First-year assistants motivated to help Gregg Marshall lead in new era at WSU
It’s been nearly two decades since the last time Tyson Waterman has worked in the same gymnasium on the same team as Gregg Marshall.
Back in the 1999-2000 college basketball season, Waterman was playing for Marshall as Winthrop’s starting point guard. The duo completed a bottom-to-top rise in the Big South Conference as Waterman led the team to a conference title and the NCAA Tournament.
Waterman is reminded a lot of those days now that he has returned to team up with Marshall, this time as a first-year college basketball assistant at Wichita State.
“All these years later and GM still has that same mojo,” Waterman said. “This year reminds me of when he took the job (at Winthrop) and we didn’t have a lot of great expectations from the outside. At the end of the day, we went from worst to first. It’s going to be interesting to see how this thing rides out this time around.”
On Monday, Marshall’s peers around the American Athletic Conference picked the Shockers to finish eighth in the 12-team conference in the preseason coaches’ poll.
Yes, WSU has the fewest returners in the conference this season. And yes, WSU’s coaching staff has been in a state of change recently with Waterman and Lou Gudino arriving this season. But few AAC coaches gave the benefit of the doubt to Marshall, who has led WSU to nine straight seasons of at least 25 victories.
It’s a new era for Shocker basketball. No longer are they assumed to be a top team like they were in the Missouri Valley. In the American, they’re going to have to prove themselves all over again and both new assistants are eager to help Marshall accomplish that.
“(Marshall) brings the same energy and intensity every day,” Gudino said. “There’s never going to be a day where you have a bad day coaching. You might not have the best practice, but if your head coach is bringing it then everybody else in the program is going to fall in line.”
Waterman knows the standard Marshall wants met and has taken it upon himself to be the enforcer during practices with the players.
“I know how he wants his players to approach every day and my job is to make sure they understand that and are going as hard as they can,” Waterman said. “He doesn’t want you to leave nothing in the tank. If you’re tired, put your hand out and sub out. But when you’re out there, we’re going all out.”
Assistant Isaac Brown, who has been with Marshall for five years, is the most vocal in practices since he’s been there the longest. Waterman has past experience with Marshall, so Gudino has picked his spots when to step in and instruct.
So far the trio have meshed well.
“Everybody brings a different perspective,” Gudino said. “Tyson played for Coach and (Brown) has been here the longest and he’s well-respected in the profession. Coach (Marshall) lets us know exactly what he wants from us, so it’s pretty easy to work for him.”
Hired in May, Waterman was able to transition immediately and help WSU finish off its 2019 recruiting class. Ultimately, Waterman helped deliver Marshall his second-highest rated recruit in his tenure at WSU with the commitment of four-star guard Tyson Etienne over this past weekend.
“I know GM’s system and what type of kids he’s going to want to recruit and what type of kids who are going to want to play for him,” said Waterman, who came to WSU from a prep school in South Carolina. “I can see right through a kids’ work ethic and how hard they play and if they are going to be coachable or not.”
Marshall liked Waterman and Gudino because they were both familiar with his expectations at WSU and his system. But Marshall revealed on Tuesday that just as importantly, he wanted to establish some continuity on his coaching staff.
Since the 2009-10 season, Marshall has had at least one assistant coach move on to another job for eight of those nine seasons, including two in the same offseason for the first time this past summer in Kyle Lindsted (Minnesota) and Donnie Jones (Dayton).
“I wanted someone that was going to be loyal and stay for a little while,” Marshall said. “I want all of my assistant coaches to aspire to be head coaches, but not all at once. It just gets tiring. We pay the freight on that quite a bit. You want to see them have success, but not what happened last year where boom everybody decides to make their move at the same time.”
This story was originally published October 16, 2018 at 7:09 PM.