Tulane has not come remotely close to the NCAA tournament since Perry Clark left in 2000. Your contention is it has nothing to do with institutional issues or the ability to win?
"Yeah. It's funny. At IUPUI I heard that every time--you can't take this program to the NCAA tournament. I got to Georgia State, and they hadn't won since Lefty (Driesell). It had been 10 years of losing. We go to the NCAA tournament. I come here and people say the same, so for me, the road map, there are so many similarities, although this is the best job that I've had. I don't want to say it's an easy turnaround, but the foundation here is unbelievable. I don't understand why they haven't won here. I just don't. You've got great leadership from the president, from the AD, you've got a great foundation. You've got facilities. You've got an unbelievable city. You've got people that love Tulane in this city. It's almost to the point where I'm looking around corners for something I'm missing. I wake up every day and am so excited. I used to wake up at 9. but since I've been here I wake up at 6 every single morning and can't wait for the season to get here. I feel like I've got something to prove. I really do. The only difference between here and Georgia State, I felt like I had something to prove to myself, but when I took this job, I feel like they were doubting some things, so I have a huge chip on my shoulder. I want to prove people who were like, why take that job? My thing is why not, and now I have to prove why I took this job."
You were bold at your opening press conference about what you want to accomplish right away. Do you think those goals are realistic for year 1?
"Absolutely. I told the team and I told the staff, and I'm dead serious when I say this, if I'm not in the NCAA tournament, I personally will be disappointed. I understand expectations, but as long as I'm sitting in this year, our expectation is to get to the NCAA tournament. I'm never going to say, well, we've got to build up to that. I've never been that way, because if I start believing in that and I start settling, then the staff settles and the players settle. I don't want anybody around me to do that. I'm optimistic about everything, and I'm more optimistic now than I was in my press conference because I wasn't sure how quickly I could turn the roster at my press conference. Where I am now, even the juniors we're recruiting right now, the top 50 or top 100 kids on the wall right now, I thought that would take two years and it hasn't. That's why I'm more excited now than I was before."
I've heard grumblings from past staffs they could not get players in academically that they needed. Is that not a concern for you?
"Every kid I've recruited I've been able to get in here. I get it. College is tough. That should not have been a reason why they haven't won here. I've talked with Perry (Clark). They won with Perry and probably the standards were higher back when Perry was here. There are kids out there who are good students, and there are kids in New Orleans who are good students and can come to Tulane and make it. When you lose, you can find excuses, and I think that's what happened in the past. Every time someone's lost, they've just found an excuse not to win, and I'm not giving anyone an excuse here. If it doesn't get done, it won't be because I can't get players in school. It won't be because of recruiting, so that won't be an excuse for us."
You talked about your matchup zone at your press conference and said you'd never played man to man. How did that come about, and why did you use that philosophy?
"Well, when I took over at IUPUI, I looked around and had Bob Knight up the road, I had Gene Keady (at Purdue), I had Butler, I had the Pacers and everyone around there was doing the same thing--motion (offense) and man-to-man. I had to do something different to attract people and basically something different just to keep up because again, you're playing some really good teams. I felt like I had to do something different. There was a guy I watched all the time and I used to love hearing him speak, and it was John Chaney (Temple's coach, who also was a coach Perry Clark loved). I used to watch a lot of the John Chaney things. We'd practice in the morning like Temple practiced in the morning. They played that matchup (zone) and they didn't have top-50 kids. They were hardnose, tough kids from Philadelphia, and I kind of took that and took the amoeba (defense) they were doing at UNLV and watched what UNLV was doing and just gradually built from that and had a lot of success with it. My first year of Division I, we played Arizona with Lute Olson and they had four pros and we lost by 5 at the end of the game. I realized after then we've got something. I played Georgetown when John Thompson Sr. was coaching and we were able to stay in the games and I realized that the system was allowing us to stay in the game. We weren't as talented as they were but the system kept us in the game, and it's just grown.
"Now people want to talk about it and I don't usually do clinics. I know coaches are going to want to come because it's part of what we do, but it's a buy-in, and our kids have bought into that have played for me and I've got to get these kids to buy into it."
Nothing is totally unique, but how many other teams run what you do defensively?
"There are a lot of people that run variations of it, but in regards to our terminology and what we do. not many. If you talk to our coaches around the country, it is a little different because you can watch it and we can do something completely different on the next possession. There are only four rules in it and I won't give you those rules, but that's what I'm talking about. This is a really important summer because we want to teach. That's why Kevin not being here is going to be tough because he already has a language barrier a little bit and he's going to come in behind. The key is I've got to have enough guys on my staff who have been through it so they can teach it. I had to have that."
Who originally taught you this?
"Again, the whole John Chaney thing. I was a head coach at 30 years old. I'm so much a better coach now than when I was 30, but you think you've got it all figured out and I thought I'm going to be man-to-man, blah blah blah, and I realized we have no chance doing this. I was at a convention, and I was sitting there listening to John Chaney and started watching tapes and watching every game and then I'm going to try this and started adding more things on it. This whole amoeba thing, when UNLV really got going, so that was it, and it just grew and grew and I had to learn with it and make some adaptations. And every year and every team, I make some type of adjustment. I'll probably make an adjustment with this team. If they don't pick it up as quickly as I want, I will keep it as simple and easy as I can. We did that at Georgia State. The first year, we started off the gates 0-3 (2011-12) because it was going too fast for the kids. We made some adjustments and then we won 12 in a row (actually 11) and then won 22 games that first year (finishing 22-12 and losing in the second round of the CIT)."
How long does it take for guys to get comfortable in your system?
"It depends on the basketball I.Q, and I have to figure that out with the team. I don't know my complete roster yet. I try to recruit kids that have a high basketball I.Q. The better basketball I.Q. they might have, the easier it becomes for them. I think Samir can be great at it. I think Ray and Jordan and Caleb can actually thrive in this. We're still pressing it. We're going to still use our half-court traps and we're going to play a lot differently than what people have ever seen before here. We're going to play six, seven, eight defenses, we're going to fly around. But this summer's big because these guys will have to learn our terminology. It's kind of like coming in if you're a new coordinator because all my terminology is football related. I'm a huge Tony Dungy fan. I used to watch their practices (with the Indianapolis Colts when he was coaching IUPUI), so I took his terminology and put it toward basketball."
You mentioned John Chaney. I covered Temple's second-round NCAA tournament win over Florida in the Superdome in 2001, and I've never seen Billy Donovan angrier than after that game, when the Gators, a No. 3 seed, were blown out 75-54 and went 8 for 29 on 3s. He didn't want to give Temple's matchup zone any credit, saying the Gators had simply missed shots, but they were flummoxed that day.
"Yeah, I hope there are a lot of teams like that, that have bad shooting nights against us. I look forward to that. But again, no one in the league does this. What I hope will happen is we cause mass confusion with what we do, especially at home. You have to learn how to win at home first before you go on the road. It's important for us to win home games, really important."
"Yeah. It's funny. At IUPUI I heard that every time--you can't take this program to the NCAA tournament. I got to Georgia State, and they hadn't won since Lefty (Driesell). It had been 10 years of losing. We go to the NCAA tournament. I come here and people say the same, so for me, the road map, there are so many similarities, although this is the best job that I've had. I don't want to say it's an easy turnaround, but the foundation here is unbelievable. I don't understand why they haven't won here. I just don't. You've got great leadership from the president, from the AD, you've got a great foundation. You've got facilities. You've got an unbelievable city. You've got people that love Tulane in this city. It's almost to the point where I'm looking around corners for something I'm missing. I wake up every day and am so excited. I used to wake up at 9. but since I've been here I wake up at 6 every single morning and can't wait for the season to get here. I feel like I've got something to prove. I really do. The only difference between here and Georgia State, I felt like I had something to prove to myself, but when I took this job, I feel like they were doubting some things, so I have a huge chip on my shoulder. I want to prove people who were like, why take that job? My thing is why not, and now I have to prove why I took this job."
You were bold at your opening press conference about what you want to accomplish right away. Do you think those goals are realistic for year 1?
"Absolutely. I told the team and I told the staff, and I'm dead serious when I say this, if I'm not in the NCAA tournament, I personally will be disappointed. I understand expectations, but as long as I'm sitting in this year, our expectation is to get to the NCAA tournament. I'm never going to say, well, we've got to build up to that. I've never been that way, because if I start believing in that and I start settling, then the staff settles and the players settle. I don't want anybody around me to do that. I'm optimistic about everything, and I'm more optimistic now than I was in my press conference because I wasn't sure how quickly I could turn the roster at my press conference. Where I am now, even the juniors we're recruiting right now, the top 50 or top 100 kids on the wall right now, I thought that would take two years and it hasn't. That's why I'm more excited now than I was before."
I've heard grumblings from past staffs they could not get players in academically that they needed. Is that not a concern for you?
"Every kid I've recruited I've been able to get in here. I get it. College is tough. That should not have been a reason why they haven't won here. I've talked with Perry (Clark). They won with Perry and probably the standards were higher back when Perry was here. There are kids out there who are good students, and there are kids in New Orleans who are good students and can come to Tulane and make it. When you lose, you can find excuses, and I think that's what happened in the past. Every time someone's lost, they've just found an excuse not to win, and I'm not giving anyone an excuse here. If it doesn't get done, it won't be because I can't get players in school. It won't be because of recruiting, so that won't be an excuse for us."
You talked about your matchup zone at your press conference and said you'd never played man to man. How did that come about, and why did you use that philosophy?
"Well, when I took over at IUPUI, I looked around and had Bob Knight up the road, I had Gene Keady (at Purdue), I had Butler, I had the Pacers and everyone around there was doing the same thing--motion (offense) and man-to-man. I had to do something different to attract people and basically something different just to keep up because again, you're playing some really good teams. I felt like I had to do something different. There was a guy I watched all the time and I used to love hearing him speak, and it was John Chaney (Temple's coach, who also was a coach Perry Clark loved). I used to watch a lot of the John Chaney things. We'd practice in the morning like Temple practiced in the morning. They played that matchup (zone) and they didn't have top-50 kids. They were hardnose, tough kids from Philadelphia, and I kind of took that and took the amoeba (defense) they were doing at UNLV and watched what UNLV was doing and just gradually built from that and had a lot of success with it. My first year of Division I, we played Arizona with Lute Olson and they had four pros and we lost by 5 at the end of the game. I realized after then we've got something. I played Georgetown when John Thompson Sr. was coaching and we were able to stay in the games and I realized that the system was allowing us to stay in the game. We weren't as talented as they were but the system kept us in the game, and it's just grown.
"Now people want to talk about it and I don't usually do clinics. I know coaches are going to want to come because it's part of what we do, but it's a buy-in, and our kids have bought into that have played for me and I've got to get these kids to buy into it."
Nothing is totally unique, but how many other teams run what you do defensively?
"There are a lot of people that run variations of it, but in regards to our terminology and what we do. not many. If you talk to our coaches around the country, it is a little different because you can watch it and we can do something completely different on the next possession. There are only four rules in it and I won't give you those rules, but that's what I'm talking about. This is a really important summer because we want to teach. That's why Kevin not being here is going to be tough because he already has a language barrier a little bit and he's going to come in behind. The key is I've got to have enough guys on my staff who have been through it so they can teach it. I had to have that."
Who originally taught you this?
"Again, the whole John Chaney thing. I was a head coach at 30 years old. I'm so much a better coach now than when I was 30, but you think you've got it all figured out and I thought I'm going to be man-to-man, blah blah blah, and I realized we have no chance doing this. I was at a convention, and I was sitting there listening to John Chaney and started watching tapes and watching every game and then I'm going to try this and started adding more things on it. This whole amoeba thing, when UNLV really got going, so that was it, and it just grew and grew and I had to learn with it and make some adaptations. And every year and every team, I make some type of adjustment. I'll probably make an adjustment with this team. If they don't pick it up as quickly as I want, I will keep it as simple and easy as I can. We did that at Georgia State. The first year, we started off the gates 0-3 (2011-12) because it was going too fast for the kids. We made some adjustments and then we won 12 in a row (actually 11) and then won 22 games that first year (finishing 22-12 and losing in the second round of the CIT)."
How long does it take for guys to get comfortable in your system?
"It depends on the basketball I.Q, and I have to figure that out with the team. I don't know my complete roster yet. I try to recruit kids that have a high basketball I.Q. The better basketball I.Q. they might have, the easier it becomes for them. I think Samir can be great at it. I think Ray and Jordan and Caleb can actually thrive in this. We're still pressing it. We're going to still use our half-court traps and we're going to play a lot differently than what people have ever seen before here. We're going to play six, seven, eight defenses, we're going to fly around. But this summer's big because these guys will have to learn our terminology. It's kind of like coming in if you're a new coordinator because all my terminology is football related. I'm a huge Tony Dungy fan. I used to watch their practices (with the Indianapolis Colts when he was coaching IUPUI), so I took his terminology and put it toward basketball."
You mentioned John Chaney. I covered Temple's second-round NCAA tournament win over Florida in the Superdome in 2001, and I've never seen Billy Donovan angrier than after that game, when the Gators, a No. 3 seed, were blown out 75-54 and went 8 for 29 on 3s. He didn't want to give Temple's matchup zone any credit, saying the Gators had simply missed shots, but they were flummoxed that day.
"Yeah, I hope there are a lot of teams like that, that have bad shooting nights against us. I look forward to that. But again, no one in the league does this. What I hope will happen is we cause mass confusion with what we do, especially at home. You have to learn how to win at home first before you go on the road. It's important for us to win home games, really important."