MU Alumnus Revisits His Days at Marquette from Ray Tobin

Dan McGrath, a Marquette alum, wrote this article for the Chicago sports section of the New York Times.
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Local College Hoops Fans Must Look Around
By DAN McGRATH
Published: December 22, 2011

Journalistic objectivity is put to the test whenever Marquette University plays basketball. I went to school in that gritty, lively patch of Milwaukee just south of the late, great Avalanche Bar, and it was a life-altering experience.


How so? My wife had to take the car keys lest I go to meet the plane after the Warriors (as the Golden Eagles were called then) won the national championship in 1977. We were living in Reno, Nev., at the time.

I blame Al McGuire. Thirty-five years after he last coached there and 10 years after his death, he is to Marquette basketball what Knute Rockne is to Notre Dame football — less successful but more flamboyant, his showman’s antics and outsize personality overshadowing each of seven successors.

Critics said that he was more promoter than coach, that he didn’t know a pick-and-roll from a dinner roll, that his wily aide Hank Raymonds was really the brains behind Marquette’s hoops ascendancy. There is some truth to that. But to diminish McGuire’s role in the evolution of Marquette basketball — of Marquette University, really — is akin to diminishing beer’s role in the evolution of Milwaukee, something no right-thinking Marquette person would ever do.

McGuire recognized that an engaged student body would fill a building and create an intimidating home-court atmosphere that could help the team win games. So he not only treated us student journalists like human beings, but he also granted us a level of access unthinkable among today’s C.I.A.-inspired paranoiacs: Watch practice? Why not?

Heady times. In fact, it may well be that the first newsmaker I ever covered turns out to be the coolest and most interesting newsmaker I’ll ever cover. Nothing like peaking at 21, but that’s a story for another time.

Though he had never been a head coach when Marquette hired him in 1999, Tom Crean had enough panache and self-assurance to embrace the McGuire legacy rather than shrink from it. He rode a Chicago kid named Dwyane Wade to the Final Four in 2003, then had Marquette primed and ready for a no-sweat transition to the mighty Big East Conference.

But just as Crean was earning his stripes as a worthy heir to McGuire, he split for Indiana, hired to clean up the mess Kelvin Sampson had created by playing fast and loose with N.C.A.A. rules.

Reaction among the Marquette faithful ranged from anger to betrayal to outrage, as much for the dynamics of the move as for the move itself; the news broke before Crean could tell his players. Assistant Buzz Williams’s promotion to first chair hardly smoothed the waters, striking many as the uninspiring conclusion to a building-wide search.

Williams may have lacked big-time experience, but Marquette’s holdover players loved this down-to-earth, born-to-coach Texan and stuck around to play for him. Over time, Williams replaced Crean’s roster with one of his own making. He has had Marquette in each of the last three N.C.A.A. tournaments, reaching the Round of 16 last year, and a fourth appearance seems likely this season — Marquette was 10-1 after an eight-point loss at L.S.U. on Monday and has been ranked as high as No. 10 in the polls.

Crean for Williams: One of those rare trades that helps both teams.

I couldn’t fault Crean for leaving; he gave Marquette nine good years, which is almost a lifetime in college sports today. And his suitor was Indiana, still a magic name in college hoops despite Sampson’s brazen misuse of it.

Crean wanted another bite of the Final Four apple he’d had with Wade in 2003, and he was more likely to get it in Bloomington. You can’t deny a driven man his ambition. And after an uncertain start that tried the patience of Hoosier Nation, Crean is getting closer to achieving it.

Indiana slipped into the national rankings for the first time on his watch by clipping Kentucky on Dec. 10. Christian Watford’s buzzer-beating three-pointer touched off a wild celebration not seen in Bloomington since the pre-Bob Knight era. Wins, remember, were greeted with grim acceptance rather than happy exuberance during the general’s joyless junta. But Watford’s dramatic shot was symbolic of a corner turned, not cut.

Indiana is on its way back if Chicago is looking for a team to adopt. It’s one of the better-looking candidates out there.

Northwestern has surrounded the veteran John Shurna with enough complementary talent to end the world’s longest N.C.A.A. tournament drought — forever — although the Wildcats’ Big Ten schedule will be a tougher matter than their tissue-thin nonconference slate. Illinois achieved addition through subtraction with the departure of Jereme Richmond, a troubled young man whose next game may take place in a prison yard. He’s facing felony charges for gun possession.

Notre Dame, already rebuilding, was gravely wounded by a season-ending knee injury to Tim Abromaitis, its leading scorer. DePaul and Loyola renewed their ancient rivalry in a highly entertaining warm-up game. Neither looked good enough to recapture past glory, though the Demons’ nine wins have already exceeded last year’s victory total.

Among teams with local ties, undersize but feisty Marquette looks to be the horse to ride come tournament time, and I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t believe it.

I don’t think.

dmcgrath@chicagonewscoop.org