Bill Mussleman, Kevin Wilson and Jimmy Williams. (photo credit Ashland Athletics)
In Order to completely understand the incredible opportunity I was given at SFSU and by Coach Wilson, I need to revisit the past and hopefully paint a vivid picture of just how connected he was and provide insight into his great basketball mind. First and foremost, it’s important to know that Wilsie played for the Ashland College Eagles in Ohio and for the great Bill Musselman.
From Sports Illustrated in 1969:
The Ashland Eagles are college basketball’s greatest show-boaters. It is their pregame act that drives the people wild and causes a kind of collective schizophrenia that in the minutes between warm ups and the game turns Eagle players from troupers to grinding, selfless defensive robots and their fans from carefree to tense nail-biters.
University of Minnesota. Can you spot Bill Mussleman, Kevin Wilson and a young Flip Saunders!, (photo credit to Minnesota Athletics
The scriptwriter for the show is Bill Musselman, 29, a bright man in his fifth season whose short muscular frame and light close-cropped hair are archetypal of proper coachly appearance, even if his scenario is not. Musselman blends a pregame ritual of. crowd hysteria, raucous music and Harlem Globetrotter drills with a game plan of sticky defense and tightly controlled offense that results in neither the Eagles nor their rivals scoring many baskets. Going to see Ashland play is like being hotly huckstered into a girlie show only to have the lights blow just as the act begins.
Bill Musselman has been called one of the best coaches of all time. By age 29, Muss (as Coach Wilson called him) had built up the basketball program at Ashland into a national power. Known for their defense, in 1969, they set an NCAA record with an incredible defensive average of 33.9 points per game. But, it was “The Show” from pre-game warm-ups to the final horn that set them apart from the rest. Muss was obsessed with every detail and Wilsie learned and developed the same traits from years of playing for him at Ashland and then eventually coaching with him at Minnesota.
From Sports Illustrated 1969:
With four members of last year’s starling lineup that included a frontcourt averaging 6'8" and a long-armed, quick-handed 6'5" guard. Kevin Wilson, returning, Musselman. can stay with a set five again this year. Wilson, whose girl friend introduced him to Christian Science and who plays without having any treatment for his injuries except soothing readings from Mary Baker Eddy, is the key player for Ashland. An exceptional ballhandler, he controls the offense tightly and his wide arm-span gives Musselman a tough man at the point of his defense. Although he may be too slow and not quite shooter enough to make the pros. Wilson gives the Eagles an edge toward winning the small-college championship they have fallen just shy of the past two seasons.
Wilsie embraced Coach Musselman’s philosophies and he implemented many of those old Ashland team rituals and attitudes at SFSU. I was lucky enough to have the chance to be there in living color to digest every last one of them. I was eager to learn about and assist in executing every detail of this program. This included everything from the “Sweet Georgia Brown” warm-up routine to the Hyperbolic Paraboloid Transitional Floating Zone defense.
From Sports Illustrated 1969:
Half an hour before game time, the 4,000-seat gym was packed, mostly with students in all-gold costumes. The gold team bench, with NATION’S NO. 1 DEFENSE painted in purple. across the back, and the gold rug that lies in front of it were in place, and the cheering, which had built steadily through the second half of the preliminary JV game, reached full pitch. The team broke onto the floor accompanied by Keep the Ball Rollin’, Musselman in a bright gold blazer and Assistant Coach Lou Markle in hideous, gold spray-painted crepe-soled shoes. While the crowd stood, clapped rhythmically and howled, as it would do continuously for the next 25 minutes, the Eagles began their routine, juggling, dribbling, passing and shooting in unison. The roaring grew loudest as the act built toward the individual highlights Ashland crowds have come to anticipate. Wilson and Hoover spun balls on their fingertips. Then Wilson twirled two, a stunt that Hallie Bryant of the Globetrotters told Hoover none of his Trotter teammates could ever master. Substitute Forward Gary Youmans juggled three balls and teammates snapped them away in midair, then drove in for dunks. After 10 minutes Center Jim Williams closed the display with the last of his clashing dunks and Ashland settled into the routine of shooting layups.
Wittenberg Coach Eldon Miller was a college teammate of Musselman and Miller’s wife roomed with Kristine Musselman in school, so the Tigers knew about Ashland’s antics. They ignored the opening minutes of the Eagles’ drills, but the temptation to look was too much. One by one they turned toward the far end of the gym. Before the show was over, five Wittenberg players had forgotten their own warmups and were standing in a line at half-court, staring. Even before the game had begun, the Eagles had taken the lead.
Kevin Wilson, Bill Musleman, Jimmy Williams (photo Minnesota Basketball)
Living, breathing and eating basketball the Musselman way while he played in college and later as Muss’s assistant coach is what developed the type of coach and the basketball mind that is: Kevin Wilson. He was a master salesman, marketer and recruiter. He was everything I needed and desired in a mentor and he was offering me all his knowledge and experience. It was all at my fingertips, so I took full advantage of this opportunity and over the course of our 1st season wrote down everything…AND I mean everything.
SFSU had led the country in defensive scoring average the year before I got there and I was excited as hell to learn the famous Hyperbolic Paraboloid Transitional Floating Zone defense (HPTFZ). Flip Saunders, who was the coach at Golden Valle yLutheran College at the time, was a very close friend of Wilsie. He had also played for Wilsie at Minnesota. Both had made some adjustments to the HPTFZ and in four seasons, Flip had already compiled a 92–13 record using it, including a perfect 56–0 mark at home. I was ecstatic when I learned that Flip was going to be visiting SFSU to help us during practice and work with the players teaching them the defense. It took 12 days, but in those 12 days, I absorbed every last detail of HPTFZ defense (adjustments and all), and I loved every moment! I wouldn’t realize the impact meeting Flip Saunders would have on my career, but it would be instrumental to my rise in college coaching.
The HPTFZ, as I learned in a short time, was extremely complicated and difficult to teach. To this day, it is impossible to implement without Coach Wilson’s help. In fact, last year I toyed with the idea of flying him out to teach it to our team. This is something I definitely plan on doing next year if his schedule permits.
This quote from Bill Musselman sums up the HPTFZ:
I teach a lot of offensive patterns and variations and then, to make the defense work, everyone must know exactly where he should be in every situation. If I want to coach that many things, I can only work with one team at a time, so I stick with the same five guys almost all year,” Musselman says.
My first season as a college basketball coach was all about watching, listening and learning. We had a successful year at SFSU, but we lost in the playoffs. That indicated to me that it was time to revaluate my goals and determine if working at Bridgemont as an Athletic Director was helping or hurting my goal to do what I really wanted to do, which was to COACH. Coach Wilson was taking over the program permanently and I knew he was going to bring in a full time assistant. Knowing this, I waited and worked. Worked and waited. I was the 1st one to arrive at the office in the morning and the last one to leave at night. I was fully aware that getting hired on at SFSU as a full time assistant at age 24 was nearly impossible, so I wanted to leave a good impression. In the unfortunate event that I would have to leave San Francisco, take take a paid coaching position to survive, I wanted to know that I had Wilsie’s blessing and that he’d give me the thumbs up.
The first season had ended and here I was at age 24. It was time (in my mind) to take charge of my career and do what was best for me. But, something happened on my road to stupidity. It all goes back to the spread in the SF Chronicle and the write up about my athletic program at BHS and my crazy antics promoting the worst athletic program in San Francisco…
The single worst event in my life happened that year…my Horror
Coach Wilson had a sort of “rites of passage” which he organized every year at the end of the last practice before our first regular season game, THE ROOKIE DANCE. No, this wasn’t a dance in a club, auditorium or classroom. He had the entire team: managers, coaches and players form a circle around center court. Initially, I was eager because the entire gym was filled with excitement. The veteran players were laughing at the freshman and Juco transfers who knew nothing about what was about to take place. NEITHER DID I…all of sudden music started blasting out speakers high above our heads. Everyone in the circle started clapping and “bumping” to the beat. Then BOOM…Wilsie called out the name of a “rookie” and they were expected to enter the circle at mid-court, alone and dance for as long as the team wanted. NOW, understand that we had some very “green” freshman who HAD absolutely no rhythm. Agonizingly, they shuffled out to the middle of the circle and tried to move their feet. The more daring ones actually got into it and had a blast. After our last “rookie” embarrassed himself, I figured it was over. FUCK ME, I WAS WRONG…That SOB called out, “Trousie”. I couldn’t believe that motha f&%ker called my name. Here I was, just having graduated from a no dancing, no rhythm, no nothing college, so I PANICKED. My mind went blank, I felt weak. I thought I was going to pass out when suddenly I was shoved out into oblivion. I could feel the sweat pouring down my forehead. My thoughts raced. I was in the middle of the gym floor, in San Francisco, alone, fainting, embarrassed like never before, getting laughed at by the entire SFSU program and like the pussy that I was back then, all I could think of was calling out, “MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!”
It looked a little something like this…