FYI- Here is the article from the Lansing State Journal newspaper where MM says he did not listen to people about taking a head coaching job..
MM quote “Don’t just take a job to say you’re a head coach. People used to tell me and I just didn’t listen. Sometimes the job you have is a better job.”
You can hear every day of Mark Montgomery’s journey as head basketball coach at Northern Illinois in his weathered voice. The realities, the resignation, the sliver of remaining optimism fighting to peek through.
He sounds a thousand miles from his days with Michigan State’s basketball program, less than a decade ago.
Eight years is a lifetime in the Mid-American Conference. More than one lifetime usually. It’s a league that lures idealistic young coaches and spits them out, wiser and worn.
“I don’t regret leaving. I wanted to be a head coach,” Montgomery, 48, said last week, ahead of this Saturday’s Northern Illinois-MSU game at Breslin Center, his first trip back since leaving Tom Izzo’s staff in 2011. “I looked forward to running my own program and one day winning the MAC championship and getting us to the NCAA tournament.”
Montgomery’s tenure thus far in DeKalb, Illinois, has been defined by what nearly was and what could have been. He took over a program in need of an overhaul and, after two five-win seasons, won 15, 14 and then 21 games in 2015-16, before sliding back slightly the last two seasons. Among the players he’s lost: Three transfers or grad transfers to Iowa State, including Boston Celtics second-round pick Abdel Nadar, another to Minnesota (Akeem Springs), and his leading scorer and rebounder two years ago to DePaul. The epidemic of mid-major transfers and graduates moving up to high-major programs struck just as Montgomery took over at NIU.
“When you’re at a school like that, you can’t overcome that stuff,” Izzo said. “I’m proud of him because that’s been a battle for him. That’s a tough spot and it’s not a lot of money and he’s grinding it. And he’s had some pretty good players, which means they’re doing a pretty good job recruiting them, but just losing them. That’s hard.”
Montgomery is, most impressively, a survivor. Only two of the MAC’s 12 head coaches have been around longer, only one of them more than a year longer.
He serves as a continued lesson to his best friend, Dwayne Stephens, MSU’s associate head coach, who’s yet to take the leap for his own head coaching opportunity. Stephens and Montgomery played at MSU together in the late 1980s and early ’90s, played professionally on the same team overseas and then coached together under Izzo for eight of Montgomery’s 10 seasons on the staff.
FROM 2013: Full Monty: Former MSU coach, player battles his way through massive rebuilding job at Northern Illinois
“I just tell him, if you’re going to take another job, especially a head coaching job, just make sure all the the boxes are checked — good administration, good program, somewhere you can win, somewhere you can see your family being happy,” said Montgomery, who interviewed several places before the NIU offer. “Don’t just take a job to say you’re a head coach. People used to tell me and I just didn’t listen. Sometimes the job you have is a better job.”
“Once you’re at this level, you get spoiled on some things and then you take them for granted,” Stephens said. “Then you get to that (mid-major) level and, whether it’s a six- or seven-hour bus ride or not being able to charter flights and get your kids back for class the next day, to just the resources we have here, you just don’t have them at that level.”
What Stephens hears bluntly from Montgomery and from MSU assistant Mike Garland, who coached three seasons at Cleveland State, and now from new MSU advisor/recruiting coordinator Doug Wojcik, a former head coach at Tulsa and College of Charleston: “Don’t take a bad job.”
Mark Montgomery spent 10 seasons as an assistant coach on Michigan State's bench, including (pictured) the end of the 2006 first-round NCAA tournament loss to George Mason.Buy Photo
Mark Montgomery spent 10 seasons as an assistant coach on Michigan State's bench, including (pictured) the end of the 2006 first-round NCAA tournament loss to George Mason. (Photo: Rod Sanford | Lansing State Journal)
There are worse jobs than Northern Illinois. But in the hierarchy of mid-major gigs, there are a lot of places where it’s easier to win, too — where there’s more tradition, where basketball is the priority and fan intensity is more present. NIU is a football school that hasn’t sniffed the NCAA men’s basketball tournament since 1996.
“I think Monty’s done as well as he could do considering some of the hurdles he has at that level,” Stephens continued. “His teams have been very competitive, they get better (in season) every year. It’s just a matter of now he’s got to take that next step and see if he can’t get his team into the (NCAA) tournament. Because it’s tough, when you’re at that level, if you don’t get to the tournament and, being in a one-bid league, that’s kind of what you’re judged on.”
That’s the unspoken reality: Montgomery won’t get another eight years to make the NCAA tournament. He won’t get many more. No matter the challenges and legitimate excuses. The MAC is a league full of them. Eventually someone else gets a turn to try to overcome them.
“(Former MSU assistant) Stan Joplin, he won a lot of games at Toledo, but he just couldn’t win the (MAC) tournament,” Izzo said, “so he never got to the (NCAA) tournament, and eventually that’s enough.”
Montgomery’s latest team isn’t projected to get there, but is off to a 7-5 start and features a gifted junior guard in Eugene German, averaging 21 points per game.
“There are really good players at this level,” Montgomery said. “Recruits or high school players think, well, ‘I want to play in the Big Ten’ and they get shunned and they come down to our level and they’re like, ‘Holy crap. This is good basketball.’
Mark Montgomery played point guard at Michigan State from 1988 through 1992, including starting on the 1990 team that reached the Sweet 16. Here, Montgomery talks with Jud Heathcote before the Spartans' Sweet 16 game against Georgia Tech.Buy Photo
Mark Montgomery played point guard at Michigan State from 1988 through 1992, including starting on the 1990 team that reached the Sweet 16. Here, Montgomery talks with Jud Heathcote before the Spartans' Sweet 16 game against Georgia Tech. (Photo: Lansing State Journal file photo)
“One thing about this level is, I think there are more mid-major players. There’s a different pressure at Michigan State. The top 100 kids, (it’s all the top programs fighting) for those top 100 kids. At this level, we can go get another one, we can pick up a late signee, we can go get a junior-college player. We can take a transfer.
“I just didn’t think before I got here that I’d be losing kids that got better here. And you lose them to a Power 5 school via transfer or graduation. I didn’t see that coming. …Unfortunately we’re going to lose them now. Because if they graduate, we’re going to lose them.”
For Montgomery, Saturday’s game in East Lansing is part nostalgia, part opportunity, part financial necessity. NIU is getting paid to play at MSU. Izzo doesn’t like to schedule his former assistants, but he wanted to do Montgomery the favor.
“First of all, I'm thankful for the opportunity,” Montgomery said. “I want to come in and be competitive. I’m the same competitive person that I was there. I want to come in and give them a game. I want to get our guys ready for our next step and that’s the MAC season. This is a good barometer.
“I’m just thankful I can take my team somewhere I played, somewhere I coached, somewhere I can give them some history. I can tell them about myself. At the same time, I get to see some people I haven’t seen in years. Unfortunately, I haven’t been back for a basketball reunion. I haven’t been back for a football game.
"I want to see what the (Gilbert) Pavilion looks like. I want to walk on campus again. Selfishly, I want to get back. I have a lot of friends and family in that area. I also want my team to experience a big-time (venue), one of the best college basketball venues in the country, and we’re going to get a chance to play there. And that doesn’t happen every year.
https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/stor...420353002/