Nothing to do with the Blazers, but the misdeeds of one of the most successful G5/P6 MBB coaches have finally gone public. Gregg Marshall, coach at Wichita State, is in hot water after a story broke about his ongoing verbal and physical abuse of his players and coaches.
Ever wonder why a guy as good as Marshall hasn't been hired away by Enormous State by now? Clearly the guy can coach, and he had a six or seven year run of excellent teams including a Final Four. He's getting $3.5m a year of Koch Brothers' money, so he's not hurting there, but still, you'd think that he'd have been long gone by now.
The bottom line seems to be that the guy is a basketball genius but an absolutely loathsome person to be around.
First I saw was in the Athletic on the 8th. (paywall)
https://theathletic.com/2123302/?amp
Outstanding work here, from Stadium of all people. They've thrown a hand grenade into the Wichita AD's office. 10/9. They must have been ready to go to press with this when the Athletic story broke.
https://watchstadium.com/sources-wichita...0-08-2020/
One of the Athletic writers tweeted this yesterday, tape from 2016:
https://twitter.com/MikeBeauvais/status/...6406480896
That's absolutely mind blowing. How does the MVC office not squash this like a bug, immediately? I guess when you're the conference cash cow your poop smells like roses, but I bet they weren't sorry to see Wichita go to the AAC the following season. Except for the money, anyhow.
I'm on another board which has a number of retired sports writers (and some who still are) posting. A couple of comments from there:
"The patterns have been there for years. Dogged him before he left Rock Hill for Wichita."
answered by
"There has never been such an accomplished low-major coach who had such a hard time getting out of that level. In many cases, as I understand it, he cooked his goose when he got to the president/provost/dean stage. The academics, in at least two cases, got back to the ADs and asked, "Why did you think I would approve of hiring such a pr*ck?"
He finally found a place without a semblance of integrity at Wichita State, where they had sold out to the Koch Bros."
and this post:
"Many, many years ago I was on the Virginia Tech beat for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Seth Greenberg had just been named basketball coach there.
The next day, I'm in the office and Hal Nunnally calls me. Some of you probably know him or know of him. Good guy, good coach, a D-III lifer who spent years at Randolph-Macon outside Richmond and had a pretty good run there. Marshall coached for him for a while and, I'm pretty sure, played there, too. Marshall was still at Winthrop but, as others have noted, his rep as an excellent coach and less-than-stellar person was already solidified.
Hal had a very deep voice, a slight southern accent and spoke slowly. Think of Mountain Man of Duck Dynasty fame. Anyway, we have this conversation:
Hal: Did you get a sense Gregg was involved.
Me: Yeah, he was very involved.
Hal: Did you get any sense of why he didn't get it?
I pause a second, trying to think of a tactful way to say it to a man who considered himself Marshall's friend and mentor.
Me: Well ....
Hal: Did they say it was because he's a f****** assh*le?
Me, chuckling a bit: In fact, that is EXACTLY what they said.
I've had countless people tell me he was upper echelon in actual knowledge of the game, the X/O part of the coaching. But he got along with no one. No one.
Hal: We've been telling him for years and years, he had to tone it down. There was more to it than just the coaching. He had to be able to get along with people. He'd go, 'Buttttttttt I just wannnnnnaaa coach,' and he's never changed.
This was 17 years ago and he's only gotten worse. Poor Hal died in 2004, he would have enjoyed that Final Four run. But I can't ever see Marshall on TV now without hearing Hal's distinct voice saying, "f****** a******."
I'd guess some of y'all remember Marshall's wife being a drunken ass at a March Madness game a couple of years back.
We've had reason to gripe about some UAB coaches along the way - but maybe we need to stop and count our blessings.
/
NBR, thank God
