my after my first year Firman is when
Buzz got the the Coastal Carolina job and I went
with them, so it didn't finish and not finished my masters.
How did it come about? Because Buzz is a Carolina
guy right like even now he's working for Jordan's with
with the Bobcats. How did you get into the Carolina
I mean I guess the kind of like how did

(39:58):
you get into the Carolina FAMI? So again, Coach Focus
been mentor UH, big help for me all my career.
And he actually recruited Buzz and actually recruited Buzz in
the same class that he recruited Michael Jordan's and UM
and and helped because obviously Buzz wouldn't bring his whole
staff from Tennessee down to that level of and we're

(40:19):
kind of looking for more opportunities to stay a high
major program. So there was an opportunity there and Uh
I was ready to take it. Okay, So Coastal for
people who don't know, Uh, Coastal Carolina is in what Conway,
South Carolina? So like you just can't get out of
the state of South South Carolina, right like you come down,
you're like man um, so you take you take this job?

(40:41):
What was it like when he what was the instructions
he gave you in your first Now you're on the
road actually recruiting. That's the first thing I had to
do is I went to the Southern Conference office and
took the recruiting test. It was in uh in Spartanburg,
South Carolina. So drove up there, took the test, and
I literally get the results and I go on the

(41:03):
role from the test and I'll go recruiting in North Carolina.
Uh some places that Buzz had known some people, and
you know, we're just trying to figure out how to
get this program going. They weren't very good a year before. UH,
So I had to the the ground running. Didn't know anything
about recruiting. I didn't think I knew how to identify
talent um, but kind of learned on the ropes and

(41:23):
started freaking things out from there. You know, it's interesting
because um Self would has told me the story of
Billy Clyde and Bill Aillespie. That Billy was at Baylor
in n and that's when Self hired him to Tulsa.
And he literally said like he hired him, like on
the phone and he's like, hey man, send me some

(41:46):
hats and shirts, and he's like send him ahead to
like the hotel wherever they were gonna be, wherever he's
gonna stay. And like literally the next day he just
had changed hats shirts and he started recruiting for Tulsa.
Like it was it was literally like that had so rumor.
So so what was it like? Like you're in your
you're you're born AD two, this is oh five, You're

(42:08):
twenty three years, three years old, You've been out of
school for not a cause of the year, and um,
you know, literally just trying to get my feet wet,
you know. And I really didn't understand at the time
levels of basketball. You know, from a collegiate standpoint, right,
who's realistic to recruit here? And so you just kind

(42:28):
of start calling people, you know, and trying to get
the best guys possible. And uh so we stopped at
but we landed a couple of pretty good kids. We
actually got a kid out of Tennessee who was a
really good player. He named Josh Smack. But the first
kid I ever personally sound was a kid named Everett Richardson. Um,
you know, obviously you go back to what you know,

(42:49):
and I knew some people in New York. Everge was
a non qualifier out of New York City, out of Brooklyn.
I knew his older brother. I knew it was a
you guys, and so they said, hey, if you can
help us, we got a way to get this kid outsible.
You know, he'll telling the little beats. So he was
actually a Sullivan Community College in New York. I went

(43:10):
up to Sawham visiting with his mom and brother, and uh,
you know the rest of ships. The first kid I
ever signed, and he was playing basketball. Now, yeah he's
still playing, Like I just looked him up. Wh you
were talking like he must have got hurt his he
must have got hurt his second year because he was
averaging like fourteen a game but only played seventeen games.
But yeah he's still playing. You that me still hoping.

(43:31):
And I've got a family now. And you know, one
of my proud of stories is so when I first
started talking to this kid in his family, obviously you
do the background of tramp scripts and I mean it's
not not anything that you would take anywhere close to
Stanford or even Ferming for that matter, And uh, when
they're like, man, how are we going to get this
kid into a college I remember sitting in his living

(43:53):
room and telling the kid, hey, if you if you
take a chance and believe in me, in our staff
and what we can do here, then when you graduated
from college, I'll be there for your graduation. And the
kid came in how he motivated obviously he had a
lot of academic support um and he graduated. I made
sure I was there, even though I was no longer
working at Coastal Carolina by the time he actually did

(44:14):
finished just a great two years later. Yeah, he's playing.
He played in Iceland last year, average average thirty a
game in Iceland. He's a bucket getter, always has been.
He's still getting buckets in Iceland. He's still and he's
only you're I don't know if you know this, Like
you're only like three and a half years older than him, right, Like,

(44:35):
I mean, you guys know no, Listen, I knew his
older brothers, so I knew him because he was kind
of a little guy around when we were big, you know,
big gas playing, So I kind of had a it
was it was an easy ending way for me to
get started. So yeah, and I still talked to the
kids to this day. And you know, all those all
those good things. So then you're there for two years?

(44:58):
How did you come to work for Mike Young at Watford?
There's sort of business of basketball continues to get revealed
to me two years and Uh, we actually started hearing
some grumblings about midway through our second year there that
Buzz wasn't necessarily happy um coaching at that level anymore,
and that Buzz had act. Bus and Michael Jordan's have

(45:18):
always remained really close, right, even when they went in
different ways from the professional standpoint. Uh, and Buzz Michael
Jordan would come down to Wilmington where he's from, which
is about an hour from Conway Myrtle Beach area where
Copal is, and they were golf throughout the year. We
started hearing rumblings about Buzz maybe leaving again. I'm young,
I'm just excited to be working and long behold about maybe.

(45:42):
Like early April mid April, Bus calls us into a
meeting and says, Hey, this opportunity to come up, I
can't pass up. Michael wants to become joining the front
office staff. But at the time they would have Bobcat
to believe and U and the rest of history. I mean,
we're sitting there as a staff have trying to figure
out what's next. Because you know, when your college assistant

(46:03):
and you've got leaves for another college job, you think
there's an opportunity for you to go with him. And
when he goes to the NBA and he's not coaching,
it doesn't really necessarily work that you have a have
opportunity there. So he was talking to the NBA and
cut Ellis came in, who I never really met. I
played against his teams at Auburn when I was in college.

(46:25):
I didn't really know much about Hi mother than that. UH.
And then Mike Young had a change in his staff,
and I respected Mike and and had a conversation with
him about that. It took that opportunity to go work
for him. The major news in that story was coach
to Catline is a pretty well paying job for UH
lower level school. So I was that I was probably

(46:46):
twenty five years old at the time, and I was
thinking about sixty five thousand. They gave me a car
and a cell phone, and that was good because it
probably stayed there a Mortle Beach for a long time.
Single UH and I went to Ratford. UH took about
a stip team thousand, I'll pay maybe a little bit more.
No car, no cell phone, but an opportunity to work
for us. Guy had a lot of respect for and

(47:07):
thought would have a chance to be with his successful
and Mike Young Moo remains really really close U to
me and my family. Yeah, and of course he just
he finally left after suchable Man, I'm shocked and took
this long because you can't imagine me the lack of
um the resources that he was able to have a

(47:28):
unbelievable amount of success with for twenty five summer years
at Watford. I mean literally when I worked for him,
I was his associate head coach and this is in
two thousand seven, and we had another assistant coach whose
full time and we had a third assistant entitle only
because he did not get paid by the university. He
actually had a job that he worked from eight to

(47:50):
three and then he came to the office for practice.
It's crazy. It's crazy. Okay, let's let's let's go back
for a second. So now you now you're starting to
build up kind of working for different guys, and it's
not like you're in one basketball family right where like
the Carolina guys, I'll run the Carolina secondary into motion.
They run kind of the same stuff back then, you know,

(48:11):
um and and you know like uh, you know, and
before you became an Underwood guy. But like Underwood, like
you guys gotta all run that same spread. You guys
all play defense. There's a similar style or whatever. But okay,
but but you played for two different coaches and now
you've worked for this is your third coach. Mike's your

(48:31):
third coach you've worked for. Al Right, so let's let's
go through it. For Like Fogler, his greatest strength as
a coach. You already talked about how honest the guy
he was. But what is his greatest strength as a coach.
This preparation. The most particulously prepared coach that I've ever
been around. I mean it's down to a science. Every

(48:53):
out of bounce play, every out of time out that
the other team would he would know it, and he
would have us prepared to ended and to attack them defensively.
If you were gonna be honest with him and tell
him here's something that he could have done better, what
would it be? He was extremely rigid. I mean, he
was an old school guy. This is how we do

(49:14):
things right. So from a player development standpoint, there wasn't
a whole lot of emphasis, There wasn't a whole lot
of emphasis, uh, in terms of that specifically as it
relates to strength and conditioning. So I think just some
of the the changes he wasn't very adaptable, um from
a coaching standpoint, And I think part of it is
he watched coach Smith dool for so long one way

(49:35):
and then also has success himself for so long doing
it that way. Remember, he was the coach of the
year at Wichita State when they were in the Valley.
He was the coach of the in the SEC when
he first came in at Vanderbilt and took them to
the tournament. There was a coach to the un SEC
with South Carolina playing the playing with the same style
with a different type of player at South Carolina. So

(49:55):
it's pretty set in his ways. It's It's one of
the things that I would say, it wasn't very deptul okay,
um n ask you about Buzz. What was Buzz's greatest
strength as a coach? Oh man, just the most easy
going guy that you could imagine, didn't sweat anything. Uh.
The house may be on fire. He'll tell you, man,
it's just getting warm in here. But that's just Buzz.

(50:16):
You know. He was very very relaxed, very confident, very comfortable,
um with the way things are going all right. And
then it was that his weakness too, is that there
was some some details something heard. You know, I heard
us in a lot of ways. Um. And and again
it's hard for me to speak on how he was
before he coached at Coastal because he had had so

(50:37):
much success and did a really good job at if
we're being honest, they didn't make determine a time, but
he had built what Bruce Pearl took over and then elevated.
You know, it was based on the foundation at buzz
At built. But he had heard him in refiting. Uh. Again,
it was time when he would take off of Michael
Jordan and go play golf in the middle of the year.
And that's just not something that you sleep very often.

(50:58):
But that was Fuzz. Yeah. No. We we we played
their app state team my senior year. They were really
we We kicked the hell out of him. We we
played really really well that game. But I remember watching
him and it's one of those like you play a
team and they're supposed to be good and then you
kicked the ship out of him and you're like, man,
they're not even good. Then you watched them, you're like, oh,
they just didn't play well and we actually played, we
actually played at a night when we played really really well.

(51:20):
Um okay, So so now you what about what? Okay?
You we talked about Mike Young? What how is he able?
What's what's the secret sauce there? So the super sauce
and Mike is that he is a basketball chunky. I
mean in terms of just selessly studying the game, being
on top of recruiting, but at a place where there

(51:42):
was not a whole lot of pressure. But you wouldn't
be able to tell that he worked every day like
you know, he was on the hot seat. And and
that's part of the reason he was so driven to
have so much success, because even though he worked at
a place, I think it's just his competitive nature. You know,
he watched uh and wast after coach quest, but the
Great College of Charleston teams Chattanooga had a good run

(52:03):
and then Davidson basically took over the league there in
the mid two thousands. So I think just his competitive
job is what made him really really good because he
was so determined to overcome some of those challenges. Uh. Okay,
so you're there one year, right, just one year and
now of a sudden, Uh, Dave Odham, who you had

(52:24):
played for your last three years, he I don't know
if he retired, he got fired. I think he retired.
Every everybody who coaches, he retires, by the way, just right,
that's it's true though, right, College of Charleston is the
ultimate retired job. But like, right, so you have you
have two that you played for both retired and then

(52:44):
Buzz essentially retired too. So you know maybe yeah, so
um so Darren Horne gets the job? How did what
was what was the decision like to go back to
your alma mater? And it was only five Again, I'm
twenty five years old maybe, and you know, my almamount

(53:05):
opened and I'm ninety minutes up the road, and I've
kind of established pit of a work, of a little
bit of a reputation that somebody who can help get
players and develop them and all that stuff. The thing
I miscalculated was just how it was working for someone
at the high major level that you don't know um.
And so it was a bit of an adjustment. Then

(53:25):
I did a great job in terms of bringing a
winning attitude and trying to change the culture because it
had gone spale a little bit at the end of
Coach Oldam's time. Uh, high energy. If just come off things.
The hot name is just come off a suit sixteen
at Western Kentucky. Uh. The thing we miscalculated was just
how much you know, how much the difference is in

(53:46):
terms of recruiting and having talent to win and the
sec versus the Sun Belt at the time in West
Kentucky is the best job in that league. At the
time South Carolina is not the best job. And he
has so the way you approach things and have success. UHM,
really not that close? Why why? Why is like I'm

(54:08):
I'm passing by South Carolina? Uh? Not just knowing you
knowing Frank um. Um, not to not to name drop,
but but um, Darius Rucker is a friend of mine.
And um, I don't know if you remember Anton James
and uh, what's his name? Harold Harold Jamison. So Harold Jamison.

(54:28):
Before my senior year, he came out, stayed in my
house all summer, played with us in Au and he
went to Clemson, and he started talking about all the
dudes in the state of South Carolina. And I didn't know,
like that was before I had ever seen Kevin Garnette play.
I don't know he's really from South Carolina. And I
know Ray Allen was an army brat, but he he
went to high school in South Carolina. Why South Carolina

(54:51):
produces a lot of players Raymond Tultons from why can't?
Why isn't? Why is it such a tough job in
comparison to some other big state schools. So I've been
part of it. Is uh and it's probably the sound
like coach state. But turnover is not necessarily always good. Yeah,
I think where you don't, you don't have consistency and

(55:12):
the messaging for recruits and then so you have turnover
every four or five years. It creates a lot of instability.
You know, the players who are coming in don't have
a connection to the players who played for the last coach,
and those guys don't have a connection to the guys
who played for the coach previously. And we've talked about this,
you know, off the record, about where we are now.

(55:32):
You know, there's been a lot of turnover and that
that harms the development of a program in terms of
having a consistent success. The resources may be there, but again,
if you're changing leadership, you're changing philosophies. And when you're
changing the philosophies being dealing with totally different people in
the way they do things in a short amount of time,
that really really hurts you your growth. It's a great

(55:54):
it's a great point um and and ultimately, what was
that like to get fired by your ALBA monitor? It
was amazing. I mean I thought I would go to
MBDA for the rest of my career, to be honest,
and that maybe there would would have success. Uh maybe
you go back to his home school Kentucky or whatever,
and then I may become a head coach there. And

(56:15):
this is again at twenty five years old, thinking, you know,
I'm an SEC and I'm at the highest level is
you can be as an assistant coach, you know, at
a powerful school where you got all the resources. And
so I was excited to get to work and try
to build ourselves to be contenders in SEC. Favorite player
you signed there? Uh, so we signed Stephen Vanilla, Ramon

(56:37):
Galloway and John dre Jefferson our first year. A second year,
we had a really good recruiting class. Bruce Sellington who
now plays in the NFL, and Demontre Harris will probably
the most highly cuted on recruits. But Eric Smith and R. J.
Slawson to South Carolina kids were part of that class.

(56:57):
Brought in a transfer from Nevada, where as the lead
with some Charlotte named Malick Cook was kind of a
combo forward um. And then we signed uh Anthony Gil
and Damien Leonard who were both really really highly included kids.
As the Guil was on Virginia's the lead eight team
not too far ago. Uh and uh, you know, at

(57:21):
the end of the day, we just didn't win enough.
He didn't develop quick enough. And you know I didn't
give ourselves enough. You know, rope To, we can have
our our administration believe in what we're doing. No, No,
favorite player you signed, you mean it doesn't have That
doesn't mean the best favorite player I thought, he said
named the players have signed. No, No, no, I don't
give a about all those other players. Favorite player you
signed anywhere? No, at South Carolina is a favorite player

(57:47):
we signed the South Lina probably was Bruce probably Bruce.
Bruce was very interesting story. So he grew up as
a two sport athlete. It was like one of the
top football players in South Carolina. And we were kind
of puzzled because he was really being recruited heavily by
football programs but not by South Carolina football clubs in Florida,

(58:08):
Florida State, Georgia and football. And so we see the
kid one summer planning in uh and you were like, man,
this kid's got a chance. I wondered if he would
want to play both sports. And he does these spurs
our football coach at the time, and we tell him, hey,
this kid wants to do both, we could use your
help here. And they don't really want to recruit him.

(58:29):
So wait, so hold on, wait wait wait so but
but this is this is interesting. I think to people,
how did it work? Did Darren go directly to the top.
Did you go to what would be the recruiting coordinator? Like,
what's the conversation because every school is different. Some it's
the football does the football thing, and everybody else does
everything else, Like how did it actually? How was the conversation?
Do you remember how the conversation went? Well, it was

(58:51):
actually one of our assistants called one of the assistants
and said, hey, this is kid. It's a Monk's Corner,
which is not near Charleston, really really Townsend. I'm sure
they knew about him, but maybe they didn't evaluate him,
ye know the way some of the other football programs
had um And so that was how it started. But
you gotta remember at the time, South Carolina football is

(59:14):
rolling and they have al Sean Jeffrey Marcus Lattimer. Um.
I mean they got like it's like eight or nine
dudes that are in the NFL making making a difference
right now. They were in their program at the time.
Uh so just never materialized very much. Um. He leaves
his team to a state championship as a senior, but

(59:34):
had signed to play basketball that November with with our
with our program, a great story. Um, so we actually
have him this freshman year. It's really good. He then
decides at the end of his freshman year he's got
the football. It's again, we think that the football stats
now realized, Holy ship, this guy's really could and so

(59:59):
he can't go on scholarship in football. But you didn't
do it, understand. But you come to play two sports
at the college you have to go. There's a hierarchy.
You have to be on scholarship at the higher with
you know, higher level of sport. So football is number
one on that fool chain because you don't want to
have football programs bringing in track athletes on scholarship and

(01:00:20):
you know what I mean, then having them be football players,
stealing extra scholarship players that way. So long story short,
he can't play bass football the spring, and he goes
out and plays the next year when he becomes an
All SEC freshman basketball player as a true freshman in
his first year, plans football in a SEC. He's an

(01:00:41):
All freshman STUC football player as a wretcher freshman. It's crazy,
phenomenal athlete. Were you were there? Were you were? Were
your students South Carolina when they had the bad fight,
Lou holds his last game. So that was actually I
graduate and leave and oh four and so that football
game was pin O four, but I was gone. I

(01:01:01):
was actually a farman, which was closer the Clemson. What
a fight actually happened in Colombia like the night before
that fight at Clemson was the mousee of the palace
between the paces and pissants. Here man, I was. I
was so the mouse of the palace. I was actually
watching the game with my wife. We had just oh three,

(01:01:24):
I started ESPN, so it's like, oh four, I'm watching
it and I was like, oh my god. And they
had I was like on radio. I think I was
on Sports Center whatever, just like on the phone, just
giving kind of commentary on it. And then I remember
sitting on like the exact same couch in the exact
same living room, and I'm watching in South Carolina and
Clemson and it was one of the craziest brawls I've

(01:01:45):
ever seen, right, and that was that was the end
of I think it was Lou Holtz the last game.
That was his last game. And then they didn't they
not they didn't play the next year or something, right,
like it's punishment, like, hey, we're not gonna play, like
it's crazy. So I yeah, okay, so um it. But
this is where it gets hard to be fired by

(01:02:07):
your You guys were fired right at the end of
uh oh yeah, four years. Four years, and you know,
we kind of still here, you know what I mean,
you look at your record. We didn't have a whole
lot of momentum recruiting that's really kind of your biggest
death nail because there's no hope to them, right, if
you're not recruiting, well then why why should we believe?

(01:02:29):
So yeah, we get fired four years later, and uh,
probably one of the more difficult moments, um, because you know,
the d comes in and sells. Darren. Hey, I'm not
not honored. We'll honor the last few years, but you're
not gonna have the job, and as an assistance, you
don't have multi years. This is kind of before that
became a voke thing. So yeah, we'll let go. This

(01:02:52):
is in two thousand twelve, I believe. Okay, so what
do you what you at the were you married at
the time, Now you weren't married, I'm kind no, Actually, yeah,
I got married in May of two thousand and eleven,
so I was less than a year married, and you know,
we had just found out that my wife was pregnant

(01:03:14):
with our first child. And so here we are sitting
there and uh, spring summer of two thousand and twelve,
my wife's got a child going away, and I don't
necessarily no kind of income I'm gonna be able to
help provide for this. So uh, but but you didn't

(01:03:35):
you do you stayed one year with Frank, didn't you?
Or did you go? Frank comes into replace Darren, and, uh,
you know I had some franking not cross pass before,
not professionally, um, but when I was younger. He was
actually counsel at Nikiell American Camp. Uh you know, kind
of continued there, but it comes in and go. Brad

(01:03:57):
is actually trying to get the head coaching job at
Case State, like, and Frank says, hey, I don't know
what's gonna happen if he gets the job. Maybe a
guy too stays and she doesn't get the job, and
bring all staff with me, and I'll try to help you,
but I don't. I won't have an assistant coaching job
for you. I get it. Respect the Frank to being honest, uh,
telling me straight up what it was so I could
kind of prepare. Uh, so well, his whole whole staff

(01:04:20):
does come and Brad comes with him, and Frank actually
asked that I helped him kind of figure out the
later land Over the first couple of months that he's there,
my wife and I had decided that we would stay
so that we could continue to see the doctors that
she had been seeing through the pregnancy, we could have
the baby in a place that we do well a

(01:04:42):
million people around. My parents lived in Atlanta, three hours away,
so they could get there, UM, and so we stayed,
and Frank actually helped us figure out a way to
stay within the athletic department UM kind of working on
some transitional things to student athletes, but in the row
that was more encompassing of the whole athlete partment as
opposed to just basketball. What's that like to watch? And

(01:05:04):
it's like you're managing your wife, but you're you're like
watching somebody else do a job you just had that
had to be that had to be hard. Well, you know,
the hardest part of this, if I'm honest, is when
you're the guy who gets fired and it hasn't gone well.
Then a lot of times what happens with the new
staff comes in and they kill everything at the last

(01:05:26):
staff's done, and the players stink, and you know, while
we're recruiting these guys and while we're taking these recruiting
services and what the heck we're doing with facilities and
so just dealing with that. But I was I was
also um self aware enough to know some of it
was right. There was there was a reason that we

(01:05:49):
didn't continue to have our job, and you know, so
there were some things that I learned. It wasn't easy,
and especially because I have relationships with those guys who
then became you know, entrenched in that talk, and a
lot of them were then moved on pretty quickly after
Frank got there, so that was challenging. At the same time,
I looked at as an opportunity to learn. UM. Now

(01:06:11):
I'm exposed to a whole different philosophy and I'm around
Frank and listening to him coach and how he teaches
and talks to kids and how they do recruiting and
stuff like that. So it was a learning opportunity. I
actually was able to remove the emotion of having to
live with wins and losses UM and just be an
objective of server basketball. So I took the time to

(01:06:33):
go around with some other people's practices that year also,
UH and just really use it as a year of
growth myself. What was the what was the best practice
you went? Sow best practice I went until I actually
was was Mike Young's. I went back to Watford that year,
UM and and just watched how he built it because
it's it's different when you're involved. You don't observe the

(01:06:57):
same way as when you're part of something. Um. And
obviously I was rooting for him to have success, and
they have had they did have unbelievable success moving forward.
But just watching how good he was sharp, he communicated clearly,
his guys understood exactly what they were supposed to do
all the time. But I'll tell you what, Frank Martin

(01:07:18):
runs the hell of a practice, um man. I wouldn't
necessarily advise it for kids under age, right, but there's
a there's a teaching going on. There's learning involved this
growth and you can see that there's a plan. And
I'm not saying I'm just saying the language sometimes it's uncomfortable,
But I'm not saying he's he's not. It's not personal.

(01:07:40):
It's challenging. Uh. And it's in this environment of growth.
Um But he is really really good on the basketball court.
So then Brad gets to Steven f Job, you got
a baby, right, Yeah? So so it works out right.
So I actually I'm around, I'm around the program kind
of observing them. They're able to bounce ideas off me
and I go on to the Lamont's office, I go

(01:08:02):
on to Brad's office, I go on the FIG's office
and to talk to Frank and you know, just different things. Hey,
when we go to Electionton, what do you think we
should stay? And helping them with that. They actually played
at both the Barclays and at St. John's, a true
road game with St. John's that year. So I traveled
with him and helped him with some different things, and
so I got to know Brad. I had never met
him before. That was actually the way I got to

(01:08:24):
do Alman's just being around that program for the year.
So Brad gets the head coaching job at Stephen F.
Auston that spring, and he doesn't have a staff and
even been been an assistant coach, and he knows people,
but he doesn't know anybody they feel super comfortable with.
So he offers me an opportunity, and um, you know,
I didn't really know much about it, In fact, never

(01:08:45):
really even heard of Stephen F. Auston um at the
time that I heard Brad was getting the job. But
I knew I wanted to coach, and I knew I
wanted an opportunity to get with somebody who I felt
comfortable I was gonna have a chance to have success,
would have support. Um I knew Brad was wanted to
was gonna want to continue to recruit the Southeast, and
it would help me start to establish another reason and

(01:09:07):
I could build relationships in But I do have a
wife and a new born child. So going home to
try to convince my wife that this is a good idea,
it wasn't the easiest thing, especially when she asked me
where the school was and I couldn't really tell her,
You're like naka nakada. No, it's worse, Doug. She I

(01:09:28):
told us, said, hey, Brad, you know, come home and say, Brad,
it's gonna take this job to Stephen F. Austin, and
he liked me to join the staff. You know obviously
want once you're blessing on your support and my wife,
she's a soldier, let's do it. You think this is
good for us and our family. But we got this
new one baby. Where is it we'd like to look
at houses? Wife, right, I want to know where're gonna

(01:09:50):
live and real dot com or Zello that's what they
go to. Immediately I told her it was in Austin, Texas,
with a straight face, because that's what I thought. Okay, okay,
So we go on the computer to start looking up
housing and we're type in Austin, Texas, and we find

(01:10:11):
these houses, but we can't find the school because the
school is not anywhere near Austin. And so, you know,
you have that sensation where you know someone's looking at
you like angry. She's like over my shoulder, and I
don't want to look at her because I know she
was So you weren't in in all like you weren't.
You were just trying to tell her Austin to get
her off your back. You really thought it wasn't Austin.

(01:10:33):
I really did not know where the school, hug. This
is the day. I haven't even had time of research.
I just know I want to coach. I want to
do this. You know, guys, we get something we're not
doing whatever. Yeah, all right, the guys, I think I
didn't be a good coach. That gives a chance to
get back in. Let's do it. Let's do it. So,
my wife, how long before you realize it? Why don't

(01:10:56):
we search this place by the school name. So we're
typing Stephen up Auston and the comp to screen like
moves to Louisiana. Yeah, well, I mean, listen, Stephen f Austin.
Thinking it was in Austin is not It's not that
it's not like you thought it was in San Antio.
Austin in the name would leave a lot of people
to think it was in Austin. That's not the worst thing,
except for if two years prior you had gotten married

(01:11:18):
and your wife was pregnant a year later and you
got fired so you don't have a job, and now
you're gonna tell her and her new born baby to
move to Texas where there's no family and you don't
even know where. It is probably not good, not a
good way to That's not a not a great way
to start. Okay, So you show up there, you guys,
show up in Nagadosis, Texas Now isn't like hill country. Yeah,

(01:11:41):
pine trees tall tall pine trees. Du What are you
the oldest town in Texas? Learned that? Right? But great
basketball edition, right, really really strong basketball program at that
level has been really successfulhen they leave for a long time. Uh,
and so the best thing that happens is we have
a lot of success. Him is basketball season wasn't until

(01:12:02):
November We moved way before November, so trying to get
used to life with a newborn in a new area
where we don't know anyone. I automatically have a group
of people to associate with because I'm with the team.
My wife. Your wife doesn't. Yeah, that's hard. It's hard.

(01:12:22):
And you're in acodosis Texas. And where is she from? Yeah,
so she's from Michigan. And and again I'm not banging
on acadosis. We had a great time there. We love
the people, We loved our experience, the city you can
get to. It's two and a half hours away. They
got a Walmart there though, right like my my my
brothers in my brother's in Corvallis. They my sister in

(01:12:45):
law was like, there's a target an hour away. I
was like, damn still still for two hours? Yeah, yeah,
that's that's that's an interesting one. How did it? How long?
Did how long? Danny Casper was I remember when when

(01:13:08):
Bob Knight came to ESPN, you know, like he didn't
he hadn't watched everybody play. He I mean like he
was a They should have hired him like ten years previously.
But he would but he would go on and on
about Danny Casper and about his team. Danny Casper's and
his team, how long before you got They were like, damn,
we actually they actually left us a good team. No,

(01:13:31):
we didn't know. We actually thought that our team was terrible.
They won twenty seven games the year before. They were
twenty seven and five the year before we got there,
and we're thinking Danny and left because he thinks that
this thing is about to go to crap. The leading
scorer and player the Uni League graduates, The second leading

(01:13:53):
scorer and first team All League got graduates, the third
leading scorer graduates. The best returning player was a kid
who averaged eight points a game. Mhm, like I was
coming back as the starting point guard. Didn't not play.

(01:14:17):
He played about ten minutes the game. He took seven
shots not per game all year. So there was really
no way to look on paper, look at what they
lost and what they were turned and think you're gonna
have any chance to be good. Except they had a culture.

(01:14:38):
They had a group of guys who already bought into
defense because that's what Danny preached. They won games forty nine.
In fact, they lost five games that year by a
combined total of like seven points. One of them was
to Stanford and the n I t by one. One
of them was in their conference tournament championship game by one.

(01:15:00):
They lost three other games the whole year. They beat
ou that year at enormous so they were really good,
had an established culture. We just didn't see that we
had any talent. How long before you knew. We didn't
really know until we go to Marshall's like the second
week of the season, and you know, we played okay,

(01:15:24):
but we hadn't really played anybody. Marshall was really good.
They had the nation's leading score and at the time,
and we wind up beating them in over time, and
we found out that we had enough talent, but we
had even more toughness and connectivity. Jacob Parker goes off,
He's a junior sophomore at the time. No, he said,

(01:15:45):
I looked this up because I was, uh, because I'm
I'm interested. Didn't you play Danny Casper in like your
first game? So we actually had They had contracted the
game Danny goes the Texas State and we played tennis.
One of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life.

(01:16:05):
Were actually contracted to play um Texas State, like the
second game of the season, and his players really didn't.
They liked him as a person, they hated playing for him.
So they were jack to go play and they felt
liberated and free because Brad brought his offensive philosophy that
seemed pretty cool. Gave an opportunity to score, you know

(01:16:27):
what I mean. Um, and we kept the defensive stuff
and granted that up some. But we go there and
after the game, Danny Castor is doing a press conference
and tells Brad to come see him and they have
one together. I've never seen that in my life. That

(01:16:48):
has to just be the weirdest thing ever. Like, it
wasn't like he left to go to Texas. He left
to go to Texas State. I think Brad because we
won the game, right, he's in this first year. He's
trying to talk about all the things he wants to do.
We're in our first year and Brad's you know, he
wants to give him some credit. But also he's a
competitor man, Like any want to talk about how he

(01:17:10):
wants to have all these guys that he chest left.
I mean, it was a weird dynamic. Um, yeah, so
you you beat them, crazy, you beat them you lose
the Texas, you beat Marshall, lose the East Tennessee State,
and then you don't lose again. Yeah, and that was
the turnaround. I mean when we lost at East Tennessee State,

(01:17:32):
that was on a like a quick turnaround. We played
two games back to back. We had one at Marshall,
got start feeling themselves and and the kid named Desmond Hayman,
well these things come full circle, um brings up. We
get back on the Sunday night and we were were
supposed to be off. Desmond Desmond Hayman has practice, the players,

(01:17:53):
senior players cost practice, runs it. He goes through it.
We don't lose another game until the second round. Dn't
say turned that's insane. What what was that like to
be part of? Like I got it. I'm looking at November. November,
you lost sixty six to fifty eight, You beat Stanford, UNC,

(01:18:15):
Wilmington's high point tousand, uh James Madison, North Texas, north Ridge, Lamar.
Then you run undefeated through league. Then you win, not
only do you win your tournament. The Northwestern State game
I remember watching because you had a point guard the
shot less than me, that little dude. And then and

(01:18:35):
then you uh, you beat Sam Houston. You beat the
dog piss out of Sam Houston State. And I remember
watching the game like, dude, I don't know, I have
no idea who these guys are, but whoever draws them
is going to lose. What was that like to be
a part of You had a twenty eight game winning
streak heading into the like coming from yeah, and I

(01:18:56):
mean like yeah, like I forgot what losing was like,
and like that the leadership and the teamship amongst that
that group was was fascinating just to watch like they
were determined they had lost in again, the core of

(01:19:17):
that team, the seniors had lost in their conference tournament
championship game the year sport right by one point. This
year we get back. There's no way they're losing, and
so they just carried us man and I said that
this Desmond Hayman things comes full circle. We played BCU

(01:19:37):
in the first round, we get this five twelve thing,
and this is at the point where it's five twelve
hot has kind of become a thing to talk about.
And so that's what the five season really like. Damn.
You know, like we're gonna play somebody really good and
we draw them, and we could kind of tell in
the in the lab line, BC, you have been to
the Final four a few years prior um. This seems

(01:19:59):
to seemed to be a little air of arrogance in
the warmups, like, oh, we gotta sleeping at Boston. I'm
sure their coaches weren't that way, but we've got the
sense of back from their players going through warmups and
then they mean that the pressing and just back and
forth for a while, but they kind of get away
from us. You come back and we're down for like
eight seconds ago, we're down for this? Is that is

(01:20:26):
in San Diego, wasn't it? Yes, Yes, we're down for
BC was at the line for two shots with eight
seconds to go. They missed both. Thomas walked up just
the rebounds drives the Lincoln of court. Our leader Desmond
Hayman just opened on the wing. He kicks it, shoots it, kids,
thous them four point play over time and the life.

(01:20:50):
Life's never been the same. Yeah, So here's here's my
story about that regional. Okay, so the whole year I
was a c yes of the time. The whole year
I said like, look, you know, my game schedules, my
game schedule. I was living out here and it's my
second year living out here, and I literally had never

(01:21:12):
my son was born March. It was the first day
of the tournament in two thousand nine, and I went
and worked that night, and like, March is just a
terrible birthday, right because he's just never there, and um,
you know, in two thousand I was working at the
I'd always worked, you know, at ESPN on his birthday,
and then when I was at CBS, I was like,

(01:21:33):
I'm like, gone for the whole month of March. Gone.
So uh, this is two thousand fourteen, rights his first
fifth birthday, and I'm in Orange County and there's a
San Diego Regional and I was like I'm there. I
was like, look, I don't really care about anything else.
Just you don't even have to book me a flight
because after the selection Sunday, I could just fly home

(01:21:55):
and I can drive down. I was like a Sandy State.
My brother used to work there. Like, I don't need
a hotel, not I'll save you money. I'll sleep at home.
I'll be home for my son's birthday. Like I don't
give a ship about because I'm not calling the duke
Carolina Games, the Kentucky Games. Right, there's a pecking order
in the way it works. So we're sitting there and
we we would get the bracket like fifteen minutes before

(01:22:17):
everybody else. And I'll never forget that. I see like
Oklahoma State is in it, and I was like, huh,
I wonder if that's a big deal. One that's a
big deal. And so, uh we do the show. I
get on the plane and I get a text message
and it says uh spoken And I was like, Spokehan

(01:22:39):
the fuck and they said and and I put a
question mark, question mark, question mark, question mark, rush shark,
like why not San Diego, Like it's right down the street.
And they're like, look at the bracket like I was
like Oklahoma State, Like yeah, we can't. It just would
look bad. And I was like, wait a second. Steve

(01:22:59):
at the time, Steve Kerr, he had keep called Arizona Games.
You know, Kenny Smith works Carolina, He's Mr Carolina, Like really,
So then I look in the Spokane bracket and Oklahoma's
in it, and I said and I told him, I said, listen,
if there's any one person who thinks I'm a homer
for Oklahoma State, for Travis Ford, who I didn't play for.

(01:23:21):
I'm friendly with, but like I'm not. We're like boys.
Like the same people that will think that will think
that I hate Oklahoma, Like don't you guys are like, oh,
we never, we never thought of that. And by the way,
Oklahoma end up both of them end up getting beat
in the first game. But that's one of the reasons
I was watching your regional was because I would have
been home for my son's birthday March nine, done all

(01:23:43):
the interviews on the twenty and then senior game on
the twenty one, and I was mad about I was like, man,
I gotta watch the San Diego thing while I was missing,
I was like, are you kidding me? I watched the
most incredible comeback I've ever seen. Unbelievable. Why, I mean,
is it just margin for air? Why? Because it wasn't
until two years later. The next year you went and
lost to Utah. But it wasn't until two years later

(01:24:05):
that you guys were almost unbeatable. Could have been a
very easily could have been a Final four team, lost
in a ridiculously good game. What was the second he
was just harder around the second year was the guys
that you lost. What was it? Yea, it was probably
a combination. Um. It was a year is actually the
only year we lost a conference game, so that you

(01:24:26):
could tell there was a little bit more of a
chink in our armor. Um. And we actually had a
really bad draw, if we're being honest, in the tournament.
So we play a team. The thing that bothered us
the most was functional size, and we didn't face that
with VCU that first year. They had some undersized dudes

(01:24:47):
like us, right, and they got Yaka Purtle who was
out scoring twenty dominates the game because he can really pass,
and they got the line right eight and so the
poor match up our best player playing in the league,
jac the Parks that goes oh for eight from the
field that you know, we only lost by seven. It

(01:25:08):
was a low scoring game. We just couldn't get going offensively.
Is that what happened? The Notre Dame game was an
unbelievable game. The next year the next year, you're six, um,
and people have now noticed walk up is making shots.
You know, you beat you beat the crap out of

(01:25:28):
a good West Virginia team, which I know was big
for for for Brad because it's against Huggy and it's
all the same family. It's a former coach. Yep. What's
your memories of the Notre Dame game? Oh man, I
remember feeling like we were gonna win until we didn't,
like you know what I mean, like that like that
That was the moment that I realized how cruel the

(01:25:51):
finality of the end of the season is. And there
was no question in our players minds. We were a
second weekend team. Walk Up was good enough to be
one of the top two or three players on the
court against anybody, and he had literally had become the
face of college basketball for the weekend after he dominated

(01:26:11):
West Virginia. And you know, we we actually played really
well and we made shots, We guarded well, and you know,
Fluke thing kind of like the way we want against
b c U. We're up late. All we gotta do
is get to stop. It's the best thing we do
is defend. And we forced the shot literally off the

(01:26:33):
side of the backboard. I mean the the side. I'm
not talking about the face side, the side side, the
mistress shot side the backboard. So it takes a funky
bounced one of the guys chips to the end and
you know we loose. There were a couple of questionable
calls in there late, and you know you got that
going and you always in the back of your mind,

(01:26:54):
but you don't give credit to those things. They made
a play at the end and and our season was
over and that runs over essentially. How long after that
did you know Brad was going to Oklahoma State? Well,
this is a Sunday. If you know anything about the
state tournament, you don't have travel plans. You just kind
of listening to what they tell you. So we hold

(01:27:16):
we should have tee up for probably two hours. We
gotta fly to the street part, so you can't fly
to Necrodots. So if we fly the street port, it's
like an hour and a half. So we don't get
home until I'm gonna guess midnight. Uh, it's a Sunday.
Brad's name the Oklahoma State head coach. Monday after soon

(01:27:36):
When did he tell you? Didn't tell me anything? I
mean he didn't. So he goes to still Water, Still's
done and he comes back and I met with him
early because the people were trying to make a plan
for me to go through the interview processes for the
head coaching job. There Uh. And then we started making
plans or you know, how to deal with players there

(01:27:59):
and and administration and all that stuff, and and he
was off. He was off the store. When did you
know you were going with him? I didn't know. I
honestly thought I was gonna become the head coach of
the Stephen Boston. I really believe that with all my heart.
Maybe a little naive, uh, and probably more naive now
that I think back, and kind of had all went

(01:28:19):
and the rest of the pool candidates, uh, pool of Canada.
So I didn't know until after I was told I
wasn't you know, gonna be alright? Did I knew I
had an opportunity to come if I didn't get a job,
So there was some comfort going through the process. Yeah,
it's interesting because Kyle Keller got the job and he
was my assistant coach when I played in college, right,
Like so it is it's amazing. So you you get

(01:28:41):
to still Water and now you're back in back in
high major basketball. What was your first impression of what
was left for you? Um? I thought it was pretty good. Um.
You know, you kind of look at the roster again.
So the first thing you look at what who's gonna
help you win? You meet players the professionally in the league.
Do you want coming back? Juan Evans gonna come off

(01:29:06):
his red shirt place fifty year? Uh So starting there
with a pretty good back court, pretty good. It didn't
have a whole lot of size, Mr Solomon, you mean
you mean you mean to Mike, you mean Phil Forte?
You mean Phil Forte? Do you want Evans? Phil Forte? Was?
He had the arm thing right, and so then he

(01:29:26):
he missed it to show the deal. It was pushing
the leading before and then Phil Forte, uh coming into
his fifth year, you know pretty good. Didn't know if
we could win in the league, but thought were gonna
have a chance to be a competitive team. What was
it like because when you got to Stephen f there

(01:29:47):
was already a culture, There was already a toughness and
and that really wasn't the case with with with Travis
at the end. It was it was. It was It
was almost a polar opposite terms of guys being brought
into winning and you can about works and how to

(01:30:09):
have success buying into it was really really challenging problem,
how hardest transition that I've experienced, um in times of basketball.
So how long did it take to before it worked?
You know, I'm not sure, if I'm being honest, that

(01:30:30):
it ever really flirted as much as we had enough
challenging to figure out how to win games, because what
we changed, we didn't change it. We changed. We changed
a lot. We changed how we operated, we changed how
we played, um And so I don't know if we really,

(01:30:55):
you know, for a long term standpoint, did anything that
year that really put some position to half success on time?
Because you went from you went from pressuring, you went
from pressuring everything. You went from pressuring everything to like
pack lining everything, right, you change your offense and change everything. Yeah,
and you went like ten out of eleven at at

(01:31:16):
at one stretch from stuck into the tournament and lost
an unbelievable game to to Michigan, just like a remarkable
game to Michigan. Okay, So then Brad leaves and goes
to Illinois and stuns people. How did you find that
one out? I was literally in my car with my
wife to day after the season in Oklahoma City, UM,

(01:31:39):
and I was starting to get these texts and calls
from these national media guys, and you didn't know why.
And then earlier in the day, I had gotten a
text message that we were going to have a meeting,
which was strange because the season had just ended the
day before. We're on spring breaks and none of the
players are here. I can see it. It's over. Was
gonna meet when spring breaks done, We'll come back, you know.

(01:31:59):
So a LOTOK, two strange things that happened, and you
know I found out well, I went to Twitter not
long after I started getting those calls from you know, jefficman,
Matt Nolan is in the world, and I saw that
the rumors were what the rumors were, and and ultimately
that they were true. So you know, then then let's

(01:32:20):
just like craziness, right, I mean obviously was a part
of it. Yes, um, you had thought you were gonna
get the Stephen f job. You didn't. Did you think
you're gonna get get the oaklhom State job? No? I
never thought about being the head coach at Olklhoma State.
It never even crossed my mind. When when it was

(01:32:42):
open um, the first thing I thought was I'm a
elkinga say that I need to get back to Stillwater
and figure out, you know, when Brad's leaving and if
I need to get get ready to get on the
plane with and move the champaign. Um. And then because
I wasn't there, I didn't have an oportunity to be
at the meeting where he told everyone and the athletic director.

(01:33:03):
My colder was there and so I didn't have a
chance to talk to him either. So I'm in the office.
This is a Saturday that this all happens. The next day,
I see my colder in the weight room and just
he just says, Hey, when you're done, come up and talk.
And I'm thinking, this goes back to me in my
South Toronic days. He just wants his keys in his
car back, you know. Um, and you know, any kind

(01:33:26):
of goes on and actually stuff about how what I
think about the program? Uh, and asked if I think
I can do the job, and totally caught me off guard.
Not too much off guard that I didn't say yes,
I think I could do the job, but caught me
off guard that that was a question. Um. And you
know I was a Tuesday or Monday, huh, whatever it was,

(01:33:49):
and my Friday I was named the head coach. I
can state. Yeah, so that Thursday was when they told
you I think right, we had or maybe it was.
Maybe it's Friday morning, so I had to interview Thursday.
Think all the interviews with Thursday. I gotta call early
Friday morning from coach Holder asking if I can meet
him at the office, like six thirty in the morning.

(01:34:11):
Kind of freaked me out. And I get there and
you know, you would appreciate this in his own way,
you know. Coach Holder comes and says, I just had
a couple of follow up questions, and he literally asked
me something about, uh, maybe i've met him, something about
commit to the school or loyalty or something like that,

(01:34:33):
and about staffing, and he asked me those two questions.
It's like six because I just stow some stuff on
and gonna meet him, Like you do whatever you gotta do, right,
So it's six fifty in the morning. He asked me
two questions and he gets up and leaves the room.
I like, is that in? Because he never tame back.
So so I go get my kids ready for school.

(01:34:56):
I get a call again a few hours later that
I need to go meet with the president. It wasn't
any interviews the day before. I think he was out
of town or something like that. That the first time
I thought, well, maybe maybe this as well, because it's
still haven't some best myself. So I'm gonna get the job, right,
still cautiously optimistic, but more cautious than optimistic. So then so,

(01:35:20):
so you meet with the president. He tells you're getting
the job. The president just doesn't tell me to meet
with the president, um and hold her and he had.
The President has some questions again because he wasn't in
the interview. Uh. And then I leave and they say, hey,
well we hope to have this wrapped up soon. Somebody
will be in touch with you. Either way. Coach Holder

(01:35:42):
called me probably about an hour or two later, I
can remember his early afternoon. Who's the first phone call you, mad? Uh? Honestly,
I don't know if I called anybody immediately. Just so
much stuff that they wanted to do because this stuff
happens so fast, they wanted to get their messaging out.

(01:36:02):
So I immediately get called to my S I d
s office, and then I get told, hey, we've got
some players here. We want you to talk to them
before we put anything out, so come back. And I'm
sitting back in Coach Holder's office talking to a couple
of players about thirty minutes later, and I realized that
I just gave you okay for for the s I
b s to put it out. I haven't caught my

(01:36:23):
wife yet, so I called my life. She's freaking out
because she's hurt already, and so you know, I don't
even necessarily get a chance to break the news or
I'm still paying for that to this day. By the way, um,

(01:36:43):
the first phone call and made outside of that was
when I actually they want to take pictures and do
the stuff at the faceball game that night. So I'm like,
I gotta go change. I'm not stressed or a photo
shoot or anything like this, and when we get a
coaching tie and all that stuff. So on my way home,
I called Dad and that's just literally how the conversation goes.
My Dad answered the phone. I say, hey, I have

(01:37:05):
five minutes, but I wanted to let you know. I
know my dad. He's gonna he has been like he's
like a bullhorn. Everyone else in the family is gonna know.
Once he knows I just became just was named the
head coach at Oklahoma State. He proceeds to like scream
for about forty five seconds, and I say, you got

(01:37:25):
that make sure, you let everybody know, Dad my five
minutes up, hang up, And I didn't talk to him
again toil the next day. Um, so you've been an
assistant forever, you've been an associate head coach. How different
was it? How different was it to have It wasn't

(01:37:46):
just to have your own program, um, but like like
now you get to do whatever you want to do now.
It was a little bit different because you had a couple.
You had Desagua, you had ever Read who you recruited
it Stephen f. You had Lyndy and you had McGriff
who you recruited at steven F. So you had some guys,
but you didn't really have many freshman incoming. So there

(01:38:07):
was still some Travis guys. There were some guys that
you and Brad had brought in together. Like what was that?
What was it like to be a head coach of
the team. Yeah, it was, it was. It was weird.
But what I tried to do was, and this is
probably a mistaker, to try to continue to operate as
I had and just I was eighteen hour day guy.

(01:38:28):
You know, he's just burn the candle at both ends.
And he figured out as you go and try to
continue to maintain those same relationships, but all of a sudden,
there's many more people who want a piece at that time.
All right, he's got media, you've got boosters, you've got
former players, you've got administration. Uh, and so starting to

(01:38:48):
try to figure out how to balance all that was
a really real challenge early on, besides the fact that
it's not like my hiring was met with a whole
lot of praise, a right about of skepticism and and
criticism even when I was initially highest. So just trying
to introduce myself to people and let them know, hey,
they didn't hire like a statue, Like I'm a real person.

(01:39:11):
I actually can articulate things, and I think I communicate
well with people. I try to make our guys better.
But had to start creating an image of myself, which
for me was just being myself, but getting myself out
there in the public for people to kind of get
to know me. Your your first year was wild, obviously

(01:39:33):
because they were the upsets, the upsets that people saw, right,
I mean, you beat Kansas Kansas, and I know you
know this, but any siding never won at Kansas ever ever.
And your first year you go in there and they're
really good and you beat them, and this is and
this was after and you had lost like three in
a row, and I would I would watch and like

(01:39:54):
gotten jails kicked at home against Temcu, which was the
third of a three game loser Street because he had
lost at Texas and at Arkansas the week before. And
we're playing without a start of tar shot and heard
his back, so he's not even gonna play. How did
you do it? And I think our guys are just

(01:40:16):
to try about the opportunity. Um, you knew how good
they were, you know, you always it's naturally get get
more excited and more focused to play against the better teams.
But we played with a great, great desire and will
I mean, I'll be honest. The game we won, but
we we really dominated the game. I mean it got
close late. You know, you get a whistles that go

(01:40:37):
back against you. You're hoping that you can hold it off. Um,
but we we we really dominated the game. And our
kids are just locked in. Played well. Kendall Smith played
exceptional there, Jeff Carol was good and cam m Griffin
was phenomenal at their place. Yeah, and then I mean,
and then you roll them again, at your place, I mean,
Rolls beat him eighteen that they didn't have a comeback

(01:41:01):
in him. In our place, Mr Silin was out of
his mind, played probably the best game of his life. Um,
you know, he's making threes, he's talking on folks, and
you know, it was a senior day for our guys.
We had some seniors who really meant a lot too too,
you know. And and I'll be honest, we thought we
were playing for a DNS a time of bid um.
We thought if we had swept him and and uh

(01:41:22):
and beat him the way we did, we thought, no,
I told those guys, should be last time you played
in front of this crowd. So we thought we were
going to be an s a turn of the team.
So to to go from, you know, and then a
week later he lost to Kansas. The third time you
played him, he kind of ran the gas. But to
go from that moment where you got hired, when people

(01:41:43):
are questioning you, I mean, should I'm pissed. You know,
I'm like, man, what a two? Now? You were like
America's sweetheart, Like I'm watching on selection Sunday, and you know,
VI tells, oh, you gotta put him in. You gotta
everybody is like, you have to and then obviously you

(01:42:05):
didn't get in. But what what is what is that
do you have? Is there is there a time during
that period of time where you're able to uh get
the juxtaposition of how it started at the start of
the year too to that moment. No, I probably didn't
get it honestly until about maybe a week and a

(01:42:27):
half two weeks later, because I felt that from the
people who probably would the most skeptical, what's for Oklahoma
State fans? I think there were people outside of the
program that was skeptical, but no one really cares, right
Bokahoma State made it bad higher uh too bad for them.
But the people that were invested in the program that
really were worried about whether they were invested in the program,
and that was about to go down in flames, you know,

(01:42:48):
because they hired a bad person or a bad coach
or whatever it was to see them. Then once we
didn't get into the tournament, we had eleven thousand, five
d people short in that t game on Spring on Wednesday.
I mean, I think that was the moment where I
felt like, Okay, they believe in me and what we're

(01:43:08):
trying to do again, and we're gonna have a chance
to have successful long time. I mean in all of this,
of course, and you had then you have the the
uh the FBI thing too, write. I mean that that
part is crazy f ideal. In December, literally at the
end of one semester, I smiss probably have two best athletes, uh,

(01:43:29):
Davon Villa and Zack Dawson. Uh. And you know, Flo Maho.
We go the next day and be a really good
and top twenty ranked Florida state team and Ours Bowl.
And that was a moment where I felt like we
had the right kind of guys to give us a
chance to have success. Okay, so then last year to
walk in and now of a sudden, those older guys

(01:43:51):
are gone. You take you take a grad transfer in
Mike Cunningham. You had Michael Weathers sitting out, who was
all freshman team kids you know who played for one
of your assistants at minat Ohio, Curtis Jones, who's been
sitting out as as a transfer like so you had
you know, look, and this is the way you gotta
do it now is you gotta take some transfers. You
gotta take a fifth year you gotta get some good freshman.

(01:44:14):
What did you think you had coming into last season.
I wasn't really sure, but I thought we had more talent,
I really did. I thought we had more talent. I
thought we had more depth. Uh. And I thought we
had a team back to the game compete uh with
with anybody, you know, if we prepared the right way
and continue to develop the guys. UH. The thing I

(01:44:35):
didn't probably calculate enough since is you know, maturity is
probably more important than age. Uh. I talked about age
a lot, and it was actually maturity or lack of
maturity that really hurt us obviously, you know, some of
the things that are publicly known decision making from our
players really really came to bite us. And it was
something that really really helped me reflect on how I

(01:44:57):
wanted to recalibrate things going into this year. You know,
it's interesting because, like the cliche is, well, it teams
the reflection of their coach. But I've never heard anyone
say like, Okay, he's he curses, he's drunk, he's this.
Like literally, I mean I can't find a personal work

(01:45:19):
with with you, you know, from people who know you
and around you all the time. And yet you have
and that you have a team full of guys, and
and again, most of them are not major. Things like
a couple of guys with a bb gun shooting out
a window is in the grand scheme of things in
comparison to other things even happen to local the state.
It's very very minor. But what what's that like to

(01:45:40):
be a guy who, like you've never been accused of
recruiting violation ever, to have that as a reflection when
you know that that's not really a reflection of who
you are and what you're about. It's hard to me
because you know the kids, you spent time with their families,
and it's actually, you know, more challenging when it feels

(01:46:03):
like it's maybe people more now than it was twenty
years ago, and it becomes like it's personal about you. Uh,
But I get it. I'm a big boy. I'm involved
in and you know, highly visible competitive athletics, and that's
part of it. And what I try to do is
focus on the things that you know, as a staff,

(01:46:24):
as as a program we can do to get better
and a voice the most pitfalls. And I truly believe
that because of some of the things that I went
through personally when our program went through UM over the
last year really going to help us UM be able
to be really really solid and more aware of moing forward. UM.
You've changed your staff, and then you have you have

(01:46:47):
like three things going on here right, Like you have
the older group that's all back, those three seniors McGriff,
Lynda Waters and Thomas Dosagua, who was the guy I
was talking about earlier who went from like, man, how
do we hide this guy and get him out there too?
He's such a weapon because he's just I mean just,
I mean like he can shoot. He's a dudeho will

(01:47:08):
never get out of any time that they shoot for
a pickup game. He will be in the pickup game
because he's an unbelievable shooter, unbelieve worker. And then you
got uh Isaac who had a terrific year and an
even better summer. And then you're a name who, for
my money, like that's what an NBA center looks like
as a freshman potentially, because he's just he's got the
natural gifts of understanding, rim, protection and movement. And if

(01:47:30):
he continues to develop, and then you have this remarkable
group of incoming freshman I mean you have to be
You've got to be super excited. Like I know you're
already practicing, but what's your level of excitement now as
compared to what you thought you had last year? Oh? Man,
I feel so much more comfortable that we're building it

(01:47:52):
with guys who believe in what our program values. Um
And I say that, And I don't mean anything bad
about the kids I recruited him. I'll still care about them.
Might have had time to evaluate these kids, We all
the all in periods of time. I know their families well,
I know their backgrounds, I know a cat what they're
made up. I know they care about winning. Uh. And
the messaging to those guys have been a part of

(01:48:13):
what happened, and we're not going to continue to but
have those type of bad decision makers in our program.
So again, I think that's part of the reason why
we feel good about last year helping us have successful
forward because we learned how to better manage things internally.
And so I'm excited about again. We've got a really
strong group of freshmen who are really talented, but the

(01:48:34):
expectations are not of control from a personal standpoint. They
know they're coming in and they have to work. They
understand that things aren't gonna be easy and that things
may not go their way all the time. And then
the leadership that I have amongst our three primary scene
isn't got another one got transferring Jonathan la Rents, but
between Thomas let me a cam. So those guys truly

(01:48:54):
understand everything that takes to have success, and they have
an awareness of the things that can be pitfalls because
they've been around a lot of them. So in terms
of managing that stuff better, how do you do so
well this communication be very clear and what I expect
chase it is and don't wait. I think part of
the reason, you know, maybe we didn't um have more

(01:49:18):
success putting out fires before because we let them. We
let them blaze a little bit too long, you know,
we didn't let things in the butt early. Whereas now
we see things and we got more internal leadership. Our
seniors are being more vocal about the things that are
that are unacceptable with in our program, being on times
and things, making sure you're respectful of people on campuses,

(01:49:39):
you know, maybe going harder, don't skip reps in the
weight room, little things that make a big difference for
building the team. Um. The best thing about being a
head coach is what UM, I would say part probably
the the autonomy that you have from my decision making standpoint. UM.
But at the same time, when you kind of but

(01:50:00):
like I am, and nothing's ever been easy, you're always
wary of getting too comfortable. UM. So just then making
sure you surround yourself with the right people the worst
thing make those choices work. Head coach, your life is
not yours, I mean, and you know everything about how

(01:50:21):
you're perceived a lot, not everything, but a lot of
how you perceive this based off decisions of you know,
young people who sometimes make the bad decisions. Uh So
that sounds in again especially in Jeff family, and that
they're affected by those things I do. In terms of
the coolest things you've done coaching at Barclay's head coach

(01:50:42):
of your own team in Brooklyn, is that is that
the coolest thing or was because it's your team, isn't
because it's something I never even could bathom. Like I
jumped out of an airplane a year ago. That was
pretty cool, but I always knew that you should do
that when I grew up. Wasn't no arena in Brooklyn.
There was no basketball team because the Knicks were the

(01:51:05):
only team in the city, so you only thought about
the next But to be able to coach in the
arena that an NBA franchise house hosts games in as
a college that coach was really really cool. The uh
give me the one that got away, the player that
you and during any of your your recruiting you thought

(01:51:30):
you had, you knew you had, you didn't get and
they went on to have a great career. Uh wow. Um,
probably Montrez Harrold. We were at South Carolina and you
know we were in on him early. Um, from a
really really small town in North Carolina, and we had

(01:51:51):
a kid committed to us already in the following class,
Anthony Kill, So we didn't want to upset the alpha
card he was. That kid was from North Carolina. Book,
if I'm in that position again as that coach, I'm
gonna take Montress and make sure Aigail understands we want
him Tom. But if we had both of them, maybe
are Maybe I was fortunate is a little bit different

(01:52:14):
as he moved forward because he's turned out to be
a hell of a player and still playing the NBA now,
no no question. Um, that's interesting that because I was
recrud by Jim, and I think because we decided not
to take them. I think he was gonna go to
the KINGI, tex and then um Seth got fired and
so he wanted to Louisville. Yeah, that's exactly what That's
exactly what happens. Funny because I was recrued by Jim

(01:52:35):
herricka u c l A and he used to go
Doug it Doug. Positions don't matter. We played the best
five guys at u c l A. We played the
best five. I was like, you have except coach. I'm
six ft tall, I'm white and Jewish. I have only
one position I can play. So if you take illusion me, man,
it was the class behind me, Like where am I gonna?
Where am I gonna play? And like he's just six

(01:52:56):
with five win guard, Like that's not that's not that,
that's not gonna happen. Um, if you could change one
thing about college basketball, would it be? Um? This is
really radical, man. I actually think basketball in general, I
don't think the court's big enough anymore. I agree my
my dad just think it is not wide enough. Yeah
maybe that's maybe it's widen, but I think you know,

(01:53:19):
the game has evolved so much. Players. We always talk
about how much bigger, fast and athletic, stronger or whatever,
and we still play in the top lines of the
same space. That's a good one. I just the problem
is the arenas are built. I guess you could. I'm
really really radical like no that that honestly no. Listen,
my lady, my late father, he grew up in the

(01:53:40):
Bronx who go to Long Island. Like his whole thing
was like, guys are too big, guys are too long,
need more space. You gotta play and it's gotta be wider,
he thought, wider, not longer, although longer would be incredible,
too right, deeper three point lines. So we've extended the line.
There'll be more goshed about a bound in the corners
of you were in it now never before. Yes, of course,

(01:54:05):
of course unless they do the Ray Alan Drew let's it.
Unless they do, isn't it isn't amazing? Like how this
thing has changed from like my my junior year, we
had an incredible it would have been an incredible small
ball team and we only did it once against Texas.
We're down like twenty. Our big guys are terrible that game.
So we went small. Dosn't Mason played the five and

(01:54:26):
we cut it to like four, and he would never
go back to it, like never, and we were we
played small. Isn't amazing on how the game is has
changed and evolved? Oh for sure? Sure. Hey man, listen,
you've been more than gracious with your time. I really
appreciate it. Let's catch all right, we'll talk soon. All right. Wow,

(01:54:48):
that was unbelievable. My thanks to Mike Boyden for all
his time. By the way, you can listen to The
Doug Gotlic Show daily three to six Eastern Time, twelve
to three Pacific on Fox Sports Trader, the I Heart
Radio app, or whever you download this. You can download
that show daily. It's called The Doug Gottlieb Show. In
the meantime, tell a friend, tweet it, put it on Facebook,
I g it. Whatever you want. Tell somebody it's it's

(01:55:10):
good content. It's not necessarily me telling you it's good content.
You listen to it, you probably liked it. I'm Doug Gottlieb.
This is all ball

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