‘Not in my wildest dreams’: Isaac Brown reacts to WSU head coaching promotion
If Isaac Brown hasn’t texted you back yet, he apologizes.
By the time he left Friday’s practice, his phone had nearly 500 text messages waiting to be read. Each one of them, from family to friends to fellow coaches, even ones he had never said more than ‘Hello’ to, was some form of congratulations for becoming the next head coach of the Wichita State men’s basketball team.
“I can’t go through all of them because there’s so many of them,” Brown told The Eagle on Saturday. “So if you texted me, I’m sorry, I still haven’t had a chance to go through them all.”
The past 24 hours have been surreal for Brown, a 51-year-old, lifelong assistant who had never been a head coach at any level before being elevated to interim head coach one week before the start of this season following the resignation of Gregg Marshall.
One moment Brown was thrown in charge of a dire situation, as the Shockers had to navigate through a tumultuous offseason and COVID-19 issues early in the season. The next moment he was leading a WSU team picked seventh in the conference to its highest-ranked home win in 54 years and to first place in the American Athletic Conference heading into the month of March.
And now, somehow, he was accepting a five-year contract — expected to be worth six times annually his current $210,000 salary when signed — to be the full-time head coach at one of the most prestigious programs in the country.
“Not in my wildest dreams did I think I was going to get the job when I first took over,” Brown said. “It was one of the most exciting moments of my life. In this coaching business, there’s guys who have been coaching 20, 30 years and have never got the opportunity to be a head coach. We only have 351 of them.”
Brown said he has heard from coaches all over the country since accepting the job. Oklahoma State’s Mike Boynton and Texas’ Shaka Smart have been two coaches who have reached out to Brown throughout this season to offer help and encouragement.
But the support that meant most to Brown was the support he’s had from within the program. From the players to assistants Lou Gudino, Tyson Waterman and Billy Kennedy to staff members like Dominic Okon, Nick Jones and Jeff Chapman, every one of them have banded together this season to deliver their best work in a season where they felt like they were coaching for their jobs.
“To IB’s credit, that man pulled us together and said, ‘We’ve got one shot to show what we can do and make people believe in us,’” Waterman said. “I know a lot of people at the start of the season said, ‘Oh my God, there’s no way.’ I know the expectations from a lot of people probably weren’t too good for us.
“But we truly believed in ourselves because we felt like Marshall had us here for a reason, we know what we’re capable of doing as a staff, we know the system and we just all had to step up and do our jobs at the highest level we could.”
That’s why Friday was a shared celebration for the WSU program. It’s not in Brown’s nature to take credit or seek attention. He’s never once made it about himself during WSU’s improbable run to success this season and the players and coaches around him respect and love how selfless their leader is.
Their genuine love for Brown was caught on camera during Friday’s practice in a video clip posted by WSU on Twitter when athletic director Darron Boatright told them Brown was being named full-time coach. The players immediately erupted in celebration and swarmed him with hugs.
For a coach who values relationships above winning, watching the clip back and seeing his players that happy for him brought tears to Brown’s eyes.
“That one sent chills all throughout my body,” Brown said. “To see how excited those guys were, that made me feel really good. We have such a good group of guys. It made me so excited to see how happy they were that I was named the full-time coach. I thought they were just going to clap or something.”
While it was Brown who was given the contract, it was really the entire WSU coaching staff who was rewarded for their work this season. Of course, it begins and ends with Brown — but perhaps his most impressive job this season has been motivating every person in the program to their best performance.
Not every coach is capable of inspiring such confidence.
“Everyone always asks me what it’s like working with him and he’s just so ego-less and humble,” Gudino said. “He’s got a good feel for the game of basketball, but more importantly he’s just a great guy. It was a natural fit for him to be a head coach at some point. You don’t always get that opportunity, so it’s like hitting the lottery and he’s taking full advantage of it without changing who he is to the core.”
Ask around the program and those closest to Brown will tell you that he hasn’t changed at all. He’s still the same “IB” as he has been the past seven years in Wichita. In a season with so much uncertainty, the coaches around Brown say his calmness through adversity has been a steadying force for the Shockers all season.
Brown said he was more worried about WSU’s players than his job status going forward. As a 19-year Division I assistant, he knew he could find an assistant job somewhere else next season if needed. But these kids? They only have so much time in college and he wanted to make sure this season counted.
“All I cared about when I took over was doing right by those kids,” Brown said. “I just wanted to make sure everything was going to be OK for them because I knew coming into the year ain’t nobody going to feel sorry for us. So we had to make sure those kids were ready to go.”
Brows actually feels more pressure today than when his future was uncertain as an interim coach. Now that he’s been named the permanent coach, he’s come to the realization it’s up to him to follow Marshall and maintain the program’s status as one of the nation’s best.
“Now that’s pressure right there, trying to follow a Hall of Fame coach” Brown said. “I’ve been here for seven years and we’ve had some great runs. I remember when I first got here with Fred (VanVleet) and Ron (Baker) and we went to that Sweet 16. We want to continue to compete for championships with good student-athletes and try to get back to this NCAA Tournament.”
The coaching staff believes the exhilaration of seeing Brown named full-time head coach could actually inspire WSU’s players even more. The Shockers are 13-4, but considered on the edge of the NCAA Tournament bubble and likely need a deep conference tournament run to return to March Madness.
“I think it’s going to help us closing out this season, I really do believe that,” WSU assistant coach Tyson Waterman said. “What better scenario for these kids to know their future is secure with the people that brought them in. I think that euphoric reaction was so genuine because IB has earned the respect and love from these players.”
This story was originally published February 27, 2021 at 3:39 PM.
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