Editor's Note: Dick Weiss, a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame, has covered college sports in Philadelphia and New York for more than 40 years. He will be providing regular commentary for the American Athletic Conference during the 2014-15 season.
NEW YORK-- SMU's Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown is a man in a hurry.
His Mustangs won 27 games last season, were nationally ranked in four of the last five weeks of the AP poll and advanced to the N/T championship game. He resurrected a stagnant program, defeating four ranked teams, including defending national champion UConn twice during the regular season in the American Athletic Conference; and was playing before sold-out crowds at Moody Coliseum in just his second year on the job.
Brown, the 74-year-old elder statesman, is one of basketball beautiful minds. He has won over 1,000 games in the ABA and NBA, taken eight different teams to the NBA playoffs and is the only coach to win both an NBA championship (Detroit, in 2004) and an NCAA title (Kansas, 1988).
Brown has enough key players returning on this year's SMU team to crack the preseason top 25 in the USA Today coaches' poll and should challenge for the conference title.
We can only imagine how good the Mustangs might have been if his best recruit, 6-5 guard Emmanuel Mudiay, a McDonald's All American from Prime Prep in Dallas, had enrolled in school instead of signing a one year, $1.2 million contract to play in China for the Guandong Southern Tigers.
"I thought if Emmanuel would have stayed – he's the only kid we signed – we could have played with anybody,'' Brown said here yesterday at The American's men's basketball media day at the New York Athletic Club. "I'm excited for him. But I'm not excited for the precedent it might set. I understand if a lot of kids have a chance to help their families, it's tough to pass up.
"But it's not a good message and hopefully, the the NBA will address it because I think it's only going to get worse. If he is as good as I think he is, he's going to be the first, second or third pick in next year's NBA Draft, which I am confident he will be. But I'm worried a lot of kids will think about it. You got a lot of people who don't care about the kids, telling them the wrong things. They won't think about the kids who come out early and are not playing anymore.
"Maybe the NBA should do it like baseball. A kid comes out after high school if he’s good enough. If he’s not, stay in school for three years, make the college game better. Give us a chance to teach kids not only how to play but how to handle being a pro.''
Brown is proud of his old school background.. He still loves practice and but he enjoys making players better by teaching the game the way it was taught to him by legends like Frank McGuire and Dean Smith when he played for North Carolina.
"I don't think kids spend enough time on fundamentals,'' Brown said."They just play more games. A lot of people might look at that as a good thing. There are some marvelous AAU programs who believe games give you experience. I find a lot of kids don't care if they win or lose. But I believe in teaching them what we can. I think kids all want to get better. They all care.
"I was a freshman coach and an assistant varsity coach coach under Dean Smith at Carolina and he allowed me to coach. All I did was what teach he taught me. The kids came to our freshman team. They valued the minutes they got from competing against lesser guys. You had a freshman team and you had 10, 11 juniors and seniors on the varsity who were expected to play simply because they got better playing in the program. Now kids want to play right away. They don't have a four-year plan. They have a one-year plan. It's not their fault. It's just the way it is. When you can play for great college coaches for four years, your second NBA contract might not come as quickly, but you are going to be more prepared when it comes."
This year's SMU team has three starters back and is filled with upperclassmen like 6-9 junior forward Markus Kennedy, a Villanova transfer who averaged 12.4 points and 7.1 rebounds; guard Nic Moore, a transfer from Illinois State who averaged 13.4 points and 4.9 assists. Both were selected on the pre-season All-American Athletic Conference team.
SMU should be better inside with 6-11 senior center Yanick Moreira, who blossomed this summer, averaging 17.8 points and 8.2 rebounds for the Angolan national team in the FIBA World Cup; 6-6 wing Justin Martin, a fifth year senior who averaged 11.7 points last season for Xavier.
Brown's team is deep, with eight players who averaged over 12 minutes per game. This is a difficult team to play because Brown stresses defense and doesn't take bad shots. His team finished seventh in the country in field percentage defense, holding opponents to 38.5 percent and allowing only 62.2 points The Mustangs also led The American in field goal percentage (48.3 percent), averaged 15.2 assists and shot 37.9 percent from the three.
"We have depth and experience,'' Brown said. "We lacked maturity in big games last year. If we can get over there I think we will be better but our nonconference schedule is tougher. We're at Indiana, at Michigan, at Gonzaga and our conference is underrated.''
The increased challenges should give SMU a chance to upgrade its RPI so the NCAA selection committee can not use that as an excuse to eliminate a deserving team from consideration. If the Mustangs have continued success, it should also give Brown a pulpit to push for kids to stay in college longer instead of rushing out the door.
"We have the best minor league system in the world,'' he said. "There are unbelievable college coaches out there that will teach kids. I can't even believe the NBA questions it because if you keep kids in school,.it opens up opportunities for older kids to play and be taught. You don't have all these analytics guys and workout guys teaching them. You have coaches teaching them.
"For me, I've had a lot of great players in my life. and the ones who have degrees or great careers had college coaches who cared about them. Look at track record how successful they are after basketball. If you played for a Mike Krzyzewski or Bill Self or John Calipari or Tad Boyle or Fred Hoiberg, when you get to NBA level, you're ready to play.
"Look at the draft. Everybody drafts on potential. Sean Kilpatrick was a four-year kid an a first-team All-American at Cincinnati. Doesn’t get drafted. Scottie Reynolds a was four-year guy at Villanova and a first-team All-America. Doesn't get drafted. But look at guys like Shane Battier, David Robinson, Tim Duncan. They stayed four years made a lot of money. They were more prepared for the NBA.
“Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, might think I'm crazy. I saw where he said kids should go to the D-League – then they'd be better off than if they stayed in college. If you’re in the D-League, what do they have? Nothing. If they go to college and don't make it, they have a degree. Nobody is going to tell me the caliber of coaching in the D-League is comparable to the caliber of coaching in college. That's not heresy. They’ve got skill coaches in the D-League. We've got basketball coaches in college. They've developmental coaches in the pros. We have teachers in college.''