Brad Brownell: Success Central
by Bill Kintner
DAYTON, Ohio – Late in the second half as the clock ticked down, the overflowing crowd in the Ervin J. Nutter Center screamed and the students crowded down to the end of the court waiting to start their celebration as the home team Wright State Raiders led the 10th-ranked Butler Bulldogs by 12 points.
As Wright State’s Reinaldo Smith streaked past the Raiders’ bench with the ball, he had a clear, unguarded path to the basket, but Wright State Coach Brad Brownell signaled to Smith to hold up and dribble out the clock.
When the buzzer sounded, the Raiders had knocked off Butler 77-65 to move into first place in the Horizon League by a half game.
The crowd of 10,837 was the largest crowd to see a Wright State game in the 16-year history of the Nutter Center. Maybe even bigger than that is the buzz that his team has created in Dayton.
Wright State has always played second fiddle to the University of Dayton, the much older and more established team on the south side of town. But in just his first year at the helm of the Raiders, Brownell has created some real excitement in this basketball-crazy town that seems to have finally embraced Wright State as a winner.
It’s all in a day’s work for Brownell, who did the same thing at University of North Carolina-Wilmington. There, he went 83-40 in four years as head coach, including two trips to the NCAA Tournament.
When Brownell decided to leave UNC-Wilmington and take up residence In Dayton, Ohio as the new coach of the Raiders, it raised a few eyebrows from the college basketball community. He went from a team that finished the season with a RPI of 37 to a team that had an RPI of about 158.
But he saw an opportunity to build this program into a real winner. He had a great arena, one of the best basketball training facilities in the country, a tired fan base that still averaged over 5,000 fans per game even though the team has been only around .500 the last three years. Maybe more importantly, he had an administration willing to get behind his efforts to take this program to the next level.
The Evansville native led his team to a 25-8 mark last season, where they won the Colonial Athletic Association Tournament. They lost a heart-breaking game in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to George Washington after building a big lead in the second half.
Brownell played basketball at DePauw and graduated in 1991. When he finally retires from basketball he may challenge former Vice President Dan Quayle as the most famous graduate of DePauw.
Upon graduation he became a graduate assistant at Evansville under Jim Crews, where the Purple Aces finished 24-6 and won the MCC Championship to reach the NCAA Tournament.
In 1994 he joined Jerry Wainwright at UNC-Wilmington, where he helped him bring the Seahawks into the national sport-light. During his tenure at UNC-Wilmington as an assistant coach they went 136-103 during that eight-year period, including two NCAA and two NIT appearances.
This record led to Brownell to be named the coach when Wainwright left.
What excited Wright State about Brownell, besides his winning ways, was his clean-cut image and values. It seemed to Wright State that they were getting an Eddie Schilling type, squeaky-clean coach that would do a little better in terms of winning than Schilling did.
Schilling coached the Raiders from 1997 to 2003. He probably ran the cleanest program in the country on his way to a 75-93 record. The best he would do was 18 wins as almost everything that could go wrong during his tenure did go wrong. He brought in sparkling student-athletes who would get hurt or get homesick and transfer closer to home or just quit basketball altogether.
Wright State Athletic Director Mike Cusack proudly announced when he hired Brownell, “While Brad’s record is outstanding; it is his character and values that excited us most in making a final decision.”
Brownell is off to a great start with his team headed into the Horizon League Tournament as the number one seed. His team is the talk of the town and the crowds at the Nutter Center lately are bigger than ever.
Brownell sat down for an in-depth interview that covers almost everything, including his past, recruiting, scheduling and even getting into a boxing ring with Bobby Knight. This is part one.
Bill Kintner: You went from Wilmington, where you ended up having a RPI of 37 then you went to Wright State and they that had a RPI of 158 that raised some eyebrows. What brought you to Wright State?
Brad Brownell: One of the factors was a change in leadership at Wilmington. The AD changed a couple of years ago and we just didn’t see eye-to-eye on how some things should be run in the program. Wilmington was a great place, I enjoyed it immensely and I had 12 great years, eight of those years with Coach Wainwright. As an assistant working with him, we rebuilt the program and I was able to continue to have success there. My wife and I loved living there. I met a lot of wonderful people, great fans, it was a terrific job and I just had some differences in leadership that were becoming a problem. I was fortunate to have a couple of offers and to be able to look at some different places. I really liked and felt comfortable with the leadership and people here. So I really liked Dr. Goldenberg (president), Dr. Hopkins (provost) and Dr. Cusack (AD), Bob Grant (Associate AD) and his wife that I met during the interview process. I also met some boosters, including Fred Setzer and Bob Mills, and I felt like they were great people. I saw some similarities in terms of a young school that wants to be good in basketball. Wilmington was a little bit like that. It just felt like being back in the Midwest, where I’m from, that this could be an area where I would still be able to recruit some and I still have some ties. I just kind of felt like this was a program that was on the move and I would have a chance to do some good things. It just needed a spark and hopefully I’m going to help be that spark.
BK: If you had stayed in Wilmington and you didn’t have problems and everything had worked out, how far could you have taken that program?
BB: It is hard to say. Every year I thought we were continuing to recruit good players; it was a good job in a lot of ways. We had kind of developed that name where when you called people there was respect there, and you had been to four NCAA tournaments in seven years, so it got you in the door with some good kids. We had an unbelievable home court, great place to play and a wonderful school. How far you could you go? I don’t know because it still is a situation where the CAA most years is going to be a one-bid league and you still have to play great over three or four days to win a tournament to get to the NCAA. I still think that you can win a lot of games there. I think once you get to the tournament, you never know what is going to happen. I felt like I had been snake bit a little bit in that we had lost two close games, tough games, one in overtime and one on a last-second shot. Had we won those games you never know what could happen in terms of winning a couple of games, advancing to the sweet sixteen and doing something special. I think that’s out there. I think that is a possibility and more for any mid-major that gets hot, has a right group of kids, has a good draw and things kind of fall your way in terms of match-ups.
BK: What is the difference between Wright State and Wilmington?
BB: Just in name and in terms of recruiting, being able to get your name in with some people and having an edge in terms of already having success versus having to prove that you are going to be successful. The other difference is in being in the same town with a university that is very successful and has a tremendous support that we didn’t have somebody like that in Wilmington in our own backyard. We were the hometown team so that is certainly a challenge that is here for us at Wright State. Those are some differences. The leagues are very similar, the CAA and Horizon are I think very challenging leagues that are difficult to win in. You know you better win them (league tournament) because most years I think it is once every several years that you are going to have a second bid. I think those are some of the similarities and differences.
BK: How do you cope with having a school right in your backyard not to mention one 35 miles down in Oxford and two 50 miles that way in Cincy and one 65 miles away in Columbus? How do you cope with having so many schools so close and specifically Dayton?
BB: Well you know, I mean you just don’t worry about those people as much as you just worry about doing the best you can with your job. I hope that University of Dayton is successful and I hope that we are successful because that brings more notoriety to this town and this area. I hope both teams do well and right now they are the established program and we are the new kid on the block trying to do the best we can to get noticed. If we do our job well, have some success, play well on the court and put our good product out there I think people will want to come support us.
I think that Dayton is a college basketball town. Dayton is a town that really likes college athletics – without having a lot of pro sports teams here you can get notoriety and get support. That is another reason I wanted to come here. So I think people are willing to come out and support you as long as you are successful and put a good product on the floor. The biggest thing is I don’t think we can worry about what Dayton is doing. They have got their league and what they are trying to do with their situation and we have got our league and what we are trying to do in ours.
But it certainly isn’t easy being here and having Miami right down the road. Then Xavier down the road, Cincinnati down the road and all the MAC schools. I mean that is another difficulty with this job. At Wilmington we had a little different niche in that we were in the Colonial and there were a lot of schools in the Southern Conference. The Colonial was a little bit higher league so that helped us. We didn’t really recruit against Duke, Carolina, NC State, and Wake a whole lot, so we were kind of that next echelon under them. We are not going to recruit against Cincinnati and Ohio State here, but we are kind of in the next echelon within the state. In North Carolina we had built ourselves to be in that next echelon, where we were beginning to recruit better players at that level in the state, I think that is something that right now is the challenge for us to continually build that and not have to fight the MAC, Dayton and Xavier. There are so many good programs right here in our backyard that have had success that there is a lot of competition.
BK: Before you took this job did you go back and look at what Wright State had done that last 15 or so years, so that you knew what the possibilities were?
BB: I asked those questions in my interview. I talked to people and knew about the support Wright State has. I knew that initially just like with any new building (Nutter Center) the excitement was there and there was great attendance. But I think that attendance in a lot of places as dwindled in some regards because there is so much saturation with games on TV every night. Big Monday, Super Tuesday, you can stay home and watch some pretty good basketball. With all the cable packages like ESPN Plus, you watch almost any game you want if you are a real basketball fan. I think more kids work in college than ever before. More kids work in high school than when I as in school. There are a lot of things that are drawing people’s attention away.
But I did know that Wright State has had success and had put people in the stands. I thought that we could get back to that point if we are successful.
