A Buzz bonanzaWritten by: Todd RosiakIn putting together the stories on Buzz Williams over the past few weeks, I had a chance to speak with a number of different people.
Most gracious with his time was Williams himself, who on two different occasions sat down and offered some real insight into who he is and where he's been prior to coming to MU.
His stories and anecdotes were plentiful -- too plentiful, in fact.
So instead of letting whatever wasn't used in the stories die on the vine, I figured I'd pull out some of the more notable and/or memorable quotes and quips and present them on the blog here, as a sort of supplement.
One of the best was his recounting of his first trip to Milwaukee back in 1991, shortly after he had completed his freshman year at Navarro College.
Urged by coach Lewis Orr to try to work as many summer camps as possible if he was indeed serious about becoming a Division I coach himself someday, Williams began another letter-writing campaign. This time he queried every Division I head coach in the country, explained his background and asked for an opportunity to work their camp.
As it turned out he landed spots in nine camps, including Kevin O'Neill's at MU. The guy running it for O'Neill at the time? Lawrence Frank, now the head coach of the New Jersey Nets.
"What I did was I flew into Chicago and they had another camp coach pick me up and bring me up here. That was the only time I had been to Milwaukee in my life prior to when I came up here when Coach (Tom Crean) hired me," said Williams. "I still have the camp picture.
"My truck that I had could only go 42 miles before it would overheat because it had a hole in the radiator, so everything I did was predicated on 42 miles. I had a guy meet me and I parked my truck and he drove me to Love Field, and I flew Love Field to Chicago. Then a guy picked me up and brought me here."
Williams then spent the work week at MU as a counselor. Before departing on that Friday afternoon, O'Neill gave Williams cab fare to the airport and a ticket to the Brewers game at County Stadium.
"Camp was Monday through Friday, so that's why Coach O'Neill gave me tickets to the Brewer game, because I didn't have to be anywhere until the following Monday," said Williams. "But I couldn't get back to my truck. So I would fly out either that Friday or Saturday, and whoever the next camp I was working, they'd put me in the dorms the day before camp started, and I just kind of helped do whatever."
Williams also wound up working Division I camps at SMU, Stephen F. Austin and Xavier. Among the coaches on Pete Gillen's staff at Xavier back then? Bobby Gonzalez and Louis Orr.
Not long after getting the head job at MU in April, Williams dropped O'Neill a line.
-- Speaking of lines, much has been made of Williams' penchant as a youngster for writing a letter a week to 425 coaches at varying levels of basketball.
So I asked Williams if any of his contemporaries now in the Big East were among those he wrote as a youngster. To the best of his recollection, there is only one: DePaul's Jerry Wainwright.
"Coach Wainwright, I think, was the only coach on my list. Coach Wainwright always wrote me back, too," he said. "I know every single coach who ever wrote me back. Remember it. I've had guys walk through that door that have driven all over the world wanting to try to get a job.
"People that email me. I always remember. When I called you and you wouldn't call me back, I remember. Wrote you, wanted to recruit one of your players, wasn't at a good enough school, I remember. People always remember. I don't mean that in a malicious way at all."
-- There were a couple different reasons Williams chose Navarro coming out of Van Alstyne High School. One was the cheap tuition -- $1,482 for the fall semester of his freshman year.
"I went to Navarro because I was responsible for paying my own way to college and the girl I was dating, the First Baptist preacher's daughter, the music minister there, his dad had just passed away and he lived in a lake house that was about the size of this office with no air conditioning, no heating," said Williams, seated in his office at the Al McGuire Center. "He told me if I would help him clean it up, get all his dad's stuff out, mow the yard, things like that, he'd rent it to me for $100 a month. So that's why I went to Navarro -- because I had to pay for everything, and I was trying to find a place to live."
-- Raised by a pair of educators, Williams knew the value of a good education. He has two degrees -- a bachelor's degree in kinesiology from Oklahoma City University in 1994 and a master's degree in kinesiology from Texas A&M-Kingsville in 1999.
Even still, he admitted being so consumed with basketball left him with little time for schoolwork outside the classroom.
"I've had several of my college professors email me (since being hired)," said Williams. "I was a pretty good student, but I only want to class and listened and studied when I was in the class. If it wasn't during the class period, I wasn't going to do it. I graduated one of those *** laudes; I don't know which one it was -- summa or magna or plain.
"But I did fine at school."
Perhaps most impressive was how he landed his master's degree at Kingsville while serving as a full-time assistant.
"Got my master's on a two-year plan in 10 months," he said. "Taught four classes, took four classes, signed seven players. None of them came on a visit. (And met) what ended up being my wife."
-- Williams' loyalty was tested at an early age.
After leaving Navarro, he was offered and accepted an assistant's job at Bethel College in Newton, Kan.
"They had hired me as an assistant, even though I didn't have my degree," he said. "They were going to take the salary and put it toward a scholarship so I could get my degree. So I drove to Newton, Kansas, interviewed for the job, met the coach, met the president. They called me the next day, hired me. I go home and go see my mom and we're going to Tyler to shop for warm clothes because I'd never lived anywhere but Texas and Oklahoma and it's supposed to be really cold in Kansas."
Shortly before leaving for Newton, he ran to the grocery store for his mother. While walking the aisles, he received a surprise phone call.
"I walk in the grocery store and they're calling my name out on the intercom," said Williams. "Now, I don't live with my mom so I'm not from that town. I'm like, ‘Man, something just happened.' So I get on the phone and she says, ‘Brent, Win Case is calling the house and he really needs to talk to you. Do you know who he is?' And I go, ‘Yes, ma'am, I know who he is but how did he get the number?'"
Case, as it turns out, was one of the 425 coaches Williams had been writing -- he was an assistant at Oklahoma City University at that time. He had just recently been named head coach at Oklahoma City, and wanted to hire Williams to his staff.
Some might have been conflicted about what to do. Not Williams.
"So I call Coach Case and say, ‘Coach, what are you doing?' He said, ‘Hey, I just got the job and I want to hire you as a GA.' " said Williams. "And I said, ‘Well, hey, Coach, I don't have a degree.' And he goes, ‘I know, but I still want you to come.' So I say, ‘Well, Coach, I can't come. I've already taken this job.' He goes, ‘No, you're coming.' And I said, ‘No, Coach, I gave them my word. I can't take the job. I really appreciate it.'
"So he said, ‘Just come up here and see.' And he bought me a plane ticket to Oklahoma City and he picked me up and said, ‘You're going to live in that dorm, you're going to get $100 a week for working intramurals, we're going to pay for your school.' And I said, ‘Coach, I can't do it. I've already told the coach at Bethel.' So he said, ‘Well, let's call the coach at Bethel.' And I called him and I told him what had happened and he said, ‘Buzz, you need to go to OCU. It's a lot better job.'
"I'm 18. I don't know what a good job is. And I said, ‘No, Coach, I'm coming with you. You told me I could come work for you and that's what I'm going to do.' And he said, ‘No, you need to go to OCU. That will help your career more.' I said, ‘If that's what you're telling me to do then that's what I'm going to do.' So I called Coach Orr and Coach Orr said if that coach said it was OK, then you need to go to OCU. And that's how I ended up at OCU."
-- Williams is proud of the fact that the first player he landed as a full-time assistant at Texas-Arlington, Scott Cross, remains there as head coach. He replaced Eddie McCarter, the man who was responsible for giving Williams his first shot in Division I.
"When I left UTA Coach McCarter said, ‘Who should I hire?' I said, ‘You ought to hire Scotty.' " said Williams. "He'd just finished playing. Scotty has never had another job. Scotty's the best. Two-time academic All-American. Second player I ever recruited was Reggie Brown, (who's now Cross') top assistant."
-- Williams said not long after he was hired by Crean he was struck by the former MU coach's "Rain Man-like creativity" on the offensive end. He also was struck by the support and passion for the MU program, "not just on the outside, but the inside as well."
He also felt MU was a great fit for he and his family from the beginning.
"Really loved the Big East, really loved the people," Williams said. "Really don't know too many people outside the office. I pretty much work and go home. So if you ask me, ‘Hey, what have you been doing?' I've been doing the same thing I always do, wherever I'm employed: work and go home. My wife loves it here, my children love it here. So as long as they're happy, I'm happy.
"But I've never taken a job thinking about the next job. In any profession I think that's the wrong way to take a job. But I didn't come here saying, ‘You know what? I'm going to be here nine years or I'm going to be here two months.' I came here wanting to do the absolute best job I could do to help the program, and that's the way I work. I don't mean that in a braggadocious way; that's the way I worked when I was at UTA. Just work. Do the best you can every day."
-- Williams bought his first house for he and his then-fiancee, Corey Norman, in Natchitoches, La. in 1999 with an $11,240 down payment he received from the NCAA as a class-action settlement for the nine months he spent as a restricted-earnings coach at Texas-Arlington in 1994.
-- One of Williams' sounding boards/mentors over the past seven years has been George Raveling, the former USC coach who's now Nike's Global Sports Marketing Director -- and one of the most well-connected men in the business.
"Talk about a guy that has juice," said Williams.
http://blogs.jsonline.com/muhoops/archive/2008/06/09/a-buzz-bonanza.aspx
