Print edition: 
During the early moments of Saturday's practice at Intrust Bank Arena, Arkansas-Little Rock coach Joe Foley stood quietly on the edge of the basketball court. His women's team yelled each other's name during a passing drill, but he didn't even have to raise his voice to tell them to change to a new drill.
With an index card and a pencil in one hand and his other hand in a pocket of his mostly black sweat suit, he watched his assistants run drills as the Trojans prepared for today's game against Wisconsin-Green Bay in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
There was a time, though, when Foley didn't have assistants to depend on.
Foley, whose team is 23-7 and in its second straight NCAA Tournament, was the boys and girls high school coach at Oxford, Ark., from 1979-81.
He well remembers washing uniforms for the junior high and senior high boys and girls teams. He was the one who carried all of the basketballs for the teams at the school that had 150 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. If anything was going to get done, he was the one to do it.
Little changed even when Foley, who spent time as a high school boys assistant and then as a men's assistant at Arkansas Tech, was hired as the women's coach for Arkansas Tech. Although he did have a team manager.
"But you still have to pick up after them, clean the dressing rooms, things like that," Foley said.
While it was difficult doing everything on his own, Foley relishes those memories.
"That was the fun part. Being around kids like that, you're so much closer to them, you're in classes with them," he said of coaching high school. "I enjoyed that part of it, but the work load is pretty tough.... Now pretty much the only time we talk to (the players one-on-one) a lot of times is when there is a problem.
"I think (the early years) is what makes you grow as a coach. It helps you realize all the things you do get when you get to this level. But you also remember what made you and what brought you to that spot."
There are plenty of coaches who didn't start out at the high school level, who know nothing about doing the little things needed to keep a program afloat.
They don't "realize how hard it is to get one of these jobs and how much you do appreciate when you do get it," he said. "All the things you have to go through to develop into a good basketball coach."
And Foley is a good basketball coach. His record shows that.
At Arkansas Tech, Foley won NAIA championships in 1992 and 1993 and was the NCAA Division II runner-up in 1999.
Little Rock, which dropped women's basketball after the 1987-88 season and started it again in 1999-2000, won a combined 117 games in 23 seasons. Foley arrived in 2003-04 and promptly won 10 games, only the third time in school history.
He has won at least 21 games since 2006-07, winning a school-record 27 in 2009-10, when Little Rock earned its first NCAA Tournament berth. His 21-10 record in 2006-07 was the school's first winning season.
"He's a very good coach, one of the best," junior Britteni Williams said. "He knows what he's talking about. If we listen, we will do well."
Senior Chastity Reed referenced Foley's penchant for studying game tape of opponents and the Trojans.
"You can definitely count on what he tells you," Reed said. "It's reliable."
As for his early quiet moments, Asriel Rolfe laughingly said that's a front for the media, who were allowed to watch only the first 15 minutes of Saturday's practice.
"He puts that on for you guys," Rolfe said about Foley's calm demeanor. "Once the 15 minutes is up and the doors close, it's a different story. He can get loud. We know when he's mad. He doesn't have to get loud for us to know he's upset....
"But he's a real good coach. He knows how to put players where they will be successful on the court. He finds the best lineups for the team. I have a lot of trust. It's got us this far. It's got us wins against teams that people thought we had no chance of winning."
