At first glance, the late Al McGuire and current Marquette coach Buzz Williams don’t appear to have much in common.McGuire grew up in Far Rockaway, where he worked in the neighborhood bar his father used to own. Williams was the child of divorced parents in the obscure northeast Texas town of Van Alstyne.
But on closer inspection, their paths crossed a lot of the same intersections. Both McGuire and Williams were relative unknowns; neither was the first choice when he was hired as head coach at the Jesuit school in Milwaukee. McGuire came from Belmont Abbey. Williams was Tom Crean’s assistant at Marquette, just a year removed from the head coaching job at Katrina-ravaged University of New Orleans. Perhaps the cool breezes off Lake Michigan transformed them into two of the hottest coaches in their sport.
Both built their programs the same way, with poor, hungry players who have a passion for the sport.
The colorful McGuire scoured the five boroughs, signing star players like George Thompson, Dean Meminger and Butch Lee, who was the most outstanding player of the Final Four when the-then Warriors won the national championship in 1977. "I never recruit players who have grass in their front yard," McGuire once said. "I always look for cracked sidelines."(sidewalks)
Williams returned to his dust bowl roots, building his program around junior college transfers like 6-6, 240-pound forward Jae Crowder with an NFL tight end build from Howard, Tex., Junior College and guard Darius Johnson- Odom of Hutchinson, Kan., JC.
Crowder made the most of his opportunity, emerging as the Big East Player of the Year. He scored 17 points and grabbed 11 rebounds here last night as third-seeded Marquette defeated No. 6 Murray State, 62-53, to advance to the West Region semifinals in Phoenix. Johnson-Odom also scored 17 for the Golden Eagles, who went on a 14-4 run to end the game to secure their second straight Sweet 16 appearance.
This was a de facto road game for Marquette, which had to deal with a hostile arena filled with Kentucky fans, who opted to root for their Commonwealth cousins.
But Crowder has learned how to block out the noise. When Crowder graduated high school, he initially enrolled at South Georgia Tech, a junior college in Americus, Ga., with hopes of winning a Division I scholarship. Crowder led his team to the junior college nationals in Hutchinson and attracted a lot of attention, but there were also questions. Bob Huggins, then of Cincinnati, came up to Crowder at a practice and told him he needed to transfer because his school was not accredited.
Crowder and his father began looking around for alternatives and he eventually resurfaced at Howard, where he had to make up two years' worth of classes in two semesters. He led Howard to the junior college national championship that spring, then had to go right back to school to finish up.
Williams fell in love with Crowder's talent and versatility. It is a trait Marquette has always valued in its players, even if they are considered inbetweeners. Crowder fits into the same category as former Marquette stars Jimmy Butler, Lazar Hayward and Wesley Matthews, who all made the NBA. Crowder's father played for Kentucky Wesleyan. It didn't hurt that Williams' assistant coach Scott Monarch had been the associate head coach at Wesleyan when they won a Division II national title in 1968. Williams took a chance on Crowder even though he knew he had academic work to do. Crowder has more than paid him back for the opportunity.
Williams knows something about opportunity. He got his start in coaching as a student assistant at Navarro College in Corsicana, Tex., in 1990 and earned the nickname "Buzz" because of the way he buzzed through every aspect of the job from sweeping floors to absorbing every bit of coaching expertise he could.
"It's a story only God could author," he said.
This latest chapter in Williams' career had a happy ending when Williams going up in the stands after the game to hug his family.
"I'm just a country kid who hung in there," he said. "Hang in there, hang in there, hang in there., throw a good pitch. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, show up and go to work and do it every day no matter what's surrounding you. That's really hard. You got to be a lion chaser to be married to me. She’s tougher than all them kids we play with. It's humbling, really humbling."
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