INTERVIEW MARSHALL AND START THROWING MONEY AT HIM...

Another year another net

Today, let’s talk about Gregg Marshall. He seems to be fan darling of the moment.  There is absolutely no doubt he is a great coach.  Here are a few things I have learned about Coach Marshall:

·         He is a son of the South. He was born in Greenwood, South Carolina. He was a point guard in high school, and that’s always a plus for a coach in my mind.

·         He graduated from Randolph-Macon, an upper tier private college. He then got a Master’s Degree from the University of Richmond. For those who care he was a Sigma Alpha Epsilon. 

·         He served as an assistant coach at Randolph-Macon for two seasons.

·         His next stop was Belmont-Abbey where he stayed for two seasons.

·         He then took a job with the highly regarded Jim Kresse at the College of Charleston. He stayed with Kresse for 8 seasons. I suspect this is where the wheels started turning to make him a great coach.

·         After the CofC he was an assistant as Marshall. Marshall would have been the biggest program in his career up to that date. Two years later …

·         He became the a head coach at Winthrop. This is where he first started to get attention. I think it would safe to say he took that program from the outhouse to the penthouse, and made it a mid-major  power. He took that program to its first conference championship in first season.

·         Then came championships in 1999,2000,2002,2003,2005,2007 along with six 20 win seasons.  Throw in seven conference tournament champions in 1999,2000,2001,2004,2005, and 2006. That is beyond impressive. That is domination.

·         Marshall then went to Wichita State. In his fourth season the Shockers won the NIT by beating Alabama in the finals.

·         His career at Wichita State has been outstanding. He’s had three NCAA field trips, but in the 2013 season his team went 34-0. In the first game of the NCAA Tournament the ‘Shockers beat Cal-Poly for win #35. Move over Jerry Tarkanian.  That is the record for most wins in a single season with no losses.

151 wins in five seasons

     
   In the movie Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart said,  “of all the gin joints in all the world you walked into mine.” Loyalty has been a strong suit of Coach Marshall. He is going to get more offers to coach at other schools than he has fingers, at the end of this Tournament. The most serious courtier is Alabama. Of all the schools that the Tide has played in recent years it has been the Shockers who impressed me the most.  Don’t think for a moment that Marshall wasn’t impressed with the play of the Crimson Tide. That’s something he’ll keep in mind.  I know that Kentucky is being hailed as the greatest team in NCAA history right now. They’ve done that with a roster full of five-star one and done type players.  In looking back at the recruits for the ‘Shockers during the Marshall era I found one four star recruit. He was a three-star  on most lists. Many of his players couldn’t be located in any publication. State is the most fundamentally sound team in the NCAA. What they lack in talent they make up with old school precision. 

It is going to take ridiculous sum of money to get him
Alabama has a ridiculous sum of money

          They shoot the ball exceptionally well. Their backcourt is always the best on the floor. They play defense. They hustle. They win the fifty/fifty balls. They play like a team that expects to win every game. In the last two seasons they have won 66 games and lost 4. In the last five seasons Marshall’s teams have won 151 games and lost only 38 games. That’s over 30 wins per year and only 7 losses per season. Are you kidding me? That isn’t just great, it’s other worldly. That is Coach K, Tom Izzo, Larry Brown,  Calipari great.  If I was the AD at Alabama I’d give him 5 million per year. I’d promise him a new arena. I’d give everything that Alabama gives Coach Saban and hope we get lucky enough he’d take it. I just hope we're that gin joint...
     
       We hire Marshall and do a few other things and we'll be NCAA stuff for years to come. It might not be the first year, but it won't be long.