Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 24, 1994 TAG: 9403240126
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: KNOXVILLE, TENN. LENGTH: Medium
Many people don't even expect O'Neill to be the Warriors' coach next week.
In an NCAA Southeast Regional semifinal tonight against Duke, the balding, bespectacled O'Neill will be coaching in a 24,385-seat building he could call home in future seasons.
As for O'Neill's candidacy, he wasn't volunteering any information Wednesday. He is, however, regarded as the leading candidate to succeed Wade Houston as Tennessee's coach.
"We got off the bus [for practice] and [Tony] Miller and [Roney] Eford, said, `Oh, the University of Tennessee. Nice place, huh?' " O'Neill said, laughing, after the workout at Thompson-Boling Arena. "They acted like they didn't know I heard them."
You can't help but hear about O'Neill's candidacy for coaching vacancies, primarily at Tennessee and Pitt.
"It's been going on for a month-and-a-half," he said. "It really hasn't been a distraction. It hasn't been the focus."
The Warriors haven't allowed that to happen. They've been too busy reviving a program that hasn't been to the NCAA's Sweet 16 in 15 years, arriving with a second-round upset of Kentucky.
Marquette has prospered with a different style of play from most big-time programs. The Warriors are big and patient. They play tough defense. They control tempo with a pro-set offense. They've given up more than 68 points only seven times this season - five of those games were losses.
They also play hard, smart and have fun, which is reminiscent of the Marquette greatness of the past, produced by coach Al McGuire. What do O'Neill and McGuire have in common? They're both Irish, witty and willing to let their players take shots with more than basketballs.
Guard Robb Logterman didn't think long when asked what he thought O'Neill would be doing if he weren't coaching.
"Time," said the Warriors senior.
Logterman, 7-foot-1 center Jim McIlvaine and bullish 6-8 Damon Key are more than the Warriors' top three scorers as seniors. They are the foundation of a rebuilt program.
In their freshman season, Marquette was finishing its time in the Midwestern Collegiate Conference with an 11-18 season. The move to the Great Midwest Conference rekindled the Warriors as a big-time program. They won the league's regular-season title this winter, O'Neill's fifth at the Milwaukee school.
"I applaud our athletic director, Bill Cords, and our president, Father [Albert] DiUlio for recognizing the kind of opportunity the Great Midwest gave us," O'Neill said. "As a coach, it would have been easy for me to say we should stay in the MCC, where it would have been easier.
"But if our program was going to make progress as a school and as a basketball team, we had to get in a league with big-name people and quality programs with tradition."
O'Neill, a native of upstate New York, had been hired from Lute Olson's Arizona staff. He previously had been an assistant at Delaware and Tulsa. When he arrived at Marquette, he thought he had gone to basketball Siberia, not a school that had won a national championship in 1977.
"When I first got there, I was ready to throw up," he said. "I found one basketball, one player. I didn't know what I was getting into."
The schedule was filled with cupcakes. He could change that. O'Neill already was known as a tireless recruiter. That wouldn't be a problem, right? Well, first he had to play one-on-one with the ghost of McGuire, who not only was on TV as a game analyst, but also still lives in Milwaukee.
"Kids today don't know about Marquette in 1977," O'Neill said. "If you could have recruited the parents, it would have been wonderful. The kids? They thought Marquette was in Michigan. `Wasn't that the place that Willard Scott said was the coldest in the nation?'
"Honestly, when I recruited Eford [the Warriors' sophomore swingman from New York], he didn't know Marquette was in Milwaukee."
What O'Neill has done is build his own success in the shadow of McGuire. The Warriors' past success is only a history lesson.
"In all honesty, I think everybody tried to fight that after Al," O'Neill said. "And you can't. Al McGuire is the most colorful coach in college basketball history.
"If you try to fight that, you're going to die, because everybody up there loves him. Everybody has an Al story. He doesn't know four of [the current Warriors'] names. He doesn't know my name.
"He calls me Coach Kevin on the air all the time. He still doesn't know my last name after five years. You can't fight any of that stuff. What you have to do is just try to reach back on it."
Soon - although the Warriors hope not - O'Neill is likely to follow McGuire as Marquette history, too.
by CNB