Marquette's tough, but they have some talent too

NEW YORK - A basketball team is always a work in progress. From the first day that the players arrive on campus until the day that the season ends -- whether that is in the conference tournament, the first round of the NCAA Tournament, or, if you are lucky enough, on the final day of the season -- the goal is too simply get better.

Yes, you want to win games along the way, but its more important for the team as a whole to grow, each and every time they step foot on the court.

"We don't want to play for the record. We don't want to play for the ranking. We want to play to improve. We want to play to grow," head coach Buzz Williams said after his team's thrilling, 79-77 win over Washington in the nightcap of the Jimmy V Classic. "Its like a stock, an investment. We're investing in ourselves so that our stock continues to grow."


No one has epitomized that more than Marquette over the past couple of seasons. The Golden Eagles have been dubbed Team Bubble Watch, as they have developed a reputation over for struggling to close out games early in the year before coming together and making an impressive stretch run.

Last season, that run came during the postseason. After dropping their last two games of the regular season, the Golden Eagles needed two wins in the Big East Tournament just to be able to get themselves an at-large invite to the Big Dance. Marquette proceeded to upset both Xavier and Syracuse en route to the Sweet 16. The year before that -- in 2009-2010 -- Marquette started out the season 11-8 overall and 2-5 in the Big East, but then won nine out of ten games, including three straight in overtime, to play their way into the NCAA Tournament.

This season is different.

Marquette has played one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the country to date. They have played just three of their eight games at home, something you rarely see out of high-major programs. They won the Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands and also own a tough win over Wisconsin at the Kohl Center, which is one of the most difficult places for a road team to come out victorious. The win is made all the more impressive considering the Golden Eagles were playing without starting point guard Junior Cadougan.

And after knocking off what is probably the most talented team in the Pac-12, Marquette improves to 8-0 on the season, something that Team Bubble Watch isn't exactly used to.

"Its different than what we've done in the past, that's for sure," Williams said. "I think that's just the maturity of our guys. I think out schedule is probably just a little too hard. We still have to play at LSU, we still have to play Vanderbilt at home."

"We haven't been able to get to this point before, having played who we play."

The stereotype that gets called into play when talking about this Marquette program is toughness. A gritty group of JuCo players led by a gritty JuCo head coach toughing out wins based purely on their blue-collar work ethic and their mettle as a team.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing, according to Williams.

"We don't want to be tactical and we don't want to be technical. We want to be tough," he said. "I don't think that if you diagnose how we played tonight, that you would consider us a top 40 teams. but if you were diagnosing our toughness relative to what we've been through over the last four days, we're pretty tough."

Toughness only gets you so far in a college basketball landscape dominated by one-and-done prospects, the McDonald's all-americans that draw the biggest crowds and the highest-spending agents and runners. Toughness allows you to hang with the best, but talent lets you beat the best. And this season, Marquette has as much talent on their roster as they have in Buzz Willliams' tenure.

And that's saying something, considering the fact that the Golden Eagles have sent a number of players to the professional ranks -- Jimmy Butler, Lazar Hayward, Wesley Matthews -- during Buzz's tenure. No one seems to notice that.

For Buzz, that's perfectly ok.

"At some point you have to give it up that our program is much deeper than just being the deepest team," Williams said. "At some point, the problem with it is because I don't say it, nobody writes it. I don't want to talk about what we do, I want our character to be revealed. Its more than just playing hard. Its more than just being the toughest. At some point, somebody has to have enough guts to say that."

Ok.

I'll bite.

He's right, and I'm not just saying that because Williams told me too. Yeah, the quote is nice (thanks Buzz), but this team's performance speaks for itself. Darius Johnson-Odom, who averages nearly 20 ppg, went for 23 points and four assists against Washington. Jae Crowder, the team's second-eading scorer and leading rebounder at 16.9 ppg and 6.7 rpg, had 18 points and six boards, which includes the game-winning three pointer with six seconds left. Vander Blue, Junior Cadougan and Todd Mayo are all capable back court players.

Throw in a trio of capable big men up front -- Chris Otule, Davante Gardner and Jamil Wilson -- that Williams said "changes the complexion of our team", and Marquette has a team that is capable of winning the Big East.

Seriously.

They do.

Sooner or later they are going to get that respect.

"For sure we get overlooked," Crowder said. "People think we're one-dimensional, and that's not who we are."

"Its all people talk about, but at some point it has to end.
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Buzz Williams once again proves to be a press conference hit

Coaching basketball at the lower levels of the college ranks is far from glamorous.

Its like any industry. Pay your dues and work your way up. Don't believe me? Read this story from Buzz Williams, taken word for word from his press conference in Cleveland this afternoon. Thanks to Todd Rosiak, who wrote about this story back in 2008, for alerting me to this epic quote:

Q. When you came out of Oklahoma City and started as a young assistant at Navarro, would you say you had modest career ambitions or big career ambitions?

COACH WILLIAMS: I was a student assistant at Navarro from '90 to '92, and then I was a student assistant at Oklahoma City University my junior and senior years, '92 to '94.
The first job that I took was a high-paying job. It paid$400 a month in a dorm room, and that was at the University of Texas at Arlington. It's a long story in how I got that job, but from the beginning of my first day of college until the last day of college, any college coach that I met, regardless of title and regardless of classification, from that point forward I wrote them a letter once a week. That's before the iPhones and Internet and Twitter. And I was 17 when I enrolled in college.
And I didn't know anything about college basketball, to be honest with you, but I knew how to say yes, sir, and no, sir. I wasn't scared to work, and I knew that being polite and being honest would at least give you a chance.

And of the 425 coaches over the course of my college career that I met, one of them was at the Final Four in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1994. In January of '94 I went to the financial aid office at OCU, and I used to steal stationery and envelopes from a lady there so I could write letters. I said, I need a loan. She said, You don't qualify for a loan. I said, I need some sort of loan. She said, Why? Because I want to go to the Final Four.

And she gave me an emergency student loan for $1,200. I bought a suit, a shirt, a tie, a belt, a pair of socks and shoes and a roundtrip plane ticket to Charlotte, North Carolina. Paid for it all in cash. I arrived in Charlotte on a Thursday afternoon, with zero dollars in my pocket, dressed with what I bought at Bachrach, and as many colors of construction paper with my resumé on it that in essence said I knew how to sweep the floor from corner to corner. And for three consecutive days and three consecutive nights I stood in the lobby of the Adam's Mark Hotel in Charlotte and passed out every resumé that I could.

On the Saturday night of the semifinals, one of the coaches that I knew told me about the job at UTA. And so every hour on the hour until Monday afternoon before the championship game, I went to the house phone and left a message for the head coach at UTA.

I flew back on Monday night. And when I got to Oklahoma City, I got in my car. It was a 1974 Ford Courier pickup that had a U-Haul box on it that I sold the box for $500 so I could afford the truck for a thousand, paid for it in cash, and I drove from Oklahoma City to Arlington, Texas.

I took the first exit at Arlington. It was West Park Row. I exited and I stopped at a Shell station. And back then they had phonebooks. Arlington's a big city, and Eddie McCarter, his name was in the phonebook, and I went in there and asked the convenience store attendant if she happened to know where this street was.

She halfway guided me there. This was without a GPS. I got closer. Stopped at three other convenience stores. I set in my car until about Tuesday night in front of Eddie McCarter's house. He drove up Tuesday night, drove in his parking garage, and when he got out of his car I got out of my truck.

And I don't know if you would call it a truck. It was more like a red wagon. I bought two-by-sixes and drilled them to the chassis of the truck and then stained it kind of a dark cherry wood stain.

And when he got out of the car, I got out and I said, Hi, Coach McCarter, I just wanted to say one more time how much I really want the job. And he said, You have to be the craziest son of a bitch I've ever seen. And I said, Coach, I wanted to tell you one more time that I wanted the job.

Now, understand, this is April the 6th. I don't have a degree. And so he invites me in his house and he said, I don't really know what else to tell you. I said, Coach, you don't have to tell me anything. I know you don't know me. I'm just telling you I want the job, and I'm telling you I don't care who you can hire, nobody will work harder.
That was on a Tuesday night. I turned around and drove through the night back to Oklahoma City. He called me on a Friday after visiting with the AD. The AD's name was B.J. Skelton. He came from Clemson. And he told me that the AD wanted to talk to me over the phone and if everything went fine he would hire me.

So I talked to the AD on that Saturday morning, and Monday I went to the registrar at OCU, who sang the National Anthem before every game, and I handed her a microphone like this, minus the NCAA logo, and I said -- I called her Aunt Nell. She looked like the African-American lady from the hit show "Give Me a Break."

And I said, Aunt Nell, I got a job. She said, Boy, that's great, Buzz. I said, Well, they don't know I don't have a degree. And she said, What do you mean? I said, I've dreamed my whole life to be a Division I coach, and I'm going. And I start next Monday.
And so whatever you have to do, if you need me to go to the president, you know, I can go to the president, because I steal letter envelopes and stationery from the secretary. I need to get out of here because I start next Monday morning.

And so I was enrolled in 15 hours. I was magna cum laude at that moment in time and I went to every teacher, some of which gave me the grade I earned up until that point. Some of which I had to finish projects, book reports, whatever, tests. I would take zeros on it. I would do the best I could. I had four days.

And I told Aunt Nell, I'm going to pull up in a U-Haul on Friday afternoon and I'm going to have an 11-by-13 frame in the front of this U-Haul truck and it's going to be blank, and I'm going to honk the horn and I'm driving the truck all the way up on the curb into the stairs, and I'm going to walk up and I want you to give me my diploma. That was on Friday afternoon at 4:30.

I got in the U-Haul and drove to Arlington, had no money, had nowhere to live. I slept in the U-Haul in the parking lot of the athletic office until Monday morning at 8:00. Monday morning at 8:00 I walked in there and I said, I'm here. That's how it all started.

So I don't know if you would deem that to be modest or not. But I can tell you that you can't create a story such as that. There was zero exaggeration in what I just told you. And for me to elicit those facts as verbatim as I did, you can't exaggerate anything like that.

Only God could author something of that magnitude, and I tell our kids, I've told everybody, I'm living the dream 1,075 days into being the head coach at Marquette, bigger than any I've ever had as a kid. And I'm unbelievably humbled and grateful for the opportunity.

But I don't know what the right adjective would be to describe what I thought or what my dreams were. I just knew that the only chance I had as a non-player, as no one that was connected to anybody associated with anybody in college athletics, was to wake up early, be very hard and diligent and effective and efficient in my work, to always tell the truth and to always try to treat people the right way.

And that's not a secret. And that's just kind of how it's played out. And I just wanted to be the head coach at Navarro some day. I never thought that the day I would be hired as the head coach at Marquette that I would hire the guy that I worked for at Navarro, and he's arrived here somewhere. He was 76 years old. He was a college coach for 50 years. He's not Gene Keady at Purdue, and I'm not Steve Lavin at St. John's, but the stories are similar. It's just we're from the country, and it's worked out the way that it has.
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Marquette's win shows lack of relevance in bubble talk

The bubble.

For the past month, that is all anyone can talk about.

If the season ended today, would Team X be in? What does Team Y have to do to become a lock? Team Z just cemented their trip to the Big Dance with that win.

Honestly, the bubble isn't for me. I haven't done a bubble watch in two years. I haven't tried to predict a bracket prior to Selection Sunday in that time. If you follow me on twitter, than you probably know that whenever I am asked what a team has to do to get into the tournament, I say win games and don't lose games.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on the process. I understand how much fun it is to follow. I get the story lines and the drama that it creates. Its the perfect build up to the conference tournaments and March Madness. People eat it up.

Its just not for me. Because once Selection Sunday rolls around, the "bubble" really consists of a handful of spots for two handfuls of teams.

Marquette head coach Buzz Williams isn't a fan either. When asked after his team's 67-61 win over West Virginia about the consensus that the Golden Eagles had locked up a bid, Williams essentially said "phooey".


"I went out early again tonight and I was looking for someone on the selection committee," Williams said. "I didn't see anybody. I thought they would be the best dressed here. I saw guys from Wall Street but I didn't see anybody from the selection committee."

"You get so caught up in the melodrama of what happens during this time of the year that you have to win this, you don't have to win that, ESPN says this, Fox Sports says that. I don't think any of 'em know. I think the best thing is to continue to win because the teams that are continuing to play this late in March are typically going to play next week."

And he's right.

The teams that win late tend to be the teams that get in. Lose down the stretch, and you'll be prepping for the NIT. Focusing on what kind of implications a win or a loss has on tournament standing only creates distraction and unneeded pressure on the task at hand -- winning games.

"Our local media talks about it every day," Clemson head coach Brad Brownell told reporters during the ACC's media day. "I've told them throughout most of the year, we've had a bunch of games they've asked me if they're must-win. Seems like we've done all must-wins in February and here into March. We certainly have some idea of where we are, what we're doing. But we don't talk a lot about it with our players."

"It's not something we go around talking about, 'Hey, we need to win this game to stay in', any of those kinds of things. I think you have to keep your team pretty focused on the job at hand. So we do more of that."

Boston College head coach Steve Donahue agrees: "I'm probably the least informed about those kinds of things. Joe Lunardi is a friend of mine probably since seventh grade. I don't read his stuff. For me it's just not conducive to me producing a good practice, having my head clear about what I'm doing."

"I just think for me it's a lot easier, my life is a lot easier, coaching my team is a lot easier, if I just block it out."

At the end of the day, the bubble is a determination of whether or not you won enough games. Look at George Mason. They hardly beat anyone this season. Their best non-conference wins are against the likes of Harvard, Duquesne, and Florida Atlantic, but they won 26 games and went 16-2, winning a top 10 conference by two full games, so they were able to survive a semifinal loss in the CAA tournament and are still a lock to go dancing.

For major conference teams, the bubble talk is even less important. Marquette is the perfect example. They were on the bubble when they on Tuesday when the Big East Tournament started, but since they had the opportunity to knock off West Virginia in postseason play, they were able to build their resume. The same can be said for a team like Colorado. The Buffaloes are on the outside looking in right now, but if they can beat Kansas State in the Big 12 quarterfinals on Thursday, they will be looking pretty good in the eyes of the selection committee.

But Williams, Brownell, and Donahue are also missing the point.

By marginalizing the "bubble" and the concerns of the fan bases that follow the bubble all year long, he in neglecting the importance of making the NCAA Tournament.

Seasons are defined by whether or not a team goes dancing. Jobs are lost when a coach can't get his team into the right postseason tournament. The NCAA Tournament is the greatest spectacle in sports. Speculating about the bubble only adds to the furor. It brings attention to a sport that has become more or less a niche for 11 months out of the year.

March is the greatest month of the year if you are a fan of college basketball.

Neglecting the discussion of who is in and who is out throughout the season would trivialize everything the season builds up to. Beating a rival is great. Winning on a buzzer-beater is a thrill.

But what people remember -- what people truly value -- are the results that come in the postseason.

So those bubble watches you see every Monday morning in late January? Those will never go away.

And they shouldn't.

But just remember. For all future queries, all your team needs to do to get into the tournament is to win games.

And don't lose them.
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Buzz Williams is no Bruce

I've always like Buzz Williams.

Not just as a head coach (although his Marquette teams are always one of my favorite teams to watch), but he genuinely seems like a good guy. He's a blue collar, hard-worker that gets so into his team's games that he's left without a voice at the end.

I'd love to play for a coach that is that passionate.

I'd also love to play for a coach with a sense of humor. And, for someone to willingly agree to the following video, you know he has a sense of humor:


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