Bob Lutz: For Gregg Marshall, time flies when you’re making history

Gregg Marshall has been at Wichita State a long time now. Seven years.

His son, Kellen, was 10 when Marshall arrived after a successful nine-year run at Winthrop to take over the Shocker basketball program. Kellen is a senior now at Trinity Academy.

“It’s hard to believe,” said Marshall, beginning his eighth season at WSU. “You look at pictures when we first came here and he was just a little boy. And Maggie (Marshall’s 14-year-old daughter) was just a little girl.”

Marshall is melancholy about his son nearing the point where he could be leaving the house. Kellen, Marshall said, has four colleges on his list: College of Charleston, where his mother went, along with Wichita State, Florida and Arizona.

“We’re watching a lot of these Royals playoff games together,” Marshall said. “Kellen is into the Royals, they’re his team. He never really picked my teams, like I did with my dad. My dad’s teams were the Red Sox, Celtics and Redskins. Those are the teams he pulled for as a kid so that’s who I adopted.

“But my kid likes the Eagles – and he does like the Celtics. But in baseball he never really had a team, so he’s become a Royals fan. And these playoff games are so fun to watch. But I’m thinking next year, he’s going to be gone. And I’m going to be watching by myself.”

Time marches on.

Marshall has created a basketball monster at Wichita State, reaching far beyond what anyone could have expected. The Shockers have gotten better every year; Marshall even found a way to improve upon a Final Four season, you could argue, by leading a team to a 35-0 start last season before a third-round NCAA Tournament loss to eventual runnerup Kentucky.

“Building it is one thing,” Marshall said. “Sustaining it is another. Expectations are going to be so out of whack. We’ll lose a game this year and I don’t want everyone to start looking for a tall building to jump off of.”

Yes, folks, Wichita State likely will lose a regular-season basketball game in 2014-15. Maybe a few, what with a tough non-conference schedule and a Missouri Valley Conference that has nowhere to go but up after a difficult 2013-14 season.

“The only way we could improve on last season would be to go undefeated and make a deeper run in the tournament,” Marshall said.

He’s still amazed by how the last two seasons have gone. First a Final Four, only the second in Shocker history and the first in 48 years. Then the longest unbeaten run to start a season in NCAA history and a slugfest against Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament in St. Louis.

“We lose Malcolm (Armstead), Carl (Hall) and those guys; how do we go 35-0?” Marshall asks. “But these guys we have are so tough-minded, so tough and so good.”

He’s talking about Ron Baker, Fred VanVleet and Tekele Cotton, who were there for the Final Four and there for 35-0. That’s a lot to be around for and who knows what this season will bring?

“I just know that Fred VanVleet is the most competitive player I’ve ever coached,” Marshall said. “And Ron Baker isn’t far behind. Tekele just does whatever it takes to win. Those guys, they’re everyday guys. They’re easy to coach and I love being around them. They work, they do extra stuff, they want to be great. They want to be the first, the best, the most. They want all of those superlatives in a positive way. I didn’t have anything to do with that. I’ve just been the beneficiary of some good parenting and some good leadership at home.”

Marshall may downplay his role, but he’s been churning out players with similar characteristics since he arrived at WSU. There’s a method to his madness. Marshall is one of the toughest, most demanding coaches in the country, but his players are rocks with ability and character.

Now the process of playing another season begins. And while the Shockers have five veterans – senior Darius Carter and junior Evan Wessel joining VanVleet, Baker and Cotton – in some ways it’s a young and inexperienced team.

There are the two redshirts from a season ago, forward Shaq Morris and guard Ria’n Holland. Wichita State has added two junior-college transfers: 6-foot-11 center Bush Wamukota and 6-6 forward Tevin Glass. And there are four freshmen: forwards Zach Brown and Rashard Kelly, center Rauno Nurger and guard Corey Henderson.

Those eight players are expected to fight for the minutes that the five veterans don’t account for, though Nurger, who played at Sunrise Academy last season, has been out for three weeks with a stress reaction in his foot.

“Honestly, I have no idea who of those players it’s going to be,” Marshall said. “Like I tell Cory and Ria’n, one of you is going to play some and one of you is probably not going to play very much. With Shaq and Bush and Rauno, at least one of them is going to play and the other two won’t play as much. With Tevin, Rashard and Brown, who wants to play and who wants to sit? Who needs a redshirt? They’ll all figure that out.”

The Shockers are less than a week into practice and still almost a month away from their exhibition game against Northwood on Nov. 8 at Koch Arena. Marshall is taking nothing for granted.

“We have a really interesting mix,” Marshall said. “There’s a bunch of really seasoned, hardened, successful and accomplished veterans and a group of unknowns and unprovens.”

Wichita State’s success since Marshall arrived, and especially the last two seasons, have allowed the Shockers to up the ante when it comes to the type of players Marshall and his staff recruit.

WSU has specialized in finding raw, rough-around-the-edges types, but is now making inroads into a higher rent district.

The Shockers already have a commitment for next season from two Kansas City-area guards, Tyrone Taylor and Landry Shamet, who is ranked No. 87 nationally by Rivals.com. WSU is awaiting word from three other high-level recruits, including Texas guard Kerwin Roach, ranked No. 34 by Rivals. He is expected to choose from WSU, Texas and California on his birthday, Oct. 24.

“I think some of the guys we’re recruiting and getting commitments from are a little higher level in terms of their notoriety, fame, status on recruiting boards and lists,” Marshall said. “But what we’ve seen, also, is that they fit our culture because they want to get better. They want to be coached and they want to play with other good players who care about how they approach their vocation.”

Marshall knows he wouldn’t do well with a player who expects to be handed a starting position or has risen through the youth ranks with a silver spoon in his mouth.

“I see those types on the recruiting trail,” he said. “There are guys who if they’re not scoring, they sulk and pout and maybe show negative emotion. They don’t defend because they’re not getting the ball on offense. I don’t care how good they are, I tell my coaches at that point that’s not somebody we want. That’s not going to work with us and our whole staff is like that. Our team is like that.”

Marshall, 51, knows what works for Wichita State. From meager beginnings, he’s taken his career to unimagined heights and says Wichita State is now a top-40 job nationally with most of the perks afforded coaches at bigger-name schools.

He winces, though, when he talks about what his soon-to-be college-age son wants to be someday.

“A coach,” Marshall said. “I‘m trying to tell him to do something else. This is just a hard, hard, hard business and there’s so little opportunity.”

But Kellen is Gregg Marshall’s son. When Gregg was paying his dues, making $9,000 a year with no health insurance, he didn’t have a father who coached basketball, let alone had a Final Four and 35-1 record on his resume.

“Yeah, he wouldn’t have to start out the way I did,” Marshall said. “I could probably help him some if I wanted to stay in the business that long.”

He thought for a few seconds, pondering all of the amazing successes he experienced, but no doubt unable to put aside the struggles and years it took to get there.

“And I’m not sure I want to do that.”

This story was originally published October 11, 2014 at 2:35 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: For Gregg Marshall, time flies when you’re making history."