Man With a Plan
May 18, 2007 01:24 PM | General
May 18, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – When his nine-year professional playing career was over, West Virginia assistant coach Erik Martin knew the next logical step for him was to become a basketball coach. He just wasn’t sure how to go about it.
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| Erik Martin coaching at Kansas State on Bob Huggins' staff last year.
Kansas State photo |
“When I was done playing I took the year off and didn’t do anything,” Martin said recently. “I just had a daughter and I was basically taking care of her. Then I realized I was going to spend all of my money if I didn’t get to work.”
Martin hooked up with a former buddy at Jacobs Center High School in Cincinnati where Martin coached the junior varsity and served as assistant varsity coach from 2003-04.
“Once I got into that spot with the kids … especially the area I was in I kind of liked it,” Martin said. “And then when basketball season rolled around that made it easier because I was playing games, traveling and doing all that.”
At the end of the year, former Cincinnati teammate Andre Tate called Martin up and asked him if he was interested in becoming an assistant coach at Cincinnati State. Two years coaching junior college basketball at Cincinnati State only fueled Martin’s interest in becoming a Division I coach.
“When Huggs (Bob Huggins) got hired at Kansas State I used to go into the office and pull up CBS Sportsline and look at all of the coaching jobs that were open and if I thought I knew a dude or even if I didn’t, I would just get the number for the school and call.”
Martin says the rejections were usually polite.
“Most of the guys didn’t know me from anyone else on the street and no one ever called me back,” Martin chuckled.
Martin also tried the coaches’ convention thing at the Final Four, making up a bag full of resumes and cards and following around head coaches who had staff openings.
“I think I passed out like two cards and I didn’t even hand out a resume,” Martin said. “When you’re doing that stuff it’s about timing. You just can’t walk to a coach and say, ‘Here’s my resume – hire me.’
“I remember I went back to my hotel room that night and I had a friend call me and we talked for like two hours and I was like, ‘Man I’m so disappointed and this is not what I thought it was going to be.’ Instead of staying Saturday, I just went home and waited to see how things would go.”
In the meantime, Martin had always kept in touch with his old college coach Huggins, who had made a name for himself as one of the best and hardest working coaches in the business at Cincinnati.
“Every summer I went home Huggs would have a cookout or I would go back there and play with some of his players,” Martin said. “Huggs had just gotten hired by Kansas State and we talked once but I never asked him for a job.”
Martin had remembered a conversation he had with Huggins a year earlier about breaking into the business.
“Before he left Cincinnati he had an opening on his staff and I went in and talked to him and asked him about it. He said, ‘You need to get a little more seasoning and meet some people.’ Then he hired Frank Martin. After he went to Kansas State, we talked a little bit and then one day Huggs called me up and said he was going to give me a shot,” Martin said.
“Once when I was interviewed by someone at Kansas State I was asked, ‘What made Huggs hire you?’ To this day I don’t know. I like to think I graduated on time, I never got in trouble and I was a hard worker … pretty much a straight-forward, honest guy.”
Those redeeming qualities made an impression on Huggins, who with guys like Erik Martin, Corrie Blount and Nick Van Exel transformed the Bearcat program into one of the most respected in college basketball. Martin says it wasn’t always like that when he first arrived at Cincinnati in 1991.
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| Erik Martin was a member of Bob Huggins' Final Four team at Cincinnati in 1992.
University of Cincinnati photo |
“When I got to Cincinnati it wasn’t the Cincinnati that everyone knows today,” Martin said. “Bob Huggins wasn’t the Bob Huggins that everyone knows today. He really didn’t have a national name then. When we got to the Final Four everything blew up.”
Martin recalls going into one of the local malls and seeing team gear for all of the area schools except for Cincinnati.
“All I saw was X (Xavier) gear, University of Kentucky gear, Louisville gear and I remember Corrie and myself saying, ‘Where is all the UC gear?’ We had to go on campus to get that and we were like, ‘that’s going to change.’ The next summer after we went to the Final Four there was stuff everywhere.”
Having played for Huggins and now coaching alongside him, Martin has a new-found appreciation for how Huggins handles his players and runs his program.
“When you play for Huggs you will never have to worry about where you stand,” Martin said. “You will always know and if you don’t, go up to his office and he will tell you.”
Martin has also seen another side of Huggins.
“He’s a different cat,” Martin said. “I’ve learned more about him this past year than in the 15 years since I played for him. Huggs has a better sense of humor than I could have ever imagined. I used to think that he was always serious.”
However, Martin says Huggins is dead serious about winning a national championship at West Virginia University. The veteran coach is assembling a high-powered staff that also includes Billy Hahn, who recruited many of the players that helped Maryland win the 2002 national title. Because of ongoing commitments, Martin says the basketball staff has yet to have an in-depth, sit-down discussion.
“Most of our talks have been about how we’ve got to get some kids in here,” Martin said. “We’re trying to win a national championship. That’s how I’m going to someday get a head coaching job. By us going to the NIT, I’m going to stay an assistant coach. I’m patient. I don’t need a head coaching job tomorrow. I can wait three, four, five, six, seven years … but I need a championship and I haven’t had one for a while.”
In the meantime, Martin is establishing roots here in Morgantown. Recently, his late afternoons have been spent with real estate agents looking over houses in the area.
“I’m staying at a Residence Inn which is much nicer than the hotels I stayed at in the CBA,” Martin laughed.
“Opportunity is what it is -- it pops up,” Martin explained. “Sometimes you’re ready and sometimes you’re not but my philosophy in life is when you’re opportunity comes just do your best. I don’t want to look back in 20 years and say, you know, when I got to West Virginia I had a chance to really do something special.”
With the players in the program right now, and the players this staff is going to bring in, Martin is certain West Virginia is going to be a major player in college basketball for many years to come.
“I saw the strides we made at Kansas State – those guys didn’t know how to win. We had to teach them from scratch,” Martin said. “I looked at West Virginia’s schedule and out of the nine games they lost eight they probably should have lost. Everything except for Cincinnati … they either played a better team, they played on the road or a Top 25 team. These kids know how to win – we don’t have to teach them how to win.
“We’ve got to teach them the little things about being physical and taking the weight room more serious,” Martin said. “Huggs is going to take these guys’ strengths and make them stronger and he’s going to take their weaknesses and make them stronger.”
And that should make for a much stronger WVU basketball program.
