Ed Schilling Jr. Interview – March 2005
by Bill Kintner
Bill Kintner: Describe what you do with Memphis.
Ed Schilling: Oh my goodness. What I do at Memphis… I do everything from scouting to individual instruction to coaching on the floor and practice, games… to carting Coach Cal around, watching him talk on the phone, to putting together game plans. I mean there’s pretty much nothing that you don’t do. I’ve done everything since I’ve been here from organizing/re-doing our lounge (the player’s lounge) to fencing around our practice facility, designing the locker rooms – I mean it’s pretty much all-inclusive. There’s not much that we don’t do from travel on up.
BK: When he gives you something to do, why does he give it to you versus Coach Barbee or someone else?
ES: Well we kind of all have our niche. So there’s a lot of things he’ll give me to do and we all kind of just have our little niches but when it comes to basketball, we’re all pretty much doing everything. I mean Derek Kellogg and I split the scouting – I do one game, he does the next game. We’ve pretty much split that in half. But other than that from Coach Barbee, Coach Kellogg, and myself, we’re all in the battle and we’re all like, whatever needs to be done, we jump in and do it.
BK: Describe Coach Cal as a boss.
ES: You know, Coach Cal is great. I mean one of things that probably makes him different than a lot of the real high-powered coaches – you know, you have to say he’s one of the top ten coaches in college basketball today in terms of success and everything, notoriety, recognizability, things like that – but you know one thing about him is he’s a regular guy to be with. When you’re around him, he’s fun to be with and he’s not one of those guys who talks down to you or anything. He’s a guy that you sit with, you hang out, and you have fun even in the midst of doing stuff. So he’s also very unique in that he doesn’t plan anything – everything is last-minute with him. He’s one of those guys that that’s just how he operates; he does everything last-minute; he doesn’t plan anything so you hardly ever know when practice is the next day or the day of. He keeps all of the options open and that’s just how he works and how his mind works. With that, it makes it kind of difficult – challenging, I should say.
BK: Who plans the practice? Who actually writes the plan up?
ES: Coach Cal does. I mean we’ll sit and talk and we’ll throw stuff out like, “Coach we need to do this or that” and he’ll usually put that in. But he actually writes it up and has a real good plan. I mean he’s been doing this quite awhile so he has a real clear vision and picture of what he wants done and what needs to be done and what’s not getting done. So what we can do is I’ll suggest a new drill and he’ll go, “huh, that’s a good deal” – I’ll tell him and he’ll do it. And he’s very receptive to new ideas and things like that. But with that being said, he has a clear picture of what he wants done and how he wants it done.
BK: How is it different working for him at Memphis than it was back at UMass?
ES: Well, at UMass I was kind of in a different spot. I was coming right out of high school as a high school coach, so I was like eyes wide open, trying to learn and contribute where I could. Whereas now, after being with them at UMass, being in the NBA, being a division I head coach for six years – in addition to my high school experience – I think there’s a lot more respect and credibility to the suggestions as opposed to just going in and proving myself. I don’t have to do that. I can just go and try to find a way to contribute and come behind him and figure out what needs to be done with the players or what needs to be done behind the scenes, and many times it’s just talking to him by himself when no one’s around and saying, “Hey, you know you said this but what about this?” So I’d throw different things out to him and I can talk to him probably in a little different way than most people because we’re more peers than we are with Derek and Tony who were both players for him and there’s a little bit different dynamic. Whereas I am more of a friend/peer as much as I am an assistant coach.
BK: Describe the Memphis program as far as what you guys try to do as a program.
ES: Well I think more than anything you have to win. I mean when you’ve got an arena – the Pyramid was 20,000 and the new FedEx Forum, I think is 18 and change – you know, the bottom line is you better win. So you try and do things by the rules, you try and graduate players (which he’s doing), but the bottom line is about winning games and putting people in the seats. He understands that; he understands that as much as this is education and all that stuff but the bottom line is you need to win because there is so much riding on each season and each game.
BK: Give some examples of how that affects the way things are done in the program.
ES: Well, I mean, when you lose a game – you lose a few games, which is how we started this year – it’s a major deal! It’s not like, “Well we’ll get them next year.” No, no. You better figure it out this year. And the idea of not being in a post-season tournament, whether it is the NCAA or the NIT is almost… that’s not even thought about. You’re going to be in post-season and you better not have too many NITs.
BK: There are an awful lot of people out there taking shots at Coach Cal saying that he doesn’t recruit good kids, that he doesn’t graduate players… I think they’re jealous. How would you answer that?
ES: I think just taking them one by one. Anytime someone’s enjoyed a great deal of success the easiest thing to do is to try and pull them down. And I think a lot of people have done that. You know, when Coach Cal took over at Memphis they had the graduation rate at about 10 percent. When he left it was about 80 percent. At UMass – what did I say?
BK: UMass. You said when he left Memphis.
ES: Yes at UMass. When he came to Memphis the graduation rate for the previous almost decade was zero percent. Zero percent. We’re online this year – we’re going to graduate all three of our seniors; I think he’ll have graduated 7 of his last 9 seniors here at Memphis. So any talk of him not graduating players – we’re well above what anybody’s doing across the country in the national average. The school’s graduation rates – he’s almost doubled what the school’s graduation rate is. His programs always graduate players. He’ll take chances on guys. Bottom line: we took a chance on Antonio Burks. And you know it was great. Turned out Antonio was two classes away from graduation, he’s playing for the Memphis Grizzlies, and he’s just been one of the shining stars in the city of Memphis – Conference USA’s Player of the Year last year. We took a chance on Sean Banks. Sean Banks was Freshman of the Year in Conference USA. ESPN.com had him as the Freshman Player of the Year nationally. Everybody thought it was great. Well, Sean didn’t work out this year. Eventually the kid was ineligible and he’s gone.
So Cal will take chances but at the same time they have to do the right things and they’ve got to be able to do what’s required of them. So the idea that he takes bad kids? No. He’ll take chances on kids but he’ll make them do what’s right. Cal’s one of those who really doesn’t care what everybody thinks. He’s going to do what he thinks is right and if you like it, fine, and if you don’t, he doesn’t really care. In regards to people out there trying to make allegations against him of not following NCAA rules, I can tell you I am in the program and he follows the NCAA rules. We’ve been scrutinized with incredible detail and we’ve not even had a slap on the wrist. So Coach Cal is gonna get it done. He’s a very smart man; he knows that he makes a whole lot of money here and he knows the only way he loses this is by breaking NCAA rules. So he’s not going to do it. Right now, he can walk away from the game; he doesn’t need it. He’s got all the money he needs. He’s not going to risk doing something like that to his reputation and so he’s going to do it by the rules. In fact, he tells us the only way you’re getting fired here is by breaking a rule. You break a rule, you’re not going to be here. A lot of that stuff I think people will see he will take a chance here and there, he’ll take a chance occasionally on players – he’ll take some chances, but you know what? That’s the name of the game and he’s a guy that came. You know, his dad never made more than $16,000 a year; he’s from the other side of the tracks in Pittsburgh and so he believes in giving people a chance and you know he said, “I’m always going to give kids chances if I think they have a good heart.” If they have a bad heart or they don’t want to listen, he’s not going to take a chance, but if they do? Occasionally he’s going to take some chances.
BK: What’s the difference between being a mid-major program (a Horizon League, a MAC program, a Missouri Valley program) versus being at a Memphis? What’s the difference according to how they operate, how they do things?
ES: I think more than anything you just take a Horizon League or a MAC school and you just take it times about five. That’s the number of people that are going to be in the stands or times ten. Instead of there being five thousand, there’s going to be fifteen thousand. You know the MAC schools, they may have one school on national television. This year, I think we may have had fifteen on national television. So everything is just multiplied. You know our lounge that we had at Wright State – you just take it times about three and that’s our players lounge at Memphis. It’s just up a level; it’s just multiplied. The fan interest, the pressure, everything is just increased. In terms of what I think it means to the players, I think to the players and the coaches it’s just as important to us at any level. You go and you look at a Division III program and guys still want to win. Guys are still competing; losing still hurts. Winning’s still great and so there’s a lot of similarities, but the difference is just the magnitude of everything from you know, we’d go out to eat. You know, when I played at Miami on a road trip, we’d stop at Wendy’s and we thought we were something. At the University of Memphis we’re eating at the finest steak houses. But then, to whom much is given, must is required. You’re given a whole lot as a player here in terms of the national television, the places that you stay, the meals that you have. But there’s also a huge, huge pressure to win and if you don’t win around here, everybody knows you and they’re not the most polite when you lose.
BK: How are you different now than when you started at Wright State? And how are you different now than when you left Wright State?
ES: That’s a good question. I think probably the biggest thing is when I went into Wright State I had this impression that I’m going to do this. And I think more than anything, I think the Lord has instilled a lot more humility, a lot less pride, and there’s a fine line between being confident in your giftings, and I think that going through being fired at Wright State, I learned that you can do everything you think is right and you still may not be successful. But what I’ve learned is a greater trust in the Lord that it’s not about me. It’s about the Lord and serving Him, and whether I’m at the University of Memphis or Wright State or Logansport High School, it’s about trying to serve Him and he’s got a master plan for this. My responsibility is to try and hear from Him, try to become more and more Christ-like every day and whether than means serving Coach Calipari and doing the best I can wherever I am; my ultimate goal is trying to serve the Lord and the difference is I have a lot less confidence in myself and a whole lot more confidence in the Lord from what I took over there to now.
BK: It seems to me that when you first started at Wright State (and I didn’t know you that well), your attitude seemed to be like, something needs to get done and if we’re not getting it done we’re going to work two more hours a day and we’ll get it done. And towards the very end, I kind of noticed you were totally at peace with yourself your last year or two there at Wright State. It seemed to me like you really changed a lot in the four years at that point that I’ve known you. Did you start to realize at the end of Wright State that “Hey, this isn’t in my hands. It’s God.”
ES: I think there’s a point where working harder doesn’t necessarily insure success. In fact a lot of times I think that being able to look at things a lot more objectively, you spend a lot of time – and a lot of times, more time is counterproductive – you know, you stay up all night watching a tape and then when you get going the next day after a two hour sleep you don’t do the job at hand for that day as well. And I think one of the other big changes is a shift in the importance of family. A lot of times, many coaches (myself included) sacrifice your wife and your family on the altar of basketball success. Ultimately you have to come to grips with, “What’s most important?”, and a lot of times as coaches you give a lot of lip service to, “Yeah, the Lord is first and family is second” but if you really go and evaluate is that really true? And you find out that it’s really not. You know, the difference from when I left Wright State to where I am two years later here in Memphis is understanding what the family has sacrificed and how much they have suffered a bit through all the time commitments and things like that. And you begin to really realize what’s most important in your life. And when I was fired at Wright State, there was a handful of people that were there for me but most importantly was my family. You start to have a greater understanding of the priorities that you need to have in life and to make those priorities jive with what you’re doing. I don’t know if that makes sense or not.
BK: What’s the difference between being a head coach (as you experienced) and being an assistant coach or almost an associate head coach really?
ES: There’s a big difference. I’d say the biggest difference is two things: one is that your time is not your own anymore. I am on 24 hour day, seven day a week call. We’ve had one day off since Christmas since I’ve been in Memphis. I mean we’re looking at March 5th and I’ve had one day off since Christmas. Now the players have had some days off but the coaches have had one day off. And even that you’re off you’re waiting for the phone to ring in. So your time is not your own as an assistant. And the second thing is you’re making suggestions instead of decisions. And you know, I was seven years as a head high school coach and six years as a head division I coach. I’ve only been an assistant, this being my fourth year. And that’s a big change. It’s a lot different; you think, “Okay, this needs to be done” and you submit a suggestion, it may or may not be done – and you have to be fine with that. And there are things that I would do differently, but you know what? It’s his decision. And it’s my suggestion. So that’s the two biggest things: you don’t have any control over your time – 24/7 you’re on call – and you’re making suggestions instead of decisions.
BK: When you’re in Memphis, what’s a typical day? Starting off with the beginning to when you go to bed.
ES: The one thing about being in Memphis with Coach Cal is you never know (both laugh). I get up at 5:45; I do my pull-up training, I get some Bible reading in. Uh, I shave shower, get the kids up and make them breakfast. Most days I take my daughter to school and drop her off; sometimes Eddie and Natalie have the little preschool on Mondays and Wednesdays so sometimes I take them. Sometimes I don’t; it just depends on how early I need to get in. Once I usually get to work, I…
BK: What time?
ES: Usually by 8:00. But once I get there, you never know what’s coming. As soon as Cal blows in the office, which may be at 8:30, it may be at 9:00 – it could be at 9:30 or 10:00 – when he comes in everything stops. We spend most of the day in what we call “the middle room” watching tape and doing this and you just don’t know what’s going to happen. Usually practice is around 3:00 or 3:30, sometimes 2:30. When you have your own practice facility, we can practice basically any time we want. And so there’s no practice schedule because there’s nobody coming in before us and nobody coming in after us.
BK: You literally have your own gym and the women have their own gym?
ES: Yes, so we have no practice time issues. We can practice anytime, which is great, but it’s also – your planning of a typical day? Who knows? During that Christmas break, which was about a month, we practiced twice a day everyday during that time because you don’t have to give them a day off and there’s no hour restrictions. So we’re going twice a day the entire time. Plus when they would practice in the morning, practice in the evening and the whole time we are working, watching tape, and doing things all through the day. Normally I’ll get home at – it varies. Sometimes it’s 6:30, sometimes it’s 7:00, sometimes it’s later – sometimes you get home and have to go back. One thing that makes it different as an assistant is you don’t have a typical day; you are constantly on call. Whatever he wants you to go do, you do. Coach Cal is one of those guys who constantly does whatever he wants to do without any consideration of time or anything else because he lives two minutes away from the school. So with him, it’s, “Come on I want to go back in the office. Let’s get together.” I’m thirty minutes away but driving back. So there are some things that are challenging but one of the things is that you don’t have a set schedule.
BK: Talk to me about this year with Memphis. It’s been an up and down year. For a team with as much talent as you all I think some people are surprised that you haven’t won more games.
ES: You know what? You’d be surprised – Cal does an unbelievable job of hiding players’ weaknesses. And what you see looks like such a great talent; they all have their warts and scars, let me tell you. We could go through, after a season, and say, “Hey, this kid can’t do this. And this kid can’t do that.” But what he does is a great job of maximizing their talent. We had some issues early in the season; guys had some chemistry problems. Some things like that; we had a freshman point guard, you know some different things, and so we lost a lot of games and we also had some guys that weren’t on the same page. And so Cal really began to go back and teach the fundamentals, because we didn’t even know how (in an offense) – some of the basic things in basketball we didn’t know how to do. Then we had these All-American players and they didn’t have fundamentals. They’d always just relied on their athletic ability, and so we had to go back over the Christmas break and teach guys how to get open, how to make an entry pass – stuff that you do as a high school coach. We had to go back and teach those things, and as we taught the fundamentals we made some changes on the roster. One of the players became ineligible, and the chemistry got better. Not necessarily as a result of him, but out of necessity everybody kind of came together and the fundamentals got better, we started to win, and we started to play a lot better, and no question the point guard really matured – you saw us; we really started to go on the rise.
BK: In terms of what you’re doing personally, are you still doing a lot of speaking around Memphis or what are you doing for Champions for Christ, all that?
ES: Again, I don’t have control of my time, so even though somebody asked me to do a speaking engagement, I said that I didn’t know if I’ll be able to do it or not. And just because of the time commitment, I have done some but not nearly what I did. If I do one a month, that would be a lot. So a lot of them, it’s like, I hope I’ll be able to but I don’t know. So that has changed. Some of things spiritually… we have started doing the chapel before every game.
BK: Is that something you brought about?
ES: A friend of mine, Ken Bennett, the guy that did chapel – he worked the Right Stuff camp – he’d bring a carload of kids up to Birmingham for the Right Stuff camp years ago, and so when I moved to Memphis, he was obviously a guy that I had been in contact with while I was still at Wright State and everything. And so Ken and I really got the thing going and we just started doing it. And it’s really been good. I mean we get about six or seven players at every chapel, you know, so more than anything we’re just planting seeds. It’s obviously voluntary and things like that, but Cal’s like, “Yeah if you want to do it that’s great.” Just like it’s done in the NBA. We started doing it before the game, but it was kind of crammed time-wise so we began to do it like we did at Wright State and did it after pre-game meal. And so it’s worked out well; we’ve been able to sow some seeds and the players get a chance to know me at a little different level. It’s different as an assistant coach. You know I’m more of a support, teach, one of those things, and so they get a chance to hear me speak, because Coach Cal pretty much does all the talking in practice. So it’s been kind of neat to just have a little platform and see some things going spiritually.
BK: How’s life been in Memphis?
ES: It’s been really good.
BK: Your house, church, things your kids are doing, your family: where you live, how you function in Memphis.
ES: It was a big adjustment. I mean, I’ve always been in the Midwest and I was out east for just a little bit. So it’s been a change. It’s been hard on the family because my wife – you know we live about 25 minutes away and so we don’t really have a lot of friends to do things with or places to do things. Again, I never know when we’ll be able to have time to do it. It’s been hard in a lot of regards to really get into the community and things like that. We just don’t have a whole lot of time to do all that Memphis has. The people have been great to us, but it’s been pretty much my life is being home with the kids – we’ve got ten-, four-, and two-year-olds. She’s pretty much on house arrest there and I’ve been back and forth to the office, so it’s been more of a time where our family has grown closer. We really haven’t had time to branch out too much. Anna, of course, is out and about and doing stuff with school and things but in terms of Shaun and I, it’s pretty much been our family and the basketball.
BK: Last question. Is there anything that you’d like to say that we haven’t covered that you want people to know about the program or about yourself?
ES: Well, it’s just one of those things where I’m just trying to hear from the Lord and say, “OK, Lord, here I am. I will do whatever you want me to do wherever you want to do it.” Whether it’s at Wright State – you know, one of those things – or at Memphis, going back to head coach, whatever. It’s basically saying, “Lord, here’s my life. Use me anyway you want,” and by His grace, he’s willing to use ordinary people like myself and I just pray that I’m hearing his voice clearly and being in obedience of a call. I know that any success or anything I have is a direct result of His grace and mercy. And I’m just grateful whether I’m in Memphis or Dayton, Ohio, or anyplace else that He is willing to meet me there. In the Bible it says in psalm 1:45 that God is near to all that call to Him, and I am grateful that I can call to him in Memphis’ basketball office or sitting in a film room, that He still hears my voice, and He’s still willing to lead me wherever He wants me to go, whatever He wants me to do, here I am.
Follow-up questions
BK: Looking back at your years at Wright State what would you do differently if you had to do that again?
ES: Well, one thing, I think after the first year I probably went a bit overboard in terms of making sure every player was very, very solid academically with no chinks in the armor in terms of character and academics and things like that. And looking back on it now, I’d probably take a chance on a kid that I thought was a good kid that maybe wasn’t a great student – he just had an issue here or there. Not in any way sacrificing the integrity of the program but at the same time trying to go after a little bit better of a player and really working with him actively. You know I look back at our success academically and you look at over a 3.0 team GPA and all that stuff. It was really incredible and a lot of that had to do with the system that we had in place. And with Mike D as our academic coordinator, who did such a great job, that we could have probably taken risks and been able to help them be successful academically and increased our ability on the court – our talent level. But you know outside of that I feel really good about what we did, how we handled things, the way we ran the program, the emphasis we placed on academics and character and things like that. And how we demanded that they behave and demanded how they carried themselves. I think that’s something that I look back on and I feel we were teaching them life skills or trying to do what was best for them to make them successful when they left and in the day of college athletics where its all about bottom line – you either win or you lose – and the end justifies the means. I feel like we did things like (what I feel is the) right way academically and educationally and ethically. But with all of that in mind I think we probably – because of what we demanded of them when they got there – that if we could’ve taken some chances and made them accountable to a level they could have been successful and it could’ve increased our talent level on the court.
BK: You are involved in some organizations. Tell me about them.
ES: One of the things that I’ve been fortunate to be a part of is the NABC Ministry Committee. The NABC is the coaches’ association, which has over four or five thousand members. Not only division-I Head and Assistant Coaches but division-II, division-III, NAIA, also high school coaches are part of it. What we do is we put together the events for the Final Four that have a Christian emphasis. For example, we had John Maxwell as one of our speakers the last couple of years. This year we’ve got Jim Cymbala from Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York City. He is a great speaker, has a huge church in New York City but he also played college basketball at Rhode Island years ago. And Joyce Meyers is going to be one of the speakers this year. It’s really been just exceptional, the type of… we’ve had everyone from Max? We’ve had groups like Point of Grace and Stephen Curtis Chapman. All these different people do a welcome concert. It’s a great opportunity to have some great speakers and great different functions where coaches can unite and try to grow spiritually. We’ve talked about it being the nation of coaches and what we’re trying to do is add the Christian piece – the ethical piece – and things like that to this coaching profession that has potentially such a great impact and it’s been really neat to be part of planning the activities and being part of those activities during the final four.
BK: What’s going on this year at the Final Four? Was it Joyce Meyer?
ES: Jim Cymbala, Joyce Meyer, and what’s the guy’s name who hosts TNT with Charles Barkley? Oh, Ernie Johnson from TNT. You know he’s going to be speaking the “Legends of the Hardwood.” Clark Kellogg is going to be one of the people involved. We’ve had everyone from John Wooden in the past and so this year it will just be a great time. Last year we actually had the film The Passion of Christ shown for free to the college coaches. The film had just come out and we had the reel to reel thing a guy just donated. Basically it costs like $10,000 and the guy just says, “Hey, we’ll do it. Mel Gibson allowed it to be released and we showed it right there in the hotel in the ballroom. So we’ve done some really neat things. John Maxwell was just phenomenal the last two years and all his leadership principals and this year having Joyce Meyer and Jim Cymbala among others. Louis Orr is going to be the FCA speaker this year. So it’s a great time and gives coaches a chance to not only go there, get away, and be part of a great basketball weekend, but they can have some impartations spiritually.
BK: What do you officially do with that group?
ES: Well, I’m one of two coaches, Ritchie McKay, the Head Coach of New Mexico and myself along with the president of Champions for Christ, can’t hear name, Dave Lauer from AIA, and the president from FCA along with Gary Lydic from Focus on the Family – and also Jim Haney, who is the executive director of the NABC. And what we do is we have a monthly conference call where we pray, where we discuss it. It takes a whole year to plan these events and get the speakers and get the musicians and everything together. We do special things like Ritchie McKay and I sent a book out to all the coaches. We send a book out every year to every division-I head coach. This year it was “A Life God Blesses” by Jim Cymbala. He’s going to be one of our speakers. So we try to do something special like that where we send something out each year. It’s a neat thing. We pray. Each person from the group takes one day a week where we pray and fast whether it’s fasting a meal or two – you may want to think about that (BK laughs) and then really praying for a specific part of this Final Four thing.
