‘Isaac was prepared for the moment’: WSU officially introduces Brown as head coach
Wichita State University officially introduced Isaac Brown as its 26th men’s basketball head coach Monday during a news conference at Koch Arena.
Brown had been serving as the team’s interim head coach following Gregg Marshall’s resignation on Nov. 17. The longtime assistant coach exceeded everyone’s expectations, taking over a program in turmoil and leading the Shockers, picked by league coaches to finish seventh in the AAC, to a 13-4 record and sole possession of first place in the American Athletic Conference heading into the final week of the regular season.
WSU athletic director Darron Boatright made it clear that no one game sealed Brown’s fate, although notching WSU’s highest-ranked home win in 54 years in his last game against Houston sure didn’t hurt. Boatright said the promotion was based on the body of work that Brown and his coaching staff displayed following a tumultuous offseason and during a season played in a pandemic.
“You want to see how the moment affects them,” Boatright said. “That’s the moment they step into the head coach role. The moment they’re the ones leading the practice and they’re the ones standing up and calling the timeouts. You want to see how the moment affects them and if they’re wired to handle it. And Isaac was prepared for the moment.
“It just continued to become clearer and clearer what the direction of our leadership needed to be and that was with Isaac Brown at the helm.”
While some may have been hesitant to hand the reigns of a top-notch college basketball program to a first-time head coach, Boatright said those concerns were eased because of the experience the 51-year-old Brown has accumulated over the past two decades coaching Division I basketball.
Boatright said that the university and Brown have agreed to details on his five-year contract, but are awaiting final approval from attorneys. Financial details were not made public because the contract has yet to be signed, but a source told The Eagle that the deal is expected to be worth around $5.75 million.
“I think so often times today coaches get an opportunity to be a head coach too early and Isaac has been very patient,” Boatright said. “He’s a first-time head coach, but he’s no spring chicken. He’s been through some things.
“This was the way that college basketball was built for decades and decades. You had assistant coaches get into the profession and their career path guided itself and they worked their whole career to get one shot. Today sometimes these guys get a job at 30 years old and they’re not ready and they get fired in three or four years and we still don’t know if they can coach because they were thrust into that position too soon. I think the people that he has worked under and the programs he has worked for set him apart in my mind.”
Whoever was going to follow Marshall, the school’s all-time winningest coach and architect of a Final Four run, a 35-1 season, and seven straight NCAA Tournament berths, was never going to be an easy job.
But Brown said in his introductory statement that he wants to keep expectations right where his former boss had them.
“Compete for championships, which is what we’re doing right now,” Brown said. “We want to compete at a high level. I feel like we have the best facilities in the league, we have the best fans and we have a rich basketball tradition. I want to get to the NCAA Tournament and win basketball games, just like we’ve done in the past. I think with this administration, with our facilities, with our fan support and with the city of Wichita, we can do that.”
Brown wants to continue the style of play the Shockers have played this season. On offense, he wants to play fast and free and seek out easy baskets. On defense, Brown said he wants WSU to make other teams uncomfortable and get back to its strong rebounding roots.
The coach thanked the current staff members for working together to help the team achieve success this season, as well as the players for rallying around him.
“I want to thank you guys for allowing me to coach you guys,” Brown said, looking at the players in attendance. “I want to thank you guys for trusting the staff. You guys had the opportunity to do a lot of different things when the season started. You guys came here to play for a Hall of Fame coach and you guys didn’t opt out. You trusted our staff and you believed in us and I can’t thank you enough for that. Your dreams and goals are now the entire coaching staff’s dreams and goals.”
Afterward, WSU senior Morris Udeze said that trust wasn’t built overnight. Brown has put in the time and work to earn that trust with the players.
“Trust starts off the court,” Udeze said. “We can actually go to IB about stuff that doesn’t relate to basketball. Like he said, the ball is going to stop bouncing for all of us one day, so we can go to him off the court. Trust just kind of builds with that and it rubs off on the court.”
Boatright said that he was actually planning on announcing Brown’s full-time hire after the regular season and before the conference tournament. But that timeline was sped up when both WSU games scheduled for last week against SMU were postponed.
“With the conversations that were going on nationally about our chances of getting into the NCAA Tournament, I didn’t want a weekend cycle to go by without us being in the conversation in some form or fashion,” Boatright said. “That’s why we did it on a Friday, so we could be in the conversation through the weekend even though we hadn’t played a game in eight or nine days.”
For Brown, he’s never been one to think too much about the future.
Even though he just secured his future and is expected to make around six times annually his current salary, Brown was looking forward more to Monday’s practice ahead of Wednesday’s game at Tulane than he was talking about his life-altering news. In some ways, that’s exactly why he was offered the job in the first place.
“To all the Shocker fans, we are going to do a great job,” Brown said in his closing remarks. “We are going to give you guys 100 percent every day. We’re going to put a great brand of basketball and a great style of play out there that you guys will really enjoy.”
.jpg)