Long (and Good) MU Trib Piece on Buzz

[Tugg Speedman]

Williams ready to make an impact on men's basketball team
By Steve Yanda The Marquette Tribune

April 18, 2008

http://www.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/uwire/041808aaa.html#

Milwaukee, WI (UWIRE) -- Dale Layer has been in Buzz Williams' shoes before. He's replaced the man who hired him. He's felt the rush of that first press conference, the one where the athletic director officially introduces you to your first Division I head coaching gig. He knows that rush subsides quickly.

Layer took over the Colorado State men's basketball program on April 11, 2000 and spent the following weeks flying all over the country. He met with recruits. He met with boosters. He met with the media.

Soon, he met with exhaustion. Beat down, worn out and ready for a vacation, Layer had one spot left to fill on his coaching staff. He already had interviewed two candidates, but a few of his close friends in the coaching realm suggested he talk to one more. There was this young, vigorous assistant from Northwestern State (La.) that Layer just had to meet, they said.

"I was so tired I wanted to tell him we'd hired somebody else and send him on a plane back to Louisiana," said Layer, now an assistant men's basketball coach at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. "Within 36 hours, Buzz not only was hired, he was one of my best friends."

Williams combined his endearing disposition with impeccable organizational skills and an unbridled energy level to build a reputation over the past 18 years as a consummate recruiter and precocious assistant. He received glowing recommendations from all but one of the eight programs at which he worked prior to becoming an assistant on Marquette's staff last July.

When former Marquette head coach Tom Crean left to take the same position at Indiana, Williams won over university officials in much the same manner as he did Layer. On April 7, one week after Crean's departure, Williams was named the program's new head coach.

"He has a way of appealing to your intellect and to your emotions," Layer said. "He can relate to every person in any situation. He's been at the junior college level as a student manager, and if you're the last guy on the totem pole at a junior college in Texas, you immediately know and have relationships with kids that no one else has had."

*****

Williams arrived on the Oklahoma City University campus in the summer of 1992, grabbed the first person associated with the basketball team that he could find and cautiously asked whether he had made the right decision. He had just left Navarro College and the coach that had spurred his interest in coaching for a graduate assistant position at OCU. He sought affirmation.

The person Williams grabbed happened to be the person he was replacing. Todd Eilert was leaving to take a GA position at Baylor and provided a response that was at once both cryptic and frank to the new guy who was taking his spot on the OCU staff.

Eilert told Williams it very well could be a good move, knowing all the while the outgoing Texan was in good hands at one of the top NAIA basketball programs in the country.

Today, Eilert is an assistant women's basketball coach at Mercer University, and he laughs when he recalls that interaction.

"If I wouldn't have left for Baylor, who knows where (Williams) would have been?" Eilert said jokingly.

Who knows where Williams would have been had he not glided up to Lewis Orr a few years earlier and asked the Navarro College head basketball coach if he could just sit and observe the team's practices.

The answer Williams received was a blunt, "No."

Orr coached at the junior college level and, therefore, was in constant search for extra help. "You never have enough hands or eyes or feet," he said. Orr could not afford to have an able body sit in the stands and simply watch. So no, Williams could not just observe. He would have to serve a purpose to the team.

"The way we operate, we put everyone to work," Orr said. "If I'm willing to sweep the floor, I expect everyone else on my team to be willing to do that too."

Orr began by assigning Williams the minute tasks, the mind-numbing and humbling jobs that had run off many other young men who thought they possessed the commitment to survive on a college coaching staff. Williams passed out uniforms, checked to make sure players were going to class, cleaned the gym and, of course, swept the floor.

It wasn't long before Orr realized he could never give Williams enough to do. The kid was always finishing and then voicing that wonderfully annoying phrase. What else, Coach?

"You want to use those guys up as much as you can," Orr said, "because they never seem to burn out."

*****

Back when he was the Colorado State media relations director, Gary Ozzello traveled on the road with the men's basketball team and roomed with the assistant coach who didn't appear to have an "Off" button.

Ozzello marveled as the guy they called "Buzz" moved incessantly around their hotel room. When Williams was awake and not with the rest of the team, he was making another phone call, writing another letter or watching another game tape.

"I don't know quite anyone that has as much energy and passion to accomplish a task as Buzz," said Ozzello, now Colorado State's senior associate athletic director.

When asked from where that energy and passion derived, Ozzello chuckled, "It's probably the 42 iced teas he drinks every day," he said.

Williams grew up in Van Alstyne, Texas, a town of 2,500 located 45 miles north of Dallas on Hwy. 75. They drink sweet tea in those parts. And Williams absolutely loves it.

"They better have sweet tea in Milwaukee," Ozzello said, "or there's going to be a problem."

If that's the worst crisis Marquette has to avoid during Williams's tenure (Lipton Iced Tea Mix is currently on a two for $5 sale at the campus Walgreens), its fan base will remain more than satisfied. Early concerns have been raised over Williams's lack of head coaching experience. His one stint led to a sub-.500 record and a messy breakup.

Those who have coached with and played under Williams believe his time at Marquette will yield more positive results.

"His biggest asset was his organizational skills," said Dave Simmons, who was an assistant coach with Williams at Northwestern State during the 1999-'00 season. "He gets all the facts before he moves forward. He's always looking for what's the best way to sell the product he had. He's a guy who always wanted to be considered the best at his craft."

According to Scott Cross, who played at Texas-Arlington in the mid-'90s while Williams was an assistant there, few were better than Buzz when it came to organization. Cross said Williams kept a detailed recruiting calendar that broke down and mapped out each day of each week.

Write this letter to this recruit on this day. Make this phone call to this recruit's AAU coach on this day. Take a trip to this city to visit this recruit's family on this day. It was all designed months in advance.

And then there was "the Buzz book." Cross said Williams kept a bound-up catalogue of each year's recruits with him at all times. In it, he collected everything he would ever need to know about each prospective player. Scouting reports. Phone numbers. E-mail addresses. Names of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, AAU and high school coaches.

"I came up with my own variation," said Cross, now the head coach at his alma mater. "I transferred it to my PDA."

While modern technology may have outdated some of Williams's trademark techniques, others remain timeless and telling.

During Cross's senior year, Texas-Arlington faced a must-win game near the end of the regular season. The players were nervous, right up until they saw one of their assistant coaches standing on his chair along the sideline.

"He was yelling and screaming for us, pulling for us," Cross said. "There was a confidence that he instilled in the guys. He's very passionate about winning and his team."

*****

In 1999, Mike McConathy agreed to take over a Northwestern State basketball program that had experienced nothing but struggles for the past 20 years. He asked his friend and fellow coach Steve Roccaforte who he would recommend as assistants and one name came to mind.

Ever since Roccaforte handed Buzz Williams his business card that day in 1988 at Navarro College, the two had stayed in touch. That was mostly because of Williams' persistence.

He would write to Roccaforte. A lot. And Roccaforte always responded, sometimes with T-shirts and shorts from Centenary College, where he was an assistant at the time.

"He stayed in contact with you," said Roccaforte, now the head coach at Lamar University. "You couldn't get away from him. He wanted to make sure you knew him and that he knew you could help him."

Williams made such an impression that Roccaforte recommended him not just once, but on several occasions, one of which was to McConathy.

McConathy had met Williams a few years prior while coaching at Bossier Parish Community College (La.). He remembered Williams being aggressive, sure of himself and passionate. He figured those traits would come in handy while digging Northwestern State out of irrelevancy.

McConathy and Williams walked into a program that was stuck in such an abyss that it could not attract Louisiana high schoolers to play college ball in their home state. For the first two seasons, they had to fill their roster with out-of-state players.

"Sometimes, you have to do things in reverse of what you're ultimately trying to do," McConathy said. "We had to believe in one another. We had to get the community to believe that we could be successful again. We had to rebuild by being positive."

*****

Not to long ago, Williams experienced one of the only times in his career when being positive was a struggle. In 2006, he took over the men's basketball program at the University of New Orleans, but his first go-around at being a head coach deviated far from the way he had dreamt of it.

UNO finished 14-17 and in fourth place of the Sun Belt Conference's Western Division. He left the Bayou after one season to join the Marquette staff as an assistant under Tom Crean.

However, the terms under which Williams departed from UNO appear murky. "It was not the best situation for me and my family," Williams said April 8 at his introductory press conference.

Jim Miller, UNO's athletic director, said through an athletic department spokesperson that he would prefer not to talk about Williams or Williams' time at the university.

That may be because of the fact a lawsuit is currently pending between Williams and the school. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last week that Williams filed a lawsuit last year in New Orleans in which he claims UNO breached his contract. UNO responded by alleging Williams left the school without paying a $300,000 buyout.

Among the allegations made toward UNO in Williams' lawsuit were insufficient meal money funds, occasional failure to provide the team transportation to the airport for road games and inadequate academic support for the players.

According to a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Williams is seeking an undetermined amount in damages.

*****

Texas A&M-Kingsville head coach Pete Peterson had a recruit on campus over the weekend and didn't have a lot of time to talk. He wanted to voice support for one of his former assistants, though, so he left a brief voice message on a reporter's cell phone in the absence of an interview.

"I can't tell you how thrilled and excited everybody down here in south Texas is for Buzz," Peterson said. "He got his master's degree here and he met his wife here, so we've got some pretty good ties with him. I'm just tickled pink for him. He knows what he's stepping into. I think (Marquette) made a great decision, and I think everybody there is going to end up loving the guy."

David Staney thinks that's the way things will end up in Milwaukee, as well. Staney, a real estate agent in Natchitoches, La. and a Northwestern State athletics booster, said he has been checking the Marquette Web Sites and knows a lot of people are taking shots at Williams right now.

He starts to defend Williams, starts to preach about how hard Williams will work. But then Staney stops himself, worried that cliche notions of hard work and determination will cheapen what he is trying to say.

"I know he's not the sexy hire, but he's just so much more than that," Staney said. "Some Marquette fans are worried that maybe this is going to be his first rodeo. Naw, he's been working toward this for a long time. He has taken something from each place he's been."

Dale Layer, the former Colorado State head coach out of whom Williams once charmed an assistant position, can attest to that. He said Williams has what is called "positive insecurity," and it is that trait, maybe more than any other that makes Layer believe Williams will succeed at Marquette.

"He has high-level motivation, he wants to achieve and he's competitive," Layer said of Williams. "But in another sense, he doesn't want to fail. As a head coach, he'll wake up scared to death of failure every morning. He doesn't want to fail."

(C) 2008 The Marquette Tribune via UWIRE

[MarquetteVol]

Wow, that's some excellent reporting. That guy is going to have a future in the biz. Best article to date on Buzz.

[PuertoRicanNightmare]

Steve Yanda is a good writer! And believe it or not, that article actually made me feel better about this hire. Wow.

Best thing I've read on anything related to Marquette basketball in a long, long time.

[MarkMiller]

I agree. Very, very well done. Terrific job, Steve.

[thatman32]

Interesting article.  Fear can really motivate a person.  My question:  What type of offense does Buzz run?  And don't say a winning one because that is not sufficient.

[Chili]

Interesting article.  Fear can really motivate a person.  My question:  What type of offense does Buzz run?  And don't say a winning one because that is not sufficient.

Someone on the other board said he will probably run a 4 out 1 in motion offense.

[Coobeys Oil Depot]

Someone on the other board said he will probably run a 4 out 1 in motion offense.

And that would seem likely if Buzz continues to look at prospects like Butler and Fulce. Versatility will always remain. He was upfront about what he learned this past season in the Big East and it's clear he paid attention.

Contrary to my position the other day, if Buzz were to rely on a motion (specifically the 4-1) then kids like Wilson and Williams would complement Hayward, Butler, and Fulce really well. If they can develop Otule then the offense could really be something special to watch with Mbakwe rotating in.

On paper, it starts to sound better.

[thatman32]

Until Buzz personally states he is going to run a motion offense then it's all speculation.

[Chili]

Until Buzz personally states he is going to run a motion offense then it's all speculation.

It was stated by incoming recruit Jimmy Butler.

[ecompt]

This Tribune kid is already light years ahead of Woeful as both a writer and reporter. Terrific piece. If Buzz doesn't cut it here, it won't be due to a lack of enthusiasm.

[Tulsa Warrior]

I wonder how Coach Williams will deal with his sweeten iced tea addiction?  When I moved to the south years ago I ordered iced tea.  They serve it in garbage cans south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  I had to ask someone at the next table to help me lift it.  It should be an interesting scene during games.

[Thomas' Danish Delight]

I wonder how Coach Williams will deal with his sweeten iced tea addiction?  When I moved to the south years ago I order iced tea.  They serve it in garbage cans south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  I had to ask someone at the next table to help me lift it.  It should be an interesting scene during games.

haha!  Instead of Diet Pepsi's, it'll be big glasses of iced tea with a little stirring thingamajig!

[Tom Crean's Tanning Bed]

Anyone know if Pepsi has a Lipton Brisk Sweet Tea? 

[warthogdriver]

This is a great article. But Steve Yanda is young. Give him a few years, after developing a beer gut and sagging jowls, he won't be so energetic. He'll begin to rely on hearsay, opinion, and innuendo. His red herrings will be references to sitting next to this or that NBA heavy weight. Just like that guy from Racine or Sheboygan or wherever the fruck that lard ass Woelful is from. 

[lurch91]

Steve Yanda is a good writer! And believe it or not, that article actually made me feel better about this hire. Wow.

Best thing I've read on anything related to Marquette basketball in a long, long time.

+1

[Canned Goods n Ammo]

Great article, Steve.

I hope you read this and keep up the good work.

You can clearly see the amount of research and thought put into this article.

FAR, FAR better than anything done by the local papers (outside of Rosiak, who I think is very good).

It's a positive piece, but not a puff piece. It's researched and supported. Much better than the Tony Bennett orgy that Hunt was having a few weeks ago. That wasn't researched or supported... it was just Hunt spouting off at his keyboard.

[ChicosBailBonds]

If Buzz doesn't cut it here, it won't be due to a lack of enthusiasm.

Totally agree